The Dead Horse
There is a lot of evidence that public schools were instituted for the sake of industry: to provide free babysitting so that women could work outside the home and to provide a training ground for future workers, who would be required to work in large groups and not do too much thinking on their own. Some people believe an additional goal for public schools was to create a nation of consumers to drive the industrial age. Early industrialists such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie spent huge sums of money (actually more than the government did at that time) on public schooling between 1900 and 1920. They would be very pleased with the nation of consumers they helped to create.
Horace Mann believed that a common education in a common school would create good citizens, unite society and prevent crime and poverty. It is ironic that the very system that was created to control the masses and force obedience and morality – the public school system – has failed miserably at those basic functions.
Our current system is using the methods and curriculum developed for an early industrial age to educate students for the entirely different world of today.
Horace Mann believed that a common education in a common school would create good citizens, unite society and prevent crime and poverty. It is ironic that the very system that was created to control the masses and force obedience and morality – the public school system – has failed miserably at those basic functions.
Our current system is using the methods and curriculum developed for an early industrial age to educate students for the entirely different world of today.
