book excerpt: Gatto on Prussian origins of US system

This blew my mind the first time I read it. The best part is, it's all online, so you can go read the rest of the chapter or the rest of the book.


Chapter 7: The Land of Frankenstein

The particular utopia American believers chose to bring to the schoolhouse was Prussian.
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[A]n immortal speech, the "Address to the German Nation" by the philosopher Fichte [was] one of the influential documents of modern history leading directly to the first workable compulsion schools in the West.
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In no uncertain terms Fichte told Prussia the party was over. Children would have to be disciplined through a new form of universal conditioning. They could no longer be trusted to their parents....Through forced schooling, everyone would learn that "work makes free," and working for the State, even laying down one’s life to its commands, was the greatest freedom of all. Here in the genius of semantic redefinition lay the power to cloud men’s minds...
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The Prussian mind...held a clear idea of what centralized schooling should deliver: 1) Obedient soldiers to the army; 2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms; 3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function; 4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry; 5) Citizens who thought alike on most issues; 6) National uniformity in thought, word, and deed.

The area of individual volition for commoners was severely foreclosed by Prussian psychological training procedures drawn from the experience of animal husbandry and equestrian training, and also taken from past military experience. Much later, in our own time, the techniques of these assorted crafts and sullen arts became "discoveries" in the pedagogical pseudoscience of psychological behaviorism.

Prussian schools delivered everything they promised. Every important matter could now be confidently worked out in advance by leading families and institutional heads because well-schooled masses would concur with a minimum of opposition.

To see the footnotes and to learn how this idea was adopted and developed in the US, go to Gatto's website and read the rest... scary eh!