Why Do We Even Have Schools? Education's Past and Purpose

UPI Study › Courses › Educational Psychology › Free lessons › Lesson 1.1 Free with a free account

Why Do We Even Have Schools? Education's Past and Purpose

Educational Psychology · Chapter 1: Foundations of Education and LearningSection 1.1 · lesson 1 of 10011 min · free with a free account

Next lesson: How People Learn: Psychology Meets the Classroom →

Earn 3 college credits for Educational PsychologyRecommended for credit by NCCRS · Psychology 120 · self-paced · one payment, lifetime access
Enroll in Educational Psychology · $250 →Download the syllabus (PDF)

In this lesson

A look at education's past, and the competing purposes it has always served.

  • Trace formal schooling from Sumerian scribes to state mandates
  • Separate the five aims schools are asked to serve
  • Explain how the Prussian model shaped the modern classroom
  • Weigh what compulsory attendance costs as well as gains

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,563 words). Read along, or search it.

Foundations of Education and Learning

Why Do We Even Have Schools?

Here is a question schools almost never ask about themselves. Why do they exist at all? Most of us pass through twelve years of schooling without once asking it. The answer is not obvious, and it has never been settled. This section traces formal education from ancient Sumer right through to the present day. Along the way we will name five competing aims that schools are asked to serve. Those aims do not agree with each other, and that is the important part. Their disagreement is the source of almost every public argument about education. We then follow compulsory schooling from a single state law to a declared human right. And we ask what that mandate costs, as well as what it buys. By the end, the school you attended should look like a choice, not a given.

Ancient Roots

Schools Older Than the Alphabet We Use

Formal schooling is not a modern invention. Its roots run back thousands of years. They reach into the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome. In ancient Sumer they were called edubba, scribal schools for reading and writing cuneiform. Notice what they were for. Administration and religion, not personal growth. The earliest schools on record existed to staff a bureaucracy. Athens took a far wider view, and the contrast is instructive. Philosophy, rhetoric, music and physical training, all aimed at cultivating the ideal citizen. Sparta, in the same era and the same broad culture, did almost none of that. Spartan education was military conditioning, and very little else. So here is the first lesson. What a society values, its schools will teach.

Church And University

The Medieval Curriculum and the First Universities

After Rome, European education passed largely into the hands of the Catholic Church. Cathedral schools and monasteries became the main centers of learning across the continent. The curriculum was theology, Latin, and the liberal arts, split into two named halves. The trivium covered grammar, rhetoric and logic, the verbal arts. The quadrivium covered arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, the mathematical ones. Seven subjects, taught for centuries, as the working definition of an educated person. Then the universities arrived, and learning acquired a permanent address. Bologna in ten eighty-eight, Oxford around ten ninety-six, Paris around eleven fifty. By the Renaissance, humanists such as Erasmus pushed back on a purely religious curriculum. They wanted classical literature and critical thought, and that argument seeded secular schooling.

The Long Arc

Four Eras, Stacked Rather Than Replaced

Step back, and this whole history falls into four rough eras. Ancient schools trained scribes to serve administration and religion. Medieval schools trained clergy and scholars for the Church. Industrial schools trained workers and citizens for the nation. Modern systems promise education to every child, as a matter of right. Here is the part that is easy to miss. No era swept away the one before it. Each simply layered on top. That is why a modern school still sorts pupils by age, and still trains for work. Every era left sediment, and the classroom you remember is the whole stack.

Key Idea

Every School System Mirrors Its Society

Here is the single idea that organizes everything else in this section. Every school system is a mirror of the society that created it. Four forces do most of the shaping, and they are worth naming. Economic demands. Political ideology. Religious authority. Cultural values. Between them, those four settle three questions about any school. What it teaches, who is allowed to attend, and how learning gets assessed. Hold onto this, because it reframes a great many public arguments. When people argue about curriculum, they are rarely arguing about curriculum. They are arguing about what kind of society they want, and school is where that becomes policy.

Three Aims

Citizen, Worker, or Whole Person

So why do societies pay for schooling? Three broad answers have been offered. The first is civic, and it is the oldest justification in a democracy. Education exists to produce informed citizens who can take part in democratic life. Thomas Jefferson made the classic version. An educated citizenry founds a functioning republic. So schools teach history, government and rights, and also tolerance and respect for law. The second aim is economic. Schooling as preparation for productive work. Mass schooling spread partly to supply factories with literate, disciplined workers. Today the same logic reappears as vocational training and career readiness standards. The third aim is personal development, and it pulls in a different direction. John Dewey and the progressive educators argued that school should cultivate the whole child. Creativity, critical thinking, emotional well-being, and a lasting appetite for learning.

