<p>I became interested in the history of public education (an oxymoron if ever there was one…) in the US about five or six years ago. After going to the library and reading – you know – actual books on the subject I learned a variety of interesting historical tidbits that are actually in amazingly close alignment with what Mini wrote in that last post. </p>
<p>In rural America in the mid- to late-19th century, farmers or people in small towns would chip in to hire a teacher to educate their children in the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. The goal was provide basic literacy skills for future farmers and shopkeepers. The teachers were either young, unmarried women or male farm workers between seasons. </p>
<p>Education as we know it began in the cities due to the need for an educated work force to run the machines of the industrial revolution. This required a regimented work force with certain skills usable in the local textile mills or coal mines or oil fields. This pattern of schooling – age-based, regimented, and highly rules-based – hasn’t, in my experience, changed significantly since its widespread adoption in the cities of the late 19th century.</p>
<p>Public schooling lost its way a long time ago. That public schools continue to dominate the elementary and secondary education field is a true monument to the power of nostalgia, intertia, the forced removal of money from consumers (taxes), teachers and their unions, and the overwhelming belief of government employees everywhere that they know what is better for citizens than citizens do themselves. A voucher system of funding education is so clearly superior to the current one-size-fits-hardly-anyone public educational system, that it could only be defeated by an unholy alliance of public employees, frightened leftists, and sheer institutional inertia.</p>
<p>My absolute favorite discussion on education in America:</p>
<p>Me: Vouchers would be great! Parents could pick the school that best meets the needs of their kids.</p>
<p>Teacher friend: What about disabled kids or kids with learning disabilities?</p>
<p>Me: Give them vouchers with higher values attached. Schools will spring up to take advantage of this.</p>
<p>TF: But we’ll have to close public schools.</p>
<p>Me: Great! You can lease an empty public school building and start your own school. Think of how great it would be not to have to answer to the state school board in Sacramento?</p>
<p>TF: <blank stare=“”></blank></p>
<p>Ironic, isn’t it, that the majority of CCers are convinced that private colleges are better than public ones, but there is no real competition in elementary or secondary education?</p>