“To train and educate the rising generation will at all times be the first object of society, to which every other will be subordinate.” — Robert Owen
Throughout history, education has been the subject of many philosophical musings. Questions such as “What is the purpose of education?” merit their own examination, however, for our purposes, we will set them aside in favor of exploring the history of the institution reigning over education in the United States, the public school system.
What is the purpose of the public schools? Who first proposed the hypothesis of government schools? When was it first instituted? These are the questions that all parents and politicians should be chiefly concerned with but too often, they are left unanswered. The refrain of many Americans seems to be, “What does history have to do with anything? We must fix the problems in public schools!” Indeed, there are many serious problems being produced by government schools. To name only a few, the vast majority of public school students are depressed, [1] illiterate, [2], [3] and sexually immoral. [4] It is right, therefore, that parents and politicians are concerned with addressing these harmful developments. But how can you address a problem if you do not understand its root cause? Can a Band-Aid heal a cancer cell? Of course not, because you cannot heal a diseased cell, you must kill it. Prescribing a Band-Aid as a cure for cancer is medical malpractice because it does not address the root cause and thus, invites the deadly disease to infect the entire body.
For decades, Americans have been sticking Band-Aids all over the public schools, hoping to cure the cancer inside. It is time to end this fool’s errand by addressing the root issue with the public school system. To accomplish this, we will explore the history and implementation of government schools to rightly diagnose the problems and administer the appropriate cure.
The History of the Public School System
To accurately understand American public schools, the intentions, motives, and influences of the men who crafted them must be examined. This exploration brings us back to the 19th century where the model of government education was originally hypothesized by an Englishman and transported from Europe into the land of the free.
Robert Owen
Robert Owen (born May 14, 1771, died November 17, 1858) is a peculiar figure of history. A committed collectivist, bright-eyed utopian, and staunch atheist, Owen was the first to seriously propose the hypothesis of nationalized public schools. He wrote, “Society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold, and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal.”
Ignorance is the problem, says Owen; thus, education is the answer. However, before one can stomp out the ignorance of the masses, one must control the masses. Thus, he asserted that the state must use government captured education as the means of controlling and molding a populus to prepare them for Heaven on earth. Towards the close of his life, this end became his great obsession, and so he commissioned his disciples to implement his vision. He implored them saying, “To train and educate the rising generation will at all times be the first object of society, to which every other will be subordinate.”
Control—this was the key by which Owen would unlock the gates of utopia, and he intended to attain it by capturing minds through state education. This was the mission of Owen and those who took up his charge.
Prussian Public Schools
In 1806, while Robert Owen was promoting his collectivist ideals in England, Frederick William III of Prussia was suffering the aftermath of an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Napoleon, Emperor of France. Perhaps to try and mend their wounded pride, the Prussian elites, rather than blame their own military miscalculations, turned their ire on the independent and freethinking Prussian population for their disastrous defeat. They believed that if they had had a docile population, who could be moved around like pieces in a game of political chess, they would have turned Napoleon back West. Thus, they began to plot how they could take control of their people to ensure future victory for their country.
It was during this period that the education hypothesis of Robert Owen began to make its way over the English Channel, through the hills of Europe, and into the ears of the Prussian elites. If control was their aim, education could be their means. In his writings, Owen eventually took credit for inspiring the Prussians to establish the first national public school system, and by 1819, this institution was firmly established. It was the perfect experiment, and to the delight of Owen and the Prussians elites, its hypothesis was proven correct: A government can control its citizens by capturing education.
The Prussian Experiment
The Prussian public schools were ordered into three tiers of learning:
- Akademiensschulen (Academy schools) prepared students to be future policymakers and leaders. They were taught a wide range of subjects and learned to think critically, write well, read profusely, and to strategize.
- Realsschulen (secondary school) prepared the “professional proletariats” to be useful to the upper class. They became engineers, doctors, lawyers, and architects.
- Volksschulen (elementary school), or “the people’s school,” taught most of the population to be submissive, passive, and obedient. In practice, they were functionally illiterate and were only taught history that would fuel blissful patriotism.
With this system, the Prussian leaders created the population they felt they had lacked in 1806: submissive slaves and ignorant patriots. The public schools in Prussia successfully created a population eagerly waiting to be controlled by their leaders simply because they did not know how to direct their own lives. With a school system that was designed to control the masses, it is no surprise that only a few decades later, the government banned all alternative schooling methods, including private schools and homeschooling. The Prussian School Inspection Law of 1872 states, “By annulment of any contrary regulations in individual regions, the supervision of all public and private school and educational institutions is solely under the control of the state.”
