The History of Education in America

In his book John Gatto, who was a school teacher in the New York school system for thirty years, and honored twice with the New York Teacher of the Year Award, talks about how it seems to be common knowledge that the school-system came from Ancient Greece, Athens and 'Hellas'. But in fact there were no schools in Hellas. Athenians would have been revolted by the very idea of schooling free men; forced schooling was for slaves. Instead, classical Athens trust in everyone's competence was assumed. They distributed their most responsible public positions BY LOTTERY.

Selection by Allotment
This is Wikipedia's entry on Ancient Greece, and it's lottery system.

Think that's strange? Think about our system for driving motor vehicles. Anyone can get a driver's license--and by the age of sixteen we can drive complex machines around the globe independently and--for the most part--more than adequately.

Anyway, Gatto goes on to suggest ( and bear with me here because it's a complicated and tangled web ) that the current school system was born following the British conquest of India".
Andrew Bell, a Scottish chaplain in Britain's military, studied the purposeful nature of Hindu schooling, and, hoping to save money, he experimentally tried the Hindu system, during his time as a superintendent of an orphanage in Madras,India. Bell found that this system, now known as the Madras System, quickly led students into docile cooperation, like parts of a machine.

As he spent more time in the country, and studied this system, he learned that the entire purpose of Hindu schooling was to preserve the caste system. Also, upon close analysis, Sanskrit Literature has proven that some kind of biological and social link existed between the Aryans (Hindu ancestors) and the Anglo-Saxons (British ancestors). This may explain the similarities between Hinduism and Anglicanism, as the Hindu caste system equals (imaginatively) the Anglican class system, and eventually provided the psychic stimulus for creation of class-based schooling. In 1797 Bell ( by then 42yo) published an account of what he had seen and done during his time in India. Bell declared the Hindu drills an impediment to learning writing and ciphering, and an efficient control on reading development.

It is by sheer happen-stance, that Joseph Lancaster, a 20yo Quaker in New York, read Bell's account in a publication. When Lancaster read Bell's observations he decided it would be a cheap way to awaken intellect in the lower classes. Lancaster received a lot of attention when he transformed a number of ghetto children into an orderly army--and at a tiny cost.

The Industrial Revolution brought changes that have shaken the foundations of civilization--that's my own personal opinion.

During the years between 1750 and 1950--groups of our elite and wealthy (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Horace Mann, engineered strategic long-range plans for social reform. Under the guise of the productive potential for machinery driven by coal, the Hindu system of forced schooling was implemented in young America in order to provide an effective control over the population. The masses.

What really hurts--and it makes me angry--is that in colonial America, and through the early republic, we already had the perfect form of education, and it lasted so briefly, then was snatched away from us. Ben Franklin is the ultimate example of the greatness a person could achieve if left to learn in freedom and follow their unique interests and desires. During this blip of time, thousands of years of orthodox suppositions regarding class and social order were shattered in a historical instant.

"Only here in America were common folk given a chance to show what they could do on their own, without a master to push and order them about." Eric Hoffer."

Ben Franklin and Thomas Eddison multiplied many times over was the result of a pressing need during these years in America's youth to get the most out of everybody, as they built a brand new country from the ground up.

Prussia took a leading part in the French Revolutionary Wars; then emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as a leading Germanic power under Frederick William IV in 1815. Following the Lancaster-Bell school-model based on the Madras system observed in India's Hindu society, the Prussian's continued to rise in power, stature. They gathered together numerous German city-states of the time, and created the German Empire in 1871.

During this time period the Prussians established a Spartan-style authoritarian/militarism society, with a seemingly democratic executive branch and two legislative bodies. However in both cultures the public political arrangements are a sham. The ultimate decision-making powers lie with a small group of the wealthy elite known as the ephors, who conducted state policy amongst themselves.

The way a totalitarian-style government works, is they have an all-embracing ideology that people want to believe in. Sure, who wants to worry over the past, or the future? But it's total-control over EVERY aspect of a person's life. These Germanic dictators even went so far as to require women to register each onset of their menses with their 'local police'! I couldn't imagine....

PRUSSIAN IDEA OF WHAT CENTRALIZED SCHOOLING SHOULD 'DELIVER':

1) Obedient soldiers to the army.

2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, farms, etc.

3) Well-subordinated civil-servants.

4) Well-subordinated clerks for the industry.

5) Citizens who thought alike on mass issues.

