22. Education is a frog in the pond

The dual hit of Black Lives and Covid-19 is shining a bright light on many things in our country, including education. In moving to online classes, primary and secondary schools are troubled by students without Internet access, and students who have relied on school meals for basic food needs. Teachers’ own health needs, skills as online communicators, and school budgets are being stretched.

Colleges and universities have special problems, because dormitory housing and athletics are big income producers. And foreign students pay premium tuitions—which schools have come to rely on. Trump Administration visa rejections for foreign students who attend online only campuses have schools scrambling.

It might be an ugly analogy, but American education seems to me like the famed frog. The education frog emerged from the ferment of early European settlement, became a full-throated croaker in the 1950s, was tossed in warm water in the 1970s, and now is roiling in the boil. 

The City of Boston founded its Latin School, a public high school offering free education to boys, rich or poor, in 1635. Harvard became the first of nine “Colonial Colleges”  in 1636. All were established by churches—Puritan, Presbyterian, etc.; seven, including Harvard and Yale, became non-sectarian members of the Ivy League.

In 1785, the Northwest Land Ordinance set aside section 16 in every township in the developing nation for public schools. By 1900, 31 states had compulsory school attendance for students from ages 8-14, and by 1918, every state required students to complete elementary school.

In 1862, the Land Grants College Act provided lands for public colleges to build on, or sell to endow. OSU, WSU, and U Idaho are all land grant colleges. (The lands were Indian lands, but that’s another issue!)  

In the 1950s—60s, when I went to school, free k-12 for all—and free or inexpensive college at state schools—was assumed. We even included African-Americans into formerly segregated state systems after Brown v. Board of Education.

Today, by the light of Covid-BLM, k-12 schools are creeping back to the churches, and “public” colleges, reliant on escalating tuitions and foreign students, are no longer easily available to men and women, “rich or poor.” The education frog is in very hot water.

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