The Sick History of Public Education

https://aproposofnothing.substack.com/p/beyond-conspiracy-theory-the-sick

by barry-cotter • 5 years ago

51 132 5 years ago

aproposofnothing.substack.com

h2odragon4• 5 years ago

Try pulling some of those quotes up in school, for teachers. It pisses them right off.

fake-name• 5 years ago

This entire essay reeks about whattaboutism, and it seems to basically lead to an attempt to validate conservative anti-mask and anti-covid-lockdown sentiments without actually having any basis for that (yeah, they flip-flopped on masks initially because there were conflicting concerns. If people changing their minds when more information becomes available is "flip flopping", you're rejecting the entirety of the scientific method).

It seems to me like the author had a bad experience in school (hey, so did I!), and seems to have massively overgeneralized that into a entire diatribe about how the current entire institution of school is a irredeemable failure.

If the author is claiming that the current educational system is irreformable, they're not presenting any alternative other then anarchy.

I'm not sure what the point is.

The whole thing is basically concern trolling wrapped in ancient references that no longer apply and overgeneralized specious citations. It's a level beyond concern trolling, it's concern masturbation.

didericis• 5 years ago

The author presents more individualized mentoring and apprenticeships as an alternative.

dav_Oz• 5 years ago

Kind of sad that you are left with that impression. I would attribute the style more to our over-polarized conditioning by social media if anything. But beyond the trigger points the author gives you enough of "depolarizing" references (John Gatto, Ivan Illich, Diane Ravitch) The article itself is just a (hopefully for most an enraging constructive rather than merely "anti-") starting point.

My on the spot quick fix: This rigid and harmful "educational" system is best to overcome if children til the age of 12-14 are not exposed to it. Most can handle it pretty fine from then on. Starting with something resembling "Montessori pedagogy" and then just enter the formal system at the age of puberty. It has worked out pretty well for Sergey Brin and Larry Page, to name a few. Wojcicki's mother is also a very interesting example. Bezos as an different example was heavily influenced by his then retired maternal grandfather (space technology and missile defense systems at Darpa in the late 1950s; in 1964 appointed manager of the Atomic Energy Commission) spending a lot of his forming years at his ranch.

And so on.

lbriner2• 5 years ago

Some interesting curiosities but in the UK, there are no limits to how inspiring the teaching can be, the challenges are more to do with organisation, energy, teaching mixed groups, consolidating and reusing teaching materials etc.

There are many, many teachers who provide education in a way that doesn't match this summary at all.

lordnacho• 5 years ago

I get the feeling that a lot of people who grew up in the US have an especially jaded view of education. Some of the worst stories of incompetence and dysfunction come from Americans.

Though I didn't grow up there, I have had some contact with American educators and there's something to it. The bottom end of teachers at my international school tended to have come from the US system. Similarly, American friends tended to have the host horrific stories about their time there.

I know a lot of people from around the world, and most of them do not think so negatively about education, it seems like a US thing.

alistairSH• 5 years ago

Conservatives have been pushing this narrative for as long as I can remember. Complain about a government service, all the while making that service worse, until the public agrees and service is terminated. It’s GOP Politics 101. In this case, the aim is government funded parochial schools. But only the right kind of parochial schools.

SyzygistSix2• 5 years ago

In the past, schools had a pretty severe element of bullying, both by students and teachers. It was a pretty toxic environment. It seems to have become a lot better though in the 21st century. It seems there are now less bullied outgroups based on class and interests that were endemic in the late 20th century.

barry-cotter3• 5 years ago

The High School Survey of Student Engagement finds that 66% of high school students are bored in class every day. Seventeen percent say they're bored in every class every day. Two percent claim they're never bored. 82% say the material isn't interesting; 41% that it isn't relevant[1]. Middle school students are bored 36% of the time during schoolwork, versus 17% for other activities.

The UK is not different from the US. Most students don't like academics. Some of them hate it.

[1]Yazzie-Mintz 2010, pp.6-7

[2] Larson and Richards 1991, pp. 427-29

lbriner2• 5 years ago

I didn't say that education was really interesting in the UK, I was saying that the claims that the problems are foundational due to history are not true.

There is nothing stopping those educators with the ideas/resources/energy from doing everything the OP said doesn't happen in education. Having been to a UK school, I wouldn't have referred to teachers as academics, so that is a strange quote but for sure, I found many lessons quite tedious and I think there should be less excuses now because of the internet and much cheaper multi-media.

tharkun__• 5 years ago

While I get that things aren't rosy, I think we do have to be fair. High School is supposed to give you a broad basis of education (at least where I went to high school, which is Germany). This means that you have to take a lot classes on topics that you find utterly boring, not interesting and deem irrelevant to your life.

