According to the official White House website, the end goal of
\n schooling is to \u201chelp restore middle-class security.\u201d
\n Such a stance is a surprisingly honest one in a political environment
\n built on deceit. The Obama administration makes no attempt to
\n hide the fact that mandatory public schooling is a state tool
\n for manipulating class structure. This is both a historical and
\n economic fact.<\/p>\n
Modern American schooling stems from two sources. First the Prussian
\n school system which was used by the Nazis to limit and control
\n legal access to information while psychologically training students
\n in order to promote fascist ideology. The second is the free state-run
\n schools which were an important part of the caste-structure that
\n has existed in India for thousands of years. Here, the menial
\n and \u201cuntouchable\u201d classes, approximately 95 percent
\n of the population, were subject to the rule of the Hindu Brahmin
\n priest (Gatto 39). Each class had its own forms of education,
\n all of them placing an emphasis on \u201ctruth,\u201d which referred
\n to the superiority of the Brahmin priest and the proper subservient
\n role of the student in society.<\/p>\n
The core principle of education for the two lowest classes in
\n India, was ignorance. By filling up the free time of children
\n with repetitive tasks of little educational value, students were
\n transformed into thoughtless followers of the Brahmin. One would
\n believe such a process would drive away any man of God who sought
\n to help children, but such was not the case with Anglican missionary
\n Andrew Bell who was able to see the \u201cgood\u201d in what he
\n referred to as the Madras system of education. In 1790 he wrote,
\n \u201cIn every instance under my observation in this kingdom,
\n and in every report with which my brethren have honored me of
\n the effects produced by the Madras System in their parishes, the
\n improvement in the subordination, orderly conduct, and general
\n behavior of the children, has been particularly noticed, and must
\n be regarded as infinitely the most valuable feature of its character\u201d
\n (Bell 10).<\/p>\n
Bell enthusiastically took over the Hindu schools and adapted
\n them to raise impoverished children into loyal subjects of the
\n Anglican Church. In 1797 he opened up the Aldgate Charity School
\n in England. In his own words, \u201cIts ultimate object, the ultimate
\n object or end of all education, is to make … good subjects …\u201d
\n (Bell 7). He was heavily influenced by the zeitgeist that it was
\n God\u2019s will that the impoverished remain in their present
\n state of existence.<\/p>\n
Joseph Lancaster, a Quaker in London, took what was once a systematic
\n approach to subjugating peasants and turned it into a method of
\n affordably teaching thousands of students, from his own home no
\n less, so as to empower them to rise to a greater glory. Lancaster\u2019s
\n school did not last long before it attracted the attention of
\n Bell, who saw his philosophy of pedagogy being defiled by the
\n Quaker. Quickly, King George III began funding Lancaster\u2019s
\n school, and with it began regulating curriculum by requiring that
\n students learn the Bible (Gatto 41-42). In 1807 Bell contested
\n the perversion of his system and, with the support of the Anglican
\n Church, replaced Lancaster\u2019s school with his own. However,
\n with Lancaster\u2019s school being more popular than the Aldgate
\n Charity School, it was his name and not Bell\u2019s that came
\n to define the Anglican version of the Indian Madras system.<\/p>\n
Amid fears of non-Anglican values destroying the newly formed
\n republic of the United States, English-Americans adopted Lancaster
\n and Prussian schooling (Liggio and Peden). Today the English traditions
\n that go back over a century in America continue to promote inequality.
\n The main purpose of school in an industrialized economy is to
\n signal productivity to employers. Government funding of education
\n whether by public, charter, or private voucher schools incentivizes
\n students seeking a competitive edge to spend more time in school.
\n For the middle and lower classes the results are greater economic
\n inefficiency. Middle class students who may have otherwise obtained
\n only a high school degree, now must deplete more savings or go
\n into debt to get a college degree that signals the same amount
\n of productivity. For the poor the results are even worse. They
\n must spend more time in school to signal that they are capable
\n of higher productivity. The high opportunity cost of going through
\n school keeps low-income students from being able to afford to
\n display their productivity, limiting them to lower paying jobs.<\/p>\n
Government schools serve to both mentally and economically restrict
\n students and history makes it clear that is what they were designed
\n for.<\/p>\n
This op ed is a shortened version of the following refereed
\n journal article: Jordan Reel and Walter E. Block, 2012. \u201cPublic
\n Education: Who is it for?\u201d <\/i>The Scientific Journal of
\n Humanistic Studies, Vol. 7, No. 4, October, pp. 66-72; this
\n article may be found here<\/a>,
\n or here<\/a>.
\n All cites to the present article may be found there.<\/i><\/p>\n