Great series, thank you very much Stef!
The history of education is in my opinion to a very large extent misunderstood and mistaught in this day and age. During the past three years I've been doing quite some research in this field, and I agree with the thesis of the series, that the root cause of WWI lies in the indoctrinatory system that is embedded in compulsory state schooling. There is indeed a seemless doctrinal evolution from the conception of the first public schools, all the way to the hypernationalistic rhetoric of Fichte, Hegel and Carlyle.
One of the most eloquent thinkers to write about public schooling was and is John Taylor Gatto. There is much truth in his "The Underground History of American Education". However, I do think his anglo-sakson background caused him to overlook a crucial development that took place in 18th century Prussia (now part of Germany). This historical episode is described in a brilliant and meticulously researched book by historian James Melton Van Horn entitled "Absolutism and the Eighteenth Century Origins of Compulsory Schooling".
Judging from this book and other sources, it seems to me that John Taylor Gatto's thesis, on the origins of public schooling as being rooted in the factories of the industrial revolution, is wrong. Instead, I think the evidence presented by Melton van Horn clearly shows how a group of radical neo-Lutherans (Pietists) in the 18th century have devised the system of schooling as a radically new invention that fitted seamlessly with their philosophy of the natural human state as utterly wretched and sinful. It baffled me to discover how many of these neo-Lutheran inventions still reign the classrooms: the constant supervision, the raising of hands, to even the clock in the classroom! (MVH indeed shows how these were explicitly devised by the priests of the time)
For those interested in this most overlooked piece of history, I have a draft article that summarises the most important passages from Melton van Horn's book. I uploaded it here:
http://www.rothbard.be/downloads/historyofeducation.pdf
As I said, it is still a draft, and it definately needs a rewrite.
Just to give you an idea of how exactly the doctrines behind public schooling were devised, here are a few passages (footnotes excluded):
The
engorged original sin -doctrine and the whimsical God of the pietists
deeply influenced their educational theory and practice. The
following aspects can be considered as most important:
Obedience
Since,
according to the Pietists, men by nature find delight in evil, they
have to be seduced into obedience, so that not their own will, but
the will of God (through the mouth of the pastor or teacher) can be
instilled in them. With their antischolastic ideal of faithful
obedience, the Pietists took Luther's creed sola
fide
one step further on the path of passive subordination; in Francke's
schools, there was no doubt who was master and who was serf: the
teacher stood in front of the class, and, a new pedagogical
invention, the pupils had to raise their hands if they wanted to ask
a question.
The
key technique in achieving obedience of the children, was described
by francke described as follows: "When forming the character of
a child, the will as well as reason plays a role ... Above all is it
necessary to break the natural will of the child. While we should
encourage the schoolmaster that tries to make the child more eloquent
to bring the child to deeper insights, is that not enough. While he
has then yet forgotten his most important task, namely that of making
the will obedient."
Vocation
(Beruf)
One
of the ways of breaking the will of the child was to impose on it the
role which destiny had chosen for it. You see the Pietists believed
that the social order of the day (nobility, clergyus, burgertum
and plebians), and the role of each group in it, was dictated by God.
One who refused or to denounced his beruf
did not fulfill his Godly duties. Francke described this as follows:
"The body of Christ consists of different members. Not every
member can be a hand, foot, eye or ear. Each member has its own task.
. . . The foot should not desire to become an eye, nor the hand an
ear."
Hence,
to learn the young to accept their social position, there was a
Realschule (once more, a pietist invention) for vocational training,
a Latin school for the more prosperous families, and an elite
boarding school called Pädagogium,
where children were being trained for the university or bureaucracy.
The worldly rulers of course loved the idea of a system where the wil of the child was broken, so that it could be molded into anything the state would need. They took over the school system of the pietists, by first subsidising it, later nationalising it, and finally amending until it met the needs of the state. The rhetoric of the intellectuals shifted accordingly:
Staatsfrömmigkeit
On
November 7th,
1806, the Prussian army suffered a bloody and humiliating blow from
the troops of Napoleon. Many intellectuals of the establishment were
as shocked as the political elite was, and started calling for a new
moral and political order that would build Germany into the great
nation Prussia no longer was. Barely one year after the defeat in the
Battle of Jena, and twenty-five years after Nietzsche declared that
God was dead, philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte infused the Pietist
educational model with a new ideal. In his "Reden an die
Deutsche Nation", Fichte said:
"By
means of the new education, we want to mould the Germans into a
corporate body which shall be stimulated and animated in all its
individuals and members by the same interests."
What
had once been obedience to God was now gradually being replaced by
obedience to the state, Staatsfrömmigkeit.
Supported by Hegel's ideas on the development of the Geist,
a rational spirit embodied by the corporate state, as being more
'real' than its separate parts and more important than the
individual, Fichte's educational vision laid the basis for a lack of
resistance against totalitarian regimes in the coming generations. The succes of Fichte's ideology is tragically illustrated by the
conclusion French historian Stephane Adoin-Rouzeau reaches at the end
of his study of soldier-published trench newspapers during World War
I; that a profound sense of national feeling, “deeply rooted by
their primary education” was the most important source of emotional
sustenance for soldiers in combat. He states that "even
in the war's worst moments, the impossibility [unthinkability] of
causing the defeat of their own nation by collective weakness
constituted a psychological barrier that nothing could overcome".
International
Reputation
Throughout
the late 18th and early 19th century, the Pietist school model of
Prussia was studied and copied throughout the western world. It was
for example Victor Cousin's report of education in Prussia that
inspired the French Guizot Educational Law of 1833.
Also, consider this quote of Horace Mann, one of the fathers of
public schooling in the United States, in the influential "Seventh
Annual Report as Secretary of the Board of Education in
Massachussetts," published after an educational tour through the
principal countries in Europe in the summer of 1843:
"Among
the nations of Europe, Prussia has long enjoyed the most
distinguished reputation for the excellence of its schools. In
reviews, in speeches, in tracts and even in graver works devoted to
the causes of education, its schools have been exhibited as models
for the imitation of the rest of Christendom"
More than anything else, the study of the history of education has convinced me to never ever consider sending my child to a public school. I think that is its importance, it teaches the truth about how perverse our school system really is.