The Messianic Character of American Education

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The Messianic Character of American Education

R.J. Rushdoony

Rushdoony’s study tells us an important part of American history: exactly what has public education been trying to accomplish? Before the 1830s and Horace Mann, no schools in the U.S. were state supported or state controlled. They were local, parent-teacher enterprises, supported without taxes, and taking care of all children. They were remarkably high in standard and were Christian. From Mann to the present, the state has used education to socialize the child. The school’s basic purpose, according to its own philosophers, is not education in the traditional sense of the 3 R’s. Instead, it is to promote “democracy” and “equality,” not in their legal or civic sense, but in terms of the engineering of a socialized citizenry. Public education became the means of creating a social order of the educators design. Such men saw themselves and the school in messianic terms. This book was instrumental in launching the Christian school and homeschool movements.

Foreward

Preface

Introduction: By Ivan R. Bierly

1. Liberal Education

2. The “Divine Rights” of Education

3. Horace Mann and the Messianic Character of American Education

4. James G. Carter: An Engine to Sway the People

5. Edward A. Sheldon: Oswego and the Secular School

6. Henry Barnard: The Wheeling of the Spheres

7. William Torrey Harris: The State and the True Self of Man

8. John Swett: The Self-Preservation of the State

9. Charles De Garmo: Morality as Social Adjustment