Good old Horace Mann is the dude who basically invented the public school. He was a superintendent of schools in Massachusetts and initially called his invention “common school” because his goal was to involve the common man and raise the standards of culture.
Building a person’s character was just as important as reading, writing and arithmetic. By instilling values such as obedience to authority, promptness in attendance, and organizing the time according to bell ringing helped students prepare for future employment.
It sounds great doesn’t it? But how exactly can you efficiently keep the masses in line? Like anything else, there must be fear of “what happens if…” (responsibility for actions) in industrialized schools. Doesn’t there? But does the fear of nonconformity tend to also stifle passion? By teaching ‘in bulk’, it sometimes seems the primary thing being taught is how to get high SAT scores. What happens to the dreamers?
Jake Halpern did a study of high school students. The question was asked, “When you grow up, which of the following jobs would you most like to have?” (1)The chief of a major company like General Motors, (2) A Navy SEAL, (3) A United States Senator, (4) The president of a great university like Harvard or Yale, or (5) The personal assistant to a very famous singer or movie star
The answers? Interesting…
Among girls, the results were as follows: 9.5 percent chose “the chief of a major company like General Motors”; 9.8 percent chose “a Navy SEAL”; 13.6 percent chose “a United States Senator”; 23.7 percent chose “the president of a great university like Harvard or Yale”; and 43.4 percent chose “the personal assistant to a very famous singer or movie star.”
So after a multimillion-student, trillion dollar, sixteen-year schooling cycle, we have a whole bunch of high school girls who want to be assistants to someone living what they perceive to be a fairytale life.
