Documentary looks at roots of public schools
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Leave it to Thomas Jefferson to craft a ringing and poetic endorsement of public schooling: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be."
9 p.m. today and tomorrow, PBS
Jefferson is one of many weighing in on the past, present or future of education in PBS' "School: The Story of American Public Education," a four-hour documentary.
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'School: The Story of American Public Education'
It's a fascinating primer on the roots of American schools and an evenhanded look at privatization, standardized testing and other contemporary issues.
It is also a call for reasoned, informed discussion and a measure of optimism, said Sarah Patton, who produced the film with Sarah Mondale.
Mondale also served as director and actress Meryl Streep narrated.
"Our main goal was to try to get people out of crisis mode when they're looking at public schools," Patton said in an interview. "Ninety percent of kids go to public schools and most of them are getting a really good education."
Taking the long view of American education was intended to provide perspective on "where to go from here, and to get people talking about what they want from their schools rather than being at each other's throats over which is the best method," she said.
Some of today's provocative issues, including religion in the classroom and the impact of immigration, arose in other forms in past eras, Patton noted.
The program opens by examining the cobbled-together approach that passed for education in young America. In pre-Revolutionary times, only larger New England towns were legally required to build schools.
Elsewhere, if formal schooling occurred it was because a community was motivated to pool its resources and hire a teacher. There were also "dame schools" led by women who were a cross between teacher and baby sitter.
Most schooling was linked to the King James version of the Bible. The most common book, the New England Primer, was used to teach reading and the Protestant catechism, according to the film.
By the time of the Revolutionary War, the majority of Americans were just literate enough to read a newspaper and the Bible. In 1776, average lifetime school attendance was about 80 days (in 2001, the figure was 14.5 years).
For Jefferson, state-supported schooling to create an informed citizenry was essential to democracy — for boys more than girls, however, and for slaves not at all.
His was a hard-fought but losing cause: In Virginia, legislators rebuffed his efforts to guarantee education.
"People just thought it was an insane notion for you to pay for your neighbor's kid to go to school," Patton said.
It would take time and an energetic advocate to change attitudes.
Horace Mann of Massachusetts, described in the film as a "consummate politician," became the state's first secretary of education and an effective cheerleader for public schools.
It has been a difficult march toward true educational equality.
The PBS film details the anti-Catholic bias in schools that ultimately helped propel the formation of a national network of Catholic schools, the nation's major alternative school system.
