In 1647, the Massachusetts “Old Deluder Satan Act” required towns in colonial New England to hire teachers. The schools were funded by local taxes to promote literacy, so people could read the Bible.
This is widely regarded as the first law that mandated publicly funded education in what would later become the United States. By the early 1800s, this idea had spread, with other New England states adopting similar town-funded schools, although southern states did not follow suit.
In the 1830s to 1850s, modern free public schooling took shape. In Massachusetts in 1837, Horace Mann championed free, universal education funded by taxes and implemented by professional teachers.
By around 1850, most Northern states had established free public elementary schools funded by property taxes. These schools were accessible to most white children, as racial equality was achieved much later.
High schools came in 1821. The Boston English High School became the first free public high school in the U.S.
By the late 1800s to early 1900s, free public high schools became widespread. Compulsory attendance laws began in 1880–1918, and segregation ended (legally): 1954, Brown v. Board of Education. Truly universal access began in the mid-20th century.
Why was free schooling mandated in the past, while free advanced education is often discouraged today? The answer, as usual, involves Monetary Sovereignty and Gap Psychology,
Our Monetarily Sovereign federal government has an unlimited ability to create dollars with just a keystroke. It never can go bankrupt or run out of money. However, it often chooses to fund tax breaks for the wealthy rather than allocate resources to education for those who are less fortunate.
Gap Psychology describes a common, almost universal desire to distance oneself from those lower on the income, wealth, and power scale while trying to associate more with those above. This mindset is the primary way the wealthy maintain and increase their wealth. It also ensures that people continue to work even after they receive higher pay.
NEWS BRIEFING Borrowers in default on student loans may see wages garnished
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will begin garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers who are in default early next year.
The department said it will send notices to about 1,000 borrowers the week of Jan. 7, with more notices to come at an increasing scale each month.
Millions of borrowers are considered in default, meaning they are 270 days past due on their payments. The department must give borrowers 30 days’ notice before garnishing their wages.
The department said it will begin collection activities, “only after student and parent borrowers have been provided sufficient notice and opportunity to repay their loans.”
In May, the Trump administration ended the pandemic-era pause on student loan payments and began collecting on defaulted debt by withholding tax refunds and other federal payments from borrowers.
The move ended a period of leniency for student loan borrowers. Payments resumed in October 2023, but the Biden administration extended a one-year grace period. Since March 2020, no federal student loans had been referred for collection, including those in default, until the Trump administration’s changes earlier this year.
The Biden administration tried multiple times to offer broad student loan forgiveness, but those efforts were eventually halted by courts.
Persis Yu, deputy executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, criticized the decision to begin wage garnishment and said the department had failed to sufficiently help borrowers find affordable payment options.
Given that:- Educated young people are vital for America’s advancement and security.
- The federal government does not need or even use any form of income.
- The federal government has the infinite ability to create dollars and fund anything it wishes.
Why does the government fund free elementary and high school — in fact, make attendance compulsory — but garnish the wages of our single most valuable future resource, college students?
Free basic schooling still reinforces the social hierarchy. It still supports the Gap. Early public education has been sold as moral and obedience training, workforce preparation, and national cohesion.
It teaches punctuality, deference to authority, and literacy sufficient for labor, not power.
Even in our early days, basic schooling did not threaten the Gap. Elites benefit because it make for more productive workers, fewer unruly poor, and cultural conformity
But college education for the poor is exactly what the rich do not want.
- It reduces the fear of losing one’s job, thus:
- It increases labor’s bargaining power (which is why the rich hate unions), and
- It puts “the rabble” on a par with the rich and weakens employers’ control.
Free college would narrow the Gap.
In this context, a federally sponsored, comprehensive, no-deductible Medicare program that covers every man, woman, and child in America would help close the healthcare Gap.
In contrast, business-sponsored healthcare insurance for workers tends to reinforce this Gap. Millions of workers fear leaving their jobs or making demands of their employers because they worry about losing their healthcare coverage.
The federal government easily could afford to provide healthcare insurance to everyone. However, instead of doing this, it offers businesses tax incentives to provide less comprehensive coverage—just enough to keep employees dependent on their jobs for healthcare.
Finally, the same would hold for federally sponsored, living-wage Social Security for everyone, of all ages. The rich make three false excuses:
- It would require tax increases (aka “Who would pay for it”?)
