Free Public Education
How did schooling arise, and where is it going
How did education arise may be an odd question for us today. We grew up where free and compulsory education is almost universal for ages to 16 – 19. Contrary to our experiences, free public education is relatively new. Free public education in limited forms have only been around since the17th century. However, the nationwide universal compulsory education was first mandated in Prussian Germany before 1867.
Key nations and the start of universal mandatory public education:
Prussia (Germany) 1763
Austria/Hungary 1774
Massachusetts 1852 (first state in the USA)
Spain 1857
Italy 1861 (limited success and attendance)
England & Wales 1870
Japan 1872
France 1882
Argentina 1884
Netherlands 1900
United States 1918 (some states much earlier)
India 1930
Russia 1930
Canada 1943 (some provinces much earlier)
China 1986
For a full list and dates LINK
From Religious to Required to a Right
Religious and Limited Education.
Formal educational classes were introduced for a sub-set of people almost a thousand years ago. These opportunities were limited and usually based around religious teachings.
China had the first mandatory education for a class of people, members of the emperors’ court. Later an imperial examination became the way to move into the professional ranks in China, much of it based on Confucius. This was limited mainly to those going into imperial administrative roles.
One of the Aztec nations also required education for people entering the ruling class.
There were European Universities started in the 1100s, three of the first being University of Bologna, University of Paris, and the University of Salamanca. These were neither free nor mandatory, but specialized in the civic arts of Law, Theology and Medicine.
In terms of mandatory schooling for some young people, this advancement was started by some local churches in (now) Germany. These educational institutions were designed to teach students religious teachings first and foremost. They also taught reading and writing in furtherance of spreading the faith. They were mandatory only for a year or two and only for those within a singular church and at the correct age.
This pre-18th century spread of education was not free nor available to all.
Required
Starting in 1763 and expanding over time to most nations, compulsory and free education spread throughout Europe and the Americas. Because it has been with us longer than any one person can remember, we tend to think of education as a basic function of government.
There are a few explanations offered for the rise of required education for a nations’ children. Most of these explanations depend on what aspect of education and what geography the researcher is investigating. Researchers offer a variety of reasons for starting national schooling, many of which might play a factor for different regions. Scholars proposed the main reasons for providing a public education, and they are explained below. I am not judging one reason as being right over another but trying to distill the most relevant.
Most of the required education schemes started in or around the industrial revolution, which is a catalyst of education regardless of underlying reason.
Military
Prussia and Austria introduced an education requirement for men in the late 1700s. They found that these educated men excelled over their untrained men in warfare. Men who had trained and gained a common education were better fighters.
The people’s common education allowed them to use more complex weapons than uneducated farmers. The first “flintlock” gun was designed in 1630 and was used until about 1850 when shotguns were invented. These weapons required more training than the use of lances, swords or arrows that had been around for thousands of years.
Nation Building
Education was also used to build a camaraderie within a nations’ male population. For most of history national loyalty was uncommon. People were more loyal to city states, local parish communities and even royalty. But for world powers rising in 1500s and onward the nation building function of schools was critical for new empires and colonies. The United States and Canada are key examples of using education to indoctrinate immigrants into the nations’ beliefs and infrastructure.
Economic
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution the local population had to take on more complex tasks. Reading and writing were now required as economic necessities. The use of education allowed for quicker learning of new trades, processes, and equipment. Even in areas that did not require much education, like textiles, the manager class was needed to keep production moving. People managers were needed in great numbers. Unlike agricultural managers in the past, the new industrial managers needed knowledge in an evolving environment.
Factory Indoctrination
I admit, this is a new idea to me while investigating this essay. It was proposed in an essay I read while investigating the US reasoning for education outside of the military. This theory proposed is that as children were no longer working in factories or mines they were not learning discipline at a young age. Parents and companies needed the future workers to learn to obey instructions, be on time, and be respectful to management. Schooling was thus used to install a sense of order and rule following which had previously taught at work. In this way education would benefit future employers as their employees would have learned discipline.
Schooling requires children to learn to work within time constraints. The schools used corporal punishment daily as children were caned or switched when their output was not up to the teachers demands or they disobeyed. Schooling set children on the track to do repetitive tasks which they do not enjoy.
Competitive Advantage?
When the US publishes data about math and science scores versus other countries, it does so to push Americans to surpass other countries. Why? I haven’t seen research that says being 5th versus 15th in science or math has any effect on a country’s fortunes. Sure, a swing between 5th and 50th is probably wide enough to see a real difference, but the published order of achievement doesn’t indicate how close or far you are from the other countries. Nor does explain military or economic power. It is, however, a great motivator.
A Right to Education
For most developed nations the question today is not ‘should there be an education for children’, but how best to ensure it is available and equal for all people. Americans are surprised and appalled when some countries do not provide full education opportunities to all, be it women in Afghanistan or Native Americans in Arizona.
The 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights spells out this international right in Article 26:
Article 26
Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
I personally value education because of the opportunities it has afforded me. I have had some amazing jobs, visits, and growth due to education. I love my football and basketball teams, but I love the education I received exponentially more. It has made me who I am.
