The modern education system was designed to teach future factory workers to be “punctual, docile, and sober”

[Bear5131]

Interesting article..



The education system as we know it is only about 200 years old. Before that, formal education was mostly reserved for the elite. But as industrialization changed the way we work, it created the need for universal schooling.

Factory owners required a docile, agreeable workers who would show up on time and do what their managers told them. Sitting in a classroom all day with a teacher was good training for that. Early industrialists were instrumental, then, in creating and promoting universal education. Now that we are moving into a new, post-industrial era, it is worth reflecting on how our education evolved to suit factory work, and if this model still makes sense.


As Northwestern University economist Joel Mokyr explains it (pdf):

Much of this education, however, was not technical in nature but social and moral. Workers who had always spent their working days in a domestic setting, had to be taught to follow orders, to respect the space and property rights of others, be punctual, docile, and sober. The early industrial capitalists spent a great deal of effort and time in the social conditioning of their labor force, especially in Sunday schools which were designed to inculcate middle class values and attitudes, so as to make the workers more susceptible to the incentives that the factory needed.

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[Gateman_Wen]

Interesting article..



The education system as we know it is only about 200 years old. Before that, formal education was mostly reserved for the elite. But as industrialization changed the way we work, it created the need for universal schooling.

Factory owners required a docile, agreeable workers who would show up on time and do what their managers told them. Sitting in a classroom all day with a teacher was good training for that. Early industrialists were instrumental, then, in creating and promoting universal education. Now that we are moving into a new, post-industrial era, it is worth reflecting on how our education evolved to suit factory work, and if this model still makes sense.


As Northwestern University economist Joel Mokyr explains it (pdf):

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Um... no. That is what the republicans are trying to turn it into, but not what it is today.

 

[aociswundumho]

Um... no. That is what the republicans are trying to turn it into, but not what it is today.

What it is today is even worse.

In my view sending your kid to a government-run skool constitutes child abuse.

 

[psikeyhackr]

So why don't we create a K-12 Autodidac Recommend Reading List because there is no way that we can fix all of these different schools?

The Tyranny of Words by Stuart Chase

The Screwing of the Average Man by David Hapgood

Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronic by Stan Gibilisco

Practical Electronics for Inventors by Paul Scherz

 

[Slartibartfast]

This was well known for a while. It was even a curriculum piece when I was an education major.

 

[psikeyhackr]

So we bitch and moan about the miseducational system forever? What are the people who make a living off the systems going to do?

 

[Cynical]

Interesting article..



The education system as we know it is only about 200 years old. Before that, formal education was mostly reserved for the elite. But as industrialization changed the way we work, it created the need for universal schooling.

Factory owners required a docile, agreeable workers who would show up on time and do what their managers told them. Sitting in a classroom all day with a teacher was good training for that. Early industrialists were instrumental, then, in creating and promoting universal education. Now that we are moving into a new, post-industrial era, it is worth reflecting on how our education evolved to suit factory work, and if this model still makes sense.


As Northwestern University economist Joel Mokyr explains it (pdf):

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You don’t think most (if not all) businesses are looking for people who are "docile, agreeable workers who would show up on time and do what their managers told them"?

The main difference now is that they want people who sit in classrooms all day with a teacher for 8 or more years instead of 4.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Searching on "education" in Project Gutenberg provides 600 works. Many are from 1870 to 1930 presenting varying ideas about education.

Books: education (sorted by popularity)

Project Gutenberg offers 76,702 free eBooks for Kindle, iPad, Nook, Android, and iPhone.

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