Government schools were ideological from the beginning. You need to know more about the Unitarians and the Owenites. Read Sam Blumenfeld’s “Are Public Schools Necessary?”
Maybe these are good points. But I’m not writing about the history of education as history. All of my interest is in what can we do now. And one of the things we can do is help pillars of the community, etc. to understand why we have dismal education statistics. Maybe then they will be motivated to oppose the Education Establishment. I’m always amazed by the passivity of the groups that should be coming to the rescue: Chamber of Commerce, military groups, big media, political parties. I want to encourage them to look more objectively at the theories and methods used in the schools.