Of course I found my German classes irrelevant and boring. I knew the language and grammar very well and having to find meaning in a green "Emergency Exit" sign being mentioned half way down on page one of the book we had to read was completely pointless to me. I wanted to get out of there and go back to the computer lab and learn more about sorting algorithms. But we only had one hour of that each week.

And sure, biology class was at least interesting but learning and being tested on how a bee dances to let the hive know where to find the field of flowers definitely is interesting but to I would venture more than 90% of students completely irrelevant.

Now reverse everything I said for someone that is interested in language, politics and public speaking. They hate the irrelevant calculus and are bored out of their minds while dreaming of reading and finding meaning in the next Goethe poem.

avgcorrection7• 5 years ago

Yeah, I guess we are going to cling to the idea of the selfless, heroical teacher who can deal with all of their bosses (direct and indirect), regulations, standardizations, go the extra mile each day for lackluster pay, and maybe even chip in for basic school supplies because the school can’t pay for them.

I don’t think that’s sustainable at all, for any of the parties. These mythical everyday heroes can’t fundamentally reform a system of education which is more about control than enlightenment.

hirundo• 5 years ago

I chatted with two public highschool teachers at Thanksgiving dinner. They are two very liberal ladies that sounded like they have been red-pilled on this subject. "I have always supported public education but ..." They are both beyond saddened by the state of their "collapsing" school systems, and do not recommend that any parent send their kids there who can afford private school.

They say that teachers are being treated so badly by the administration, and that the students are so out of control due to no consequences for anything, that teachers are quitting in large numbers, causing the remaining teachers to have much bigger classes. Then those overwhelmed teachers are quiting, and that is snowballing.

They say the kids learned next to nothing during remote teaching and are now years behind, and so poorly socialized to the classroom that they disrupt it continually, but cannot be stopped or removed. They both once took a lot of pride in their work but feel that their jobs have become about wharehousing kids rather than teaching them.

They let loose with war stories, each one worse than the last.

They're both from the Phoenix area. I can only hope it's particularly bad there.

EdwardDiego9• 5 years ago

Is the American education system federally run? I'm guessing not. Is it run at a state level? And then how much sway to subdivisions of a state have? (Counties? Towns?)

civilized• 5 years ago

It's local, but the state and federal government provide funding, and as always, this enables them to pull strings.

temp89642• 5 years ago

It's very local. The difference between city and suburban schools is day and night. So without this context, I have no idea what the above comments are about.

gumby• 5 years ago

The federal budget for education is about 4% of what the country spends on schools (and at the federal level the dept of education is also involved in university education as well).

So in practice federal involvement in education is mostly standing on the side shouting encouraging words, except where the federal government has some authority for other reasons (such as some nondiscrimination rules).

bob10293• 5 years ago

I have had similar conversations with elementary school teachers and principals in Texas. All family members.

I think it's the same story everywhere now. No one knows what to do to resolve it. Teachers no longer have sufficient means to provide an effective education to our children.

The school boards and layers of governance have all but stripped the actual educators of any autonomy that may have existed. Using decades of experience to deal with nuanced situations is not a thing that is allowed anymore. There is some strict procedure for everything, and if you deviate the administration will make your life hell.

The solution is probably a blend of: pay teachers more, give them more autonomy, banish smartphones in the classroom, more accountability for abjectly-shitty parenting and a reduction of our total obsession over standardization of outcomes.

If we could only fix one thing - Every teacher I talked to would rate the smartphone as the #1 reason for lack of engagement in the classroom. Even if they arent using it at school, being on tik tok with your friends at home until 3am every day has the same effective blast radius.

A4ET8a8uTh06• 5 years ago

<<banish smartphones in the classroom

This, I think, is the most impossible thing listed.

For the record, I agree with you, but I honestly can already see someone crying that they need to be able to reach their child 24/7.

syshum6• 5 years ago

>No one knows what to do to resolve it.

That is actually very easy, but hard politically

Backpack funding of school choice. End the monopoly of government school districts determining how the money is spent. Let the market, and capitalism work its magic

I am sure however most will disagree with this position

bsder4• 5 years ago

The solution is probably a blend of: pay teachers more, give them more autonomy, banish smartphones in the classroom, more accountability for abjectly-shitty parenting and a reduction of our total obsession over standardization of outcomes.

We are where parents chose to be with respect to education. Nothing more, nothing less.

Parents wanted accountability--so we have standardization of outcomes. Parents say they want autonomy and discipline--until you apply it to their child and then they sue you. Parents complain about taxes going to education--while teachers have to buy their own supplies (this particularly frosts me).

We are where decades of parents chose to be through their collective actions. The fact that they don't like the consequences of their actions is simply typical of modern society.

diognesofsinope• 5 years ago

I've always thought it was weird how the 'Information Age' has barely changed an institution entirely based on passing information to new generations (education).

