The Purpose of Free Public Education: A little history

 This post originally appeared on Substack at https://pegatron.substack.com/p/the-purpose-of-free-public-education

Once upon a time, kids learned everything they need to know from their parents. Dad taught the boys a trade, or how to farm; or he shipped them off to learn blacksmithing, masonry, commerce - whatever they could find - as apprentices. Mom taught the girls cooking, sewing, mending, fine needlework; plants, flowers and a bit of herbal medicine if she had the knowledge. How to grind grain; find eggs; kill, pluck, clean and cook a chicken.

Everybody was pretty much a generalist. Mom made all the clothes they wore, all the food they ate, all the bedding, cushions, curtains … I’ve never made a man’s shirt, much less a pair of jeans! Dad made the roof over their heads, the chairs they sat on, harness, wooden buckets for the well he dug, all the “tackle and trim.” For a change of pace, he hunted and fished.

Passing this exhausting list of skills on to their children would have taken a high priority, and a significant slice of time. But it could be done, because the kids worked by their parents’ sides. Older kids taught the younger. Do I need to say that some parents were more successful than others? That they were better at the skill, or at sharing the process, or both?

When everybody moved to the cities, and dads went to work in the factories, the kids needed new skills, and new teachers. Jewish males had been literate - and urban, because they were often forbidden to own land - for a long time:

The Jewish religion made primary education mandatory for boys in the first century when the high priest Joshua ben Gamala (64 fh) issued an ordinance that “teachers had to be appointed in each district and every city and that boys of the age of six or seven should be sent.” From Farmers to Merchants: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish Economic History; Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, January 2003

The Catholic Church started educating the general population; in the US, according to Wikipedia:

The earliest continually operating school for girls in the United States is Ursuline Academy in New Orleans. It was founded in 1727 …

… In 1875, Republican President Ulysses S. Grant called for a Constitutional amendment that would mandate free public schools and prohibit the use of public funds for "sectarian" schools. He said he feared a future with "patriotism and intelligence on one side and superstition, ambition and greed on the other" which he identified with the Catholic Church. Grant called for public schools that would be "unmixed with atheistic, pagan or sectarian teaching.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_school#Background)

The idea caught on, even if the Amendment didn’t - it was never passed. But 34 states incorporated the idea in their Constitutions. And public schools, funded by States, were distinctly different from religious, or otherwise private, schools which were not funded. (Some see this as a negative reaction to Catholics in general, since religion and religious practice were taught in Catholic schools.)

Congress created the Department of Education as we know it in 1979, but:

… its origins [go] back to 1867, when President Andrew Johnson signed legislation creating the first Department of Education. Its main purpose was to collect information and statistics about the nation's schools. However, due to concern that the Department would exercise too much control over local schools, the new Department was demoted to an Office of Education in 1868. (https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/focus/what.html)

The Wikipedia article on the Dept. of Educations says, in part:

Unlike the systems of many other countries, education in the United States is decentralized. Due to the courts and lawmakers' interpretation of the 10th Amendment, this means the federal government and Department of Education are not involved in determining curricula or educational standards or establishing schools or colleges.^[8] The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) oversees schools located on American military bases^[9] and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Education supports tribally-controlled schools.^[10] The quality of higher education institutions and their degrees are maintained through an informal private process known as accreditation, over which the Department of Education has no direct public jurisdictional control. — Dept. of Ed Wiki

That’s pretty weak. All the Department of Education really does is collect and disseminate Federal funds and monitor how they are used, collect data, prohibit discrimination, assure equal access, and focus National attention on important issues.

Some Republicans are calling for it to be abolished altogether. They see it as Congressional overreach. I disagree. If we are truly “One nation … indivisible,” one people following one set of rules, then we need to educate our future leadership the same, whether they’re growing up (as mine did) in urban Oregon, or rural Georgia, or the wealthy exurbs of Connecticut.

We need a nation-wide population that shares a fundamental set of literacy skills, cultural understanding, math and science skills and basic tenets of ethical behavior. I wish the Department of Education would expand its operations in new ways, such as:

• establish standards for education;
• offer training for teachers;
• create pamphlets that outline “best practices in education” for parents and administrators, and
• make sure there are educational pathways forward for every child.

I’ll talk about this part later, and maybe detail why I hate the 10th Amendment and States’ Rights. But that’s in the future.