Education as a means to control the masses

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. 

Eugenics

The idea of improving the human population through a statistical understanding of heredity used to encourage good breeding was originally developed by Francis Galton. His theory was, initially, closely linked to Darwinism and the theory of natural selection--which sought to explain the development--or "evolution"--of plant and animal species. 

     A half-cousin to Charles Darwin, Galton had studied his cousin's theory of evolution. He developed a desired to apply it to humans. Based on his biographical studies, Galton believed that desirable human qualities were hereditary traits. Coupled with the introduction of theories and applications that would later acquire the name "genetics," Galton's theory relied on an ideology of genetic determinism in which human character was due to genes, unaffected by education or living conditions. Darwin strongly disagreed with this elaboration of his theory. 

     In 1883, one year after Darwin's death, Galton gave his research a name: "eugenics." Throughout its history, eugenics has remained controversial.

     Among the first to latch onto the idea of controlling the gene pool of humankind were ultra-wealthy elitists such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and Henry Ford. Writings and quotations attributed to these men point to their purposeful direction of funds into causes and organizations (such as their "Foundations") in which their money could impose serious influence upon the medical, educational, and educational research policies of America's leading universities, think tanks, and institutions (such as public education). These "Captains of Industry" saw eugenics as another means to the shaping of society into a stratified hierarchy in which the largest segment would be the industry-supportive working classes (the new slaves). They purposefully shaped public education, fine-tuning it in order to help create a continuous flow of numb, blindly obedient (fear-based) humans who would be both willing and capable of handling businesses' dirty work. Private education (e.g. boarding schools) and exclusionary social clubs were endowed with the ability to isolate and protect the superior blood lines of an upper class. "Higher education" was then honed to support the steady perpetuation of a number of specialized skill-based "professions" that were deemed necessary to the support and administration of the class system,. These would be occupations such as lawyers and doctors, engineers and accountants. Even "higher education" has, over time, been shaped to continue to ensure and perpetuate the separation of classes: keeping members of the upper-middle class bound to their station through debt (education loans, professional insurance and dues for legal protection, the need to pay and insure a staff of underlings, equipment and its constant need for maintenance and upgrades, etc.) and 'employee' status, while denying access to the intellectually inferior and those unwilling to take financial risk (debt), ensuring the perpetual stream of laborers to fill the increasing number of factory and blue collar jobs. 

Originally, eugenics was conceptualized as a means to improve the human species through reproduction: It was posited that the qualities of the human species or a human population could be improved by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics). It did not take long, however, for the development of the extrapolated ideas of both 1) forced, state-mandated sterilization of members of the human population who might possess what are determined as "less desirable" genetic traits and then 2) the active, dedicated and preemptive weeding out or selective thinning of an already-existing population in order to improve its overall "gene pool." In the 20th Century, Germany's Nazi Party's policies of Lebensraum, racial selection, and ethnic cleansing for the purification of an Aryan "master race" were, in fact, coopted from American writings and policies.