This is the standard and wrong story of how US education is designed around a factory meant to produce docile students.

For a compelling essay against this view, read "The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education'" at http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model

Here are my comments about this essay:

> The first largescale education system put in place in the Western world was in the Prussian and Austrian states in the mid-to-late 18th century.

"Large scale" is in the eye of the beholder.

In Colonial America, the Massachusetts Law of 1647 required "towns of fifty families hire a schoolmaster who would teach children to read and write. Towns of a hundred families must have a grammar schoolmaster who could prepare children to attend Harvard College." (Quoting https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/masslaws.html ).

It's not "large scale" because (now quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_School_Laws ) "By the end of the 1650s, all eight of the 100-family towns and a third of the 50-family towns had met the respective requirements for grammar schools and the hiring of teachers."

But it's not like there weren't older systems. Charlemagne "pursued educational reform, requiring monasteries and cathedrals to establish schools to educate boys to read and write in order to make the Bible and other religious texts more accessible and in turn broadening and deepening the spread of Christianity. The schools would also teach religious music, singing and psalms to encourage the spread of the faith, as well as grammar so that religious texts could be revised and edited." in the 700s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admonitio_generalis .

> or monastery like colleges.

"monastery like colleges" is a rather broad brush. The medieval period had cathedral schools in addition to monastic schools. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_school .

Or, see how https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/The-Carolingian-r... distinguishes between "Monastic schools" and "Urban schools".

I think the point is that education was considered as part of religion. But "monastic like" seems too constraining. "Scholastically inclined minds" couldn't help but enter a religious school, because that's all there was.

> The teachers will have certificates attesting to their pedagogical competence. Pietist schools were the first to require formal training for elementary schoolmasters,

Note here the "elementary" qualifier. Pedagogical competence requirements existed for centuries. Quoting the same Britannica link:

] The success of the urban schools was such that it was necessary, in the middle of the 12th century, to define the teaching function. Only those who were provided with the licencia docendi conferred by the bishop—or, more often, by the scholasticus—could teach. Those who were licensed taught within the limits of the city or the diocese, whose clerical leaders supervised this monopoly and intervened if a cleric set himself up as master without having the right.

> > The pupils you observe use only textbooks that have been approved by the state board of education.

That's not true! At least in 2013, "Thirty states allow local agencies or schools to choose textbooks." - https://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/01/09/23/10923.pdf Egs: Kansas, "Individual school boards are responsible for adopting appropriate textbooks; Michigan, "The board of each school district shall select, approve,and purchase the textbooks to be used by the district."

> Mann may have not been as explicit as his German counterparts in his hopes for social control

But, but, but ... schools have always been about social "control". Colonial Massachusetts started public schools because the Calvinist Puritans believed a literate populace that could read the Bible "was an essential requirement for temporal living and eternal salvation", and they required the education be under the "Puritan leaders, in order to avoid "false glosses of saint seeming deceivers"." (Quoting WP from earlier.)

We see that same topic of 'social "control"' in the arguments about laws banning schools from teaching "critical race theory".

We see that when Charlemagne wanted to broaden and deepen "the spread of Christianity".

So connecting 'social "control"' specifically to Fichte is nonsense.

> > “Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products…

Cherry picked quotes do not make a good history. Again, see "The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education'" at http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model ,