Generally speaking, American workers are well-educated. We got that way through a uniquely American process that began long ago.
Education was valued in America even before there was an America. The colonists valued education. Before the war for independence, schools were present in most communities in every colony.
With independence came a more urgent sense of the importance of education. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and many others argued passionately that a republic must have well-educated citizens if it is to survive. Most Americans agreed.
Historians often note that the American ethos has always been an odd and sometimes conflicting mix of individualism and egalitarianism. Early American education manifested both streaks.
Our individual streak showed itself in the organization, control and financing of education. From the beginning, American schools were organized, controlled, and financed locally. The federal and state governments had their roles, but their roles were quite limited. Americans must have wanted it that way, because local organized, controlled and financed public schools spread rapidly.
Our egalitarian streak showed itself in who education was intended for. In virtually every other country at the time, education was the exclusive privilege of the elite. It was centrally controlled, expensive and, with an occasional exception, restricted to males.
Early American education stands in sharp contrast. From the start, Americans wanted education for the masses – the free masses, at any rate. They designed local public schools to be free of charge and coeducational, and they stayed true to the design.
How did this uniquely American innovation turn out? By the mid-1800s, school enrollment rates in the U.S. far exceeded those in any other country. The gap would not be closed until the mid-1970s.
By the 1880s, free local public education was ubiquitous in the U.S. – even in the south, and even for blacks, though southern schools were segregated.
The 1900s brought another uniquely American innovation: the high school. The public schools that spread at such a rapid rate in the early decades of the 1800s were “common” schools, what we today call primary or elementary schools. The U.S. had secondary schools well before 1900, but they varied considerably from place to place. Many were private and almost all were designed to prepare select students for college. Educators across the land prescribed a standard structure for high schools in 1902, but the institution continued to evolve over the next 18 years.
In 1910, locally controlled and financed public high schools, also free of charge and coeducational, began to spread. They spread even more rapidly than local public primary schools had decades before, and with even less involvement from federal and state governments. The American “high school movement,” as it has come to be called, was an uncoordinated, decentralized effort from below, executed simultaneously by local people in 125,000 independent school districts across the country.
The primary force behind the spread of high schools was another uniquely American innovation: the modern business enterprise. Producing increasingly sophisticated products in increasingly sophisticated ways, and getting those products to a growing population spread far and wide requires sharp, well-educated people. Lots of sharp, well-educated people.
The “high school movement” was a spectacular success. Between 1910 and 1940, the high school enrollment rate increased from 18 to 73 percent, while the graduation rate increased from 9 to 51 percent.
The success continues. Among Americans age 25-29 years today, 95 percent have graduated from high school, while 39 percent have graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree.
The U.S. is an extremely wealthy country for a number of reasons. Its education history is one.
Reg Murphy Center