Bryan Caplan (economist at George Mason) wrote The Case Against Education (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174655/th...). IMO, he's definitely too provocative and it's certainly not perfect but he makes really good points on modern education. My version of a summary below:

1. There's an enormous return to attending 4-year university. 4-year degree holders on average ~400k over there life time than high school graduates. This is somewhat suspicious, because it's not obvious 'HST 105: History of Ancient Greece' is imparting labor market skills.

2. Economists says education builds (1) 'human capital', i.e. education causally makes individuals more skilled and thus labor market success. There are two other stories: (2) action bias which is that universities simply selected people who would have been successful whether or not they went to college or (3) signaling theory which is that the degree communicates to employers you're smart, conforming, punctual, can accomplish ~4 year goals, etc...basically you're a 'grade-A worker'.

3. Bryan lobbies for the signaling theory. A flurry of educational psychology research is presented and it's impressive. A good example is there's almost (A) no scientific evidence that 'learning how to learn' or 'transfer of learning' or 'critical thinking' are taught well in classroom. It's shocking how this appears on every syllabus but that actual research that classrooms can impact this essentially doesn't exist. (B) The fadeout effect, where giving students extra education does boost tests scores for those individuals, but if you track them for the next 5 years the effects fade out -- like many things there's regression to the mean (C) Memory isn't as reliable as we think -- this has been very important in the judicial system that has historically relied on witness testimony. I don't remember anything from my 'History of Rock and Roll' class when I was a freshman.

4. Non-psychological critiques are that (1) the econometrics almost never include the stat that ~50% of all students who attend 4-year college don't graduate (some transfer, so that number is a bit difficult to calculate). But almost nobody guesses baseline of ~50%. The returns to college look good because of survivorship bias. (2) Labor econometrics in general is weaker than we think...for example, how do you operationalize 'experience' -- almost all academic studies on discrimination, pay gaps, etc. have this problem. (3) There's extremely strong evidence and intuition that getting the degree matters, i.e. if go for 4 years but don't graduate returns are much lower.

There's a ton more in the book, but those are the big parts. I was a teacher for 5 years and it's crystal clear to me that 'passive learning' isn't nearly as useful as 'active learning', but for classroom management reasons active learning is rarely viable. Active learning also makes the teacher look like they're not doing much work, which is bad for their bargaining.

bnralt• 5 years ago

no scientific evidence that 'learning how to learn' or 'transfer of learning' or 'critical thinking' are taught well in classroom. It's shocking how this appears on every syllabus but that actual research that classrooms can impact this essentially doesn't exist.

Indeed, I've found the way that people mindlessly parrot this without presenting any evidence for it demonstrates a lack of critical thinking.

whoopdedo• 5 years ago

Does Caplan go into discrimination against people who don't have a degree? I've been in conversations that turned awkward when I revealed that I didn't attend college. The people who went to a 4-year university don't want to be told that their degree is less valuable than they think. They feel most comfortable around other people with similar backgrounds. So when they end up in a hiring role, they will value candidates with a degree higher than those without. Leading to a feedback loop with the observed outcome.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

A lot has changed in 50 years. Before, most children had the time at home from two adults, now about half do, this must have a huge impact on behavior at school…

op00to• 5 years ago

That sounds nothing like my experience in the NE USA. It actually sounds more like GOP talking points which makes sense coming out of Arizona.

rbanffy2• 5 years ago

and do not recommend that any parent send their kids there who can afford private school.

This is one of the most dangerous threats to a well functioning society.

Whenever we have two-tier systems inequality grows and the closer a society moves to a caste system. Those who can't pay will receive sub-par education while those who can, will receive the best education available according to the means of their family. The issues of public school will be invisible to them and they will feel no need to properly fund it.

This is the same with public education, public funding, public security, public healthcare. Wherever a private system exists that competes with the public (as in "it belongs to everyone") one, it'll consume resources and deprive the public one.

In time, most elected officials will not have experienced it and will neglect it completely.

seneca• 5 years ago

This is the same with public education, public funding, public security, public healthcare. Wherever a private system exists that competes with the public (as in "it belongs to everyone") one, it'll consume resources and deprive the public one.

This is a big part of the problem with the mindset that everything is about "equality".

You are suggesting that a superior private option should not be allowed to exist because it will out-compete a public option (If it were not superior, why would anyone choose it?). I don't think your logic is wrong exactly, a public option will in fact be worse if people are not forced to invest in it, but the problem with this approach is that you're telling those with more resources that they must make due with less (or their children must, in the case of education) for some greater good.

This is where "equality" thinking always seems to lead. You have to tear down those with more so that they don't have something better than those with less. Everyone gets the same mediocrity. The issue is that many people don't want to be collectivists, and they especially don't want to sacrifice their childrens' wellbeing for some utopian ideal. That's an inevitable conflict, and one I think we're seeing playing out right now.

