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Why Do We Have Government Schools?

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

Before we take any steps forward to reform education (again), we ought to take a few steps back to look at the big picture and consider why government schools were begun in the first place.  Many people assume that government schools were created because large numbers of people were not able to obtain an education, but the evidence does not support that assumption.  In fact, before government took control of education, the American system of decentralized, private education worked very well, and literacy rates were high. 

Parents were completely in charge of their children’s education, and there was a wide variety of educational opportunities.  A study in Boston in 1817 showed that 96% of the children attended school. “Literacy in the North rose from 75 percent to between 91 and 97 percent between 1800 and 1840, the years prior to compulsory schooling and governmental provision and operation of education. In the South, during the same time period, the rate grew among the white population from between 50 and 60 percent to 81 percent.” http://www.mackinac.org/2034  Clearly, the job of teaching children to read and write was being accomplished very well without government intervention – certainly better than it is today with government control.

If there was not a serious illiteracy problem, then why did the government take control of education beginning in the mid-1800’s?  As with any political movement, there were many reasons for establishing government control over education, but those reasons had nothing to do with a literacy problem or with the desire to make children more literate.  Instead, they all involved a desire to make “good citizens” of the children, teaching them the “right” morals, values and beliefs.    

Otto von Bismarck used government control of education to help consolidate his political power in Prussia.  (Bismarck was trying to put down Catholic opposition by taking control of religious education.)  Horace Mann began the tax-funded common schools in Massachusetts with the goal of “social harmony”, using Bismarck as his model.  http://www.mackinac.org/2035

It should be remembered that the last half of the 19^th century was a time of large scale immigration to the United States, with many of the new immigrants being Catholics.  The Protestant majority at that time was very concerned about this influx of immigrants.  Nativist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Know-Nothings, formed to oppose the immigrants.  A major reason for putting education under government control (otherwise called “common schools” or “free schools”) was to try to make “good Americans” of the immigrants and to stamp out Catholic education.  The Ku Klux Klan, in particular, pushed very hard for government control of all education.

Education in Kentucky

The nativist, anti-Catholic movement was very strong in Kentucky, where, on “Bloody Monday” in 1855, almost 100 Catholics were killed, and many houses were burned to the ground in anti-Catholic rioting in Louisville.  Kentucky’s control over education falls into line with the national trend, with the Kentucky Constitution being amended in 1891 to provide for state control of education.  Section 183 of the Kentucky Constitution states:  The General Assembly shall, by appropriate legislation, provide for an efficient system of common schools throughout the State.   The Constitutional amendment that established state control of education also made it clear that the intention was to put down those pesky Catholics and their Catholic schools.  Section 189 states:  No portion of any fund or tax now existing, or that may hereafter be raised or levied for educational purposes, shall be appropriated to, or used by, or in aid of, any church, sectarian or denominational school.

The following picture is an example of a newspaper exhibiting this popular, nativist, anti-Catholic spirit, being in favor of protecting American mechanics against foreign pauper labor, in favor of requiring foreigners to reside in the country 21 years before voting, and in favor of the “Free School System”, while being against “papal aggression and Roman Catholicism, foreigners holding office, nunneries and the Jesuits, etc.  Clearly, the “Free School System” was intended to be used as a weapon against those blasted foreigners!

The religious impetus behind government control of schooling is also evident from John Dewey, who had a great influence on government  schools.  His Pedagogic Creed statement of 1897 said:  “Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way the teacher is always the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of heaven.”

John Taylor Gatto says the makers of modern schooling were not really people like Horace Mann and John Dewey, who are generally given the credit.  Instead, he credits the big industrialists like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and J.P. Morgan with making schooling the tool of political and corporate management and turning children into standardized consumers and employees, making them docile and always looking for a teacher or other leader to tell them what to do later in life. 

Whether the impetus behind government-controlled, tax-funded education was a desire to amass political power, a desire to create “social harmony”, or a desire to turn children into obedient consumers and employees, it certainly was not a concern about teaching children to read, write, or do math, and it most definitely was not based on a desire to teach children to explore, analyze, and think for themselves.  If teaching children to read and write had been the goal, then the hundred plus years of increasing disaster following the government take-over of education certainly should have convinced us that the experiment had failed, and that it was time to kick the government out of the schools!

As we look at the education landscape today, with literacy rates plummeting, we should not be surprised, because the system was never designed to increase literacy.  The reason for a government-planned and controlled education system always was to mold and control children’s minds – to teach children to be obedient drones, incapable of making their own analyses and decisions.  Considering the true purpose of government schools, we can see that they have been very successful in achieving their true goal. 

After 100+ years of government control over education, we now have young people and adults who cannot read or write and who cannot make change when they sell you your burger and fries, but everyone knows what is “in”, and many literally will kill to be “in” – to follow the trends set by the “leaders”.  We have a vast majority of “upstanding citizens” who take their marching orders from Hollywood celebrities, slick magazines, elected officials, rap singers, columnists, or talking heads on television, without ever really thinking the issues through for themselves.  Indeed, we have truly arrived in the “utopia” of government education.

So, before we take any steps to “reform” the government-controlled education system, we need to challenge the assumption that government took control of education because there was an illiteracy problem.  We need to challenge the assumption that the purpose of government schools ever was to teach children to read and write.  And we need to understand that the more tax money we spend to support the government schools, the more we strengthen the system that really was designed and intended to turn children into obedient, easily-led sheep. 

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