The previous two short articles were priming-the-pump, so to speak, to a fuller discussion about education. The onus of education should be shouldered by parents and the Church. This may be controversial by today’s gatekeepers and those of the secular laity who help maintain this gate, it is these people who believe that the State should play at least a significant–if not totalizing–role in education. In this article we’ll look at the origins of compulsory education, the ideology that undergirds the system, and what it has its main goal.
The Beginning
The State should play at least a significant role in education. This idea of the omnipotent State has its origins in Hegel, and State controlled education began to rise to prominence with Fichte and the Prussians. After Napoleon stepped upon the world stage, Fichte attributed Germany’s defeat to lack of education, and he called for a new education, one that was not based on classical learning, which was too individualistic, but one which had has its goal the nation. With this national ideal in mind, the State became invested in the training of young minds that would be subservient to State standards and control. However, what often comes into conflict with collectivism is the individual human will, if one thinks for oneself and is not subservient to another, then one is not molded into a good, law-abiding citizen. As Fichte said in his Addresses to the German Nation, “I should reply that that very recognition of, and reliance upon, free will in the pupil is the first mistake of the old system.” In Fichte’s formation of a new educational model, the State replaced both parents and the Church as sources of education. Inevitably the new model will run aground when students return home to their families, so Fichte stressed that
“It is essential that from the very beginning the pupil should be continuously and completely under the influence of this education, and should be separated altogether from the community, and kept from all contact with it.
Contemporary cultural issues in the West, the idea that parents have no say-so in what their kids are taught even though it may stand against their own ascribed beliefs and values–even to the point of sexual ethics, critical theory, and, even in some extreme cases, actual gender transitioning–has its origins in Fichte’s model for education. Separate the child from their home, religion, and traditions and the State can indoctrinate them to ensure that national values are utmost.
Coming to America
The Prussian model for education was adopted by Protestant Americans, specifically Unitarians. There has always existed a strong prejudice against Roman Catholicism in the States. Classical education was too inextricably tied to the Catholic Church and, what most Protestants believed, their outmoded dogma and tradition. After all when the Catholic Church clashed with the likes of Galileo they may have won the battle, but, ultimately, they lost the war. With one hand they refused to release their grip on faith and superstition, while white-knuckling their rosaries with their other hand. What America needed was a tabula rasa to build a new society without being beholden to the Old World in perpetuity. Enlightenment values were already at the foundation of Americanism, yet these values upheld the rights of the individual and freedom, but to steer a nation in the direction that would benefit the elites needed a model of education that held science in high regard while deemphasizing the individual in favor of the collective. The Prussians offered the solution.
In the 1840s in the state of Massachusetts, Horace Mann pushed for the tax funding of compulsory education. The state funded “common schools” offered a curriculum that all students would submit to, and this also allowed for a standard for the training of teachers. Mann’s goal was to keep the unruly kids off the streets and out of trouble, while providing an education that would prepare them for modern life. This paved the way for the factory modelled school to become the norm around the turn of the century. These “common schools” modeled on Prussian education quickly spread in New England. Many of these areas were dominated by Protestants and Unitarians, therefore what is often labeled the Calvinist work ethic and the idea of working towards building the Kingdom of God in the temporal realm ran though the culture. Efficiency, reason and science were seen as virtues to aim form. And an education system had to inculcate this into the youth.
After World War II, FDR’s plan for public education built upon the preceding Prussian “common schools”. Education standards both for student and teacher were lowered so that there would be equal opportunity for all. The goal then was to ensure that every child had to undergo the same education. And for a nation coming out of another world war and entering into the Cold War (which was an ideological, informational, and psychological war) public education was used as mass indoctrination of pro-America/anti-communist ideals. The government ensured this because education was now a federal issue, it was no longer in the hands of states and local government.
In the 2010 compulsory education underwent another revision, this is when we arrive at “common core”–this should sound familiar. As with any education system there are pros and cons. One of the alleged good things about Common Core was the changing of certain standards in, for example, math, a subject that students were struggling with. It also included technology in its curriculum, in an age where we are seemingly inextricably bound to computer technologies, including tech classes will likely prove beneficial. However, Common Core detractors believed that it lowered overall standards and shifted focus to subjects in STEM while jettisoning the humanities, art and music. If we examine the push for Common Core through the lens of the history of compulsory education in this country, then one will begin to question the significance and purpose as to why a new model of education has been implemented by the federal government. I have my answers to this question, but it’s too speculative to put here.
The Goal
The basic tenets of the Prussian model are collectivism, behavioral training, suppression of the imagination, and obedience. We already discussed collectivism, so not to be repetitive we’ll examine the other tenets. Based on Wundtian behavioral psychology and Pavlovian conditioning, public education sought to form children to respond to stimuli in a preconditioned way, whereas classical education which followed the trivium, informed students to make inquiry, think critically, seek wisdom and cultivate virtue. Around the turn of the century, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation funded public education. Inevitably the question should arise as to why billionaires saw the funding of public education as a viable investment. The answer is found in Rockefeller’s own idea of modeling the school day to reflect that of factories. Schools began to take on the appearance of factory buildings, and even the length of a school day and the bell notifying students that class is beginning or ending was deliberately created to prepare students to one day work in factories. And as previously mentioned, public schools were a good way to keep kids off the streets while their parents reported for work.
As C.S. Lewis noted in one of his essays, stories provide the fertile ground of meaning where the seed of truth will take germinate and take root. The key to this ground of meaning is imagination. As discussed in length here, here, and here, imagination plays an integral role in spiritual formation, acquisition of virtues, and the reception of truth. If the imaginative faculty is not cultivated in the young, or if it is actively asphyxiated, then children will easily be molded into obedient workers. What good is reading Homer, Virgil, Dante, or Shakespeare if the purpose of education is to create a working class? Whether one is drawing from the mythopoeic of Lewis, the role of the fairytale from Vigen Guroian, or the moral imagination of Russell Kirk, the imagination is an entry point to the soul and, therefore, is integral in cultivating virtue and wisdom. This poses a serious problem within the Prussian model. Imagination must be snuffed out. To what benefit are the Russian stories of Ivan…or Pinocchio’s descent into the underworld (the whale) to the factory worker? What good is reading about Pip’s rise through ranks of Victorian society for the person working a fast food establishment? Or the tales of Arthur’s knights? These stories might give workers lofty ideas. These stories might form a virtuous soul, not one easily crushed by the Machine of modernity.
Behavioral training in terms of Wundtian psychology meant that students responses were conditioned. This simply means that there is an input and an output of information. As long as the students can regurgitate what they’ve been taught with very little questioning or understanding, the job of the teacher was successful–because really the end goal is obedience to superiors. It is interesting that around the time that FDR implemented social programs, he revised public education as well. FDR (and Wilson too) were influenced by a European variety of socialism, not the militant, Communistic kind, but the Fabian, Anglo-American establishment kind. This variety of socialism believed that institutions could influence and steer society in whichever direction benefited the elites. Ultimately, the end goal is a totalizing State and a subservient population of workers. We see these ideas in books such as 1984 and Brave New World.
The next installment of this series on education will focus on the alternative to the public education model. Most of the information in this article is found in these books, for a deeper reading on this subject I recommend reading them:
- “NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education” by Samuel L. Blumenfeld
- “Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling” by John Taylor Gatto
- “Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students” by Allan Bloom