Five Aims

The Full Set Schools Are Asked to Serve

Those three aims are the classic trio, but the full list runs to five. Cultural transmission is the fourth of them. Schools pass shared knowledge, values and traditions from one generation to the next. Social equity is the fifth, and the most recent to be argued for. Schooling to reduce inequality, giving every child access regardless of background. Read all five together, and the conflict between them jumps straight out. Cultural transmission asks schools to conserve. Social equity asks them to disrupt. Economic productivity wants measurable output, while personal development resists measurement. No school system satisfies all five at once, which is the honest position. Every generation rebalances them and calls the result reform. Ask which aim got demoted.

Print And Factory

Two Technologies That Rebuilt the School

Two technologies reshaped schooling more than any theory ever did. The first was the printing press, in the fifteenth century. Written knowledge stopped being scarce, and that mattered hugely for the Protestant Reformation. Protestants demanded literacy, so that believers could read the Bible for themselves. So reading stopped being a clerical skill, and became a religious duty. Across northern Europe, literacy gained a motive with nothing to do with work. The second technology was the factory, and its effect was more dramatic still. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, populations moved from farms into cities. Economies moved from agriculture into manufacturing, and governments wanted education at scale. The answer they adopted was the Prussian model, and here it is. Age-graded classrooms, standardized curricula, compulsory attendance, and certified teachers. Read that list again, because it describes the school of today. A design built for industrial Prussia remains the default across Europe and North America.

Sputnik And After

A Target That Keeps Moving

The twentieth century kept applying pressure, from directions nobody had planned for. In nineteen fifty-seven, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. One satellite launch redirected American education policy toward science. The United States poured money into science and mathematics teaching. Note the mechanism, because it repeats. A shock arrives, and the curriculum changes. The civil rights movements applied a different kind of pressure entirely. Their demand was not new subjects, but equitable access to the existing ones. Then the technology revolution reshaped labor markets, and schooling along with them. Today the pressures are digital literacy and global citizenship. And an awkward one. Preparing students for jobs that do not yet exist. The aims and structure of education are never finished, and never will be.

Compulsory Schooling

From Privilege to Legal Obligation

For most of human history, schooling was a privilege of the elite. The idea that every child must attend school is remarkably recent. Massachusetts passed the first American compulsory schooling law in eighteen fifty-two. The requirements were modest. Children between eight and fourteen, for twelve weeks a year. Twelve weeks. Not twelve years. The coalition behind that law is worth examining closely. Reformers, industrialists and civic leaders, who agreed on very little else. Horace Mann was one of those reformers, and his reasoning had two halves. He believed universal schooling would reduce poverty and prevent crime. He also believed it would unify a diverse immigrant population around shared American values. That second motive is less comfortable, and it is inseparable from the first. By nineteen eighteen, every state in the union had an attendance law.

Going Global

Education Becomes a Declared Right

Compulsory schooling did not stay American for very long. It traveled through colonialism, nationalism, and international development agendas. The decisive moment came in nineteen forty-eight, and it changed the language. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated that everyone has the right to education. Elementary education, it said, shall be free and compulsory. That sentence turned schooling from a policy choice into a human right. Two later commitments tried to make that right real. UNESCO launched Education for All in nineteen ninety, and Sustainable Development Goal four followed in twenty fifteen. And yet the gap has not closed, which is the uncomfortable part. Roughly two hundred and forty-four million children worldwide are still out of school. That is the mid twenty-twenties figure, decades after the right was declared. A legal mandate does not, by itself, produce a classroom seat. Poverty, conflict and gender inequality keep the gap open.

The Tensions

What Compulsion Costs, and Why Teachers Should Know

Compulsion buys a great deal, and it also costs something. Two trade-offs run through the entire debate, and both are still live. The first is opportunity against authority. A compulsory law expands opportunity, and extends state power over families. The second is standardization against diversity. A common experience can flatten cultural and linguistic difference. These are not abstract tensions, and you can see exactly where they surface. Arguments over home-schooling rights, over religious exemptions, over Indigenous control of Indigenous education. Each of those is the same underlying conflict, wearing different clothes. Universal access on one side, community autonomy on the other. Here is why that matters to a teacher, and not only to a historian. Some families arrive distrusting schools, and that distrust has a documented history. A teacher who knows the history can build a partnership, rather than take offence. Schools are not a fixed institution. They are a social product, still being argued over.

About Educational Psychology at UPI Study

Educational Psychology (Psychology 120) is a self-paced online course of 100 video lessons in 11 chapters, from memory, conditioning and child development to motivation, individual differences, assessment, instruction and educational technology. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.

