I'm not sure what bearing an 18th century philosopher has on anything much. I find philosophy as a discipline to be rather self important and contribute little but linguistic sophistry to most debates.
That said I have heard of Alfred Whitehead, and his opinions on education (if he did indeed influence the forming of early compulsory/state education systems) seem so far removed from any idea of suppressing creativity and individualism that I'm not sure why you'd drag him out to support your point.
I'm not familiar with Finney.
Hanlons razor would apply to the wider situation regardless - you don't think that any of the army of educators would have caught wind of this nefarious plot?
Whitehead's opinions on education were somewhat mixed and eclectic, but an individualist he was not. He noted the pivotal importance of getting people to perform arduous tasks and conditioning them through education, as well as the teacher as this godlike authority figure who is the sole guide of a child's education. An anti-autodidact. In many ways, he promoted the master/slave dialectic.
you don't think that any of the army of educators would have caught wind of this nefarious plot?
That's the thing. It wasn't really nefarious to them. The upper class pretty much had a consensus that this was necessary. It started off as industrialization rapidly kicked off nearing the end of the 19th century (especially in the USA), and a way to breed a trustworthy yet disposable workforce was in order. It then went downhill from there.
Woodrow Wilson himself had this to say in 1909:
"We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
Near as I can tell, the mainstream K-12 curriculum today resembles what Wilson would have considered to be a liberal education. Lots of math, science, reading, writing, history, etc.
>> The upper class pretty much had a consensus that this was necessary. It started off as industrialization rapidly kicked off nearing the end of the 19th century (especially in the USA), and a way to breed a trustworthy yet disposable workforce was in order. It then went downhill from there.
The 'Upper Class' have nothing to do with it any more and what some people said well over a century ago has extremely little bearing on the aims of modern state education.
>> "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
Which he said over 100 years ago, and which again bears absolutely no resemblance to what we have now.
You were asking within the context of the relevant time period.
That's when the seeds were planted, and they continue to grow today. Charlotte Iserbyt provides a fairly decent timeline and compendium of relevant documents related to the shaping of the compulsory schooling system in the USA, entitled the deliberate dumbing down of america. Despite a few conservative biases in her writing style, the documents outlined are self-explanatory.
>> You were asking within the context of the relevant time period.
No, pretty sure I was deliberately not asking about it within historical context, because the aims of those people 100 years ago are not really relevant to the aims and goals of the continuing system, IMHO.
That said I have heard of Alfred Whitehead, and his opinions on education (if he did indeed influence the forming of early compulsory/state education systems) seem so far removed from any idea of suppressing creativity and individualism that I'm not sure why you'd drag him out to support your point.
I'm not familiar with Finney.
Hanlons razor would apply to the wider situation regardless - you don't think that any of the army of educators would have caught wind of this nefarious plot?
It's nonsense.