Intro/Outro (00:06)
From the Bill of Rights Institute, Fabric of History weaves together US history, founding principles, and what all of this means to us today. Join us as we pull back the curtains of the past to see what’s inside.

Haley (00:21)
The start of the school year prompts Mary, Gary, and Eryn to reflect on the broader concept of education and how schooling has evolved throughout history. They’ll explore how educational structures reflected the times during which they were implemented and what modern-day schooling says about our values today. Has the purpose of education changed over time? And what should the future of education look like?

Mary (00:50)
Every August when the weather starts changing and school supplies go on sale, I start getting this feeling of nervous excitement. I remember this feeling as a little girl, and I think it’s still the same as an adult, even though I’m no longer a classroom teacher. It’s just these happy nerves of back to school. School is such a huge part of our lives, and at the Bill of Rights Institute, our mission is bound up with education for self-governance. As we gear up for another school year in a school year that looks rather different across the country, we thought we should explore the purpose of education in America. Do we even agree on what this purpose is? Has it changed over time? What’s next for school in America?

Eryn (01:41)
So I’m kind of curious what our experience because we were all teachers and then, of course, we all went to school. So I think maybe a good place to start this conversation is what have our experiences with education been like? What did we think based on that experience in education? What was the purpose? And then kind of looking at the background and the history of it and perhaps broadly or nationally, what we think that purpose looks like?

Gary (02:09)
I agree with Mary and the internal body clock that sort of happens, right? You almost feel the school year happening before it does. And I think that’s also the answer to your question, Eryn, which is it almost pre-exists. It’s almost that school is going to happen. We use the phrase like we take it almost for granted. Somewhere in there is just there is going to be schooling. But that purpose is a really good question in terms of our personal experience. If I go back to my own school age, it was exciting, scary. You’re a little sad. Maybe summer was ending, but right from the get-go, there’s this why does it happen that way? Why is there a summer? We all agree at a certain age as you go, and there’s a comfort in the structure existing the way it is. There’s a comfort, I thought, in like, getting a new notebook and writing my name on it and saying, this year, I’m definitely going to take notes. This year is like a fresh start even at a young age. But it relied on there being a system that I could go into. As I’ve gotten older, though, I realized that the system, air quotes you can’t see on a podcast, is not one system in the United States. And that system is really very local. Right. It’s a webbing of lots of schools and lots of counties and lots of districts across the country. And that also over time, it absolutely has changed. Not to divulge age, but it’s changed dramatically from the images I have as an elementary school student to now because of these things happening. So to me, it’s an odd interplay between that comfort and stability of knowing it’s going to happen at the same time. It’s always going to be different and it’s going to be changing constantly and evolving. And that just blows my mind.

Eryn (04:13)
Yeah. Well, I think you’re right that there’s a predictability and a comfort to it because there are so many aspects of education that I think any teacher will agree on. And of course, like you said, it can also be so vastly different because schools vary depending on the district or where they are located. Is it public? Is it private? But there are those elements of school we’ve always thought like it’s now time for history, it’s now time for math. And we have these subjects and there are school bells. Right, there’s a comfort in that predictability. It’s just a question to discuss or how has it changed?

Mary (04:55)
You’ve said that education in the US has changed a lot. But what do you mean by that?

Gary (04:59)
Yeah, I just mean that over time, the structures, the schools, and other ways that people have sought to educate young people has always been dynamic. It’s always changed. I mean, going back to the 17th century, we can start with this idea that there is value and the oldest schools. Right. The Boston Latin School, I think was the first public school that opened. That was in 1635. Right. So pre-colonial times, you have this idea of bringing people together, bringing young people together to learn. But then over time, that really changes. Right. Over the 1800s, you have this idea of the one-room schoolhouse starts happening and making sure that communities have schools. And within that, I think we mentioned Horace Mann, the idea that there should be some evaluation of these schools. Are they fulfilling this goal of educating young people? What does that mean? What subjects really should be tackled? By the time you’ve gone through schooling, how well should that happen? And that leads to this responsibility of communities by the 19th century to have schools, it’s often referred to as the factory system. Am I right, Eryn?