Again, I don't think you're wrong exactly. I just don't think this mindset is one that works outside of totalitarian societies. Implementing it in a society with any sense of individual libery is, to borrow your phrase, "one of the most dangerous threats to a well functioning society", in my opinion.

avgcorrection7• 5 years ago

I don’t understand how this is supposed to relate to the OP. The OP claims that education was always about social control and domestication of children (so that they may become domesticated adults). I guess it’s a bad thing that public education is not working out in America, but that’s just a worse outcome for an already bad model—the classroom was poisoned to begin with.

The idea that education as we know it is an unalloyed good—as long as we fund schools enough and appreciate the teachers etc. etc—is just false.

kwhitefoot• 5 years ago

I think he credits the European monarchies with altogether too much power and foresight.

Jensson• 5 years ago

But it is true that back then many planned for many generations ahead. Big structures, monuments, churches etc could take more than the entire lifespan of a human to build, and they were still built. How many such projects are run today?

watwut2• 5 years ago

Some of those basically bankrupted budgets and despite staying until today, they were more of narcistic show of power then actually good decisions. So you have higher taxes or actually needed investments postponed for not other reason then finishing those.

the-dude2• 5 years ago

I went to an excellent public high school in the 80s/90s in The Netherlands and I am still grateful to the school and my teachers. They treated us as adults from the first year and always tried to accommodate any specific interest you might have.

HarryHirsch• 5 years ago

Same observation regarding my public school in rural Germany in the same timeframe. We received an excellent education, but all of us thought it was just adequate. High expectations from the public count for something, I suppose.

the-dude2• 5 years ago

Maybe for me it was a bit different because my elementary school was in a lower class neighborhood and a bit behind the times ( they only gave me extra stuff in the last year ).

Compared to that, my high school was a big relief.

mavhc7• 5 years ago

I'm confused, is this only about USA schools? If so why the history lesson about Prussia? Surely many countries would have the same issues then.

Most pupils are taught collectively rather than individually

Err, yeah, because that's cheaper. Anyone want to increase the education budget 10x?

It should be noted that prior to the Civil War, the large majority of Americans were not slaves, indentured servants, nor employees of other people.

Yeah, I wish we could go back to the olden days when we grew Intel Core i7 processes on our own farms, much better to be self sufficient

The reason for this being that these parents had the gall to demand a say in their own children’s education, protesting and screaming about curricula and mandates that were implemented unilaterally without their input.

If only they'd been to school and learned to communicate without screaming like children.

Can we honestly say that our accelerating funding of education in this country has been the key to prosperity?

Yes, yes we can.

The children in public schools who sit down and agree to absorb information are marked as intelligent and tracked as headed for success – the other ones, who critically reject simply parroting and assenting to what is being told of them are labeled stupid and sent on a path for dejection and exclusion with the intent that it should follow them through life.

Has anyone ever politely asked a question about something and been sent to detention?

Lying to the public

To be fair, the public are a bunch of idiots who'll panic and cause shortages where non exist.

In conclusion people in the past said things relevant to the past.

A4ET8a8uTh06• 5 years ago

The reason for this being that these parents had the gall to demand a say in their own children’s education, protesting and screaming about curricula and mandates that were implemented unilaterally without their input.

If only they'd been to school and learned to communicate without screaming like children. ... > Lying to the public

To be fair, the public are a bunch of idiots who'll panic and cause shortages where non exist.

In conclusion people in the past said things relevant to the past.

...

The tone of the comment is ridiculously dismissive. If you do not address existing complaints, at best, they will fester. The response provided did not address the complaint, but instead opted for ad hominem variant.

mavhc7• 5 years ago

Less dismissive than the original article though.

What's the existing complaint?

Also if education is designed to be conservative, why is it seen as a threat much more by conservatives? Aren't they always complaining about new fangled teaching of evolution/women having the vote/slavery being bad/etc?

jaybrendansmith• 5 years ago

It appears the original article is dismissing the very idea of public education by using a set of cherry-picked opinions and quotes that seem to indicate the intent of public education is to turn us all into a bunch of human robots, subservient to the will of our corporate masters. Does anyone on this chat feel that way about themselves? I certainly don't. And having watched my sons go through the system, I can say that they went into it as children, and will come out as responsible men. They accumulated ways of thinking that are systematic and complex, such as arithmetic, algebra, research, logical reasoned arguments, programming, and similar. This entire time they've been absorbing TikTok, yes, but also 1000x of excellent YouTube videos on history, science, and many other subjects. So what is the point of this article? Have we all had our creativity beaten out of us? Would we have been otherwise more successful? Perhaps the cultural revolutions in the 60s were aspects of the public education system breaking away from Mann's original intent.

watwut2• 5 years ago

Has anyone ever politely asked a question about something and been sent to detention?

