September 3, 2014
Before the Industrial Revolution(IR) education was private. But the IR brought about a change in needs by our new industrial sector because everything was standardized on the assembly line. So two types of workers were needed – large numbers of workers standing in the line who needed to be ready to read, write, and do basic arithmetic (sound familiar?) to do his job – and a smaller group of managers who would be better trained and able to make limited decisions.
It would take too long and was cost-prohibitive for factory owners to train workers and managers themselves…so a group of industrialists (Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, etc) began to push for and create the modern public education system. To say these men had the political power to do something like this is an understatement.
Then, as now, public education focuses on how to teach your kids the 3 R’s – reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic. They do get a bit of liberal arts thrown in there, but neither STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) nor critical thinking (Socratic method which teaches through logic and questioning everything and not accepting things on face value) are a focus. Unlike “prepatory” private schools, both then and now, who do focus on STEM and critical thinking.
In public school, kids are put into an assembly line. They are grouped by age rather than skills and everyone receives a standardized curriculum. They’re a widget with overworked and understaffed teachers in place of line workers. (How can we expect teachers to work miracles in this situation??) Every year kids are given a battery of standardized tests and if they pass, they move to the next level. Classes were (and are) divided into set time periods which are dismissed by a bell, just like on an assembly line. The curriculum is set up into “credit hours” which used to be called Carnegie Units. After the public school finished producing literate workers ready for the assembly line, the top students went to college to learn skills for management.
Our current public education system was designed and built to produce factory workers. And it has done an excellent job. There are pros and cons to this and a major pro is movement between economic classes. But we no longer need factory workers in such large numbers.
We now have another shift in what companies need from their workers. Now we need workers to have some level of critical thinking skills, but our current system just wasn’t set up for that. It was set up as an assembly line to turn out interchangeable cogs with standardized skills.
Just like in the IR, industry leaders believe it is too costly and time consuming to train workers in the way they wish them to be trained. So over the past 3 years Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle have been meeting with President Obama about how education needs to change.
Education WILL change in the US. It has to because the needs of our economy is changing. How it will change and what it will look like – well…that’s the question, isn’t it?
But it wasn’t created for the benefit of kids, it was created for our economic needs. And it won’t change to benefit the kids, it will do so because our economic needs are changing. This is just another form of corporate welfare and if it does happen to benefit children, that’s a by-product created by dedicated teachers who go above and beyond.
As parents, you’re faced with a choice – place your children in public school, pay to have your child in private school, or home school. As libertarians we should push for an end to corporate welfare.
Cara Schulz
LPMN Executive
Concerned about the expansion of government control and the erosion of individual liberty? Please consider joining and becoming active with the Libertarian Party of Minnesota. Libertarians support liberty on all issues, all the time. Libertarianism is a philosophical and political movement to promote personal freedom, strong civil liberties, a genuinely free marketplace, and peace.