Eryn (06:17)
Yeah, well, I think that also coincided with the rise of industrialization and we kind of alluded to this earlier. But the idea of efficiency in the school system in the country that is so large when there’s a huge influx also of populations and people and immigrants into cities especially. How do you school efficiently? And it was very parallel to the rise of factories. And so we kind of modeled it on the success of those factories, for better or for worse. But a lot of those ideas have actually persisted into today where you get, for lack of a better term, lump students into a certain classroom based on their age. And there are blocks of time in a specific schedule that is outlined by bells throughout the day. And then you, of course, have these specific subjects. The specific matter, again, very overall, there are some parts of this factory model that kind of have persisted to today, even though we don’t have the same idea of industrialization. But it really did impact like our current model of teaching because, for a lot of schools, we are still grouping based on age. And we have Bells and we have specific schedules.

Gary (07:41)
Yeah. And it informed a lot of decisions and it still continues to inform these decisions. Right. And industrialization is interesting because it not only gave goals but also served it right through industrialization. You can have paper to have every kid come from farther away from industrialization. You can feed them on a daily basis at lunch.

Eryn (08:04)
Right. Yeah. And then even at the time, it prepared them to go into that field, if nothing else. Right. Like, they were already so used to that structure. And so it’s very I want to say, like symbiotic.

Gary (08:17)
Right. Because society is now demanding it. Right. So like by 1900, by the turn of the 20th century, it becomes more and more compulsory. Students should go to it. And that’s where it gets really interesting in terms of who’s going. Is it for everyone, really? If so, there’s an expectation that now the agency, the choice to go if it’s more compulsory becomes much more the onus of you are expected as a young person to do this, and that just continues. But that symbiosis is an interesting word. Right. Because the schools have to serve students and students have to go to it. And then over time throughout the early 20th century, more and more that becomes the big topic. Too big for this conversation. But the idea of which schools, the idea of desegregation, how equity is going to happen, that’s a much bigger topic for this kind of quick version of the history of American education. But that becomes a really important thing in the 1950s, 60s, and then that question of how well our students being served was really hit a point in the 80s and a Nation at Risk, that report was 1983. Let’s take a look at how well our schools and the means of education happening. It was a real call to arms about maybe changes should happen in this model, and it becomes a real choice that places have to make about how compulsory do we keep it if that is still happening? Then what is this model serving? And then over time, you’ve got all these meetings of governors and goals. There’s the America 2000, there’s No Child Left Behind, which people remember. Now Essa is different. I mean, it’s just constantly trying to serve. These ideas still keep taking different forms. How well are these means of education serving these individual students? And that brings us right to today. Right. That we’re still questioning still every couple of years saying how well is this happening? How do we assess that? How do we keep the assessments from hindering education, which is something people wrestle with and now throw in 2020. Right. With all of these structures that were set up, when new challenges are faced, how do we keep forging ahead? And I think that history may seem all over the place, but it’s not. It’s just a dynamic flow of American education systems that have occurred for hundreds of years, always charging toward a similar direction. But what it looks like and the twist in turns of that river has looked different. And it’s been really fascinating but always moving. And I think that’s really exciting.

Eryn (11:06)
So it really kind of begs the question based on what I was saying, what are the implications for how we have viewed and structured education?

Mary (11:17)
Well, I know for me as a little kid, my world was so local. So like Gary was saying, there’s this predictability and a comfort, this taking for granted that you’re going to go back to school and you just you’re going to go through the day, you’re going to look at different subjects, concrete spelling, then we’re going to do reading. And that was my world. I didn’t think to question that it could be different, that it could have been different in the past, that it might be different in a school in another state. And as I got older and as I was a teacher especially, that’s when you start thinking about school means different things to different people, I just didn’t have the creativity, I guess, as a little kid to think you go to school and then you apply to college and that’s just what you do. Is that what you do? I mean, that’s how I thought of it growing up in the system. But is that the purpose of school? And I think we’re at a very this moment right now when the world is kind of topsy turvy that a lot of people are asking this question, what is the purpose of school? Is it to get kids to go to college? Is it a place to put your kids while you go to work? Is it to pass a test? Is it to create an informed citizen? There are lots of answers to this question. And I think that’s what’s exciting is that there isn’t one answer.