Every lesson transcript is free on pages like this one, and the videos are free with a free UPI Study account. Enrolling adds a practice quiz after each lesson, the graded work and final exam that earn the credit, lifetime access, and an official transcript on completion. UPI Study has helped over 130,000 students with college credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Enroll now → Course details Download the syllabus All Psychology and social science courses Every course with PRO →

Why take it here

Why students take Educational Psychology with UPI Study

How people learn, and how to teach themEducational Psychology explains how students learn, develop and stay motivated, and how teachers assess and support them. It is a standard course in education and teaching degrees and a common psychology elective.
Credit at a fraction of the priceThe same 3 credits can cost $750 or more at a US college. Here it is one payment, self-paced, with lifetime access.
Finish your degree soonerTransfer credits reduce the courses you still owe, so you can graduate earlier or lighten a heavy semester.
Strengthen an applicationA completed college-level course on an official transcript shows admissions and scholarship committees you can do the work.
Study on your own scheduleNo start dates, no deadlines. Watch the lessons, practice, and take the final when you are ready.
130,000+students helped with college creditsACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Where the credit goes

Universities that work with NCCRS

Educational Psychology carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Thomas Edison State UniversityThomas Edison State UniversitySigned partnerUniversity of the PeopleUniversity of the PeopleSigned partnerCharter Oak State CollegeCharter Oak State CollegeSigned partnerStrayer UniversityStrayer UniversitySigned partnerColumbia Southern UniversityColumbia Southern UniversitySigned partnerIndiana TechIndiana TechSigned partnerPenn StatePenn StateWorks with NCCRSSouthern New Hampshire UniversitySouthern New Hampshire UniversityWorks with NCCRSSUNYSUNYWorks with NCCRS +many more cooperating universitiesFind my college →

Find my college → Not listed? Ask Athena in the corner of this page, or book a 15-minute call.

FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Why Do We Even Have Schools? Education's Past and Purpose

What was the Prussian model of education?
The Prussian model was a design for mass schooling built on age-graded classrooms, standardized curricula, compulsory attendance and certified teachers. It spread during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when populations moved from farms into cities and governments wanted education at scale. That same list still describes most schools today, and the design remains the default across Europe and North America.
What are the five aims of education that schools are expected to serve?
Schools are commonly asked to serve five aims: civic preparation, economic productivity, personal development, cultural transmission and social equity. These aims pull against each other. Cultural transmission asks schools to conserve, social equity asks them to disrupt, and economic output wants measurement that personal development resists. Because no system satisfies all five at once, each generation rebalances them and calls the result reform.
When did compulsory schooling begin in the United States?
Massachusetts passed the first American compulsory schooling law in 1852. It required children between eight and fourteen to attend school for twelve weeks a year, not twelve years. Reformers such as Horace Mann argued that universal schooling would reduce poverty and crime and unify a diverse immigrant population around shared values. By 1918, every state had an attendance law.
What are the drawbacks of compulsory education?
Compulsory education expands opportunity, but it also extends state power over families, and that is its main cost. A second trade-off is standardization against diversity, because a common school experience can flatten cultural and linguistic differences. These tensions surface in debates over homeschooling rights, religious exemptions and Indigenous control of Indigenous education, each pitting universal access against community autonomy.

About the Educational Psychology course

How many college credits is Educational Psychology?
Educational Psychology (Psychology 120) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
How much does Educational Psychology cost and what is included?
$250, paid once, with lifetime access: all 100 video lessons, a practice quiz after each, the graded work and final exam, and an official transcript when you finish. Students who want several courses choose UPI Study PRO instead.
Which universities accept UPI Study credits?
UPI Study has signed partner agreements with universities such as Thomas Edison State University, University of the People and Charter Oak State College, and works with universities such as Penn State, SNHU and SUNY. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities. Use "Find my college" on this page to check yours.
How long does Educational Psychology take?
It is self-paced with no deadlines. The 100 lessons total about 15 hours of video; most students add reading and practice time and finish in a few weeks to a few months, on their own schedule.
How are the exams done?
Quizzes and assignments are online in the course. The final exam is taken online with proctoring; a person on the UPI Study team checks assignments, usually within two days.
How do my credits reach my college?
When the course shows 100% complete, request the official transcript from your dashboard. It is sent to the college you name, and you can send it to more than one. Check your college first with "Find my college" on this page, or ask Athena.

Ready for the full course? Earn 3 credits in Educational Psychology.

100 video lessons, a quiz after each one, and the graded work that earns the credit. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.

Enroll in Educational Psychology →Download the syllabusEvery course with PRO →
Educational Psychology
3 credits · NCCRSEnroll →