"Some skeptics argued that it was waste of public resources to attempt to educate the children of the working classes: such children were essentially uneducable and would not benefit from these efforts. They were wrong about that. Others feared the social and political consequences: educating the working classes would give them ideas above their station and lead to a social revolution. They were not wrong about that." (p. 122)
"We now take it for granted that governments should provide mass systems of education; that they should be funded from the public purse; that all young people should go to school until they are at least 16 and that a high proportion of them should go on to college. As obvious as they may seem now, these assumptions are relatively new.1 It was only from the 1860s onwards that countries throughout Europe, as well as many of the American states, began to establish mass systems of public education." (p. 119)
Ken Robinson (2011). Out of Our Minds. Chichester: Capstone Publishing.
