You've probably heard the name Horace Mann.
He was a 19th century reformer who championed the abolition of slavery,
the rights of women, and most famously, the American public school system.
As Adam Harris wrote for the Atlantic,
Mann sought to mold a certain kind of student, conscientious, zealous, inquisitive.
Augustina Paglion would probably add another word, obedient.
Augustina is a political scientist at UC San Diego.
Her new book, Raised to the Rise and Spread of Mass Education,
argues that the roots of the world's modern education systems were based not on progressive ideals,
but on a desire to suppress unruly populations.
My name's Jerusalem Dempsis.
I'm a staff writer at the Atlantic.
And this is good on paper,
a policy show that questions what we really know about popular narratives.
Public education is largely seen as a progressive enterprise meant to provide opportunities
to those who could not afford an education on their own.
But its roots may have been anything but.
Beginning with Prussia in the mid-1700s.
Agostina looks at the curious timing of when countries invest in their education systems and finds
that investment comes in response to political elite witnessing threats to their political power.