3 ms·

I don’t know what your feelings on qz.com are but it disagrees. https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/1314814/universal-education-was-first-promoted-by-industria

I don’t know what your feelings on qz.com are but it disagrees. https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/1314814/universal-education-was-first-promoted-by-industrialists-who-wanted-docile-factory-workers/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/1314814/universal-educat... > Factory owners required a docile, agreeable workers who would show up on time and do what their managers told them. Sitting in a classroom all day with a teacher was good training for that. Early industrialists were instrumental, then, in creating and promoting universal education.

wahern 7y ago
We shouldn't confuse aspiration with environmental constraints. Just because some company says their product, XYZ, was designed to change the world and increase IQ doesn't mean you can go around stating that XYZ changed the world and increased IQ, or analyzing the various characteristics of the product solely in terms of the claims. Rather, in reality almost everything of substance about such a product follows from exogenous constraints--cost, feasibility, etc. To explain the seemingly arbitrary and stifling demands of a typical Prussian-style universal education system, the obvious place to look first would be cost--instructors, facilities, organization, etc. Also, the beginning of industrialization coincided with the end of serfdom in much of Europe. Were capitalists trying to create and exploit compliant workers, or were they trying to create workers, period? That is, there were no workers beforehand, just serfs or recently emancipated serfs, depending on territory. Social reforms were so wildly successful in Prussia that they swept the Western world, even places like the U.S. where industrialization (but not universal education) was already well under way. Was that because it produced virtuous, Christian workers, or just because it was efficient at improving basic literacy?

wahern 7y ago

We shouldn't confuse aspiration with environmental constraints. Just because some company says their product, XYZ, was designed to change the world and increase IQ doesn't mean you can go around stating that XYZ changed the world and increased IQ, or analyzing the various characteristics of the product solely in terms of the claims. Rather, in reality almost everything of substance about such a product follows from exogenous constraints--cost, feasibility, etc. To explain the seemingly arbitrary and stifling demands of a typical Prussian-style universal education system, the obvious place to look first would be cost--instructors, facilities, organization, etc. Also, the beginning of industrialization coincided with the end of serfdom in much of Europe. Were capitalists trying to create and exploit compliant workers, or were they trying to create workers, period? That is, there were no workers beforehand, just serfs or recently emancipated serfs, depending on territory. Social reforms were so wildly successful in Prussia that they swept the Western world, even places like the U.S. where industrialization (but not universal education) was already well under way. Was that because it produced virtuous, Christian workers, or just because it was efficient at improving basic literacy?