While listening to this guy, I had so many questions.  He’s vague.

This is a vague rambling account of the origin of modern schools.  Zander Sherman has written a much better one.  http://www.amazon.com/The-Curiosity-School-Zander-Sherman/dp/0670066435

In a nutshell:  Prussia invented the modern school system after being defeated by Napoleon, its purpose was to secretly train soldiers.  They discovered that schools were the ideal tool to create ‘product’.  If the government wanted mindless soldiers, engaged citizens, schedule-sensitive factory workers, literate office workers, whatever, a modern school system could be organized to produce them in volume.

The references to Rockefeller and Carnegie are because they were early advocates and provided funding for schools to turn farm children into ranks of obedient and purposeful factory workers.

A Toronto connection: Egerton Ryerson was an early visitor to Prussia to study this innovation, and brought it back to Canada.  Sherman claims that Ryerson’s influence led to the dreadful Residential School system in an attempt to create ‘product’ with less aboriginal content.

- - -

Assuming the ‘purpose’ of schools is to create product, why would private schools be different from public schools in this regard?  What should the purpose of schools be?  What product do we want to produce?

To answer what Tom is questioning at the end -Throughout Europe and NA, private schooling was always available for the political and professional classes of the Industrial Era.  At the same time of the Industrial Revolution, divisions took place among the main Protestant denominations. New ones formed, and of importance for North America and the emergence of the public education system model. Or otherwise, the public education system, would have been a clone of the British model.

In Egerton Ryerson and Education in Upper Canada, published in 1912, is the book to read for Canada. In the first 25 pages, one will learned that the Methodists won the day over the Anglican Church, as to who would be in charge. The first education leaders. On page 22, the Globe - ” In the Globe of May 28th,
1844, there appeared a letter signed ” Junius,”
protesting against Ryerson s appointment. The
writer insinuates that Ryerson was won over
by receiving some notice from Lord Metcalfe,
and that the Governor hoped by winning over
Ryerson to win a united support from the
Methodists. He calls Ryerson a violent political partisan and taunts him with having only a superficial education. He says : ” Nor is it flattering to the many learned men of the country that one represented to be of slender attainments in a few common branches of English education, and totally ignorant of mathematics and classics, should be entrusted with the education of the country, many of whose youthful scholars have attained higher knowledge than their chief.”
http://archive.org/stream/ryersonuppercanada00putmuoft/ryersonuppercanada00putmuoft_djvu.txt

Ryerson was not cool with the Anglican set in Upper Canada. Ryerson was a Methodist preacher, who found the school system lacking in so many ways. The majority private, with a set of fees. Otherwise, there was no schools for the masses. Catholics, at the time, had already developed their own education system and schools, but were left up to their own devices for the most part. Ryerson did indeed visited Prussia, plus other European countries, and took what he thought was good of the various school systems, and created a made-in-Upper Canada public school system, much to the chagrin of the Anglican political elite.

Just think if Ryerson was not born?  Did not become a Methodist preacher? Was not politically attuned to the times? What would be the education system in Ontario, and for that matter across Canada be like in 2012? 

In another paper, on Manitoba’s public education system -  In the Image of Ontario: Public Schools in Brandon 1881-1890
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/12/brandonpublicschools.shtml#31

By 1890, Manitoba became the first province to established a government funded non-sectarian public schools. In the paper, it all started because the Protestant schools were losing Protestant students to the Catholic schools. The Protestant parents thought the Catholic schools delivery a better education for their children.

There is other historical papers and essays on the history of the public education system, but it is clear that the public school system and its model, was a Protestant creature, based on Protestant values to solve political and social problems of the day. Protestant values and its culture of the 1800s,, was not inclined to give choices to parents and their children when it comes to schooling. Choice was given only to those who had the means - the money to pay for private schooling. Otherwise, education control remains with the exclusive control of the government.

That said, the denial of choice is coming home to roost on the political and social decisions made in the 1800s.  Governments can no longer hold unto exclusive control of the education system, built on Protestant values that is asking for exclusion of all other values. Just a matter of time, when the NA education systems, will fall. How they will fall, will be the question to asked.

Another paper I ran across, is one of the best that I have read from the homeschooling crowd. “Not only is it ineffective to try and force children to learn, it is also unjust. But if you ask most people why we need a strong public school system, they will talk about social justice. They will tell you that the public school system forms the foundation of a caring, tolerant and democratic society. They will also tell you that a strong public school system provides equal opportunity for all, regardless of socio-economic background.”
http://www.lifemedia.ca/altpress/cae_excerpt.htm

How can the present public education system have social justice, when the origins of the public education systems in Canada is built upon the foundation of Protestant values, that excluded others of differing faiths, other languages including French? It can’t, not when the Protestant values has been institutionalized since the late 1800s, and is very much in control as to who and who will not received a quality education.