In her book Raised to Obey, Agustina S. Paglayan presents the thesis that governments introduced mass education not to empower their citizens, but to control them by indoctrinating them as children. She argues that this thesis is supported by evidence concerning the timing of when states introduced mass education, the arguments that persuaded governments to provide mass education, and the training and direction that governments provided to teachers.
He book is quite the counterweight to the romantic narrative about how mass education came to be.
I thought that was quite well known a long time ago. I have recollections of reading that one impetus for public schools was in response to all the Irish and Italian papists owing allegiance to the Pope, probably some Bavarians and Poles thrown into the mix too, maybe Slavs and Greeks with their own patriarchs.
It sort of applied to abortion too, IIRC. I had a dry-as-dust book on changes in America from 1776 to the 1840s, just short of railroads and telegraphs, which said something like 1/3 of marriages were with a pregnant bride, judging from marriage and birth records, and while abortion was not really approved of, it was accepted if before the quickening. The first anti-abortion laws came along with the influx of Irish and Italians due to worries about Protestants being out-bred by Papists. But that book was really hard to read more than a couple of pages at a time, and I gave it away after finishing it, so I won't swear to any of these details, only that I remember something along those lines.
The obvious antidote to all of the acrimony is state-sponsored summer youth camps. They had k-12 to indoctrinate us, but everything can be rectified over a few additional weeks. I can’t think of any downsides. Let’s do this!
https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/common-experiences