- It would cause inflation by adding growth dollars to the economy (Federal spending isn’t inflationary.)
- If given a bare minimum stipend, no one would work because the poor have no ambition. (aka, “Keep ’em poor so they have to accept low-pay jobs and bad working conditions.:”)
And things will have to get much worse before the populace begins to understand how Monetary Sovereignty and Gap Psychology are used against them.
Only a nation of fools would give a tax break to religion but not to science and education.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell;
MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell;
……………………………………………………………………..
A Government’s Sole Purpose is to Improve and Protect The People’s Lives.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
Well said. I find it so infuriating how so many ignorant fools, and also those who should know better (and probably do but are being disingenuous), insist on gatekeeping college for the following reasons:
1) “Don’t cast your pearls before swine” argument, namely, students won’t fully appreciate the value of education unless they “EARN” it. Because REASONS.
2) Many other countries (but clearly NOT all!) who have free college make it hard AF to get into, merely using a different form of gatekeeping. Therefore the USA must also use one form of gatekeeping or another.
3) The “elite overproduction” and “credential inflation” argument, namely, that opening it up to the masses for free or cheap will devalue education for everyone.
4) “Everyone must earn their keep, pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and reach for the brass ring”. Or more accurately, “I got mine, screw everyone else”. The neoliberal mantra, in other words.
5) Almost in the same breath, without seeing the irony, they say the Grover Cleveland argument, namely that the federal government giving people free stuff somehow “atomizes” citizens, making people less dependent on their families and neighbors and more dependent on the government, and that it is better to be dependent on one’s family and neighbors than the government. (To that I would say, it must be really, really nice where they live, lol. And they say progressives are idealistic!)
(But I thought their idol Margaret Thatcher said there was no such thing as society?)
6) Anything else patronizing or paternalistic.
And it’s all BS, basically. All are flavors of Gap Psychology masquerading as virtue signaling.
LikeLike
Good thoughts. There always are “good’ reasons for not doing what one doesn’t want to do. One of my favorites is “charity begins at home,” which translates to “charity ends at home.”
LikeLike
Thank you, Rodger! “Charity ends at home” is a indeed great way to describe this kind of questionable mentality. Much like how when these folks, usually right-wing or adjacent, often luuurrrve to say that “the right to life begins at conception…”, but elide the quiet part of what they really believe, “…and ends at birth”, as well. Hypocritical modern-day Pharisees, the lot of them!
LikeLike
Happy New Year, Rodger! Friendly reminder to approve my most recent comments awaiting moderation, thanks 😊
LikeLike
?
LikeLike
Basically, any argument against free college, UBI (Social Security For All), Medicare For All, and similar things is either patronizing paternalistic, sadistic, and/or illogical, which means there are really NO good arguments against these things. So what are we waiting for? (The oligarchs and their sycophantic lackeys to get out the way, that’s who!)(And yes, I am including trade school and similar things in my broad definition of higher education which I use “college” as shorthand for, in case anyone is wondering).(Mic drop)
LikeLike
Another lie they luuurrrve to shill:“If everyone got free stuff from the government, the resulting ‘marginal reduction in work effort’ from less incentive to work, even if small in the short run, say, 1% less, will compound over the long run in the form of less economic growth, thus making future generations poorer.
Why, if the US economy grew at a rate of 1 percent point less each year from the year 1900 onward, then by 1990, the US GDP per capita would ultimately be no greater than that of… MEXICO! The horrors! If it was that way since 1800, including the Industrial Revolution, future generations would be even poorer still than Mexico!”.
Conservatives, neoliberals (same difference), and LOLbertarians alike are all known to actually make that patronizing argument with a straight face, once their more obvious lies are roundly and easily debunked. No matter how much they desperately want to finally exorcise the ghost of the late, great, John Maynard Keynes, the fact remains that GDP literally nothing more than a spending measure, with 70% driven by consumer spending and 20% driven by government spending.
So in that way, consumption mathematically “creates” wealth, as demand creates supply far more than the other way around. And as he famously said, “in the long run, we are all dead”. (Ba-dumm-chhhh!) Also, inequality kills growth as well.
And regardless, as Robert Reich famously said, “The economy exists to make our lives better. We do NOT exist to make the economy better”.
(Mic drop)
LikeLike