At 17:35 06/10/2010 -0400, REH wrote:
When education went private and students began paying the actual bill then college became impossible for the poor.
You have things the wrong way round. Education was private from the very beginning. Think of the gymnasia of ancient Greece. Think of the grammar schools of Medieval England. My own old school, Bablake, started as a gift from Queen Isabella for a dozen poor boys of Coventry (free board, clothing and education -- so long as they sang Mass for her every day!), later added to by her grandson, the Black Prince, in 1359, later added to by the merchants of the town, particularly by one Thomas Wheatley in 1566. He was an ironmonger who made manufacturing instruments for the wool merchants. He had sent his agent John Oughton to Spain for some Toledo steel wedges. When his agent returned, Thomas Wheatley opened the box and discovered that he'd been sent gold instead*. He sent the box back to Spain to correct the accident, but John Oughton couldn't find the original merchant, so he returned with the gold. Thomas Wheatley then donated it to Bablake and this enabled the school to expand to 41.
Think also of the private schools that the industrial workers of the big manufacturing cities of England set up in the 19th century -- in addition to the Medieval grammar schools and the religious charity schools. Over 90% of the factory workers paid a penny or two a week for their children to be educated up to the age of 11 or 12. Despite what the out-of-date history books tell you, pre-puberty child labour in the factories or the mines was very rare and those parents who forced it on their children were looked upon with contempt by other parents** (as in India today). Like Count Bismark in Germany, the British state took over the schools at around 1870/80 in order to be able to indoctrinate children into mindless nationalism. No wonder millions of the young men enthusiastically signed up for the First World War or were voluntarily conscripted by both Germany and the UK ("Give me a child for seven years and he's mine for life", as the Jesuits used to say.)
(*Spain was plundering the Aztecs and Mayans at the time and gold was being imported by the shipload, causing all sorts of chaos in Spain! **In the cotton factories of Lancashire only one boy was needed every 50 cotton weavers [to collect the waste cotton under the machines]. In the coal mines only one or two boys were needed to feed and lead the pit ponies.)
KSH Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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