To be fair, it happens. It takes some time till abusive teacher is figured. But, it does not happen nearly as often as ideologues like to claim it does.

The kids who get in trouble in school are way less likely to be critically commenting on world history and way more often interrupting the lesson with completely unrelated remarks. Or are just not handing in work done at all. Or just stay mute when asked question.

programmarchy• 5 years ago

This post would’ve been better if it stopped after the second word.

barry-cotter3• 5 years ago

> Can we honestly say that our accelerating funding of education in this country has been the key to prosperity?
Yes, yes we can.

No, we can't.

Where Has All the Education Gone?

Cross-national data show no association between increases in human capital attributable to the rising educational attainment of the labor force and the rate of growth of output per worker. This implies that the association of educational capital growth with conventional measures of total factor production is large, strongly statistically significant, and negative.

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/1...

xwolfi• 5 years ago

As an anti-american I d love if you were right, but the US is still overweight in many things we would like to take over and I learned latin at school, speak two languages fluently, work in an investment bank in Hong Kong and I STILL see friends jumping to emigrate there...

When will this fail finally :( Are you sure it's THAT bad ? Should we really continue resisting the US education model that seems to create an endless stream of indebted compliant morons rather than the non productive philosophers we build everywhere else ?

notahacker2• 5 years ago

From the conclusion "None of the arguments in this article suggest that governments should invest less in basic schooling, for many reasons"

The main part of the article deals with the fact that microeconomic data strongly supports returns to educational yet cross sectional comparisoms of countries don't. The author prefers structural differences to labour forces meaning some countries make better use of their educated workforce to signalling arguments.

It's going to take stronger evidence from a paper making stronger claims than that to convince people that the US would be the same place if educational investment was at the pre public education level when most kids didn't learn to read or perform basic arithmetic.

mavhc7• 5 years ago

The modern world wasn't built on geniuses with no education. Even if 90% of people don't benefit, 10% do, invent new stuff, and the 90% benefit from that.

Also you have to factor in competition, if you don't educate your population another country will and leave you with the low paying jobs.

We should be educating people their entire lives, 1 day a week at school to learn things that were invented after you left school.

avgcorrection7• 5 years ago

Layer on the sarcasm enough and you get an actual argument, some believe.

What a bunch of modernist drivel.

eesmith4• 5 years ago

This is the standard and wrong story of how US education is designed around a factory meant to produce docile students.

For a compelling essay against this view, read "The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education'" at http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model

Here are my comments about this essay:

The first largescale education system put in place in the Western world was in the Prussian and Austrian states in the mid-to-late 18th century.

"Large scale" is in the eye of the beholder.

In Colonial America, the Massachusetts Law of 1647 required "towns of fifty families hire a schoolmaster who would teach children to read and write. Towns of a hundred families must have a grammar schoolmaster who could prepare children to attend Harvard College." (Quoting https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/masslaws.html ).

It's not "large scale" because (now quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_School_Laws ) "By the end of the 1650s, all eight of the 100-family towns and a third of the 50-family towns had met the respective requirements for grammar schools and the hiring of teachers."

But it's not like there weren't older systems. Charlemagne "pursued educational reform, requiring monasteries and cathedrals to establish schools to educate boys to read and write in order to make the Bible and other religious texts more accessible and in turn broadening and deepening the spread of Christianity. The schools would also teach religious music, singing and psalms to encourage the spread of the faith, as well as grammar so that religious texts could be revised and edited." in the 700s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admonitio_generalis .

or monastery like colleges.

"monastery like colleges" is a rather broad brush. The medieval period had cathedral schools in addition to monastic schools. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_school .

Or, see how https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/The-Carolingian-r... distinguishes between "Monastic schools" and "Urban schools".

I think the point is that education was considered as part of religion. But "monastic like" seems too constraining. "Scholastically inclined minds" couldn't help but enter a religious school, because that's all there was.

The teachers will have certificates attesting to their pedagogical competence. Pietist schools were the first to require formal training for elementary schoolmasters,

Note here the "elementary" qualifier. Pedagogical competence requirements existed for centuries. Quoting the same Britannica link:

] The success of the urban schools was such that it was necessary, in the middle of the 12th century, to define the teaching function. Only those who were provided with the licencia docendi conferred by the bishop—or, more often, by the scholasticus—could teach. Those who were licensed taught within the limits of the city or the diocese, whose clerical leaders supervised this monopoly and intervened if a cleric set himself up as master without having the right.

> The pupils you observe use only textbooks that have been approved by the state board of education.

That's not true! At least in 2013, "Thirty states allow local agencies or schools to choose textbooks." - https://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/01/09/23/10923.pdf Egs: Kansas, "Individual school boards are responsible for adopting appropriate textbooks; Michigan, "The board of each school district shall select, approve,and purchase the textbooks to be used by the district."

