The Myth of the Common School

I finally finished reading over The Myth of the Common School by Charles Leslie Glenn (2002, ICS Press, Oakland, CA).  Glenn talks about the development of a common school (government-sponsored primary and secondary school) primarily in the United States, France, and Holland. He traces the development of a common school philosophy from its initial agenda, common to all three nationalities, through the social and political debate about the validity of a common school, to the widespread acceptance of the concept.  Throughout, Glenn brings up arguments presented for and against common schooling.  

It was particularly interesting to observe that the philosophy underlying a common school education has never been a desire to make sure everyone can read, write, and calculate.  It has never been about literacy.  Especially in New England, where the eighteenth century ministers who valued education for their congregation provided literacy training, school attendance and literacy rates barely changed with the advent of the common school.  The common school, rather, was founded to train young people in the values which the administrators of the common school (the state government or department of education) considered socially important.  School, in short, was for socialization, not for education.  This was especially important within the French school system following the French Revolution, in which there were bold, overt efforts to set up an alternate religion, the religion of the new state.  There was relatively more flexibility in this landscape in Holland, where schools found their identities either as Catholic or Lutheran schools, government sponsored and approved, with their identity based on the religious identity of the community.  In the United States, the common schools first had rather a lot of orthodox Christian teaching, but with the rise of Unitarianism the idea of doctrinal teaching was removed as something which could be divisive.  The Bible remained in use as a manual of social conduct.  This, of course, was offensive to orthodox Christians, who to this day have fought for appropriate use of the Scripture and for doctrinal teaching which is distinctive and clearly defined.

As he closes the book, Glenn observes that in the United States the battle is not over.  There is a recent trend in the United States to withdraw from the common school system, with increasing acceptance of private sector and home schooling.  We are starting to see more and more of the dispute about the common schools to be focused on whether or not they are religious institutions in their own right, celebrating the religion of whatever the state considers good at the current time. 

While this is an intriguing book and brings up a lot of thought-provoking historical research, it is neither an easy nor interesting read.  Glenn is a professor at Boston University in the Department of Administration, Training and Policy Studies.  He has worked extensively with the state Department of Education.  Unfortunately, he writes very much in the style of an educational researcher, using the kind of bland and sometimes circumlocutory language that you would expect among the policy and government elite.  Yet once we get through his writing style, I think there are some gems to be mined in this book.

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Dave Spotts
blogging at http://capnsaltyslongvoyage.blogspot.com and http://alex-kirk.blogspot.com