NHEG-Magazine-September-October

www.NewHeightsEducation.org
But actual education is an organic process and requires free will; this was not an attempt at education. Schools were to be factories
that would churn out the type of obedient, compliant workers the state preferred. Here’s Fichte again explaining the
desired interaction between teachers and students:
[Y]ou must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will
otherwise than you wish him to will.
www.NewHeightsEducation.org
The National Society of High School Scholars -- NSHSS
Fichte understood full well that a statist vision could most easily be realized if governments were given kids’ minds early on:
Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest
of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished ... When the technique has been
perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its
subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.
If such a totalitarian vision were quietly isolated in Germany, or even Europe, it might be of very little consequence. But it
would be this Prussian model of control-by-schooling that 19th-century American politicians would bring to our nation—and
the one that is still with us today.
Horace Mann’s Evaluation
Referred to as the first great American advocate of public education, Horace Mann embarked on a journey to Europe in 1843 to
evaluate national school systems. He toured several western European states, but Prussia left the most impressionable impact
on him (see his 7th Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1843). Once back in the United States, Mann began to lobby
heavily for a taxpayer-funded government school system that largely mirrored that of Prussia’s.
Mann was no ordinary, grassroots American activist; he was an extremely influential public figure. He had been a part of the
Massachusetts State Legislature, he was the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and he later became a
United States congressman. He had enormous reach. In short, Mann’s influence worked. His “common school movement,” as
it would be known, began to spread across the Northeast, with government schooling taking root in Massachusetts, New York,
Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
View Online National Society of High School Scholars
Dear Pamela, On behalf of Mr. Nobel and the NSHSS team, we wish you
and your family our warmest season's greetings.
May your holidays and New Year be filled with joy.
The end of the year is a time to look back with pride
on all the wonderful things you have accomplished,
and a time to look forward to goals for the New Year.
May 2019 be your best year yet.
Sincerely, James Lewis & the NSHSS Team
By the end of the decade, all states had public schools. Unsatisfied with forcing taxpayers to fund a government school
system, Massachusetts also wanted to force everyone to go. What good would an organized system of indoctrination be if
people could simply ignore it? They instituted the first compulsory attendance laws in the 1850s, and neighboring states began
to follow suit; by the end of the 19th century, 34 states had compulsory school laws.
By 1918, they all did. Over the decades, the number of years kids were forced to go to school slowly increased, as did the
number of required school days per year. Fines and penalties would be imposed nationwide for school truancy. Within
decades, the federal government passed the ESEA, which thrust the national government into education and shortly thereafter
established a federal Department of Education. Mann’s vision for a truly national school system would be realized just a
little over a century after his initial visits to Prussia.
Pure Intentions?
It is impossible to discuss, or even understand, the failures of our school system without understanding its origins. The motivations
were not pure; they were never to educate. That need not be speculation—it is directly from the mouths of the reformers
themselves. The objective was to nationalize the youth in a particular mold.
From Luther to Fichte, the idea to use the coercive power of the state to force kids into schools and indoctrinate them was
clear. Horace Mann became instrumental in importing this system and helping it spread throughout the United States.
Attempts to reform this system amount to an incredible waste of time and resources; discussions of reform are a waste of
breath. The system is rotten at its foundation and must be abolished completely.
Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
https://fee.org/
102 102 NHEG | GENiUS Magazine MAGAZINE | September | www.geniusmag.com
- October 2019
September - October 2019 | NHEG Magazine 103