Absolute control requires absolute ownership; thus, an attack on private institutions is a clear warning sign of tyranny. Perhaps if the government had not seized ownership of their minds, the Prussian people could have stopped the madness of their leaders before it was too late.
The Implementation of the Public School System
Dividing a population up into tiers based purely on perceived potential is a ghastly business because, of course, Prussia, as it once existed, can no longer be found on a map. Ultimately, the experiment of government schools did not bring about the desired end of utopia. So, why do the Prussian schools matter? Why haven’t they faded into obscurity like the country that formed them? The Prussian schools would be nothing but a lesson of history if not for an American named Horace Mann.
Horace Mann
Horace Mann (born May 4, 1796, died August 2, 1859) was a man of many stations; A lawyer, state representative, state senator, U.S. Senator, and president of Antioch College, Mann was a consequential political figure in his time. However, each of these titles pale in comparison to his most prized position, the founder of the American public school system.
Mann believed that in order to maintain the American social fabric and to stem the tide of ignorance, the nation needed to establish a taxpayer funded school system, where children of all religions and backgrounds would be taught facts and history that are necessary to make good citizens. As he wrote, “Public Education is the cornerstone of our community and our democracy.” In 1837, he established the first Board of Education in Massachusetts of which he was secretary. The purpose of the board was to oversee all education in the state. To Mann, however, this did not go nearly far enough; the public schools needed to be nationalized.
The general hypothesis of public schools was “in the air” during the 19th century and soon, Mann learned that a national education system existed overseas in Prussia. So, in 1843, Horace Mann, along with a few of his colleagues, travelled to Prussia to observe the first national public school system. He observed how the Prussian government used classrooms to control the minds of the masses; he watched children be divided up based upon their perceived potential; he saw the Prussian people sink deeper and deeper into the cold embrace of ignorance. What did he do in response? Did he abandon his thesis of nationalized education? Dismantle the Board of Education? Warn the American people of the classroom tyranny taking place overseas? Regretfully, he did none of these things.
Public Schools in America
Rather, Mann returned to Massachusetts with the intention of implementing a similar system in the land of the free. This he accomplished by wielding his political influence convincing his fellow statesmen to institute a public school system.
In 1867, President Andrew Jackson signed legislation establishing the national Department of Education. This department became the federal “hub” of American education, overseeing education and informing the nation of the state of public schools. With such broad responsibilities and federal influence, Congress feared that the department would garner too much power over local schools, so it was dismantled the following year. This reasonable fear was dismissed by Congress in 1979, however, when the Department of Education was re-instated by President Jimmy Carter. Today, this federal agency has 4,400 employees and a budget of $268 billion dollars [5] to oversee a public school system with 63 million students and an annual budget of $857 billion dollars. [6] Only now, after watching this department drain resources and produce ignorance, are Presidents and politicians dealing harshly with Horace Mann’s creation.
There can be no doubt; Horace Mann successfully transported the government funded and controlled education system dreamed up by Owen and first instituted by the Prussian government. But is it still teaching children to be submissive and ignorant as it did in Prussia? Surely, modern schools are not as oppressive as their original model. For instance, we do not have a three-tiered system, but a system that treats all students equally. So, American schools are not entirely like their Prussian mother, right?
John Gatto
John Taylor Gatto is a retired public school teacher of thirty years, who was named “New York State Teacher of the Year” by the New York State Education Department in 1991 and received the same honor in the city of New York three years in a row, in 1989, 1990, and 1991. With his many years of experience and awards, Gatto could be considered an expert on the system he had helped to perpetuate. He knew the curriculum, systems, methods, subjects, teachers, and students. So, when he was asked to speak at his award ceremonies, no one expected him to boldly condemn the system that employed him. But he did. His speech in 1990 was titled “The Psychopathic School,” and his speech in 1991 was titled, “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher.” Each of these he later combined into a book titled Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. In his book, Gatto wrote of his experience as a teacher:
“I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them [the students] down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children’s power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.”
This description should instantly beckon the vision of Robert Owen, Prussian politicians, and Horace Mann to mind. Control. Dependency. Submission. These were the tenets of government schooling that was brought onto the shores of America and according to Gatto and teachers like him, they are the tenets of the classroom still today.