Mann may have not been as explicit as his German counterparts in his hopes for social control

But, but, but ... schools have always been about social "control". Colonial Massachusetts started public schools because the Calvinist Puritans believed a literate populace that could read the Bible "was an essential requirement for temporal living and eternal salvation", and they required the education be under the "Puritan leaders, in order to avoid "false glosses of saint seeming deceivers"." (Quoting WP from earlier.)

We see that same topic of 'social "control"' in the arguments about laws banning schools from teaching "critical race theory".

We see that when Charlemagne wanted to broaden and deepen "the spread of Christianity".

So connecting 'social "control"' specifically to Fichte is nonsense.

> “Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products…

Cherry picked quotes do not make a good history. Again, see "The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education'" at http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model ,

EdwardDiego9• 5 years ago

Wait, so, you're going to start with Prussia's rather, shall we say, statist education system, and completely ignore Britain's similar industrial age education system? Why focus on Prussia, not Britain?

Did Prussia really influence US education philosophy more than Britain did? I find that a bit hard to believe.

Love this "source" in this paragraph:

It should be noted that prior to the Civil War, the large majority of Americans were not slaves, indentured servants, nor employees of other people.

The source being a link to a 372 page scanned PDF. No page numbers for that reference. Just a thoroughly unsearchable and massively long PDF. Nice reference bro.

The thread of school being used for ulterior motives runs right up to the present day. In 1967, a book...

Today I learned that 54 years ago is "present day" when discussing education.

Why do I feel like the author had a really bad time at high school?

rsj_hn• 5 years ago

Wait, so, you're going to start with Prussia's rather, shall we say, statist education system, and completely ignore Britain's similar industrial age education system? Why focus on Prussia, not Britain?

Because the essay is about public education, e.g. state funded education. Not the history of all education. Public education in the West was pioneered by Prussia in the 18th Century and then copied by other nations in the late 19th Century:

"Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce tax-funded and generally compulsory primary education.[3] In comparison, in France and Great Britain, compulsory schooling was not successfully enacted until the 1880s.[4]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

Moreover the article traces the history of this movement by Horace Mann, an expert on Prussian education and the acknowledged "Father of public education" in the U.S.

Today I learned that 54 years ago is "present day" when discussing education.

That's not what the essay says. Let me help in explaining what a period means: it ends one thought and starts another. Let me help explain what a paragraph does: it groups thoughts together. Often the first sentence of the paragraph makes a thesis, and then what follows provides evidence for the thesis. So he says it continues until the present, and then as evidence of this continuation he cites data from 1967, 1976, 1980s, 1998, 2008, 2016. That is meant to show continuation until the present.

EdwardDiego9• 5 years ago

Because the essay is about public education, e.g. state funded education. Not the history of all education. Public education in the West was pioneered by Prussia in the 18th Century and then copied by other nations in the late 19th Century

My question remains - why is Prussian educational thought considered influential in the USA by the author, and no thought given to British educational thought? Because one guy visited Prussia to see their system?

It's not like the USA's lower house of government is called the Diet, I'm pretty sure the USA does things the USA way, education included.

If you want to strongly link Prussian educational thought to American educational thought, you might have to prove it beyond "this guy who thought education was important visited Prussia".

PS - Horace Mann, yep, visited Prussia. However, didn't say shit about "let's use schools to control the people". Which even the author acknowledges with a a slight sneer:

Mann may have not been as explicit as his German counterparts in his hopes for social control

(But he totally was for it, trust me, I'm a substack author).

throwaway23313• 5 years ago

Did Prussia really influence US education philosophy more than Britain did? I find that a bit hard to believe.

Yes, if only because the people (General Education Board: Frederick Taylor Gates; Massachusetts Board of Education: Horace Mann; medical schools: Abraham Flexner) behind all of the school boards were "convinced" of the efficacy of the Prussian/German systems -- having all personally visited them (but never for any long enough period to see their outcomes).

My question remains - why is Prussian educational thought considered influential in the USA by the author, and no thought given to British educational thought?

Because both the U.S. and the U.K. did not have any wide-spread educational systems (the U.K. primarily had some religious schools) until the middle/end of the 19th century.

The reforms in the U.K. to get more schools were driven by the government, while the reforms in the U.S. were primarily driven by ex-unitarian preachers.

They evolved side-by-side, and by circumstance did not really have much influence on the other.

EdwardDiego9• 5 years ago

You're talking systems, I asked about philosophy.

It's easy to agree that the Prussian state educational philosophy was focused on building good citizens for a nation state embroiled in near continuous war, or threatened by hovering on the horizon storm clouds of the next war.

But you can use a Prussian system to deliver results according to American ideals - the Prussian system doesn't necessitate Prussian ideals.

