Originally Posted by
awake
"Wright and Owen advocated that the states simply organize a
series of institutions for the “general reception” of all children liv-
ing within that district. These establishments would be devoted to
the complete rearing of the various age groups of children. The
children would be forced to live at these places twenty-four hours
a day. The parents would be allowed to visit their children from
time to time. From the age of two every child would be under the
care and guidance of the State.
In these nurseries of a free nation, no inequality must be allowed to enter. Fed at a common board;
clothed in a common garb...raised in the exercise of common duties... in the exercise of the same
virtues, in the enjoyment of the same pleasures; in the study of the same nature; in pursuit of the
same object...say! Would not such a race...work out the reform of society and perfect the free
institutions of America?
Owen was quite insistent that the system not “embrace any- thing less than the whole people.” The
effect will be to “regenerate America in one generation. It will make but one class out of the
many.” Frances Wright revealed the aim of the system starkly, call- ing on the people to overthrow
a moneyed aristocracy and priestly hierarchy. “The present is a war of class.”
Thus, we see that a new element has been introduced into the old use of compulsory education on
behalf of State absolutism. A second goal is absolute equality and uniformity, and a compulsory
school system was seen by Owen and Wright to be ideally suited to this task. First, the habits and
minds and feelings of all the chil- dren must be molded into absolute equality; and then the nation
will be ripe for the final step of equalization of property and incomes by means of State coercion.
Why did Owen and Wright insist on seizing the children for twenty-four hours a day, from the age of
two on, only releasing them when the school age was over at sixteen? As Owen declared:
In republican schools, there must be no temptation to the growth of aristocratical prejudices.
The pupils must learn to consider themselves as fellow citizens, as equals. Respect ought not to
be paid to riches, or withheld from poverty. Yet, if the children from these state Schools are to
go every evening, the one to his wealthy parent’s soft
carpeted drawing room, and the other to its poor father’sor widowed mother’s comfortless cabin, will they return
the next day as friends and equals?
Likewise, differences in quality of clothing invoked feelings of envy on the part of the poor and
disdain by the rich—which should be eliminated by forcing one uniform upon both. Through- out his
plans there runs the hatred of human diversity, particularly of the higher living standards of the
rich as compared to the poor. To effect his plan for thoroughgoing equalization by force, the
schools must receive the children, not for six hours a day, but altogether must feed them, clothe
them, lodge them; must direct not their studies only, but their occupations and amusements and
must care for them until their edu- cation is completed.
It might be asserted that the Owen–Wright plan is unimportant; that it had purely crackpot
significance and little influence. The contrary is true. In the first place, the plan had a great
deal of influ- ence: certainly the ideas of promoting equality were dominant in the thinking of the
influential group of educationists that estab- lished and controlled the public schools of the
nation during the
1830s and 1840s. Furthermore, the Owen plan pushes the whole
idea of compulsory state schooling to its logical conclusion—not
only by promoting State absolutism and absolute equality—to
which the system is admirably suited, but also because Owen rec-
ognized that he had to educate the “whole child” in order to mold
the coming generation sufficiently. Is it not probable that the “pro-
gressive” drive to educate the “whole child” aims to mold the
child’s entire personality in lieu of the complete Owen–Wright
compulsory communist seizure, which no one in America would
accept?
The influence of the Owen–Wright plan is attested to by the fact that a contemporary laudatory
historian of the public-school movement places it first in his story, and devotes considerable
space to it.17 Cremin reports that a great many newspapers reprinted Owen’s essays on the plan,
and approved them. Owen began expounding his project in the late 1820s and continued on until the
late 1840s, when he wrote the elaborated plan with Miss Wright. It had a considerable influence on
workers’ groups. " - M. Rothbard, Education:Free & Compulsory
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