Free – but Mandatory – Education

In May we visited Johannesburg, South Africa. While there we were fortunate to visit Soweto and to visit a small school. While there we learned some about Apartheid and how the whites used the education system to keep the blacks from learning much that might help them beyond being capable of much more than menial labor.

That got me to think about the origins of public schools in American. It also stimulated me to wonder if American schools were purposefully designed to keep people from learning certain things.

Over the last few weeks I have had an opportunity to explore the original foundations of free public schooling in America. What I learned has helped fill in some blank spots I’ve had about why things don’t change in the education system.

The original founders of public schooling in American and in Britain really didn’t want schools to be a place where smart people attended (or where smart people came out after being there). They wanted schools to be a place where the poor and not so smart could learn discipline and order and how to follow rules (so that society wouldn’t have much crime and problems with them).

I had always thought that schools were designed to produce factory workers and good citizens. Factory workers being people that could work with their hands but not their minds and good citizens being people that could follow the rules. It wasn’t until reading about these origins of public school that I’ve been able to see that being a ‘good citizen’ was the primary reason and that being a good factory worker just happened to be one of the applications of being a good citizen (and factory work was plentiful in the late 1800s and early 1900s).

At the time of creating free public schools there was an existing system and from what I read the majority of parents sent their children to school. But the school system that existed at the time (1800s through around 1870s) was made up of private schools (which were mostly religious). But schools tuitions were paid for by parents. Free public schools were created for the minority that couldn’t afford to go to those religious private schools.

In the 1870′s school became mandatory – law – and every state now has a law that says young people have to go to school at a certain age and must be in school until a certain age.

Over time parents began letting their children go to the free, public schools because of the money (free versus cost seems to win quite often). So now, the free, public school system is the dominant design and private schools are “only for the wealthy.”

Given these early foundations it is pretty clear that changing the existing system is NOT of any priority and would take a significant change in the way of thinking by leaders. Of course there are small pockets of change. Home schooling is a movement away from the public school system. Unschooling is a movement away as well. And of course there are some schools that have bucked the trend and continue to make progress in becoming places of true learning.

Open Letter to Bill Gates