Gary (12:43)
There could be internal or external reasons why things change. And I think education we’re talking about in terms of there’s a structure to it, and then there’s a purpose to it. And I think that is really important because you’re right. Your personal experience. And I think this is super common. Right. It’s one of those things and maybe everything’s like this, I don’t know. But it’s one of those things where it’s almost necessarily anecdotal it’s something so uncommon that people have that they’ve experienced in some way going to school or being educated or not. It’s easy to want to extrapolate that into like, well, this is the way it is. Right. Because this was my experience with it. And yet taking that step back and saying that. Yes, absolutely. There’s a commonality it sounds like what we’re saying is that there’s a, for lack of a better word, assumption that there’s a value to people being educated. The structure of how that happens is really interesting because even in a year-by-year basis, the context of that can change. Case in point, this year. Right. The structure has changed across the country, really across the world. And yet there is still this fundamental value that we say education still is charging forward, even if it does look different. So I think it is really good to maybe flesh out what we mean and what we think about why educate, why have this at all.

Mary (14:21)
Hello, Fabric of History listeners. Join the Bill of Rights Institute and fellow educators this fall as we explore topics such as women’s suffrage, the Executive Branch, and how to use Socratic discussion with your students. See the link in Show Notes, and we hope you’ll join us. And now back to the show.

Mary (14:41)
So, Gary, what you’re saying is that even though the systems around education have changed or education looks different at different time periods, the underlying assumption that there’s a value in being educated hasn’t changed. Otherwise, why would we still have school? So I think that’s really important, that we need that assumption about the value in education that we should dive into a little bit more.

Gary (15:06)
Yeah, absolutely. I think assumption is a really interesting approach because that’s like you’re saying about this, it’s kind of in your body that this happens. Right. So I think starting with that question of what does that mean? Why do we value this or how do we value this idea of being educated no matter what it looks like? Because I think you’re right. How it has looked and how it continues to look context by context, year by year, location by location may change. And yet there is this commonality, there’s this fundamental idea that people should be educated. And I’m going to stop right there because when I say people, it gets into the question of at what age, what does it mean to be educated? And I don’t know if I have the answer, but I do think that it is worth considering and asking about that foundational idea that education has value.

Eryn (16:03)
I think like what Mary said earlier is that there are so many different answers to those questions that they’re also, for your part about who the people or what does education mean. Maybe I’m just a little more personal, but I do think depending on who you are, education can have a different meaning. But at the end of the day, it’s gaining knowledge about something that you didn’t have before. And I think that’s so important. Kind of like we’re talking about that self-governance and that foundation of our country is always driving for more knowledge than you had before.

Mary (16:48)
I think that, of course, as an employee of the Bill of Rights Institute, we value education because it prepares you for being an active citizen. And that’s one answer to this question. And I also think going back to what Gary said before, as a former teacher and as someone who went through all the education graduate degree and all that stuff, it’s still very anecdotal and very personal. Like to me, there are certain things you need knowledge about to function, and there’s also knowledge for the sake of knowledge because it’s interesting and it helps you appreciate other perspectives and it helps you communicate effectively and it helps you just know what’s going on and feel that you’re not just an observer but you’re a participant. But even that is something that could be argued and different people would disagree with that or have more to say on that. And it’s changed throughout history like you said.

Gary (17:56)
There are branches now, right? There’s education in and of itself, that it is its own end. There’s education that having learned something that serves a purpose, we keep using that word for something else. I think Eryn’s point about knowledge is really interesting because there’s knowledge of and there’s knowledge that and there’s knowledge for. Right. So there’s like skills acquisition, there’s transference of knowledge from past generations acquisition. There’s the experience of being outside of yourself, which is, I think, part of why we value connecting people with either each other in person or again, biased to where we work, people from the past. And to your point, people of the future, how education, this idea of self-governance is a really important one because that itself is a big phrase to unpack, to rephrase what I’m thinking about. So education, there’s lots and lots of branches, lots and lots of directions to go in terms of what is the purpose and how does that happen? Maybe we should take a lens of this idea of self-governance. We look at education as twofold. There’s the enrichment of individuals. And I think we value the individual enrichment and their experience, but also the enrichment of the public, of the community. The reason these structures have often come up is this twofold to enrich the life of an individual child. Let’s say let’s take that as an example, but also what that means for enriching the community. So I think a question that I have is what has that looked like? How have structures come about to both enrich individuals and to benefit the community in education?

