Industrially repeated

This argument has been industrially repeated for decades. It makes superficial sense but there are flaws in the assumptions and facts.

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Industrialization explicitly rewarded compliance, conformity, and disciplined repetition.

Schools were designed to produce workers who fit neatly into that mold, treating variation as a flaw instead of a strength.

Now the factories are gone, but we’re left with millions conditioned to fear creativity and independent thought because those qualities have been systematically punished for several generations.

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The hidden assumption is that schools were vastly more open and creative before the industrial age.

Public schools were invented during the industrial age, in an attempt to apply mass production to schooling. The assumption makes sense so far. Public schools didn’t exist beforehand.

Flaw: Before public schools there were two forms of learning, religious schools and on-the-job.

Religious schools are EVEN MORE rigid and repetitive than public schools. Monks and priests memorize mantras and bible passages and official prayers. They don’t learn any skills at all.

On-the-job training has always been individualized and personal. A cobbler’s apprentice or a farmer’s son learned the trade as the master practiced it, with constant interactions and adaptation for his own abilities. The master had already adapted his trade to local conditions and local customers and his own abilities. If the trade needed reading and writing (clerks) the literacy came naturally as part of the training. If the trade needed math (carpenters and masons) the math happened naturally. Other things we typically learn in public school, like history and civics, weren’t needed then AND STILL AREN’T NEEDED.

A flaw in the facts: Most industrial workers received very little if any public schooling. Until 1940 most workers of all types had to start earning EARLY. In a family business or farm you were automatically participating as soon as you were physically ready. Both of my grandfathers completed 3rd grade. One ended up as an engineer and the other as a manager, with no further formal education but a lot
of OJT.

So the alleged regimentation of public schooling wasn’t a large factor in the lives of most people. Only urban “thought workers” finished 8th grade. The last four grades were optional, essentially the same as the first four years of college now. We forget the effects of shrinkflation!