6) National uniformity in thought, word, deed.

The first effective secular compulsion schooling was put into action in Prussia, in the year 1819. The Germanic authorities were actually prepared to use bayonets on their people to enforce this movement. It was a state where scientific farming alternated with military drills, and with state-ordered meaningless tasks intended for no purpose but to subject the entire community to the experience of collective discipline. These peoples had been conditioned toward totalitarianism for generations, it's my personal suspicion that it may have come a little more naturally for them, and maybe that's why it had such an impressive effect.

So, after the Prussians assisted the Seventh Coalition at the Battle of Waterloo, which defeated Napoleon, they earned themselves much esteem in the fledgling American colonies. At that time, we'd recently experienced a sort-of stale-mate against the British for free trade and sailor's rights, and Prussia acted like a mirror, showing Americans what we might become with discipline. During this time thousands of young men went to Germany for the coveted Ph.D degree, which at that time had actual existence in a practical sense only there in Prussia. When they returned, they returned with well-schooled minds, filled with Prussian ideals, and they took up positions at the various new universities springing up all over new America.

During the Colonial and Federal period of economics in early America, characteristics of individuality and independence were the back bone of the American people. They were resourceful and inventive, they had to be.

In Colonial America and on through the early republic, a pressing need existed to get the most from everybody. As a result of that need, unusual men and unusual women appeared in great numbers to briefly give the lie to the traditional social order. In that historical instant thousands of years of orthodox suppositions were shattered into oblivion.

Ben Franklin and Thomas Eddison multiplied many times over were the result.

In the Colonial period, family and community were the controlling factor driving society. In that setting, home education, self-teaching, and teacher-directed schoolhouses served well. Competition was believed to be the tough-love road to fairness in distribution. People bought locally, supporting their fellow neighbors. People read books. Even the small farmer considered it important to toughen the mind by reading, writing, debate, declamation, and to learn to manage numbers.

There weren't really social classes here. And it's incredible that a person's strength of character could determine their social standing in their community, rather than their family's lineage or wealth. Especially considering that elsewhere in the world, a society revolving around money and power had prevailed for eternity. To have shaken off thousands of years of oppression and then to have such freedom snatched away from us--it just fills me with anguish.

Before there was forced-schooling in early America people knew reading was a virtual skeletal key to open any door.

In 1840 census figures gave fairly exact evidence that a reading revolution had taken place without any exortation on the part of public moralists or social workers, but because people had the freedom to learn. Ordinary people who could read, though they were not priviliedged with wealth or power, or position and social stature, could see through the fraud of social class, and the even grander fraud of official expertise.

And that was the trouble!

Coal and Oil forced a shift in the most crucial aspects of social life, in our relations to nature, each other, as well as to our own selves; and this is especially true with the up-bringing of children.

Inspired by the growing realization that the productive potential of machinery driven by coal was limitless, some began to fear the menace of 'overproduction', since traditional American culture encouraged a surplus of manufacturers, and entrepreneurialism was the heart of the economy.

Prior to coal and rail roads, production was small scale. Local materials were purchased by local people. The difficulty of transporting the goods forced people to keep trade local. But once all the kinks were worked out of the rail road system, trains began to be used for more and more tasks.

Mass production was created by our own Henry Ford

The History of Coal Mining
Here's Wikipedia's entry on coal's history.

History of Coal Use
This site gives a general overview of coal's history, and also numerous links to verify and learn more; so you don't have to take my word for it!

Virtual Coal Museum
This is a really terrific site; check it out!

So the rail-road was first utilized for moving coal just as America became a united country. Once the technical problems were solved, industry could then be created away from the mines. And the rail road began to be used for other uses, as well.

That was the start of industry as we know it today. As the population exploded in coal-mining countries it guaranteed cheap-labor for the mining companies.

Once the rail-road was completed, it allowed the rise of a network of business/banking communities at every stop. This increased the concentration of capital into pools and trusts.

THAT in turn attracted the attention of Brittish capitalists (about 1840), who increased their investments in America, and they brought with them their political consciousness and social philosophies previously banished from our shores!

The message that there had to be social solidarity among the upper classes for capitalism to work.

When the Civil War broke out industrialists observed how a standardized population could be stripped of power and trained to function as a reliable money tree. And it was especially beneficial that the system stripped individuals of their power to interfere, of their ability to cause trouble for industrialists and politicians.

Mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the 19th century, and on the surface the principal motivation does seem to be greed. But that merely concealed philosophic visions that early indoctrination of all children would lead to an orderly scientific society, one controlled by the best people--freed from the obsoleet straight-jacket of democratic traditions and historic libertarian attitudes. Forced-schooling was to be the mediciine to bring the whole continental population into conformity so it might be regarded as a human resource, a workforce.

No Ben Franklins were to be allowed. They set a bad example.

And there were the Prussians with their Totalitarian society succeeding so well, and so many of our men returning from Germany with new Ph.Ds and their heads filled with Prussian theories and ideals, taking up positions as the Deans and Heads of Universities all over the country. They talked in drawing rooms, theorizing, discussing, planning how it could work if they were disciplined.

Social Reform in an Industrial City
This is a 200+ page essay that supports my information.

Between the years of 1852--1918, compulsory-attendance was a net employed to capture the children of society, in order to prevent them from gaining real-world knowledge and experience, which allows for personal growth. It was employed under a gradualism strategy, as there was strenuous opposition everywhere at the time.

At first the period of schooling was short. Only 10-12 weeks, and only for children between the ages 9-12 years old. It was a struggle to extend the period of schooling downward to include 8-year olds, and then 7-year olds, and then upwards, to include children 14-years of age, 15, and then 16. Such drastic changes required enforcement, which required the cooperation and supervision of the state.

And because of the flood of immigrants to America during those years, their contempt for the people, allowed them a remarkable about the whole thing.

Our very own President Woodrow Wilson, in 1909 said to a group of trainee teachers: "We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the priviledge of a liberal education, and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."

Arthur Calhoun in his 1919 article titled The Social History of the American Family notified the nation's academics of what was happening. Calhoun declared "the fondest wish of Utopian writers was coming true, the child was passing from its family into the custody of community experts."

In his 1934 report Public Education in the Unites States Ellwood P. Cubberley is quoted for saying: "It has come to be desirable that children should not engage in productive labor. On the contrary, all recent thinking...[is] opposed to their doing so. Both the interests of the nation have set against child labor."

When we think of child labor, we think of young children in sweat-shops, doing potentially dangerous or hazardous duties; and I think we can all agree that that is not an appropriate environment for a child. But in this instance, their primary target was the tradition of independant livelihoods in America. That's the very essence of the American Dream!

Only by a massive psychological campaign could the menace of overproduction be contained.

Cubberly also goes on to say, in the same publication, "the coming of the factory system has made extended childhood necessary by depriving children of the training and education that farm and village life once gave."

The old book-subject curriculum was set aside, despite much public protest and ridecule, and was replaced by a change in purpose, and "a new psychology of instruction which came to us from abroad." This was a reference to the practices of dumbed-down schooling common to England, Germany, and France, the three other large world-coal-powers--other than the US.

For the general public's reaction, please see the module titled: Riots of 1917

In the very beginning, there was absolutely nothing wrong with America's schools. They were voluntary, they were efficient, and they turned out intelligent individuals with the ability to read, and possessing critical thinking skills. And that was the problem that those leaders of the new-age of Industry saw. That goes back to the threat of overproduction that they feared after the rise of people like Ben Franklin, and Thomas Eddison, who, by the way, both succeeded despite their lack of institutional schooling. So--in their pursuit to stem the number of intellectuals among the masses, they felt it necessary to render the schoolhouse ineffectual.

The forced compulsory school legislation caused the deliberate introduction of children who "demoralize school procedure".

Children who didn't want to be in school, who caused disturbances, caused strife, and did not want to learn, would sufficiently disrupt the classroom routine to assist in impeding any learning taking place.

At PS 171 rioting broke out over the adopted Gary-plan. Around 1000 demonstrators smashed windows, menaced passersby, shouted threats, and made school operation impossible. The rioting spread to other Gary-schools, including high schools, where student volunteers were able to participate. At one school 5000 kids marched in the picket lines.

The rioting continued for 10 days.

1000 Pupils in Riot Against Gary Plan
An archived article from the NY Times.

Thousands of mother milled around schools in Yorkville, a German immigrant section, and in East Harlem, complaining angrily that their children had been put on "half-rations" of education. Mental exercise had been removed from the center of education.

