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Many parents feel the school system is broken. Across America, teachers and textbooks are pushing an agenda to fill children’s minds with information and ideas that are controversial or counterproductive to their healthy development. They have in mind an idea of how schools ought to operate and see them falling far short. Consequently, they believe the system is malfunctioning and simply needs to be fixed. Is this true?
That question can’t be answered properly without understanding the original plans and purposes for which the system was created. Imagine, for example, that you’re in a submarine. You hear some creaking in the pipes near you. Down the corridor, you see some steam emitting from an open valve. Above you, there are gauges that show really high internal pressure inside a row of tanks. Is any of this normal? The sounds are scary and seem to suggest there’s a problem. But until you look at the original schematics and understand how the system was designed, it would be hard to know whether it is broken or working as intended.
Today’s government schools were first designed in the mid-19th century with heavy contributions from Horace Mann, one of the leading education reformers in America. He was an admirer of the schooling system being developed in Prussia, featuring a standardized curriculum, widespread testing, compulsory attendance, professionalization of teachers, and career training. It was an authoritarian, top-down model that emphasized the collective over the individual. Following a trip abroad to see this system in action for himself, Mann became a strong advocate for its implementation in America.
His lobbying effort was swift and successful. Mann was instrumental in getting Massachusetts to adopt the Prussian model of education statewide in 1852, and other states soon followed.
