Sublime

Schools are not good at dealing with kids who show signs of independent thinking.

Dr. Joseph Mayer Rice toured public schools in thirty-six cities, he came away appalled at what he saw, calling one New York City school “the most dehumanizing institution that I have ever laid eyes upon, each child being treated as if he possessed a memory and the faculty of speech, but no individuality, no sensibilities, no soul.”

These liberal education reformers were attempting to reconcile what the historian of education David Labaree has called the three competing ideals in American education, each corresponding to a different end goal and a different model of the student subject. The goal of “democratic equality” sees students as citizens, with the role of schools being

Young people do not degenerate; this occurs only after grown men have already become corrupt,” wrote Montesquieu in the eighteenth century.1 Our children may take this statement to heart when they find that their elders are leaving them with a poorer future. Three-quarters of American adults today are not confident that their children will be bette