American Public Education

Improved Essays
Public Education: From It's Birth to the Present
The American education system is a large tool for the indoctrination of the country's citizens. It creates an identity for the populous that makes a nation strong and unified. Aside from its national use, the public education system Americans know today is very familiar. Nearly 50 million children are attending elementary and secondary schools in the U.S. for the fall of 2015 (“Statistics”). However, public education was not always as mainstream as it is today. Initially conceived by intellects of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, the Western educational system began as the revolutionary idea that every person had the ability to learn academics. Two-hundred years later the system put in
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All of the sudden making ends meat no longer required an entire family’s assistance, the husband now left every morning to work in a factory in which he made money for the family. Wives no longer contributed in the same way they used to and, according to Katz, they make up for this with added attention to their children. There are many possibilities as to why exactly this happened but, whatever the cause, there was an "intensification of the emotional bonds between parent and child." (Katz). Before the Revolution, if you were under the age of sixteen, you probably worked on a farm with your family or as a servant. If you were lucky, you had an apprenticeship with someone of wealth and were taught to read and write in the classics. Education at the time was merely an accessory for the wealthy (Katz). It was not until the Industrial Revolution that the way of life dramatically began to …show more content…
Crime rates steadily increased. At the time, the idea of public responsibility was ambiguous (Katz). This was a time when people believed the government should intrude as little as possible."The state did not enter into the area of public welfare without serious opposition." (Katz). Most work to alleviate social distress was done voluntarily by the community heretofore. Philanthropic organizations, mostly done through charity by churches and women, were the biggest suppressors of crime and mental illness, which was at the time considered a temporary issue. However, it soon became clear to those organizations that these problems were far more permanent than they had previously believed. Assistance in the form of grants and eventual requests for public responsibility in the matter became a more and more popular appeal. Katz concludes that people concerned with social policy questioned the legitimacy of public activity and its organizational form. Thus, the idea of the institution came into

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