I have been reading a lot about education early in American history recently, and some of my disparate thoughts came together a little today as I read Spunky’s post “In loco parentis .”
Before compulsory education laws, the teacher served the needs of the children under the authority of the parents. But when the state took over and confiscated a parent’s wages to pay for public education and required children to attend, the state became the authority. The teacher turned from satisfying the needs of the parent, to meeting the requirements of the state.
The part that has been sticking with me is this idea of the conflict between the state and the family. It wasn’t so early in our history, but not necessarily because the state recognized the rights and duty of the parent to educate their own children.
In 1642, the Massachussetts colony broke with tradition, taking the supervision of education away from the clergy and putting it into the hands of selectmen, or in other words, the state. These selectmen had the power to assess children’s ability “to read & understand the principles of religion and the capitall lawes of this country” and, while implementation was scant, they had the authority to enforce their standards on parents and masters.
In 1647, the famous “Old Deluder Satan” law was passed, establishing a public school system in the colony and the responsibility each town had to the establishment of schools. This, too, was not fully implemented, with many towns preferring the fines to the establishment of schools, but the system was set in place and governmental authority was asserted in education matters. This law specifically in targeting Satan also demonstrates that “social engineering” has a long history in America. In fact, our founding very much was a “social engineering” project as the Pilgrims came seeking to build a nation consistent with their religious beliefs.
In 1683, Pennsylvania passed a law requiring that children be taught to read and write and perform a useful trade by the age of 12.
In fact, by the time Horace Mann began reforming education, the Northern states had a long history of public schools, making the adoption of his ideas a little easier. They were a little slower in the South, where there was not such a long history with state involvement in education.
But even Mann’s ideas did not come out of a vaccuum, and while he was certainly heavily influenced by the Prussian system he so idolized, he wasn’t the first to envision a national public education system in America. It was not Mann, for example, who wrote the following in 1786:
Our schools of learning, by producing one general and uniform system of education, will render the mass of the people more homogeneous and thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceable government. Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic
It was Benjamin Rush, who signed the Declaration of Independence. And if we want to be concerned with the state in particular, other statements of his are more concerning when viewed through today’s lens (emphasis in the original).
Next to the duty which young men owe to their Creator, I wish to see a SUPREME REGARD TO THEIR COUNTRY inculcated upon them. When the Duke of Sully became prime minister to Henry the IVth of France, the first thing he did, he tells us, was to subdue and forget his own heart.”" The same duty is incumbent upon every citizen of a republic. Our country includes family, friends, and property, and should be preferred to them all. Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property. Let him be taught to love his family, but let him be taught at the same time that he must forsake and even forget them when the welfare of his country requires it. Ibid.
Even Noah Webster, “America’s school master,” described the loose education system of his day as “monarchic” in not granting a free and public education to all Americans.
In our American republics, where [government] is in the hands of the people, knowlege should be universally diffused by means of public schools. On the Education of Youth in America
Public education has always been about educating “other people’s children.” The poor, the immigrant, the minority. And always with a goal of “reforming” them, or “engineering” them, if you will. When the society is fairly homogenous, no one objects because the overwhelming majority shares the same religious and social values. An extended public education system was viewed as a way to spread this virtue. Unfortunately, American Protestants did not really begin to vociferously oppose state involvement in education until the state’s involvement no longer reflected their values. On the contrary, we did a lot to set the foundations of what would become the current system.
[will render the mass of the people more homogeneous and thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceable government]
Benjamin Rush may have written the perfect definition of socialization.
And, your post points out what I see has caused a failure in the Republican Party. No longer a party of small government and fiscally sound policies, just like the Democratic Party, it has become a party of big government and big spending. The only difference is that the Christian right hope to use the party to engineer a society that reflects our values. The politicians are too eager to play the game. They purchase our vote by supporting pro-life and anti-gay marriage laws and we line up to vote for them. American Protestants are not vociferously opposing the 9 trillion dollar national debt and ever increasing Federal Government’s encroachment on our freedoms.
This is exactly why Catholic immigrants began their own schools!
The attitude expressed by Benjamin Rush in that quote reminds me of Ancient Sparta. The boys left their families at age 7 to be raised by the government. The purpose of their schooling was not academics but conformity and loyalty to the state.
Personally, I much prefer the Athenian system of privatized and home education that focused primarily on literature and the arts!
Julie, you are exactly right and that is the direction I was going with this. The Dominionists and Reconstructists look to this history and elevate it, arguing for a sort of theocracy. Although I believe their actual power is greatly exaggerated, they have had an influence in the way many Christians view government and this whole notion of “taking back” the country. Rather than advocating liberty and the rights of individuals, they are really just fighting for control of the same institutions.
Jeanne, that is quite true.
And Crimson Wife, Rush seems to have had a fascination with Sparta. When he says:
The policy of the Lacedamonians is well worthy of our imitation.
He is talking about Sparta.
Some light summer reading?
I think Dana is spot on with this:
True. As long as generations of white male American Protestants WERE the State and controlled all our institutions, no problem! Any comfortable majority enforcing its own set of values and beliefs from the driver’s seat, has no need or desire to redefine community standards or rebel against its own political and religious leadership. They are the Masters, educationally, culturally, morally, economically, politically, artistically, you name it.
Noah Webster was dead-set against that btw. He believed America’s universal education could help free us from perpetual fighting to gain control of society’s values and language and institutions. So you might say he defined real education as learning to think for ourselves and then how to perpetuate our freedom to do so!
