Before around 1880, most people received very rudimentary tuition in reading and writing, or none at all. Only the relatively affluent received a great deal of tuition in their formative years largely by private tutoring methods, or by attending boarding schools, etc, and a few went on to the universities. In working class households, younger children made themselves useful around the house to some extent and teenagers were put to work either in family businesses, farms or in apprenticeships as early as the age of 12. Child labour in general was common and accepted in the interests of helping the household, earning another income, etc. Laws and social attitudes changed around child labour in the middle of the 18th century as industrialisation was getting underway. In around 1880, at least in the UK and Australia, and most likely the US and much of Europe simultaneously, it was held in public policy that basic literacy and numeracy were now an essential part of living in society, clearly as technology etc picked up in leaps and bounds. The way to do this was to enforce mandatory schooling for some years, although perhaps only to what is now Year 7 level as a minimum. The extension of schooling and effective helplessness into adolescence and early adulthood came later.
This late Victorian era was seen as the great 'age of institutionalisation' -- the creation of schools, hospitals, factories, prisons -- as also named by the OP -- and other organising structures on a large and systematic scale.
Many working class parents resented this public policy initiative at the time, in around 1880, and were concerned for bullying, losing their children from home who were useful and contributed to household income, etc, and where they could keep a watchful eye over them and remonstrate with them as necessary. As noted in the OP and other remarks, schools barely achieve their basic literacy and numeracy goals for the working class even today -- although that is all they really were ever intended to do, to enable adult participation in a more information-oriented and technical society -- and the economically efficient high student:teacher ratios allow for low levels of supervision, bullying practices, formation of Lord of the Flies patterns and cliques, and so on. Child development and psychology awareness should of course also play a part in managing a large number of unrelated children responsibly. The formation of cliques and bullying cliques in particular might be anticipated given a low level of adult supervision to separate or control certain children and adolescents. Modern society has fragmented and individualised people at home also, with sprawling suburbia further contributing to a sense of isolation and need to belong to a defining group when drawn together for institutional reasons.
Naturally distracting kids with sports and other physical activities they like is also used to try to keep them under control (apart from the benefits of lifelong physical activity). The curriculum content really doesn't matter as long as basic literacy and numeracy is achieved for most. Higher performers will naturally go on to get better marks, have a more enriched curriculum, and eventually go to college or university. They are more likely to take an interest in learning for its own sake, and explore intellectual areas of interest outside of their immediate jobs.
A 'rights based' approach appealing to reason -- which children possess at least to some extent, and can over-ride their other emotions as a kind of cognitive-behavioural approach -- can also work well to reduce bullying, by emphasising respect for others, observing 'the golden rule', and so on. Schools that have instituted such a framework have reported good results. Probably not enough of this is done, and it is not widespread or enshrined in the system either.
All the foregoing goes some way to explaining the observations of the OP quotation above. Not as well written as for my PhD thesis, but there you have it. The only way around the problems is possibly streaming of students of different abilities into different classes and even into different schools -- which is where the private schools for the very rich originally came into play -- and in fact were originally the only real schools.Statistics: Posted by SydneyPSIder — 06 Aug 2014, 13:45
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