By Lee Gottlieb

Today, in the year 2003, the public education systems in the fifty states are in shambles. The prevailing belief is that the way to create a more efficient system is by training more teachers, placing fewer students in a classroom, and allowing teachers to spend more one-on-one time with each student.

At the other end of the spectrum of opinion, some people believe that public schools are a total waste of tax-payer money and that the best way to eliminate ignorance and crime in the country is for all children to be educated in private secular and religious schools. Furthermore, these people believe tuitions of such schooling should be paid by government from public school funds.

In between the two, there are many other opinions how to improve public school education in the United States.

There is also much talk in the media and in political circles about the function of public school education. Some "experts" believe the goal of public education is to guide students to be the best they can be: to help them develop to the highest levels of achievement possible.

Others claim public education should not be required to do more than to develop a child's basic level of proficiency in reading, writing, and mathematics and that after this level is achieved the child should use his or her own natural ambitions and abilities for full personal development.

As a result of these varied "expert" opinions, many parents of America's school-age children are confused and uncertain not only about which of the local public schools would be best for their children, but what knowledge they should be required to learn and how thoroughly they should learn it.

This article is an attempt to eliminate such confusion.

Part of the confusion is because current generations of Americans are woefully ignorant of American history or they would know public education in the U.S. was initiated only after a long, hard fought struggle by the common people of the republic: the farmers, factory workers, craftsmen, and domestic workers

Why was there a struggle for such a noble cause, and who opposed them? Rich Americans, opposed public school education, of course. They didn't want the children of farmers and industrial workers to acquire the same knowledge as their own children.

They especially didn't want their servants to become "educated," because educted people have greater expectations than those of uneducated people; they want something better for themselves and their children than being domestics in the homes of rich people or laborers in a factory owned by rich men.

The fight for public school education in the country was purely an extension of class conflict; the eternal battle between rich and poor people. It's a subject strangely missing in current discussions about public school education.

It's also missing in the political discussions about pitiful conditions in the areas of crime, healthcare, and poverty, which are also the consequences of class conflict.

The concept of educating the children of commoners in schools paid for by tax money had one other formidable foe: organized religion.

In all countries, and in all past eras, religious leaders have been the traditional ally of the wealthy and powerful. In the 19th century, the stewards of organized Christianity in the U.S. opposed public education and fought just as vigorously as wealthy Americans to prevent the birth of secular, non-religious education for the masses of common children.

Why? Because in the early 19th century the only education available to common children was religious school training, which was basically restricted to reading, writing, and religion.

After all, the successful—and traditional—way to imbue poor, unlearned peope with the doctrines of Christianity was to have them learn the writings of the Bible, which they couldn't do if they couldn't read. It was, therefore, essential that poor people learn to read.

Religious leaders also feared the thought of losing religious school students to public schools, and were horrified at the thought of teaching common children secular ideas that were contradictory to religious dogma. This, they feared correctly, would result in the eventual loss of Church membership.

The study of history reveals still another relevant fact that must never be forgotten by contemporary or future working Americans. The early masses of immigrants to this country fled Europe to remove themselves not only from the oppression of arrogant kings and wealthy aristocracies, but also from the brute-force oppression of organized Christianity.

But despite the opposition of both wealthy Americans and organized religions, the masses of poorer Americans won the battle for secular, public school education. And despite the inadequate funding of public schools ever since by a political system created by the wealthy for the wealthy, public school education in the United States has been an overwhelming and unqualified success.

That is, until the end of World War II.

Prior to the war, and during the Great Depression of the 1930s, American workers and their labor unions had finally begun to win demands for fairer wages and safer working conditions from wealthy factory owners. This, of course, angered the wealthy who begrudged and resented any reduction in their profits, as much as they resented a reduction in the differences between the lifestyles of working people and rich people.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal programs couldn't solve the problems of the Great Depression caused by the unregulated capitalist system. It was World War II that saved the system from death. It was World War II that gave the leaders of the American Establishment time to plan postwar strategies to rebuff American workers and their demands for fairer wages and a bigger slice of the American pie.

Part of this strategy was the eventual dismantling of state public education systems and the lowering of the intellectual capabilities and expectations of working class children.

The abnormally long post-war prosperity for middle-class workers ended in the 1970s when many of the corporations owned or controlled by American Establishment families were moved overseas, throwing millions of Americans into the unemployment lines. That same twenty-five year period witnessed the slow transformation of public high schools and colleges from institutions dedicated to academic studies into agencies specializing in vocational training.

The dismantling of the public school systems began when the Congress passed a law authorizing "charter" schools, which are funded with tax dollars, but free of most state regulations. Charter schools function independently of a school district and are expected to offer courses differing from public schools.

Soon after the Republicans illegally stole the 2000 presidential election, the republic was flooded with propaganda—created in the advertising and public relations offices of the republic's largest corporations—attacking the merits of the public school system.

Our unelected Republican president has since advocated and legalized the "school voucher" law that siphons additional public funds away from already underfunded public school systems, diverting them to religious schools.

Yet, few working parents can comprehend what this means, anymore than they can envision the bleak future in store for their children.