I read in the paper today the increasing use of the word “degree” to describe a high school “diploma”.  These are bits of paper stating the completion of a prescribed course of study, usually four years in length.  High school is usually for teen-agers while college is for those who complete high school and are eligible for a “degree” usually after four years.

I really should not be concerned with this subject but it is just one more piece of evidence that our educational system has become confused with its purpose and importance in our social, political and economic system.  The schools, when we use that term, usually mean the PUBLIC SCHOOLS and these basically mean the system of education beginning in kindergarten and ending in the twelfth grade.  This has been described as a thirteen-year prison term imposed by “government” upon innocents. This is a prime example of a disregard for a knowledge of history.

The only reason I am concerned with this subject is that I taught the history of education for many years and have become even more convinced that the course of democratic history is entwined with the development of the PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

My knowledge of the history of education includes the obscure fact that education in what became the United States of America was begun in New England with the establishment of the first Anglo-Saxon school, Harvard, a college with the sole intention of providing ministers that were in short supply in the Colony of Massachusetts.  Colleges were the important thing and all you needed to enter them was a proof of literacy and numbers.  The “schools” of that time were not public but for-profit enterprises.  The only reason, two centuries later, public systems of “free” education were debated and finally adopted was because the alternative was building prisons.

This ground has been covered repeatedly.  My high school "diploma" was granted me even though I graduated in the third quarter, below the halfway point in my class.  I earned a college “degree” in Rutgers, only because Uncle Sam paid my way.  Rutgers gave me a provisional entrance approval with the proviso that if I didn’t come up to snuff, out I would go.  Since that time, the war raging over who shall or should be educated has gone on and on. 

Mostly, we see America convinced by the propaganda of the elite that public monies should support their private schools with little or none left over for PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The untutored masses confuse this with education at the same time they think degrees are granted by High Schools. These people need more education.