There have been five educational revolutions in Western education.
1. The Catholic university (11th century)
2. New England Puritanism's tax-funded common schools (1642-47)
3. Prussia's nationalization of both, plus kindergarten (late 18th century)
4. College sports (1870's)
5. Khan Academy (2006-9)
Students were in charge initially in the university system. They paid teachers. But the teachers resented this system of economic authority. It put the students in charge. So they set up a new system: students paid the college, and the colleges hired the teachers. The students surrendered authority. All of this was under the authority of the local bishop. But the professors and students adopted black robes -- academic gowns -- to designate themselves as part of a separate legal order from both the bishops and the townspeople. It was not just town and gown. It was town vs. gown. The towns put up with it because the students spent money. The universities protected the students from both systems of rule: bishops and magistrates.
Students were never in charge in New England. Congregational churches were. But by forcing towns to pay for the education of the children of poor families, the Massachusetts Bay Colony's General Court transferred control to the local civil governments. The churches steadily lost authority.
The Prussian system transferred this authority to the central government. The Wikipedia entry is quite good.
The Prussian education system refers to the system of education established in Prussia as a result of educational reforms in the late 18th and early 19th century, which has had widespread influence since. It is predominantly used as an American political slogan in educational reform debates, since it was adopted by all American K-12 public schools and major universities as early as the late 18th century, and is often used as a derogatory term for education in the service of nation-building, teaching children and young adults blind obedience to authority, and reinforcing class and race prejudice. The actual Prussian education system was introduced as a basic concept in the late 18th century and was significantly enhanced after Prussia's defeat in the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars. The Prussian educational reforms inspired other countries and remains important as a biopower in the Foucaultian sense for nation-building. [Note -- this sentence is academy babble -- G.N.] Compulsory education on the Prussian example was soon mirrored in Scandinavia, and US states started to adopt the Prussian example. Early American adopters include Daniel Coit Gilman, who set up The General Education Board, later renamed The Rockefeller Foundation, and first president of Johns Hopkins, John Dewey at the University of Chicago, James Cattell at The University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, James Earl Russell at the New York College for the Training of Teachers, and many more. France and the UK failed to introduce similar systems until the 1880s.
Gilman was famous as the president of Johns Hopkins. But he was hired by JH from the University of California in 1876, where Gilman had been its third president. In 1855, he studied at the University of Berlin. (Note: He was a Skull & Bones member, and was a co-founder of the Russell Trust Association, which administers Bones' finances.)
The fourth revolution was college football. It was introduced in 1869 in the Ivy League to drain off student enthusiasm for pranks against faculty members. College sports redirected this enthusiasm and creativity against students at rival colleges. It worked. Then tax support and alumni support followed the win-loss record. This is why football coaches earn $5 million a year in tax-funded universities. It has to do with the flow of funds.
It always has.
The first four revolutions had an underlying strategy: to reduce the influence of students and their families. They strengthened college faculties.
The fifth revolution was student driven: Salman Khan's nieces and nephews. He posted math videos on YouTube. Other students joined in as free riders. Bill Gates entered the picture late in the process. He has persuaded Khan to adopt Common Core Curriculum. Money talks.
Khan's strategy is clear: free is hard to resist. If you offer something free, there will be takers. There are a lot of takers: 26 million students.
Khan Academy is a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a mission to change education for the better by providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. We believe that students of all ages should have free, unlimited access to the best educational content, and that they should be able to consume and master this content at their own pace. In addition, we believe that there are incredible opportunities to use intelligent software development, deep data analytics, and intuitive user interfaces to more effectively surface and present these educational resources to students and teachers around the world. Our library of content covers kindergarten to early college math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and reaches into humanities with tutorials on economics, finance, music, philosophy, and art history. We have over 26 million registered students and to date, we have delivered over 580 million lessons and 3.8 billion exercise problems.
BLINDSIDED
America has had independent education for a long time. Catholics set up parochial schools under local bishops in the second half of the nineteenth century. Immigrant Dutch set up board-run schools. Lutherans set up church schools.
In the 1970's, as the fundamentalists began opening brick-and-mortar schools, Catholic bishops started closing parochial schools. These had not been fully tuition-funded. They were a drain on diocese finances. Again, the flow of funds was crucial. Also, Post-Vatican II bishops began to lose interest paying for schools taught by nuns with a pre-Vatican II outlook. The nuns had rigid standards, from the older catechisms to the older wooden rulers which they used to rap unruly knuckles. "Spare the rod and spoil the child." If you want to read a book on this -- highly enthusiastic -- read Garry Wills' Bare Ruined Choirs (1972). I reviewed it -- highly unenthusiastic -- for The Wall Street Journal. Wills was the poster child of this transformation.
YouTube came online in 2005. In 2006, Khan posted his first videos.
Where were the bishops, the nuns, the Dutch, the Lutherans, and the fundamentalists? The low-hanging fruit of the fifth revolution was drooping there. Khan picked it.
Some bishop could have gone to a struggling parochial school and told the Mother Superior to start making YouTube videos. He could have paid for the cameras. All it would have taken was one school. English-speaking Catholics around the world could have taught their kids at home.
Any traditionalist Catholic college could have produced this. Well, anyway, a boring version of this. But not one of them did.
The leaders of the churches have been asleep at the academic wheel for a generation. The fundamentalists ignored all of this until the 1970's. The main exception is Liberty University, but if Ron Godwin had not persuaded Jerry Falwell to implement the home school plan I presented to Pat Robertson in 1982, which Robertson ignored, Liberty would have gone bankrupt. I wrote about this for Lew Rockwell here.
The Ron Paul Curriculum is a Khan knock-off, but without Common Core. It will never catch up. Nothing will catch up in my lifetime -- and even yours.
Meanwhile, no one is systematically monitoring what the Khan Academy teaches. Incredible.
Khan blindsided us all.
WHY?
One Catholic school or college could have done it. One fundamentalist day school could have done it. Liberty could have done it.
They didn't.
Why not?
Because they were all making their money in terms of tuition and dorm payments. They all had debts to pay off.
It was the mistake that let IBM pass over the PC revolution. It had the business market with the PC AT, a 286-based computer. But it refused to adopt Intel's 386 chip. The senior managers at Armonk saw the Boca Raton PC operation as a threat. They saw that the 386 would threaten the entry-level IBM mini market. So, they passed. Intel sold the chip to Compaq, which captured the business PC market. IBM never got it back.
Innovate or get passed by.
Innovate or get run over.
Innovate or die.
This is the free market in action.
Salman Khan stumbled into it. The rest of the educational world sat on the sidelines and mumbled: "This is no threat. Khan is not formally certified to teach. The Khan Academy is not state-accredited."
Whoosh. Gone.
A millennium of academic centralization and bureaucratization is ending. Good riddance.
As for college sports:
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