The Origins of Modern Education Might not be as Noble as you Think

It's been said that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. It is probably hard to repeat something that we have not been able to come out from. However, by getting a notion of the origins and fundamentals of schooling and modern education, as described by John Taylor Gatto, we might find a way to leave the rat race in which we have stagnated ourselves into in terms of education.

So, here you go...

"The structure of American schooling, 20th-century style, began in 1806 when Napoleon’s amateur soldiers beat the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is selling soldiers, losing a battle like that is serious. Almost immediately afterwards a German philosopher named Fichte delivered his famous “Address to the German Nation” which became one of the most influential documents in modern history. In effect, he told the Prussian people that the party was over, that the nation would have to shape up through a new Utopian institution of forced schooling in which everyone would learn to take orders.

So the world got compulsion schooling at the end of a state bayonet for the first time in human history; modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:

1. Obedient soldiers to the army;

2. Obedient workers to the mines;

3. Well subordinated civil servants to government;

4. Well subordinated clerks to industry

5. Citizens who thought alike about major issues. “

– John Taylor Gatto

The fundamentals behind this can be found in the following statement from that German philosopher.

The purpose of this post is not to demonize schools, but, to provide information that can hopefully open our eyes just to question anything that is presented to us with the "education" label, which apparently is now more related to profits than to the right of new generations to achieve it.

Of one thing I am certain. The future of learning is decentralized and self-directed.

So, now that you know this version of the history... a penny.. uuuhmm....a steem... for your thoughts.