History of Education

 We are naturally inclined to believe that there must be some good, logical rationale for all of this when we observe that students are compelled by law to attend school worldwide, that practically all schools are constructed similarly, and that our society goes to tremendous difficulty and expense to create such institutions. Perhaps youngsters wouldn't develop into capable individuals if we didn't make them go to school or if schools were run quite differently. Maybe some really smart people have figured all of this out and have demonstrated it in some way, or maybe different theories about how children develop and learn have been attempted and failed.

I have provided proof of the opposite in earlier postings. I specifically discussed the Sudbury Valley School in my August 13 piece since it has been educating students for 40 years under conditions that run counter to those of standard schooling. Studies of the school and its graduates demonstrate that typical, average kids learn via exploring and playing on their own, without adult guidance or pushing, and grow up to be happy, useful individuals in the greater culture. The school offers a rich environment in which to play, explore, and experience first-hand freedom rather than directing and nagging students. It accomplishes this at a cheaper cost and with less hassle for everyone involved than is necessary to run conventional schools. Why then don't most schools operate that way?

We must give up the notion that standard schools are the result of logical necessity or scientific insight if we are to comprehend why they are as they are. Instead, they are a result of history. Only when we look at education from a historical perspective does it make sense as it is today. The background of education from the dawn of civilization to the present is described here as a first step toward elucidating why schools are what they are. Although most academic historians would use different terms than I use here, I doubt they would contest the sketch's overall truth. In fact, I've used their works to inform my development of the sketch.

Children used self-directed play and discovery to teach themselves at the outset for hundreds of thousands of years.

Schools are relatively new organizations in terms of the biological evolution of our species. Before agriculture was developed, we lived as explorers for hundreds of thousands of years. I outlined the evidence from anthropology in my post from August 2 that children in hunter-gatherer cultures discovered what they needed to know via their own play and inquiry in order for becoming useful adults. In human evolution as hunter-gatherers, women's strong urge to play and explore likely developed to meet the demands of schooling. Because they understood that play and independent exploration are children's natural ways of learning, adults in explorer cultures gave kids practically unrestricted freedom to entertain and explore.

Agriculture slowly brought about change. People could produce more food thanks to cultivation, which made it possible for them to have more kids. Aside from allowing people to live in fixed homes where their crops were planted rather than leading a nomadic lifestyle, agriculture also made it possible for people to amass property. These adjustments, however, came at high wage costs. Farmers had to plow, plant, cultivate, tend to their herds, and do other tasks while hunter-gatherers expertly collected what earth had grown. Long hours of repeated, relatively unskilled jobs, most of which could be performed by youngsters, were necessary for successful farming. Children in bigger families were often forced to work in the fields to help feed their younger siblings or to care for those brothers at home. Children's lifestyles steadily shifted from being free to pursue their own interests to spending an increasing amount of time at employment that was necessary to support the remainder of the family.

In the Middle Ages, rulers and masters were not averse to physically subduing children. For instance, a French count recommended that nobles' birds of prey "select a boy servant as young as seven or eight" and that "...this youngster should be thrashed until he has an appropriate terror of failing to carry out his master's orders."  The document listed a ridiculous number of duties the youngster would complete each day and mentioned that he would spend the night in a loft above the hounds to respond to their needs.

In conclusion, the education of children was, to a significant extent, a question of squelching their willfulness in order to make them good employees for several thousand years following the introduction of agriculture. A good child was one who was disciplined, who restrained their desire to play and explore, and diligently obeyed their older superiors. Fortunately, such schooling has never been wholly effective. A youngster can never completely overcome their natural urge to play and explore since those instincts are so strong. However, the approach to education during that time, to the extent that it could be expressed, was the polar opposite of what warriors had believed for hundreds of thousands of years.

The concept of universal, required education began and progressively spread for a variety of reasons, some religious and some secular. Incorporation was the definition of education.