Future of Education
Roadblock of Costs I
The value of an education and the opportunities it provides have only grown over time. It is not entirely clear this value growth will continue. The United States and many other countries continue to increase the cost of education far more than comparable costs or inflation. If this happens only the richest of us will be able to get a university education.
In the United States prospective student now must trade the value of an education versus the debt the must take on to finish college. In this context, college level education is often seen as not worth the cost.
Even if someone thinks college will be helpful, they will steer towards educational degrees that promise a return on value. However, those returns can be transitory as computer science and math fields are moving towards automation. When it costs so much, education becomes a transactional good. One that less fortunate do not find is a useful tradeoff or even possible.
Roadblock of Costs II
On the other side of the education equation are the teachers. Teachers are paid poorly in many countries considering the critical work they do with children. There are many of reasons for this. For those tax payers without children, the cost of education for others is often not seen as common good and therefore not a good valuable. Teaching also suffers from the impression that anyone can teach, and so pay can be meager. Last year the state of Florida decided that they could resolve a shortage of teachers not by paying more money, but letting veterans and retired police officers teach without specialized training. Where teaching and education is seen as critical and important to a nation’s future, teachers are respected and paid well. Sadly, this positive situation is true only in a minority of nations.
Roadblock of Culture
There are more and more parents that no longer value public education. Worse, there are cultures that actively disavow education as evil. This includes strict religious countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia that believe education corrupts the family and women’s roles. There have also been many times where a minority was not allowed an education or a secular education because they were not seen as worth the cost for out groups. The United States, Canada, and Ireland were only a few of many nations were minorities were not encouraged or allowed to be schooled.
Today in the United States, a majority of Republicans believe that Colleges and Universities have a negative effect on the country – 59% of them responded this way in a 2019 Pew Research Survey (LINK). These new anti-education Americans are united with repressive religious regimes that find open information anti-God. Education teaches people to question authority and values. This ability to question is seen as a very bad thing by many in positions of power.
Roadblock of Technology
This is more speculative with my opinion. Technology has made certain parts of education redundant. I studied Geography and Economics in school. Geography as a major is now seen as useless. Knowing how to navigate a map, or how cities evolve or how development works is not useful in an age of computers. No one checks a map now, they plug in the desired location and follow the directions like automatons. In the past year new AI tools allow for automatic generation of essays and writing. Technology has allowed more access to information without the need for education. Where education is not valued, these developments reduce the need to teach people.
On the other hand, geographers were first to widely identify climate change as a problem. My classes investigated this in 1978. In combination with other disciplines geographers mapped elevation, mapped out ocean currents and their effects on the weather (think El Nino), help to answer archeology questions and look at current population movements between urban and rural areas and what the impact are.
This isn’t to say the geography is important, but to point out that surface level observations in almost any field are still important. You can snap an image of a painting and find out who and when it was painted. But to understand the context and symbolic meanings will still take a Art Historian.
Old Roadblock of “Choice”
This is a problem with education systems in America, where funding is local. This is not the case in many European countries where equal education funding is made available nationwide.
One of the reasons suburban residents have left large school districts is based on money and student make-up (i.e. fewer minorities). In the United States most of the money for schools is raised by property taxes on residents. As richer people move to the suburbs, the schools are better funded and more homogenous. This leaves urban districts with less money to spend on poorer children. During the segregation fights of the 1960s and 1970s, this trend expanded quickly, because forced bussing was used for integration in large school districts.
New Roadblock of “Choice”
This may be unique to the United States. In many jurisdictions there are laws to allow parental choice in schooling. In some places that means you can choose a “charter school”. These are semi-independent schools set up in the same districts as normal public schools. These were designed as laboratory type schools free from the red tape and bureaucracies in today’s public schools but funded by the same communities. Since they operated independently they have proven to be more segregated and give a quality education to wealthier students because the school may request additional funds or time requirements on parents. This is a low stakes problem, but their spread has also allowed the flourishing of “home schooling” – which has almost zero educational requirements or supervision.
These two trends, charter schools and home schooling, have led to several states to propose tying all funding to individual children. This legislation would eliminate mandatory funding for all schools and give the parents access to the money to use on the schools of their choice. Or they can keep the money if they home school. In America 16% of children live in poverty; their families could easily choose to keep these funds and not provide a sound education. Arizona has been in court since 1991 for not adequately funding public schools with both state and federal money - as they attempt to go to a funding based on individual students.
There are few guardrails around which kind of education parents can choose, which has led to children graduating with even the most basic of skills or understanding.
Reality of the Future
The best case going forward in the United States is that the current terrible system stays in place. Funds are cut, charter schools enrollment rises for the rich and connected, and nothing changes. All other options are even worse. Promoting charters schools even more moves more government funds to schools that are successful - ignoring public schools that serve non-white majorities and poor families that don’t have time or money to investigate the choices.
The well off will get better educations and poorer students will be left behind to explain why the “public school system is dead”. Politicians will scapegoat teachers or curriculum and defund education further.
For more and more Americans, and world citizens, this is a hidden problem. Birth rates are low and a growing majority of adults have no children, and no immediate interest in the problem.