Second, much of this is unprecedented. When my parents were children, they didn't attend Kindergarten, and first grade was a half day. When my parents younger siblings were children, Kindergarten was a half day. When I was a child, I didn't attend preschool.

In 3 generations we've added more than 2 years of education for every child, and that education is qualitatively quite different, even from what I experienced (Kindergarten 23 years ago)

When I was in kindergarten the majority of the day was playtime, we had 30 minutes of recess, 45 minutes of mostly freeform PE, 30 minutes of naptime, and a few hours of structured playtime (drawing, making crafts etc...).

From friends of mine who are teachers, since no child left behind, all of that has been removed or severely restricted. Recess is now 15 minutes, PE is more structured and not every day, no more naptime, and they don't have time for freeform activities because the curriculum is so dense.

In Kindergarten we spent almost the whole year learning the Alphabet. Now the curriculum assumes that children already know it.

Teachers know this doesn't work, but schools are obsessed with testing and metrics to the determinant of real education.

Or else until about 100 years ago there was no economic benefit to educating the great mass of humanity, and industrialization created a type of work for which literacy and numeracy helped.

"Learning to handle monotonous boredom and obey orders was of primary importance to a factory worker."

The education of the children--sons, mostly--of the well off always involved a lot of monotonous boredom. Orders were enforced with a stick.

But indeed kindergarten was a half day in my day. The extension of schooling to younger ages is at least partly a result of the need for day care, with more and more mothers in the work force.

"Teachers know this doesn't work, but schools are obsessed with testing and metrics to the determinant of real education."

Quite so.

http://books.google.com/books/about/Nations_And_Nationalism....

http://www.amazon.com/Nations-Nationalism-Second-Perspective...

http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/nation...

Actually it is the inverse. The higher classes (from rich upper class families to wealthy lawyers, doctors, scientists etc) were those that sat down and studied without much fuss, in quite demanding schools. Those classes had a high respect for education, and very demanding curriculums.

It's the working classes (factory workers then, office drones to McDonald burger flippers now) that did and still get by with laxer schooling, less "boring stuff", and more "creativity".

Most of the factory workers in days past didn't even get to go to school, or stopped very early. That they learned "to handle monotonous labour" and "obey orders" at school is a myth. They learned it by necessity at the factory. It was either that or not getting to eat at all.

Creativity is inherently good. It's literally what brought us from the plains fighting large animals to making monolithic structures that battle the elements. We can harness the power of the electron to post, critique and posture ideas in nanoseconds because of extremely creative people. The "boring" stuff matters just as much as the "non-boring" stuff. What kills me is that the STEM and liberal arts side of the education debate are arguing from extremes - and both sides sound like morons when it comes to creativity. Creativity is harnessed by two things: a wealth of experience and knowledge (ie learning Calculus is good, just like skipping rocks on the river), and treating idea generation like play and not like work. Obviously it's a little bit more nuanced than that, but that's the distillation and the point remains. The boring stuff matters. The non-boring stuff matters. Everything is relevant and we should be creating a culture of education that not only understands that, but actually does something about it.

I disagree with this common trope. The benefits of mass literacy are extremely obvious; consider that countries where agriculture was and is more important than industry also adopted universal education.

And at the same time, higher classes attended highly demanding schools, with very high discipline and demanding curriculums.

Plus, on the 20th century, mass education was adopted by almost all countries (including agriculture based ones), and it had produced people working mostly in office and service sector jobs, not rote factory assembly lines.

So if anything, it's the inverse of the "old wives tale".

(See, we can also agree on some things!).

And? You can teach the average 9 year old to read in 50 contact hours. Quadruple that so they can learn arithmetic (200) and and quadruple that to account for the fact that all school hours can't be contact and you have 800 hours. That's 20 work weeks. Whatever school may be about it's a hell of a lot more than literacy.

Here's the thread, the idea gets debunked pretty hard http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hbezd/was_th...

Rockefeller's General Education Board wrote the following in 1906:

  "In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our 
  molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our 
  minds, and unhampered by
  tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive
  folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children
  into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not
  to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of
  letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters,
  musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen,
  of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is
  very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a
  perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an
  imperfect way."

President Woodrow Wilson (one of our most academic presidents) said this to a gathering of industrial leaders:

  "We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class,
  a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a
  liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."

I suspect that factory owners and other bosses would have been scared of a new class of worker that could read and write. In fact I tend to think more education means less docile and easily manipulated people - then and now.

As a Southern European, I find that idea hilarious. Drunkenness is far more pervasive and culturally ingrained in Northern Europe and in America than in Southern Europe. If all you've ever known is America, you may find it hard to understand just how ridiculously obsessed with getting drunk your culture appears from outside.

Later waves of immigration were not so Puritan, but the upper classes were still very much associated with those sects well into the 20th century.

And yes, I don't think it's a coincidence that a society founded by Puritans has a binge drinking problem.

How about instead calling it -- teach everyone the same; teach to the bottom of the class, even if they still aren't learning anything; and no child is permitted to get ahead?

But now finally, at last, we have true, 100%, coveted, equality and social justice!!

Similarly, the average high schooler was better back then because the average person stopped their education at the eighth grade, if not sooner.

(Note to non-Americans: In the US, high school runs from ninth to twelfth grade, usually named freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years.)

This is true, you know. Or are you saying only Americans can do arithmetic?

I'm not sure I understand your point. Please quantify this. Historically many, many people haven't been felons, but we still have a criminal justice system.