Mary (20:00)
I mean, again, at the Bill of Rights Institute, we believe in education for self-governance. Self-governance is one of those big topics. It’s hard to pin down what that means exactly. But it’s something like you need to regulate yourself. You need to check yourself, if I may, for our governing structure to work. Right. It only will work if, in the individual, the individual has a role, even though there’s the voice of the community, of the people. But has education always served that purpose, like even going back to before we were even a country? Is that what education was about in colonial times?

Gary (20:41)
I think that’s a good question in terms of the phrase serving the purpose because let’s go with that purpose. I think that’s a great one because I think that speaks to what we’ve been talking about, the individual and the community. I think it’s a great way to phrase it in terms of how the structures that have existed commonly across what we’re now calling the United States addressed it over time. And I think that’s a great question.

Mary (21:10)
Even going back in time, if we are talking about structures meant to educate, there was a huge difference in who was educated. So generally speaking, boys were educated and girls received education and like the finer arts. So even I think just kind of making that point where education looks different, it’s very situational now and then I think it’s worth bringing up. And there’s always been voices saying, well, maybe more people should be exposed to this education because it would benefit the community. If we educate women as mothers, they can educate their sons to participate in our Republic, and this whole idea of Republican motherhood that comes up. So I think as timeless as this question of what is the purpose of education is who has access to it to make sure that our governing structure really includes the voices of all the people.

Gary (22:14)
So what I’m hearing then is that in addition to the value that we started with in the beginning, which is the value of enriching individuals and society is a middle ground for lack of a better term, number of people. Right. So we seem to be saying then that pretty early on there needed to be some way to examine the success of education, not only for is an individual upon the time that they leave formal schooling fully educated, but is it serving enough people in a community, and perhaps the idea that structures then try to increase that number. Right. How can we better reach more people more efficiently? Is that what we’re talking about?

Mary (23:02)
I think so. I think if you look at the history of education in the United States, that it seems to trend that way by the late 19th century, early 20th century with the Industrial Revolution and you have this wave of immigration coming in. You start seeing sort of this model of school that we’re familiar with today. We have all of these children, and it’s not safe for them to be working in factories, and they need to be assimilated into American culture. They need basic skills to have managerial jobs that we need to have them in some sort of school building. And that’s sort of where that idea of a factory school comes from. But I think over time, does that model still work? Should other people be included in that model? I think that’s something that we’re still working out.

Eryn (24:02)
Well, what you were just saying about this inclusive model is one of the reasons that Horace Mann, back when he was thinking about public education, went with what was called the Prussian model, because when he went to Prussia, looked at this Prussian model of education, it was designed to build a common sense of national identity, which I think is also so strongly tied to a lot of these American values. Right. Like having this common sense of national identity. And so he thought like bringing back home and applying it here. These large groups of students learning together would establish like a more unified, egalitarian society.

Gary (24:46)
Part of why we’re focusing on this conversation, I think it sounds like, on the United States model is that identity part. Right. Very early on, right after the 1700s, early 1800s. You’re right. There’s this really important nation-building that happens. Right. And we’re establishing part of this nation-building. Is this self-governance piece. Is this good for the community piece? And yeah, pretty early on there’s the not only what does it mean to be educated, what does it mean to be educated in the new United States? And by that point, you’ve got even early in the 19th century, it seems like a good idea to have schools, not for everyone, but that perhaps the public needs to think beyond the individual and have these schools, and then these schools themselves have subject areas that are deemed to be of value. And so you mention horrors, man. I mean, that’s the first board of education. Right. The first state board. And that’s the 1830s, 1837 I think, really on. Okay. There needs to be some decision-making that happens that is serving a purpose not only of individual enrichment, but also to help build this nation. And over time, it has changed absolutely into this really interesting waves of changes to keep iterating to keep little changes here and there to get further into. And you use the term factory system, but I think that definitely was an approach for efficiency. What is serving the most people best? If we are taking as an assumption there is a value to education for an individual and then that education of individuals collectively are important for society. And when we say society, we mean this newly formed American society, then how does that continue on, and does it continue to serve that purpose? I’m wrapping myself in circles here, but it explains that there’s a lot of people spending a lot of time really wanting to accomplish these things. I don’t think anything’s out of habit. I think it’s very intentional over time.

