Daryl Cobranchi spotlights the threat to Michigan homeschoolers in a trenchant post quoting a school official who seems to claim ownership of Michigan’s children, by saying, “They’re still our students and families.”
There’s a lot of history behind that quote — and others like it. The American school system still rests on foundations laid around the beginning of the twentieth century. Whenever we hear judges or legislators or school officials speak of the importance of turning children over to credentialed teachers, or of giving the system more jurisdiction over families, we hear the echo from those foundations.
Educational historian Herbert Kliebard covers the history in depth in his book, The Struggle for the American Curriculum: 1893-1958. Kliebard notes that social philosopher Edward A. Ross, who strongly influenced the development of the American curriculum, actually welcomed the decline of family influence. Kliebard writes:
The school in his view was actually in a better position than the family to instill ‘the habit of obedience to an external law’. Anyone can be a parent, while the certification of teachers is a matter of state control.
Or, as Ross himselfwrote,
Copy the child will, and the advantage of giving him his teacher instead of his father to imitate, is that the former is a picked man, while the latter is not.
Ross wasn’t the only influence on the development of schools as we know them, and in future posts we’ll look at some of the other founding fathers and mothers.
1 response so far ↓
1 don // Apr 15, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I remember when my first child was but a toddler, thinking about how important those formative years were. I remember actually saying to my wife that after they were 5 years old, the main influence on children would be their teachers and friends. It was as if I was prepared to abdicate most of my parental responsibility once they hit school age. It’s sad to think that most people in America accept that reasoning without hesitation. Now that same child is a teenager and she’s smart, funny, responsible, well-adjusted, and on her way to becoming an incredible adult. I look at the challenges of raising teens and now I realize that the influence of parents is important at all ages. We’ve sacrificed a lot in order to homeschool our kids, but the results are absolutely worth it.
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