|
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
Public schools were created to get kids accustomed to shift work, obedience to bosses, and boring tasks done in a standardized way. Industrialists wanted dependent, dependable, and compliant workers for factories, and the schools were designed accordingly. The schools had the additional (beneficial?) effect of breaking down religious and familial loyalties, concentrating the emotional energies of the individual on work -- and on its obverse, consumption. And by surrounding kids for most of the day with people their own age, schools provided the soil of "generational provincialism" from which, years later, the quite lucrative "youth culture" would sprout.
The stuff about "preparation for citizenship in a democracy" and "broadening minds through liberal education" was mostly a pleasant facade, so pleasant that quite a few people actually bought it.
The factories that the industrialists had in mind aren't as important anymore, but schools still serve the same basic function. |
Great post!
___________________
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
|