It's like how you can do Kanban, without building cars in a very homogeneous society.

eesmith4• 5 years ago

both the U.S. and the U.K. did not have any wide-spread educational systems

How wide-spread does it need to be to be influential?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitorial_System including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_school_(England_and_W...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Stow#The_Glasgow_System which mostly replaced the Monitorial System.

And the US had schools before the influence of the Prussian model - where do you think their educational models came from, and do you think that influence suddenly disappeared?

nathias• 5 years ago

I like that he establishes the intellectual history, I don't like that he doesn't know that intellectual history, but still better than nothing I guess. Fichte is pretty cool, fun trivia: he also invented the passport.

EdwardDiego9• 5 years ago

Oh, sweet, I read another article of the author's. https://aproposofnothing.substack.com/p/deep-dive-covid-19-m...

There have been at least 25k deaths due to vaccine

We're obviously all going to die as brainwashed corporate drones. Also, Rockefellers, did I mention the Rockefellers enough?

padseeker2• 5 years ago

This guy is pushing invermectin as a treatment for COVID. How is this other article on the front page?

slfnflctd• 5 years ago

Both articles smack of viewpoints I've seen & heard circulated in right wing religious circles (e.g. my parents) for a long time now. I guess if nothing else it's good to know where people are getting these opinions from, both for general awareness and because the resulting discussion can prompt deeper insights - like in this comment section - but I agree it doesn't exactly seem to be in the spirit of HN.

h2odragon4• 5 years ago

If the subject of "schools suck" is worth discussing, the prompt for the discussion may not be that relevant. How many read the articles before commenting?

Also, what if you discovered that, say, some astrophysicist whose work was being discussed was also a devout Christian? Would that suddenly make the original work less valuable just because they admit a religion you don't share? How about if they're Satanist?

It's possible to disagree with others, about specific subjects, and still interact socially with mutual benefit. It doesn't threaten your purity to do so.

bad_username2• 5 years ago

You imply the world has only two kinds of people: the "people who never question the dominant narrative" and "dumb flat earth conspiracists". It is an extremely low resolution view of the world, and you are doing yourself a disservice by ignoring the spectrum in between (or you are simply propagandizing). Do you know that PhDs are among the most vaccine hesitant?

EdwardDiego9• 5 years ago

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But not their own facts.

Speaking of, do you have a source for your last statement? I'd be interesting in reading it :)

notahacker2• 5 years ago

Nope. The OP pointed out that the author believes in some very obviously suspect things, which may not make him a reliable source for information on the education system (even if the article corresponds perfectly to the "why can't everybody be taught to read by their parents and then learn everything else through autodidacticism like me" viewpoint which is popular here)

Ironically, the original article is the one trying to divide people into thoughtless drones that never question the dominant narrative and other people like the author himself. Got to say, that if mindless acceptance of an extraordinary claim made by (checks) a programmer's blog is the sort of critical thinking that can be expected from those too independent for the schooling system, I'll settle for being a mindless drone

(PhDs being the most vaccine hesitancy is something of a tangent, though it doesn't really support the contention in the original argument that education breeds only conformity, or say anything about whether people with relevant PhDs' myriad of reasons for being more cautious about novel vaccines has anything to do with the credulity involved in believing vaccines have killed 25k people despite the lack of evidence)

avgcorrection7• 5 years ago

Do you know that PhDs are among the most vaccine hesitant?

Kind of ironic to elevate the most educated as being the most independent-minded given the topic of this thread.

biophysboy2• 5 years ago

I guess the alternative is homeschooling, where the parent is the tyrant instead. Sometimes they are benevolent dictators (e.g. more personalized education encouraging methodical exploration and autodidacticism), sometimes they are not (time to teach my son/daughter how the world REALLY works). And a lot of parents don’t have the time to be either.

h2odragon4• 5 years ago

Or Community schools where the communities set the standards. My specific example is the local Amish school, which is a "one room schoolhouse" old style model and has worked with our local school board to meet the state standards, too. Their example and materials were extremely helpful when we home schooled our daughter for a few years.

Some kids won't benefit from a formal school at all. I expect HN has a rather larger proportion of that type than usual in the population. Getting those kids out of prison as early as possible and into a situation where they can develop instead of cramp their potential would be a great boon for humanity, I think.

AnIdiotOnTheNet5• 5 years ago

That's a similar problem though. Yes, the community may benevolent, or it may be tyrannical, and if you're a kid in the latter community well it just sucks to be you buddy. Maybe you'll get luckier in your next life.

BlueTemplar3• 5 years ago

This becomes a problem (in true Nation-States) if you have some communities that have values that are fundamentally opposed to the values of the Nation itself.

To take a recent example : homeschooling is now effectively banned in France due to the (reactionary) Muslim threat.

