Earlier quoted context omitted.
First, historically mass education of the type we now employ is only about a century old, and designed to produce factory workers not to promote creativity. Learning to handle monotonous boredom and obey orders was of primary importance to a factory worker. Second, much of this is unprecedented. When my parents were children, they didn't attend Kindergarten, and first grade was a half day. When my parents younger sib…
On /r/askhistorians someone asked about this idea that universal education was brought about to raise a nation of docile factory workers. Here's the thread, the idea gets debunked pretty hard http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hbezd/was_th...
Rockefeller's General Education Board wrote the following in 1906:
"In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our
molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our
minds, and unhampered by
tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive
folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children
into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not
to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of
letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters,
musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen,
of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is
very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a
perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an
imperfect way."
President Woodrow Wilson (one of our most academic presidents) said this to a gathering of industrial leaders:
"We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class,
a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a
liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."