The Seven Lessons
Gatto continued in his book to outline, what he titled, “The Seven Lessons” that every public-school teacher teaches their students. Lessons four through seven are given here in his own words:
- “The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency. By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces, I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestinated chain of command.”
- “The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency. This is the most important lesson of them all: we must wait for other people better trained than ourselves, to make meanings for our lives… If I’m told that evolution is a fact instead of a theory, I transmit that as ordered, punishing deviants who resist what I have been told to tell them to think… Successful children do the thinking I assign them with a minimum of resistance and a decent show of enthusiasm… Bad kids fight this, of course, even though they lack the concepts to know what they are fighting… Fortunately there are tested procedures to break the will of those who resist.”
- “The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem. The lesson of report cards and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.”
- “The seventh lesson I teach is that one can’t hide. I teach students they are always watched that each is under constant surveillance by myself and my colleagues.”
These four lessons make up the curriculum of the public school system and their result is children who are confused, submissive, indifferent, ignorant, and dependent. Of course, it is possible for students to exit this institution with a grasp on facts and an upright character but that is sadly becoming entirely exceptional. It is time that Americans wake up to the real lessons being taught to 63 million children every day. Regretfully, too many American politicians and parents are too busy covering the public schools with Band Aids to diagnose the cancerous cells within. Gatto, reflecting on these claims, wrote this in response:
“The current debate about whether we should have a national curriculum is phony. We already have a national curriculum locked up in the seven lessons I have just outlined. Such a curriculum produces physical, moral, and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum of content will be sufficient to reverse its hideous effects… Look again at the seven lessons of school teaching… All of these lessons are prime training for permanent underclasses, people deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius.”
Was this not the original intention of public education? To create a permanent underclass of people who are intellectual slaves and ignorant patriots, ready and willing to accept the narratives given to them by those in power. Indeed, a population in this condition cannot be free.
The Disease and the Cure
By examining the purpose of the public schools and the men who established them, we have properly identified the disease within the public schools. Though these facts may cause alarm, it is not too late to administer the proper cure. It would serve America well to recall the words of James Madison:
“It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it.” — James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments
Americans have allowed those in power to experiment on liberty since Horace Mann established the first Board of Education in 1837 and we know all too well the consequences of his experiment. Children are suffering because they are being funneled into a system that was designed to make them suffer. Public schools are antithetical to freedom because they were designed to make slaves.
The Cure
Millions of parents and politicians are trying to find a cure for the public schools, but they are only willing to apply a Band-Aid here and there rather than treat the rot that exists deep within the institution. There is one common thread that connects each stage of public school development: government control. The principle is simple: free people cannot be taught by those seeking to control them.
It is time to stop the cycle of intellectual slavery; to stop the perpetuation of Owen’s hypothesis; to place the Prussian public schools on the shelf of history’s worst ideas; to reject the seven lessons taught in every classroom around the nation. The Prussian people waited until “usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise” and thus, they lost the freedom of their minds and country. Though we have waited long to throw off the chains of government schools, it is not too late. It is time we take up our duty as citizens and hold fast to our prudent jealousy for liberty. Then, and only then, will we reject the intellectual slavery we have been suffering under and be liberated to learn and think in freedom again.
[1] Panchal, N. (2024, February 6). Recent Trends in Mental Health and Substance Use Concerns Among Adolescents. Retrieved January 23, 2025, from https://www.kff.org/mental-health/issue-brief/recent-trends-in-mental-health-and-substance-use-concerns-among-adolescents/
[2] NAEP (n.d.). National Achievement-Level Results. The Nation’s Report Card. Retrieved January 23, 2025, from https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading/nation/achievement/?grade=12
[3] Program for International Student Assessment (n.d.). PISA 2022 Mathematics Literacy Results. National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved January 23, 2025, from https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2022/mathematics/international-comparisons/#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%207,scoring%20below%20proficiency%20level%202.
[4] Ethier K. A., Kann L., McManus T. “Sexual Intercourse Among High School Students—29 States and United States Overall, 2005–2015,” Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved March 20, 2024, from https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm665152a1.htm
[5] USA Facts (2024, November 4). What does the Department of Education do? Retrieved January 28, 2025, from https://usafacts.org/articles/what-does-the-department-of-education-do/
[6] Education Data Initiative (2024, July 14). U.S. Public Education Spending Statistics. Retrieved January 28, 2025, from https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics
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