The burgeoning Protestant churches provided a significant portion of the motivation for universal education. According to Martin Luther, each person's interpretation of the Bible determines their level of salvation. Luther was aware of a corollary, which was that everyone must learn to read and realize that the Bible contains unchanging truths that are essential to their salvation. In order to save people from an eternity in hell, Wittenberg and other Reformation leaders pushed public education as a Christian obligation. Germany, which was at the forefront of the development of education, had laws allowing children to attend school in the majority of its states by the end of the 17th century; nevertheless, the Lutheran church, not the state, managed the schools.

National leaders saw education as a tool for producing loyal citizens and potential troops as nations consolidated and became more centralized. The most important lessons for youngsters were about the wonders of the fatherland, the amazing accomplishments and moral qualities of the country's founders and leaders, and the necessity of defending the country from foreign evil forces.

Therefore, the lessons that students should acquire in school were clearly viewed by everyone involved in the founding and support of schools. No one, quite rightly, thought that kids left to their own devices, even in a rich learning environment, would all learn precisely the lessons that they (the adults) thought were so crucial. They all viewed education as the indoctrination of children's minds with particular truths and methods of thinking. Forced repeating and tests to see if the information was retained are the only methods of inculcation that have been proven effective throughout history.

With the expansion of education, people started to view learning as the responsibility of children. The same coercive techniques that had been employed to make kids labor in industries and fields were quite obviously carried over to the education.

John Wesley's guidelines for Wesleyan schools, which included the statement: "As we have no play days, so neither do we allow any time for play on any day; because he that plays as a child will plays as a man," indicate a dominant attitude of eighteenth-century school officials regarding sport.

The lengthy coercive techniques to keep kids in line on the farm or in the industry were brought into schools to force kids to learn. Some of the underfunded, inexperienced teachers had an apparent cruel streak. In his 51 decades of teaching, one master in Germany kept track of the consequences he administered, which were, in part, listed as follows: "911,527 explodes with a rod, 124,010 explodes with such a cane, 20,989 taps with a ruler, 136,715 blows with the side, 10,235 blows to the tongue, 7,905 boxes on the ear, and 1,118,800 blows on the head". It was obvious that the instructor was pleased with all of his educational efforts.

A well-known American pastor from the eighteenth century, John Bernard, wrote in his memoirs with approval of how his school principal beat him frequently when he was a boy [7]. He was defeated by his insatiable desire to play, his inability to learn, and even by his peers' inability to learn. Being a smart lad, he was given the responsibility of teaching the other children, and when they mispronounced a subject, he received a beating. His sole gripe was that one classmate purposely misunderstood his lessons so that he might be punished. When the school day was finished, he gave the colleague "a hard beating" and threatened further thrashings. This eventually resolved the issue. The good old days were then.

Although educational techniques have softened recently, fundamental beliefs have not. Learning is still viewed as women's labor, and authority techniques are employed to make kids do it.

Although universities are substantially less strict than they formerly were, several fundamental beliefs about how people learn to remain the same: Learning takes effort; it is not something that will occur automatically as a result of youngsters choosing their own interests. Children must be made to learn. Learning nowadays is still very much a subject of internalization since teaching staff to choose the specific teachings that students need to know, not the students individually (though educators tend to avoid that term and use, falsely, terms like "discovery").

Children may be enabled some free game time during recess (though even this is decreasing in recent times), and today's clever educators may use "play" as a tool to make some of their learning fun for the students, but it is widely acknowledged that family's own play is insufficient as a foundation for learning. Children who can't sit still for classes because of their overwhelming desire to play are really no longer spanked; instead, they are given medication.

All children these days understand the distinction between work and play at school, which is something that explorer never did. You have to do your job before you may play, the teacher instructs. This signal makes it clear that work, which includes all academic learning, is something that people must do and that play, which is everything people want to do, has minimal significance. That may be the most important lesson to learn from our system of education. Children understand the distinction between work and pleasure in school, as well as the fact that learning is labor and not play.

I've attempted to illustrate how world civilization has influenced the evolution of schools into what they are now in this posting. I'll go through a few of the factors why attempts to modify schools in fundamental ways in the contemporary age have been so unsuccessful in my following post.