• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

From the Government

How Governments Have Made Us Healthier, Wealthier, and Better Educated and Made Our Lives Safer and Fairer

How Governments Have Made Us
Healthier, Wealthier, and Better Educated
and Made Our Lives Safer and Fairer

  • About
  • Archive
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Local governments / Public Schools

Public Schools

August 29, 2020 by Otis 2 Comments

As we’ve seen, many of the things we look to government for today—clean drinking water, waste disposal, public health, fire protection, and so on—became government obligations only in the 19th century. Before the 1800s, it was pretty much everyone for himself. It was more or less the same with education, though at least the idea of free, compulsory public education went back to colonial days.

This notion—that everyone ought to be educated well enough to read and write—began with the Puritans in Massachusetts who thought literacy was important for religion and that cities and towns ought to pay for rudimentary education. (Later on, people like Thomas Jefferson advocated for public education as necessary for democracy and commerce to thrive.)

These ideas did not spread far, though, until the early 1800s, as states in the Northeast and Midwest passed laws requiring taxpayer-supported schools and requiring attendance by every child until age 14. Gradually state after state followed suit, until by the early 20th century, every state had compulsory, tax-supported public education systems.

The results have been dramatic. In 1870, 20 percent of Americans and nearly 80 percent of African Americans told census takers they could not read or write. By the late 1970s, those numbers had been driven down to 0.6 percent of Americans and 1.6 percent of African-Americans. For this enormous accomplishment—the spread of basic literacy to virtually every American—the credit belongs to the public schools.

Much has changed about public education over the years: the establishment of secondary schools (high schools) that followed primary (elementary) schools, the end of schools segregated by gender and race, a wave of school district consolidations following World War II, the rise of testing as a way of measuring educational achievement, the rise of special education for children with disabilities, and the creation of charter schools supported by taxes but operating independently of the school system.

Yet the most important features of public education remain unchanged: They are free to attend and compulsory for children until their teenage years, and government pays for public education through taxes levied at the state and local levels. If you attended a public school or have benefited from having these schools in your community, you can thank government for it.

More information:

https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/a-history-of-public-schools

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education

Give the credit to: local governments 30%, state governments 60%, federal government 10%

Photo by throgers licensed under Creative Commons.

Filed Under: Local governments, State governments Tagged With: Better educated, Children, Education, Public schools

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Public Libraries | From the Government says:
    December 5, 2020 at 4:45 pm

    […] examples, the idea of tax-supported public libraries spread slowly, tied to a growing belief in the value of public schools (which were also based on three beliefs: free for students, compulsory for children until […]

    Reply
  2. The Internet | From the Government says:
    March 27, 2021 at 7:05 pm

    […] in the public because governments could do the work cheaper and better, things like public transit, public schools, and fire safety and prevention. Now, let’s turn to something that began as a public innovation […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Public Libraries | From the Government Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Categories

Tags

1930s 1964-72 Better educated Children Cities Civil War Collaboration Economic development Education Elderly Energy Externalities Fairer Franklin Roosevelt Germ theory Health care Healthier Higher education Home ownership Late 1800s Lyndon Johnson Market failure National defense Parks Public health Public safety Public schools Public works Race to the Bottom Safer Tourism Transportation Wealthier

Recent Posts

  • Farmers Markets
  • Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks
  • The Postal Service
  • Consumer Product Safety
  • Workplace Safety
  • Dependable Insurance
  • Food and Drug Safety
  • Professional Licenses
  • Public Television and Radio
  • The Internet
  • Cooperative Extension
  • Weather Forecasts and Storm Warnings
  • The Census
  • Cleaner Air and Cleaner Water
  • Appliance Energy Standards
  • Minimum Wage
  • Unemployment Insurance
  • Human Genome Project
  • Sidewalks and Trails
  • Disaster Relief
  • Americans with Disabilities Act
  • Civil Rights and Voting Rights
  • Vocational Education
  • Public Libraries
  • Building Codes and Inspections
  • Elevator Inspections
  • National Defense
  • Driver’s Licenses
  • Public Transit
  • Streets and Roads
  • Honest Markets and Sound Banks
  • Rural Electrification and Rural Broadband
  • Interstate Transportation
  • Medicare
  • Social Security
  • Playgrounds and Recreation
  • Public Hospitals
  • Public Schools
  • The Courts
  • Police and Public Safety
  • Fire Safety and Prevention
  • Clean Drinking Water
  • Nuclear Safety and Nuclear Waste Disposal
  • Public Health and Disease Control
  • State and National Parks
  • City Parks
  • Waste Disposal and Public Sanitation
  • State Colleges and Universities
  • 30-Year Mortgage

Copyright © 2025 · Log in