Yes, Noah Webster was a schoolmaster but he wasn’t academic about America needing to innovate our own “homegrown” and independent culture and to define our own institutions instead of conserving the old ways from British society. He taught that real education was “interrelating language, learning, liberty and leadership.” He worked to define a common language to help us understand each other, not so that different segments of American society could use it to argue over which set of political and religious beliefs was universal truth to be taught to all.
Speaking of Catholics and conformity and society that reflects “our” values, no enlightened history of education in any time or place can credibly cast the State as Value Villain and the Church as Value Victim. Let’s not forget how <a href=”Savonarola (called a “master of studies”) focused on literature and the arts, and what happened to community freedoms under his, um, tutelage.
And I’d include Martin Luther King, Jr. in educational history — he led generations toward greater liberty by challenging comfortable majority values. He educated society about freedom in the streets and the pulpits and on the evening news (in black and white, pun intended) while School’s comfortable controlling conservatives literally stood blocking the door with an axe, to keep such leaders and lessons out and the majority’s values comfy inside:
Thank you, JJRoss.
I like Noah Webster. He is one of my favorites, and he was one of the early people to advocate strongly for a free and public education system in order to inculcate liberty. I don’t think he envisioned that it would become the political point that it is now, but that it would teach everyone to read, do math and avoid dependence, allowing all to reason for themselves and protect our liberty.
He also fought for a truly American system, and wanted children raised to respect their state and their country through doing away with sending youth off to Europe to be “finished” and instead spending that time here, getting to know America.
Oh…and as to “light summer reading,” I just finished that. The first book in a long while I purchased just for me, just because I wanted to. It cost a whole quarter, too. “Catherine the Great” by Zoe Oldenbourg. Who needs novels when you have biographies of people as fascinating as she?
My readings on education are my “assignment” for homeschooling. So I read lots of old laws, old letters and old essays.
Off topic, sorry, but my summer reading really IS light and fictional. Young Son is recently enamoured of Australian author John Flanagan’s series, “The Ranger’s Apprentice” and he got me and his dad caught up in them too, to the point that when we’d finished the four books published so far in the US, we found an online bookshop in Australia to ship us the next three! Good fun and also educational, since we never scooped American publication before. After all the Harry Potter hoopla, I guess I figured it would be embargoed or something until we were officially deemed ready to read it here.
Not nearly as great a value as a quarter though! It was $80 for three books plus airmail shipping through customs, etc.
(Of course we are getting three reads to a book. That should count the same as nine books in all then, right?)
I think I need to do that. Not with those books, but with a German book I want. I actually got so far as inquiring with some company over there but they didn’t know quite how to go about selling me the book. That was a long time ago, though, so maybe it is less complicated now.
We order stuff from Australia all the time, seeing as my children are “halflings” and all.
I didn’t realize– between that and your German, you’re so cosmopolitan!
In a provincial sort of way.
Brilliant post!
The purpose of public education is to change the political system, nothing more, nothing less.
Who would know better than someone who worked in such a system for 35 years?
Well, hmmm. Actually the purpose it to perpetuate the system! Not change it.
Gee, JJRoss, I wanted to say “subvert.” Because if your ideas aren’t making it in the political realm, the next best place is the education system. That is why it is such a battle ground, I think.
But you are right. In the end, it mostly just perpetuates the system.
Dana –
As always you are getting the wheels in my brain turning. In his book RECOVERING THE LOST TOOLS OF LEARNING, Douglas Wilson visited this topic. He basically said that we now find the public schools biased against Christians, but if 51% of Christians “ruled” the schools, we’d be biased against other religions. So what do we do? Retreat from the public schools? Reform them? Try to “take them back?”
There isn’t such a thing as neutral education. Even if the government were not currently in charge of education, what do we do with other areas that government controls? There is also no such thing as neutral ideas on taxes, neutral ideas on life issues, or neutral ideas on virtually any topic. Our government buildings / memorials testify to the fact that there was a very real Christian presence in America. Do we just ignore that? Do we retreat from government? Should we reform it? How do we do that?
To our credit, we welcome people of other faiths allowing them liberty to worship or not worship as they choose without fear of persecution, but have we prevented their un-Christian ideas from infiltrating our own? I’m anxiously awaiting Gai Ferdon’s ebook “A Republic if You Can Keep It” to be released. Obviously we haven’t kept our Republic INTERNALLY through education and such so do we play by their rules incrementally trying to recover the Republic we once had through external laws(i.e. working for a Federal Marriage Ammendment, federal legislation against abortion,etc.)? We saw similar difficulties arising after the Civil War. We haven’t kept the “heart” of the Constitution so do we need to change the “letter” of it or would this just continue the downward spiral?
Wondering how you’d solve our problems if you were “in charge,”
Lori
It’s a tough one. I believe the problems we are having are due to the general loss of virtue. Laws won’t change that. Ideally, I’d like to say “return to true local control.” But it only works where the citizenry is responsible. The only real answer is to increase virtue and liberty will increase.
It can’t be regulated, and to attempt to would only create a tyranny of the right. We both know Christianity cannot be imposed on anyone, nor should it be. Civil government needs to protect the liberties of all, even those with whom we disagree. Which means that it needs to be as neutral as possible, something that is only possible when it isn’t funding half of the activities of the nation.
Which means that it needs to be as neutral as possible, something that is only possible when it isn’t funding half of the activities of the nation. Too true!
I have been thinking about this post since you wrote it. I really want to do some more research about this. Thanks for engaging my brain again.
I meant to include this earlier, but you get different perspectives depending on whether you are talking about the Puritans or the Pilgrims. But it seems all of our founding fathers were seeking to expand public education as a means of furthering liberty. I don’t think they viewed the American government quite the same way we do.