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My point is that education/literacy in America is not something that magically emerged on its own but is something that was mandated by the earliest settlers.

by mdakin 17y ago

My point is that education/literacy in America is not something that magically emerged on its own but is something that was mandated by the earliest settlers. These particular settlers, regardless of number/geographic footprint, exert great cultural influence up until this very day. As time went on their meme spread out and mutated, and we have what we have now which is universal public education. Compulsory school attendance seems like a different question, and more like an implementation detail to me. At least today school attendance is not compulsory if the parents arrange for the child to be educated up to the currently mandated educational standards. (i.e. Homeschooling is legal.)

kingkongrevenge 17y ago
There was high literacy because Americans were more affluent. Slaves and indentured servants aside, there simply weren't the masses of deeply impoverished folks toiling long hours to survive as were common in Europe. People had the leisure to read. The public schooling movement had nothing to do with literacy or a culture that valued education. It was about nationalism and cultural uniformity. Elite WASPs wanted to hammer all those urban Catholics and ethnically disparate (German, French speaking, etc) rural kids into Americans in their own image. There was armed resistance to public schooling. It was something imposed on communities that did not want or need it.
tokenadult 17y ago
And my friendly disagreement is that literacy among American colonists was something more generally sought than compelled, especially if we keep all the colonies and not just the Puritan colonies of New England in view. (My ancestors who arrived in America the earliest were New England Puritans, and they and others of my ancestors were literate before they left Europe. I have books in the German language at home that have been owned by family members since they were published in the 1600s.)
- mdakin 17y ago
  I think most people value education and generally seek it without compulsion (then and now). The idea of codifying the education requirements as law (then and now) directly serves that small fraction of people who would not have found education on their own otherwise. (Indirectly it serves us all because it saves us from trouble uneducated people end up placing on society.) I believe that the essential elimination of that small fraction of the uneducated likely would not have happened without the codification of educational requirements (as law), but that's a point we can't really prove one way or another. And perhaps that unprovable point is the root of whatever friendly disagreement you and I might have? (It might be possible to do a comparative study of countries/cultures which have codified educational requirements vs. ones that don't-- comparing basic literacy rates to get some insight into this in the general case. It could be very tricky to factor out economics though. I know what I suspect the results would indicate. But I've not the time to do the study.)
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    It might be possible to do a comparative study of countries/cultures which have codified educational requirements vs. ones that don't Singapore is a good example in this regard. Its compulsory school attendance law is still less than two decades old.

by mdakin 17y ago

kingkongrevenge 17y ago

There was high literacy because Americans were more affluent. Slaves and indentured servants aside, there simply weren't the masses of deeply impoverished folks toiling long hours to survive as were common in Europe. People had the leisure to read. The public schooling movement had nothing to do with literacy or a culture that valued education. It was about nationalism and cultural uniformity. Elite WASPs wanted to hammer all those urban Catholics and ethnically disparate (German, French speaking, etc) rural kids into Americans in their own image. There was armed resistance to public schooling. It was something imposed on communities that did not want or need it.

tokenadult 17y ago

And my friendly disagreement is that literacy among American colonists was something more generally sought than compelled, especially if we keep all the colonies and not just the Puritan colonies of New England in view. (My ancestors who arrived in America the earliest were New England Puritans, and they and others of my ancestors were literate before they left Europe. I have books in the German language at home that have been owned by family members since they were published in the 1600s.)

mdakin 17y ago
I think most people value education and generally seek it without compulsion (then and now). The idea of codifying the education requirements as law (then and now) directly serves that small fraction of people who would not have found education on their own otherwise. (Indirectly it serves us all because it saves us from trouble uneducated people end up placing on society.) I believe that the essential elimination of that small fraction of the uneducated likely would not have happened without the codification of educational requirements (as law), but that's a point we can't really prove one way or another. And perhaps that unprovable point is the root of whatever friendly disagreement you and I might have? (It might be possible to do a comparative study of countries/cultures which have codified educational requirements vs. ones that don't-- comparing basic literacy rates to get some insight into this in the general case. It could be very tricky to factor out economics though. I know what I suspect the results would indicate. But I've not the time to do the study.)
- tokenadult 17y ago
  It might be possible to do a comparative study of countries/cultures which have codified educational requirements vs. ones that don't Singapore is a good example in this regard. Its compulsory school attendance law is still less than two decades old.