Acculturation: originally this meant systemized homogenization: the institutional unification of a population through one language, one set of values, rules, ideals, and even dreams
Compulsory public education laws began to be instituted in the 1850s with all states having implemented compulsory schooling laws by 1918. Tuition-free public education was first formed in Massachusetts in 1952 and later, eventually, adopted by the other states. Tuition-based private schools (almost always oriented and backed by a specific religious sect) were allowed but discouraged (through denial of public funding) except by the upper class(es).
Public schooling was created specifically for the creation of a docile, malleable, robot-like workforce. In its original form, schools were devised as a means to the destabilization of the family. The greatest enemy to industry and consumerism were the independent and self-sufficient farm families and their small networks of mutually-cooperative farm families. Horace Mann and his "Captains of Industry" cronies needed a means to weakening family bonds, a means to acculturating the American youth with the information that they wanted disseminated, as well as a means for preparing America's future labor force for lives committed to the tediously repetitive manual labor tasks in the new-born mills and "factories."
Originally, the information and skills passed on by schools were distributed over a period of six years. The original compulsory public school laws followed a fairly standard model that had been set by years of ad hoc rural schools--schools that had served farm communities by occupying their children during the "down" times on the farm: usually about six weeks in the summer (after planting, before harvests), and six to ten weeks in the winter--before the next Spring's prep and planting season. Eventually, these were commonly systemized to required six years of attendance (to age 12), for six hours per day for 180 days. This trend predominated, with occasional codification, until the 1880s when the growth and demands of an increasingly industrialized society saw the appearance and growth of urban populations around the growing number of factories. These urbanizing communities needed schools and schooling to serve the child supervision needs of working families as well as the brainwashing needs of the states and the rich business owners that ran them.
In the 1870s, the public funding of "secondary" schools (later to become known as high schools and, later still, as junior and senior high schools) became increasingly fashionable (but by no means the norm). In an interesting note: a study of the content of the pedagogical material being offered by the average American school system now using the "primary" and "secondary" school paring model, it becomes fairly obvious that the content of the now-12-year curriculum is very much the same as that of the former six- and eight-year curricula available earlier in the 19th Century. Again: the curriculum has been diluted, thinned out over 12 years; there has been little new information or skill added, only busy-work.
Secondary schools were originally voluntary, not compulsory. In 1900 compulsory attendance laws around the country allowed for voluntary drop out age of around 12. This was fairly universally raised to age 16 throughout most of the 20th Century. Now most of the states require school attendance to the age of 18.
In 1916 government began passing child labor laws. With the huge influx of foreign immigrants, the adult contingent of the working labor force began to organize and unionize: demanding that employers prioritize healthy men over cheaper labor force of children. In the 1920s, the school curriculum was diluted to eight years in order to help keep children out of the workforce longer. (It is here important to note that the knowledge base and skill sets schools were attempting to pass on to children was not being expanded: the same amount of information and skills were now diluted in order to be distributed over eight years instead of six).
The rise and normalization of "early education" phenomena (translate: earlier free babysitting and earlier state acculturation), like Kindergarten, Head Start, nursery school, pre-school, pre-Kindergarten, and day care.
In another fascinating aside, through the 1990s there were only three specific requirements for high school graduation: one semester of American government, two years of physical education, and a variable ("X") number of total credits and/or attendance history.
In another fascinating aside: throughout the history of the United States of America, no college or university had minimum age requirements for attendance/acceptance into their educational factory, that is, there has never been (until very recently) a requirement of a high school diploma or certain number of high school credits (or GED) in order to attend (and earn a degree from) an American college or university.
