Even still, schools in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods were geared for vocational training in blue collar skills that would satisfy whatever the current job market called for.
Throughout global history, the right to attend school has always been sought out but not guaranteed. The reasons to deny certain groups a formal education in any culture have been as varied as the cultures themselves.
The most common determining factors had to do with land ownership and wealth, gender, race, fitness of body and mind, immigration status, and religion. The justifications that form these determinations are deeply rooted in economics and religious beliefs. When you distill it down, the only group that has consistently been guaranteed the right to formal schooling has been wealthy, healthy males.
It has been a long held belief that the unwashed masses needed only to be educated enough to be able to read, and thus follow, their master’s instructions, that the most important source of education was a religious one, be it the Bible, the Torah, or the Koran, and that higher education is best suited to the upper classes. It has only been in the last hundred years, give or take a decade, in the United States, that mandatory education began to go beyond the rudimentary elementary foundations of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and to expand to secondary education, that included subjects that could prepare students for higher learning.
Even still, schools in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods were geared for vocational training in blue collar skills that would satisfy whatever the current job market called for. College prep curriculum was found in public and private schools almost exclusively in middle and upper class neighborhoods. The infamous separate but equal solution to school integration in the South, was closely related to the de facto school discrimination in the North. Educational opportunities have never been equally available to rich and poor alike. Ultimately, even with affirmative action, students receive the best education their money can buy.
So what is it about education that makes it an object of privilege? One could argue that having an educated population could only benefit a culture, that surely there could be no downside if indeed we were to take the view of the respected historian, Will Durant, that, “Education is the transmission of civilization.” Why then would we want, as a nation, to limit who carries that burden? Wouldn’t we all be better served if every citizen shouldered a part of that responsibility? What makes education so dangerous that at present times, girls, in some parts of the world, who seek schooling, risk death? Why are the contents of some books so dangerous that they need to be banned? Why should higher learning create such a financial burden that young graduates begin their adult lives in serious financial debt? The old adage that knowledge is power appears to be true if we were to judge it’s veracity by how those who have it will do anything to keep it out of the “wrong” hands.
In many ways, getting an education is one of the true revolutionary acts. Educated, free thinkers are dangerous. Throughout history, governments have used education as a tool to control the populace. Educational reforms created and instituted by politicians are uninformed, short sighted ones. An education only informed by religious beliefs, is a narrow one. A nation whose educational goals are formed only by the needs for a specific job market, is a poor one. The only education that leads to a positive change and lasting advancement, is one that has no other agenda than to educate without limits.
Collaboration of Alessandra Profumo / «Entre Noticias» Editorial Team
Image credit: Malate269
