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The public school system is absurd and the biggest culprit in the vast majority of our modern problems. The idea that we would take children and put them in an

The public school system is absurd and the biggest culprit in the vast majority of our modern problems. The idea that we would take children and put them in an environment that is essentially the same as a prison for 18 years, is ABSURD. When in human history would teenagers spend most of their time surrounded by other teenagers? Yet another thing we can credit to Christian expansionism. We have never put our kids in school- no bullying, just balanced happy healthy kiddos.

skissane 1y ago
> Yet another thing we can credit to Christian expansionism. Yeshivahs and madrassas are nothing new; in Bhutan, there monasteries brimming with young boys spending their days studying voluminous Tibetan Buddhist scriptures. The biggest factor in the growth of schooling in modern period hasn't been any religion – it is the idea that education is a universal right for every child, as opposed to a privilege for the children of the elite.
- bobxmax 1y ago
  That's incorrect. Public schooling can be directly traced back to protestants - the idea of state-wide mandated education was to ensure the Bible was taught and spread. Education and public schooling are different things.
  - skissane 1y ago
    I don't know why all this focus on "public schools". Of my 13 years of K-12 education, I spent 2 years in a public school, the other 11 in three different Catholic schools. Whatever the merits of your complaints about school systems, I think many of them would apply to many private schools too There are at least four countries/territories worldwide (Aruba, Bangladesh, Sint Maarten, and Macau) where over 90% of secondary students attend private schools, public schools enrol less than 10% of secondary students – you think none of the private school students in those countries would sympathise with any of your criticisms? > Public schooling can be directly traced back to protestants You think Catholic majority countries don't have public education systems? In Brazil 86% of secondary students attend public school; in Portugal, 81%; in Argentina and France it is 74%; in Spain 69%; by contrast, Australia, a country in which historically Protestants have outnumbered Catholics by as much as 3:1, the percent of secondary students in public education is only 53%. Sources: - Public education rates worldwide: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.PRIV.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.PRIV.ZS?most_rec... (okay, that's percent private, but subtract from 100 to get percent public) - Australia historical religious affiliation statistics: https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/10072ec3ffc4f7b4ca2570ec00787c40!OpenDocument https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca2... As an aside, although Australia's Protestant:Catholic ratio was around 3:1 in the first half of the 20th century (and I believe through the 19th century too, although I don't have hard figures handy on that), nowadays there are only slightly more Protestants in Australia than Catholics – this is because, while both branches of Christianity have lost huge numbers of followers to secularisation, Catholicism has always partly compensated for that by immigration from Catholic majority countries (most recently the Philippines), Australia's post-1950 immigration patterns have left Protestants at a comparative demographic disadvantage – which I believe is true of the rest of the Anglosphere too
    - bobxmax 1y ago
      I think you misunderstand my comment. When I say "public" school I don't mean in distinction from private. I am referring to the broad modern standard of putting every child in school... which is traced back directly to protestants wanting to have the state enforce bible study to every child.
      - skissane 1y ago
        Okay, but that's not what "public school" standardly means in English. In American English, and most other English dialects, "public school" means "school run by the government". However, in British English (and also I believe Indian, maybe Irish too), "public school" has a rather opposite meaning – "expensive private school for the children of rich". In no major dialect of English does "public school" mean "the broad modern standard of putting every child in school" What you are really talking about is compulsory education – laws that oblige parents to send their children to a school, whether government-run or private. Are Protestants responsible for compulsory education? It is true, that historically speaking, Luther and other Reformers did play an important role in promoting the idea in the early modern period - but they didn't invent it. It existed in ancient Sparta, for boys. Plato, in his Republic, advocated compulsory state-run education – not just for boys, but for girls too. It is true the first few states in modern Europe were to enact it were Protestant, but Catholic Europe soon copied the idea – Protestant Prussia introduced it in 1763, but Catholic Austria followed suit only 11 years later (1774), while it took Protestant Sweden another 68 years (1842). The Ottoman Empire made education compulsory in Istanbul in 1824 (they planned to gradually roll it out empire-wide, but that took far longer to achieve than they'd initially anticipated); at that point, no US state had yet done so, the first being Massachusetts in 1852. (Although publicly funded education was established in Massachusetts over two centuries earlier, it wasn't compulsory, there was no legal obligation on parents to send their children to school until then.) So, while certainly Protestants played an important role in promoting the idea at in the modern period, they didn't invent it, and some Catholic and Muslim jurisdictions introduced it before many Protestant jurisdictions had.
        bobxmax 1y ago
ahazred8ta 1y ago
The Aztecs had mandatory boarding schools which were basically military academies. Plenty of nonwestern societies had mandatory training for children who lived apart from the rest of the community. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calmecac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calmecac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%93lpochcalli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%93lpochcalli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#By_country#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#By_countr...
- bobxmax 1y ago
  Well obviously schools have existed in any part of society. But schools have always had a purpose - whether it's training future scholars at madrasas, training sons of nobility for war, etc. The institutionalized mass factory-farmed education system was a direct result of western Christian imperialism and the desire to enforce and spread biblical teachings.
  - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
    I'd argue it stems from the invention of the nation state and the need to build national identity. Specifically in those areas of Germany/France that blended together. Prior to the current school system you didn't get taught a standard language. More specifically, the modern school system is to teach a nation a common shared language.
  - ahazred8ta 1y ago
    > institutionalized mass factory-farmed education system Please tell us what country anywhere in the world in the past 200 years had an education system that was good, instead of bad. Please explain what the differences were.

