How did public school become the default mode of education?
While I know a bit of the history, I was wondering if somebody knew more. Before public education was available, people tended to be educated at home (homeschooled) by their parents or private tutors or they went to private schools, often boarding schools. Public education became available and when schooling wasn’t mandatory, public schools were what the non-rich used. At some point, education became mandatory, but how is it that the public school became the default? Was there an encouragement on the government’s part? Was it the business side of schools that did it? Some other reason?
I wasn’t thinking specifically of American education, but American, Canadian, other places where public school is the default for the masses and anything else is seen as an alternative. For much of the upper class, private schools are still the default, or only option. I guess what I’m looking for is how did the masses come to see public education as THE way to be educated and everything else is an alternative? How come public school is not seen as the alternative to private schools or some form of home education? Is it just a question of money/class systems?
I suppose I should add the church schools in the mix of schools, too!
It just became the easiest way to go, and it was cheaper than other alternatives and allowed both parents to work out of the home. School is only mandatory between the ages of 6 and 16. Kindergarten got started because parents wanted childcare while they were at work, in some states they are now working on k-4 programs for public schools.
It just became the easiest way to go, and it was cheaper than other alternatives and allowed both parents to work out of the home. School is only mandatory between the ages of 6 and 16. Kindergarten got started because parents wanted childcare while they were at work, in some states they are now working on k-4 programs for public schools.
References :
Jefferson was a proponent of a public school system to give the populace a rudimentary education. A guy named John Dewey is responsible for a lot of the way education is today.
References :
I don’t think I know enough about this subject to answer your question fully and in depth but what I do know is that in the 1840’s a reform movement in the US started by Horace Mann. He is known as "The Father of American Public Education." It started in Massachusetts and he basically was an advocate of public education being available everywhere…..also that it be free and mandatory.
References :
The public school system developed with the settlement of the American frontier. Private schools and tutors weren’t really available in newly settled lands. Also settlers started out economically equal–there weren’t really many "rich" people to build private schools. The settlers would pool their resources to build a schoolhouse and hire a teacher who would serve the entire community.
It is because public schools started in an agrarian society that schools have a long summer vacation — the kids needed to be home during those months to work the fields.
When cities started to develop in the settled areas, they followed the same model for their school system.
As far as I know, the public school system has been the "default" for as long as there have been schools, at least in frontier America. Private schools would appear in an area after the population had reached a certain size and there were enough wealthy families to make use of them.
References :