[Aracelis]

Ping!

[PatrickHenry]

Interesting. I've read that our first government-funded, mandatory schools were in Massachusetts in the 1840s, around the same time that Massachusetts was disestablishing its state church (it was the last state to do so). The model for the Massachusetts school system was (so I've read) taken from imperial Prussia.

[PatrickHenry]

Ah, found a website on this: Why There Are Public Schools. Talks about Prussia, and says: "American advocates of compulsory state schooling observed the Prussian system, became enamored of it, and adopted it as their model. As former teacher John Taylor Gatto writes ... "