Mary (27:06)
I think it also comes back to the idea of the local community. I think education very much. It’s more of a local. Historically, it has been very local. And it’s only in somewhat recent history that you have this federal presence in education. And again, that speaks to just the efficiency and the size of the United States. We’re an enormous country. We’re incredibly diverse, incredibly varied. So many different communities exist in our country and have that the idea that there is one answer for all of that diversity is really I’m just going to say it pretty foolish because what school looks like where I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, DC, is not what it looks like in rural Kansas or what it looks like in downtown LA. So, I think it’s healthy that we have different models and that the models change and different ideas. And I think it’s healthy that there is this discussion. And in a way, maybe it’s a blessing that we’re having this conversation again in this moment because it’s back to school and it’s a very different school year. But these are questions that they don’t have an easy answer. But you have to have the conversation and the conversation will probably get a little argumentative because we’re talking about your kids and you’re talking about education. And there is a value again, I’m putting my own, my own belief into this statement. There is a value in education. Why else would education be used as a weapon over time? Having access or not having access to education is something that’s been held over people in our own history. If you think about enslaved individuals who weren’t taught to read or write, why? Because that’s power. Because that’s knowledge. How do you communicate that power to children across the United States in all these different situations and scenarios is beyond my pay grade. I don’t know how to again, I come back to the local mess of it. I knew how to talk to my kids in my classroom, but my classroom was its own Kingdom in a way, and it would be very different if my classroom was located somewhere else.

Eryn (29:33)
I think you can even say that from year to year that would change, right, Mary? Because your students were always different students. And so you almost kind of have to cater on a yearly basis. And earlier when we were mentioning kind of this differentiation individualization, you have to cater to each student as well. And not just the area in which you live. But if we’re talking broadly about how not everyone but they’re different learning types. Right. And if, you know, one student learns a certain way, you’re not going to teach them in a way that’s not conducive to their learning. And so it’s almost like we’re constantly reevaluating how best to reach our students.

Gary (30:23)
Yeah. It’s delightfully dynamic. Right. Unlike other systems. And I’m not much of a mechanic, but I feel like there are mechanical systems that can be perfected. Right. That can be an ideal version of it. It’s necessarily dynamic. You have in your head the idea of school. And for some reason, my brain goes to my image of school as a young child watching Little House on the Prairie. Right. And this idea of the one-room schoolhouse and the teacher in town. Right. But the world isn’t static. Right. It didn’t stay like that very quickly. Cities pop up, populations change, neighborhoods come and grow, and that makes a new school. And these external factors necessarily have to make things change. You can’t just say, well, this is the way it should be. This is the way it’s going to be for everybody. It just can’t happen that way. And then as you were just saying, Eryn, absolutely not only year to year, day to day class to class. Right. How it goes on a Tuesday is very different than how it’s going to go on a Thursday and then added onto that where we are right now of external causes have necessarily changed structures, and yet there’s still that core thing of school starting again, that education is happening again. And it may look different, but that core still happens. And I think that value still happens. And like you said, who it’s for and who it is through access problems kept from or at least the versions that we think of when we say it is being kept from. I want to circle back to that. Like, what do we mean by it? What is being educated?

Mary (32:08)
Gary asks us the hard questions here at BRI.

Gary (32:11)
Sorry, I toss those out. Lob them into the crowd.

Eryn (32:16)
Maybe we need to ask our listeners. I think there are a bunch of them who are teachers and they can email us, tell us what they think their idea of education is because like Mary mentioned, it will probably vary from New York to California and everywhere else in between.

