Native Americans being groomed for United States culture. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

This is part II in the series Origin of Public Education.

The idea of compulsory school has been around for much longer than most would like to think.  Around 380 BC (or so), in the Socratic dialogue The Republic, Plato discussed justice on various levels. He also deliberated on social structures and various stages of government—including a form of required government provided education. The concept was euqality and fairness and a solution to poverty.

The Aztecs didn’t just chat about it, but had a compulsory education system implemented around AD 1400-1600, requiring children to attend “school.” Girls learned how to care for the family and economics and boys were taught leadership and fighting skills (hmm…Bullying prevention and anti-violence must have come around a few hundred years later).

Our timeline of collective academic supporters would certainly not be complete without Martin Luther, who during the German Reformation in 1524 promoted compulsory education so that Protestants could read the Bible for themselves.

The Lutheran influence was very strong, even as the centuries passed.  Prussia (East Germany) engineered the model used for most modern school systems–including the one in the Untied States. Introduced by Frederick the Great in 1763, this working academic paradigm sported a tax-funded compulsory academic system through the eighth grade. Not only did “Volksschule” (translated people- or public- school) provide swell basics needed for industrial purposes, like reading, writing and mathematics. But the Prussians found mandatory schools to be an excellent conduit to groom obedience through national doctrine, preparing students for military service or bureaucratic positions. Yikes!

Yet the world over, just a century later, seemed to think this system was a groovy solution to whatever was going on in their neck of the sequoias.

Among the members of the Prussian model fan-club was Horace Mann (as discussed in Part I), and General Richard Henry Pratt, who used these techniques on Native Americans on prisoners of war and those forced into government schools (more later).

Mann and Pratt were instrumental in creating the first compulsory laws in this country, in Massachusetts, 1852, to be specific. This new law required children ages 8 to 14 to attend school three months out of the year, six weeks which had to be consecutive. A child who was poor, handicapped, or could prove mastery was exempt to mandatory schooling.

Just five years later 43 teachers congregated in Philadelphia and created the very first Teachers Union. This very organization is still alive and well today—The National Education Association (NEA).

Race still played on issue as to whether or not a child had the right to learn, how, and what. In some states it was illegal for a colored person to write. Public schooling was far behind in the southern states even prior to the Civil War. The war aggravated the destitute situation; many schools were closed, social turmoil and poverty.

Many saw the value in what some level of education could provide, even if the system was not designed with them in mind. Black literacy rates rose, and women led by advocates like Catherine Beecher began not only going to school, but take an active teaching role in the structured classrooms.

But don’t get too excited. Although our public education timeline now is nearing the 1900’s, public education still has not found a civil rights footing. In 1875 the first Civil Rights Law was passed, forbidding segregation in all public accommodations. It was short lived. The Civil Rights Law was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1883.

Native American children were sent to compulsory boarding schools. At these controversial institutions the children were forced to give up their customs, language, culture and upbringing, in exchange for an acceptable American academic doctrine.  Black children often faced exclusion as well and many started their own schools. Herein lay the great historical debate about what is segregation and discrimination, and what language and culture immersion for immigrant children today (but that’s an entirely separate blog).

The United States had by the turn of the century become the world’s largest provider of free public education, enrolling more than 12 million children.  Schools were busting at the seams, much thanks to the continuing immigration boom, and many kids were attending part-time because of space issues. Yet not all children were afforded an education. Nor was the system designed for, or capable of handling all. In 1900 merely 50% of American children attended school and the average education stint was 5 years.

Around the corner of the new century awaited two World Wars, continued immigration, poverty–and school choice.  To be continued in Origins of Public Education III.

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Until the 1800’s the closest comparison to “public schools” were the short-term schools of the British colonies. These schools were in session for 10-12 weeks per year, providing basic instruction, charged a fee along with the collected community funding, and nearly exclusively preferred teaching white boys.

Hence schooling, costly and religious, was designed for the privileged few.

Parents were considered the primary educators, and families often relied on each other and churches for additional learning partnerships. Something about “it takes a village to raise a child…”

Around the mid 1800’s the “common schools” were born.

Common schools were the brain child of Horace Mann of Massachusetts, who was the founder and editor of The Common School Journal. Mann theorized that public education was the most effective method in converting the country’s disorderly youngsters into disciplined and obedient citizens. Common schools, reformers said, would prevent crime and poverty. Such schools, claimed Mann, needed to be: funded and controlled by an interested public, inclusive of children of diverse backgrounds, non-sectarian, and taught by well-trained professional teachers. Sounds familiar?

So it was that common schools were tuition free and paid for through local property taxes in exchange for a few state regulations. These schools welcomed both genders—of white children.

School was still only an option for select few.

There was a fear of foreign influence in the recently independent Americas. The Protestant Christians whom had sought religious freedom in this country were leery of the growing immigration of the Irish, which was bringing in an increasing presence of the Catholic Church. Added tension among the Protestants was conflicting beliefs on topics such as abolitionism, temperance, and women’s rights. This divided the Protestant churches into schisms.

This discrimination was not going unnoticed. In New York, were many poor families were Irish Catholic, a grumbling grew louder and louder about the anti-Catholic and anti-Irish attitude of the free public schools as these were almost all Protestant.

A third element in the quickly expanding cities was increasing popularity of secularism. This group was also anxious about the presence of Protestant teaching.

Bishop “Dagger” John Hughes loudly protested and demanded that the New York Public School Society would make city funds available for Catholic schools too. “These children deserve their own school,” Bishop Hughes firmly argued. He also announced that “We are unwilling to pay taxes for the purpose of destroying our religion in the minds of our children.”

In an attempt to take a neutral stance, New York legislators sided with secularism as a worldview and passed the Maclay Bill passed in 1842, which unified public schools under one board and prohibit(ed) sectarian teaching in NY Schools. So instead of making public education inclusive of all variations of faith, it simply resulted in exclusions of a new group—the believers of all sorts.

A couple of years later the (Protestant) Public School Society was no more, and the New York City Board of Education elected.

“Dagger John” was named archbishop and became the founder of the privately funded national system of Catholic schools. He had tired of fighting for Catholic public schools and decided to start his own. School choice was born.

In 1859 Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution in The Origin of Species. The philosophy was blasphemous for Catholics and Protestants alike, and quickly adopted as appropriate curriculum doctrine for secular public schools.

Speaking of which, let’s not forget about compulsory school laws, Part II in our series of history of public education.

For more information

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Mann

www.pbs.org/kcet/publicschool/roots_in_history/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hughes_(archbishop)