Common Schools: The Hope For Our Country

While working the fair last week, I took a couple of minutes and walked through the rest of the buildings the historical society had open. The old school had a certificate on the wall dated 1909, if memory serves, and on it was the inscription: "Common Schools: The Hope For Our Country". Having taken plenty of educational courses in college, I had heard of Common Schools, but it hasn't been recently. So, I searched Common Schools on Google and I had more info than I could ever possibly want. But like most internet searches, one thing lead to another.

In a nutshell, Common Schools were schools that everyone would be able to attend. Not expensive schools that only the wealthy could attend but schools for the common man and by extension, a common curriculum. I'm sure 100 years ago they were hoping for more than what we've ended up with. We've certainly succeeded in creating common schools. In fact, they're just too common. You don't normally hear them being described as exemplary or excellent but rather, it's common to lament the state of our schools, especially in big cities.

While looking up Common Schools I ran across the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, a think tank in Alabama. Apparently Ludwig was a heavy hitter in the Austrian School of Economics. The following comes from their site:

The Institute is named to honor the life and work of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973). In six decades of teaching and writing, he reconstructed economic theory and method on a sound basis of individual human action and showed that government intervention is always destructive, whether through welfare, inflation, taxation, regulation, or war. His vision of the free and prosperous commonwealth is carried forward in all the work of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

From the Institute site the conclusion of an article on Common Schools by Barry Simpson:

Public education reduces opposition to wealth transfers by teaching students that redistribution, public works, and democracy are the American way. War and crisis increases the size of government. Public education tells us we need government all the time. Public education introduces the mantras of democracy to the young. Democracy keeps the two major parties in power, keeps their spoils flowing in, and tells us that intervention is okay because the majority voted for it.

The conclusion is that public schools and compulsory attendance laws benefit educators, administrators, and politicians more than citizens or their children. But one could draw deeper conclusions. Through the Mises Institute and other free market organizations, one can find books on the evils of all kinds of intervention and democracy, and how once instituted these evils begin to destroy us as individuals, then our families, and even society itself.

Public education is the glue that holds all of these ideas together. It is how these ideas are spread to society at large. Thus, one might argue that public education is the greatest evil of all, and that it must be struck down in one mighty blow before we begin to find ourselves as persons, families, and a people again.

I'll readily admit to not knowing much about the Austrian School but I'm pretty much in agreement that government intervention is always destructive. As a shop teacher, I might disagree that public education is the greatest evil of all but I'm willing to concede things could definitely be better. In fact, that was the whole premise behind this post. Things need to be better and "shop" classes can help do that. Anyway, lots of interesting and thought provoking information at the Institute website. Might be good for a rainy day.