Is it Society’s Job to Educate Children?

Since questions about education are often common to hear among parents (and rightfully so), it seems interesting to wonder on occasion just whose job it really is to educate children. Today, we explore this question.

“But what do you mean?” you may ask in response. “Civilizations have always educated their children.”

Well, yes and no. And most of them certainly do so now. However, when comparing the total length of human existence on Earth, we can really only consider the ‘modern’ end of that period to be about 173 years. This is when public education was first ‘mandated’ in America in the state of Massachusetts in 1852. Before then, and many thousands of years in the past, ‘formal education’ was mainly confined to the upper classes and was rarely funded by the state.

In 1763, the first compulsory attendance law was passed in Europe, followed by more in the 1800’s. In the US, the first law to mandate school attendance was the one in Massachusetts, requiring children aged 8-14 to attend school for at least twelve weeks out of the year.

Before ‘public schools,’ children of means were tutored at home, educated at church, or educated at boarding schools. Middle-class children attended schools organized by towns, were homeschooled, or attended something called a ‘Dame’ school, where women taught children basic subjects from their homes. The very poorest children, if they were educated at all, were sent to charity schools run by churches and benevolent societies, or became apprentices in a workplace where rudimentary reading, writing, and arithmetic were taught. School at this time was entirely optional.

Question: So, if mandatory education has only been around since the 1700’s, why didn’t anyone bother doing it before?

Answer: It is important to remember that the science of education has many definitions. For children of the poor, historically, it meant learning concrete skills that could be used to earn income. In Indigenous societies, it was meant to teach the art of survival. It was only in the wealthier tiers of larger civilizations that ‘Education’ became abstract and theoretical. In other words, it did not teach ‘how’ so much as ‘why,’ and its beneficiaries were in a unique position to put forth concepts for social improvement. Their ideals made it possible to theorize what children ‘ought’ to be learning, and to mobilize society to bring it about.

In the eyes of such leaders, who ran governments and formulated laws, an educated populace was necessary for the function of a free society. Public schools were places where children of all backgrounds could assemble to learn assorted disciplines at no cost. By 1918, all American children were required to go to school, which brings us to the following ‘modern’ questions.

What Do We Stand to Gain by Letting Society Educate Our Kids?

• The advantages of a modern (mandatory) education can be laid out on several levels. First, it is very convenient. The vast majority of parents today have little choice but to work, and healthier economies of the past have morphed into inflationary monsters with ever-higher costs of living and exploding reliance on technology in order to manage everyday tasks. With children in government schools, preparation for adulthood and future employment is more or less deferred.
• Along with the communal advantages like low price, kids may gain exposure to peers from different walks of life, an opportunity to learn varied skills, and a chance to acquire the nationalistic sentiments that define state education. For this and other reasons, public schools have become the go-to for most families.

What Do We Stand to Lose by Letting Society Educate Our Kids?

• There is rarely an advantage to anything without an accompanying disadvantage, and in the case of state schools these can be myriad. Most importantly is the requirement that families relegate the rearing of their children to an outside party. Not a person, as was common in the past, but an institution with relatively unlimited mandatory power. Children in public schools are subjected to daily compulsion, oversight, and scrutiny that might alarm anyone who is unaware of its depths. Under current (US) policy a school is legally entitled to use any form of curriculum a board deems fitting, including some that have come under fire in recent years. It is also able to employ disciplinary measures that may or may not coincide with parent values at home, and exert opinions on students (whether political, social, or medical), that may not align with many home views, either.
• Many experts also feel that public education lacks in several important areas. Historically, it wasn’t typically known to encourage free thought and expression. Independent exploration that led to novel problem-solving was not only absent in such settings but often prohibited in the name of efficiency. Today, children who exist outside the usual learning spheres can at times be overlooked or worse, penalized for their differences. The state education model is one that most families have come to rely on and rarely question as a result, even if practices become damaging. Societal education can only cater to the ‘mean,’ which can sometimes produce mediocre results.  

Question: If it isn’t society’s job, then whose job is it?

Answer: There’s no question that state schools have provided skills to children who wouldn’t otherwise receive them and despite shortcomings, remain the common choice for most families.

But compared to mandatory methods of the past, student and parent rights have evolved. Most children nowadays have access to a broad list of skills, programs, and subjects while parents are freely able to access children’s records, opt out of classes, information-gathering, standardized tests, and public school in general. If state education remains the best option for most, it can be navigated with skill.

It is also worthwhile to note that we are members of the societies we live in and directly connected to the institutions we create. Therefore, the answer to the question becomes two-fold. Yes, it is society’s job to educate kids if the skilled individuals it creates go on to enrich and benefit the people. However, it is likely not the role of countries to produce citizens who are responsible, creative, independent, and who exercise good judgment and character. That is a duty that continues to fall to families and cultures in non-institutional settings, as well as the pursuit of the optimal learning experience whether at home, in a school, or in the changing world at large.