"Common" Schooling
Part 1 - New Harmony & Prussia
When I picture “the internet” in my head, I see a room full of loud people yelling about their POV, and trying to drown out all the others.
Lines are drawn in the sand. And then…they keep being drawn. Oh you’re a crunchy mom but you don’t have a water filter for your SHOWER? Banned from the crunchy corner. Oh so you’re a Homemaker who ALSO brings in an outside income? The nerve. Banned. You’re a Charlotte Mason homeschooler with a touch of unschooling? BYE.
It’s a weird phenomenon. One that, at least in my experience, doesn’t translate to real life. Think of your best friend. I’d be absolutely shocked if you aligned with them 100%. Humans just don’t work that way. ie: you cosleep and they don’t. Do you “unfollow” them in real life? Of course not. That would be silly. (This is not to say that differences worth ending friendships over do not exist, of course.)
That was my drawn out way to get to this. Spoiler alert, I believe public schools were created for nefarious reasons, and so far they’re succeeding quite swimmingly. And yes, I am a “homeschool at all costs” advocate. Never fear, I will make a case for my stance, because I believe that it actually IS important to discuss these things. Unfortunately, these sorts of forums open up the conversation to folks who do not know me personally, and it is difficult to have good faith discussions in that manner. But hey, lets give it a go, shall we?
Disclaimer: Despite my personal stance, parents have a God given authority over their children. Perhaps you’ve discerned that public school is best for your child or family. I hope that you will consider the case I’m about to make, but your authority comes from God, and nothing I say should shake your decision if it is the right one for your family!
Time to dive in.
The history of public schools is fraught with concerning aims, and I promise that we will jump all the way back to the beginning. But before we do, I want to share with you a quote from the 1980’s Secretary of Education, TH Bell.
As he was conducting a review of our schools in order to make reform suggestions, this pretty much sums up his conclusion:
"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves...Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament."
Oof. Surely though, the reforms he suggested were undertaken and we’re in better shape today, right? Look, you’re busy, and I won’t bore you with a long list of statistics, but this one is pretty telling: as of 2022 54% of adults in the US have a literacy rate below 6th grade level.
How can that be? Well, I would argue that the low rate of achievement is actually not a bug in the system. It’s not something to be reformed. Instead, it’s actually a feature. Horace Mann and John Dewey would be proud.
We’ll get to them.
But yes, we do in fact have to go back a bit further. Have you heard of New Harmony? It was a communist commune in Indiana founded by the eccentric Robert Owen, a Welshman.
Falling prey to the “true communism has never been tried” line, he wanted to show the world how it REALLY worked. It took less than two years to fail miserably. Oh, I should mention, he called it “collectivism” as Marx’s Communist Manifesto had not been written yet. Same concepts. Different name.
Of course, we are told that it was not a failure of communism, but instead, the founder claimed it’s because the folks living in it had not been educated to be collectivists from childhood. Owen and his fans decided that government schools, heavily involved in child rearing from a very young age had to be the way forward.
Good news, you don’t have to take my word for it!
Owen wrote a lovely collection titled, A New View of Society or Essays on the Formation of the Human Character.
He wrote,
“Under the guidance of minds competent to its direction, a national system of training and education may be formed, to become the most safe, easy, effectual, and economical instrument of government that can be devised. And it may be made to possess a power equal to the accomplishment of the most grand and beneficial purposes.”
Should we send all of our nation’s children to an instrument of the government? Uh, no thank you.
Owen’s essays were given to, and subsequently highly esteemed by none other than the King of Prussia. They were used as the foundation for Prussian state run schools. This model included mandatory schooling for all children, powerful police forces to deal with non-compliance, segregation of children by age, instilling of a statist mindset in all children, etc. The Prussian model was then used in Germany. Some historians speculate that the blind obedience the system taught allowed Hitler to indoctrinate the youth, paving the way for his horrific deeds.
“Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state.” - Hitler