(Personally, I'm still unsure as of whether this was the best way to go about it, especially considering how it comes together with an attempt to create a Muslim clergy, which not only seems to go against the (majority) Sunnite practices (closer to Protestants than the better known Catholics which serve as the model here ?), but also puts at the head of it an association with terrorist ties (ties to the Muslim Brotherhood), and finally violates the core principle of separation of Church and State...)

dhagz• 5 years ago

It's funny, I'm fairly skeptical of homeschooling due to my experience being homeschooled. Not that my mom did a bad job, she did the best she could, but the curriculum we followed was, to put it lightly, incredibly conservative and Catholic. Like, there was an entire chapter of one of my American history books dedicated to the oppression of Catholics in Colonial/early America. To focus so heavily on that instead of the other oppressions of the time is...not great. There were some good things in the curriculum as well - I spent a lot of time reading and memorizing Shakespeare and great poems. But those bright spots don't make up for brushing over evolution and an incredibly skewed perspective of history.

SyzygistSix2• 5 years ago

There are other alternatives. 20 students per teacher, along with an teacher's aide/intern for starters.

And I had a very different type of schooling, even though it was public. And in a 1970s working class/middle class town. From 1-5th grade, we were taught a subject together, then separately in turn according to our ability and level. While not being actively taught we worked on packets that we worked through at our own pace. This allowed some students to advance years ahead in English or math, as well as preventing teachers from passing kids who do not comprehend the material, while still being taught in the same classroom. I'm surprised this method is not used more often. Perhaps it failed on the whole. It seemed to work well for me.

Although the lower amount of single income two parent households is definitely an issue, as are the modern extended over 40 hour workweek for parents. And the lack of independence imparted from walking to elementary school, which was common then.

threatofrain• 5 years ago

In California, math classrooms in nice places may still have classroom sizes of 40 students, with classroom size penalties ending at middle school. To get down to 20 students per teacher districts across the state would have to basically double the number of math teachers.

This may be a necessary move but it's a steep political battle.

avgcorrection7• 5 years ago

By “I guess” I presume you mean that you have only heard of homeschooling and standard public education and in turn you sling dirt based on your total lack of knowledge.

There have been alternatives -- for example based on Steiner, Montessori, Dewey, etc.

biophysboy2• 5 years ago

I'm aware you can pay money to solve problems.

dsign• 5 years ago

Totally out of topic, but what is the habitual class size in elementary school? Mine was somewhere between 30 and 40 kids, and teachers were not afraid to use punishment to get kids to behave. Some were better chalk-throwers than us the kids, and used their skills to keep the class focused. Still, it was often complete mayhem. All of this was before the smartphones, kids these days seem from a different species altogether.

I have read somewhere that smaller classes are better.

cfoster• 5 years ago

Homeschooler / semi-unschooler, here.

The school system tried to shave down our square-peg for years before we re-arranged our lives so we could bring them home. It’s fair to say we have a highly critical view of the education system (in Canada, but I think it’s reasonably similar to the U.S.).

That said: To me, this article is raving. The author is taking real problems and attributing them to the machinations of their own personal hobgoblins.

Just because a historical figure had a sinister motive in education, that doesn’t mean that a front-line teacher in the classroom today is using that ideology when interacting with their children. The quality of the relationship between a child and their teacher, produces at least half of that child’s overall experience (with the other half coming from requirements of “the system”).

There can be bad things in a system that happen for reasons that aren’t sinister. By and large the “round pegging” of children is not harmful at all to kids who are roundish in shape to begin with. Most people who achieve some kind of prominence in their fields as adults came through the school system just fine, but that path is by no means the only one that leads to success.

The key is to note when a particular child doesn’t fit into the available system. Private schools can only provide a slightly more accommodating model, largely because of improved student/teacher ratios (improving that relationship) and less restrictive finances (improving resources). Beyond that it’s a question of how much support the child can be given (by parents, tutors, etc.) to help extract what they can from school, and fill in where it's lacking with other activities.

For a more rational look at the education system and the needs for its reform (towards a more individualized educational experience for each child), I’d recommend:

The End of Average - Todd Rose

Free To Learn - Peter Grey

avgcorrection7• 5 years ago

Most people who achieve some kind of prominence in their fields as adults came through the school system just fine,

Someone asked Chomsky what happens to people who are too independent-minded for traditional schooling. He said that they become taxi drivers.

I wouldn’t elevate traditional success as the be-all-end-all of personal education.

avgcorrection7• 5 years ago

There is such wild idealization and blind faith in mass education as we know it. Teachers are underpaid saints who are raising the next enlightened generation. Education itself is, of course (wink), an absolute unquestioned good. But is it, really? To me it just looks like 18–30 kids being herded and lectured at for 6–8 hours a day.

What’s enlightening about that?

We really ought to question mass education as we know it.

The Sick History of Public Education

Related Stories