Re: How not to privatize schools
Topics: Education
10 Oct 1994
From: ervan
>Ervan Darnell, via Debate Group writes:
> > 19th century. Despite people being
> > much poorer on average than now, most children received a decent education.
>
>Do you have anything to back up this astounding statement?
>
Hard evidence is difficult to come by because they didn't keep stats then
like we do now. One has to surmise it from different sources and analysis.
The particular bit of evidence I had in mind came from David Friedman. But,
that's obviously a biased source.
I did look it up in the statistical abstract and found that the illiteracy
rate in 1910 was 7%. Widespread public schools got underway about 1890.
They became universal in 1918. Thus, the first wave was only partially out
of the pipeline by 1910. I had trouble finding some intervening years (I
was looking for something else at the time anyway), but skipping back to
1870, the illiteracy rate was 11.6% (including blacks).
Of course, literacy is not "decent education", but relative to what skils
were needed 100 years ago it becomes an interesting metric of how much
parents tried.
The original motivations also have some relevance here. Public schools were
not started so much because children were going uneducated but because the
Protestant majority was afraid the recent Catholic immigrants would not have
the proper respect for the (Protestant) government.
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