skissane 1y ago

> Yet another thing we can credit to Christian expansionism. Yeshivahs and madrassas are nothing new; in Bhutan, there monasteries brimming with young boys spending their days studying voluminous Tibetan Buddhist scriptures. The biggest factor in the growth of schooling in modern period hasn't been any religion – it is the idea that education is a universal right for every child, as opposed to a privilege for the children of the elite.

bobxmax 1y ago
That's incorrect. Public schooling can be directly traced back to protestants - the idea of state-wide mandated education was to ensure the Bible was taught and spread. Education and public schooling are different things.
- skissane 1y ago
  I don't know why all this focus on "public schools". Of my 13 years of K-12 education, I spent 2 years in a public school, the other 11 in three different Catholic schools. Whatever the merits of your complaints about school systems, I think many of them would apply to many private schools too There are at least four countries/territories worldwide (Aruba, Bangladesh, Sint Maarten, and Macau) where over 90% of secondary students attend private schools, public schools enrol less than 10% of secondary students – you think none of the private school students in those countries would sympathise with any of your criticisms? > Public schooling can be directly traced back to protestants You think Catholic majority countries don't have public education systems? In Brazil 86% of secondary students attend public school; in Portugal, 81%; in Argentina and France it is 74%; in Spain 69%; by contrast, Australia, a country in which historically Protestants have outnumbered Catholics by as much as 3:1, the percent of secondary students in public education is only 53%. Sources: - Public education rates worldwide: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.PRIV.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.PRIV.ZS?most_rec... (okay, that's percent private, but subtract from 100 to get percent public) - Australia historical religious affiliation statistics: https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/10072ec3ffc4f7b4ca2570ec00787c40!OpenDocument https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca2... As an aside, although Australia's Protestant:Catholic ratio was around 3:1 in the first half of the 20th century (and I believe through the 19th century too, although I don't have hard figures handy on that), nowadays there are only slightly more Protestants in Australia than Catholics – this is because, while both branches of Christianity have lost huge numbers of followers to secularisation, Catholicism has always partly compensated for that by immigration from Catholic majority countries (most recently the Philippines), Australia's post-1950 immigration patterns have left Protestants at a comparative demographic disadvantage – which I believe is true of the rest of the Anglosphere too
  - bobxmax 1y ago
    I think you misunderstand my comment. When I say "public" school I don't mean in distinction from private. I am referring to the broad modern standard of putting every child in school... which is traced back directly to protestants wanting to have the state enforce bible study to every child.
    - skissane 1y ago
      Okay, but that's not what "public school" standardly means in English. In American English, and most other English dialects, "public school" means "school run by the government". However, in British English (and also I believe Indian, maybe Irish too), "public school" has a rather opposite meaning – "expensive private school for the children of rich". In no major dialect of English does "public school" mean "the broad modern standard of putting every child in school" What you are really talking about is compulsory education – laws that oblige parents to send their children to a school, whether government-run or private. Are Protestants responsible for compulsory education? It is true, that historically speaking, Luther and other Reformers did play an important role in promoting the idea in the early modern period - but they didn't invent it. It existed in ancient Sparta, for boys. Plato, in his Republic, advocated compulsory state-run education – not just for boys, but for girls too. It is true the first few states in modern Europe were to enact it were Protestant, but Catholic Europe soon copied the idea – Protestant Prussia introduced it in 1763, but Catholic Austria followed suit only 11 years later (1774), while it took Protestant Sweden another 68 years (1842). The Ottoman Empire made education compulsory in Istanbul in 1824 (they planned to gradually roll it out empire-wide, but that took far longer to achieve than they'd initially anticipated); at that point, no US state had yet done so, the first being Massachusetts in 1852. (Although publicly funded education was established in Massachusetts over two centuries earlier, it wasn't compulsory, there was no legal obligation on parents to send their children to school until then.) So, while certainly Protestants played an important role in promoting the idea at in the modern period, they didn't invent it, and some Catholic and Muslim jurisdictions introduced it before many Protestant jurisdictions had.
      - bobxmax 1y ago

ahazred8ta 1y ago

The Aztecs had mandatory boarding schools which were basically military academies. Plenty of nonwestern societies had mandatory training for children who lived apart from the rest of the community. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calmecac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calmecac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%93lpochcalli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%93lpochcalli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#By_country#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#By_countr...

bobxmax 1y ago
Well obviously schools have existed in any part of society. But schools have always had a purpose - whether it's training future scholars at madrasas, training sons of nobility for war, etc. The institutionalized mass factory-farmed education system was a direct result of western Christian imperialism and the desire to enforce and spread biblical teachings.
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
  I'd argue it stems from the invention of the nation state and the need to build national identity. Specifically in those areas of Germany/France that blended together. Prior to the current school system you didn't get taught a standard language. More specifically, the modern school system is to teach a nation a common shared language.
- ahazred8ta 1y ago
  > institutionalized mass factory-farmed education system Please tell us what country anywhere in the world in the past 200 years had an education system that was good, instead of bad. Please explain what the differences were.