The Sordid History of Compulsory Education
- Breakout Session
- Mount Hope Church Classroom 4
- May 10 2024 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Literacy in early America was at its highest until the responsibility for education was stolen from parents by the government. When nineteenth-century Massachusetts parents resisted new mandates to hand their children over to government schools, they were met swiftly with threats of violence. The long arm of the law won the battle by physically enforcing attendance, and literacy rates dropped like a rock after that.
Where did education begin in the first place, and how did it end up on its downward trajectory of today? Who were the men responsible for compulsory or "forced" schooling, and why did they crave it so? A standardized, one-size-fits-all education, synonymous with indoctrination, was never about innovation or individual progress of American citizens, but rather was a modern idea birthed out of a scheme conjured up by a powerful king in the early 1700s, far away in another land, with an idea to squelch a captured people and its culture by gaining the hearts and devotion of the next generation: the children.
It was wickedly brilliant.