Mary (32:34)
Right. I think if you ask not even just teachers. So definitely, listeners, if you please tell us your thoughts, if you ask someone, what is it, what is education? What purpose does it serve? It’s almost like asking what is the meaning of life? It’s such a big question, and it’s a question that we’ve always, I think, been asking. And I think it’s a question we will continue to ask and the answers will continue to change. But I do think this idea, I think change. It’s interesting in that there’s so much change if there’s also this continuity like at the core, I used to always say, because I did teach in Northern Virginia, and I taught in some very affluent schools, and I taught in a not so affluent school. But sort of, in the end, kids are kids at their core. I think. And I think education has a value just at its core, regardless of how all the jargon or the models that you want to put around it to go through your life, like understanding and asking questions and communicating with others and trying to understand their point of view has a value. And that’s what we’re working for. And it’s messy and it’s argumentative and you’ve got to be flexible. But that’s why BRI is here, right? We’re here to support our teachers, and we’re here to support whatever teacher may be. If teacher is mom or teacher is dad, or teacher is in a classroom or teacher is on Zoom. We’re here to try to help you out as you grapple with these big questions with your students. Kids are inherently curious. They’re funny. My kids were. I mean, they would make me laugh every day. And they are resilient. So we might be pulling our hair out with sort of our new normal in this time. But I think kids always impressed me with their resilience. And I think whatever we can do to support them in getting that education, maybe it looks a little bit different is a worthy endeavor just for them personally and also because they’re part of a community and we have big problems. We’ve always had, we always will have big problems because we’re not angels. And you need critical thinking and you need those skills from an education to tackle those problems. And this is to have I think this idea that education is essential for citizenship is something that is really American. Even if you go back to the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, it establishes that religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind. Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

Gary (35:24)
I love that phrase, schools and the means of education.

Mary (35:28)
Yes, I thought that too.

Gary (35:33)
I don’t know. I’m imagining right now listening to this conversation, thinking like, take a deep breath and just focus on there’s a charge here, right? There’s a charge to say this is important, this should happen. And all the context, all the changes, all the things that happen in front of you. There’s this really nice. I feel inspired, as I did teaching and as with what we do, to say, what is this encouragement? What is necessary and how can we contribute to that? How can we help get it done? And often from a teaching point of view, it was the beginning of the year, the first meetings. We’d always have an idea of envision this student as well as possible, all the things they’re going through and really empathize with this person, this human being who themselves are coming back and have all these feelings and things like that and then go beyond that and say, like, what can we do? What is on us to encourage their education and then add to that it’s not just one student. It could be 36 in a classroom, it could be 150 in a classroom. It might be your one student or it could be a pod or it could be whatever combination. But to spark a fire in individuals who are not just the students, but those who are encouraging, Whether it is through schools or other means of education, is a really good charge, is a really good goal, is a really good task. It’s inspiring.

Mary (37:04)
We always need inspiration, especially teachers, as we go back to school. So I think that is a really nice way for us to end this conversation, Is that education is foundational to our country. You are doing such important work, and even if you’re not a teacher in a, quote, unquote school, we still take on this role of teacher at some point or some way in our lives Because we’re a member of this community of this Republic. So be inspired, be encouraged, and know that BRI has your back because we have so many resources to support you in what you’re doing. We have all these tremendous videos on YouTube, On Supreme Court cases, on primary sources. We have a new free digital resource for US history, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That is just a treasure trove of information and stories about the complexity and the richness of the American story. So there’s a lot of tools out there to help you. And this is a crazy time of change, but it’s always been a crazy time of change, right as we go back to school And I stock up on pens that I don’t need, because that is what I do every August, know that we’re with you in spirit. And if you have thoughts on these big questions, what’s next for school? Why educate? What is the purpose of education? Please let us know. You can talk to us at comments@fabricofhistory.org.

Gary (38:36)
Thanks, everybody.

Mary (38:37)
Take care.

Intro/Outro (38:42)
The Bill of Rights Institute engages, educates, and empowers individuals with a passion for the freedom and opportunity that exists in a free society. Check out our educational resources and programs on our website mybri.org. Any questions or suggestions for future episodes? We’d love to hear from you. Just email us at comments@fabricofhistory.org and don’t forget to visit us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram To stay connected and informed about future episodes. Thank you for listening.