[ExI] How to get a healthy country

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Oct 16, 2007, at 11:47 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> On 17/10/2007, J. Andrew Rogers <andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:
>> Odd.  Public universal education in the US (a 20th century invention)
>> did not significantly improve educational outcomes but it *massively*
>> increased cost.  Far more tax dollars are spent on education than
>> defense, but an argument could be made that the latter has been much
>> more efficient at producing results.
>
> Are you saying that people were just as well educated in the  
> nineteenth century?


19th century Americans were exceptionally literate by all accounts,  
due in large part to a confluence of social and cultural pressures  
that demanded literacy from all individuals as a matter of basic  
decency and went to great lengths to ensure that everyone was decent  
in that sense.  A number of foreign historians of the period marveled  
at it, and the printing and publishing records of the period strongly  
suggest it.  I think it was Alexis de Tocqueville (circa 1830) who  
wrote something to the effect that the street urchins were as well- 
educated as the aristocrats in Europe.  Some of my very old relatives  
that I have met were common rural folk that were educated before the  
availability of public education but it did not stop them from  
getting science and engineering degrees from good universities.  It  
is an anecdote and all of those relatives have died over the last  
couple decades, but it indicates to me that the pre-public system was  
not exactly poor.  It is a pity education is not valued nearly as  
much today in American culture as it was back then.

The history of education in the US is unique and pretty interesting;  
I do not know of any other country with an education history quite  
like it.  The advent of public education was the result of political  
power plays; it was forced on a population that neither wanted it nor  
saw a use for it.  The results were widely considered deplorable  
relative to the non-public alternative at the time and little seems  
to have changed, but laws were passed that made it the only choice  
for all practical purposes.


US history is a bit unintuitive.  Virtually every government  
institution we have today was invented at some point in the 20th  
century, but it feels like they've been there since the beginning.

Cheers,

J. Andrew Rogers