The Gary Plan was a radical new school innovation based on Taylor's gospel of efficiency, which demanded complete and intensive use of industrial plant facilities. William Wirt, a former student of John Dewey at the University of Chicago, invented a new organizational scheme for schools, departmentalizing academics, requiring the movement of students from room to room on a regular basis, so that all building spaces were in constant use. The Gary Plan utilized a curriculum apart from "basic subjects", which were looked upon in that time as a menace to long-range social goals. Wirt's theme was: "Work-Study-Play", and because of the large numbers of students the schools could house at an efficient low-cost,
they were nicknamed the "Platoon Schools".

The Gary Plan
John Taylor Gatto has published the whole book online, free for anyone to access; this is the section regarding The Gary Plan.

Enter the PEA, the Public Education Association, made up of bankers, society ladies, corporation lawyers, and people with private fortunes or access to private fortunes. In 1911 the PEA announced an "urgent need" to transform the public schools into child welfare agencies. And so they began a barrage of attacks against the schools, condemning them for their inefficiency, and in turn, naming the Gary Plan the answer to our nation's school prayers.

"Schools must fill the vacuum of the home; school must be life itself as once the old household was a life itself."

When John Purroy Mitchel, a well-connected, aristocratic young progressive, was elected Mayor of New York, Superintendant Wirt of Gary, Indiana, was immediately contacted and offered the New York superintendancy. He agreed, and the first Gary-schools opened in New York City in March of 1915.

Mitchell also, discreetly appointed members of the Rockefeller Foundation to the New York City Board of Education.

America Could Learn a Lesson From Germany
This is a NYTimes archived article in which Mitchel is quoted promoting the Gary Plan.

During these times some of the press was manipulated by people/institutions of wealth and power, and Randolf Bourne, the beloved columnist for the New York Times, published "The Gary Schools", which praised the plan. At the same time, Abraham Flexner wrote an analytical report in which he flatly stated "the Gary schools are a total failure. Offering insubstantial programs and a general atmosphere which habituated students' inferior performance." Yet that condemning report was effectively sat-on by the PEA until 1918.

There was no public debate as to whether or not the plan should be enacted in New York, no warning to parents or students. 75 days after the trial was begun, the financial arm of New York City's government declared it a complete success, authorizing conversion of 12 more schools. It was done at the end of the school-year, in June, when public attention was notoriously low.

September of 1915, after barely 100 days trial, Comptroller Predergast issued a formal report recommending extention of the Gary Plan to all schools of New York City, and also the lengthening of the school-day and school-year.

Despite grassroots protests, the elite PEA opened 48 more Gary schools (that's in addition to the already 32 Gary-schools). Apparently the elite were tired of the gradualism method. Crisis were manufactured (through yet more inflammatory newspaper articles) to thaw reluctance from the Board of Estimate, which body voted funds to extend the Gary scheme.

The riots broke out following the vote.

European immigrants, especially Jews from Germany (whom we would not typically think of as violent or riotous), where collectivist thinking in the west had been perfected, knew exactly what the scientific Gary Plan meant for their kids.

Naturally, newspapers downplayed the riots, marginalizing rioters as "street-corner agitators from Harlem or the Upper West side--they were anything but.

In the fallout from the disturbances, Mitchel was thrown out of office in the next election. The Gary schools were dissolved by incoming Mayor Hylan, who called them a "scheme" of the Rockefeller Foundation. "A system by which Rockefellers and the allies hoped to educate coming generations in the 'doctrine of contentment'(aka: serfdom)"

Progressive Education
An article summarizing Progressive Education, which was a common-theme throughout the early to mid-twentieth century. The Gary Plan falls into that category, and is mentioned here.

Pass Lie on Hearing at Gary Plan
Another New York Times articles that verifies the controversy over the proposed Gary Plan.

The School Riots
This article, from the archive of NYTimes ridicules parents, and downplays the severity of the transgressions of political fractions against society and the local public.

Gary School Plan as a City Campaign Issue
Yet another article for your perusal.

The Alliance for Separation of School and State
Lots of articles about education reform; sign the petition in favor of ending government involvement in education.

Article Contemplating the Education Debate
Here's an article that goes over the effectiveness of homeschooling.

The Simple American
A non-profit, non-partisan organization whose objective is to bring about reform in our government as it relates to current lobbying tactics and to create a central finance funding system for equal distribution as well as building educational programs fostering citizen civic responsibility beginning with pre-school through senior year.

Institutional Schooling Must Be Destroyed
Here's an article by John Gatto that was recently published in a publication called the Spinning Globe.

John Taylor Gatto OnLine
Here's Gatto's online site with links for further exploration.