In three sentences
1. The working class and the industrial owners had different expectations from education.
2. The campaign to pay school taxes involved convincing property owners that schools would create docile, affordable workers while ensuring the security of private property.
3. White people whipped and fined freed Black people who taught enslaved Black people
2. The campaign to pay school taxes involved convincing property owners that schools would create docile, affordable workers while ensuring the security of private property.
3. White people whipped and fined freed Black people who taught enslaved Black people
Impressions
This book changed how I see schools. Grateful my sociology professor Eleni Natsiopoulou assigned it in class.
How the text changed me
I understand that “good” and “bad” schools aren’t accidents but serve economic interests. The system isn’t just broken; it’s designed to create a subordinated workforce and ruling executives. Better teachers, smaller classes, and nicer buildings won’t fix a system built to ensure the comfort of the wealthy.
Top three quotes
“[Common schools are] ‘the best police for our cities, the lowest insurance of our houses, the firmest security for our banks, the most effective means of preventing pauperism, vice, and crime’ (52).”
“In times past, the schooling system has attempted to convince many of us that we were not among the best and therefore had to settle for a second-best education and the second-best jobs it led to” (232) And conversely, that we ARE among the best and we “deserve” the best jobs, even if it comes at the expense of others.
“If higher education drops its meritocratic disguise, a crucial instrument in dividing the working class among itself, "new" immigrants from newer, black and Latin from white, women from men, will be destroyed. A most efficient tool in disguising structural unemployment will be blunted, and the illusion of social mobility fostered by the expansion of higher education will be broken” (237).
Fascinating details
David Nasaw's Schooled to Order examines how public education in the U.S. functioned primarily as a tool for maintaining social order rather than as a democratic institution. Nasaw argues that economic, political, and social forces shaped public education to instill discipline, reinforce class hierarchies, and serve industrial needs.
Three Key Historical Periods
1830s-1850s: Common Schools
Reformers like Horace Mann promoted education by arguing that schooled workers were "docile and quick," with "personal cleanliness," "domestic and social habits," and "punctuality and fidelity in the performance of duties." In 1848, Boston's mayor discovered that schooling children would cost less than expanding "Police, Courts, and Prisons." This economic argument persuaded wealthy citizens that funding schools served their interests. As Nasaw notes, "The common schools had for a good fifteen years before the campaign been promoted as the best available property insurance."1890s-1920s: High Schools and Vocational Education
High schools expanded to serve immigrants and the working class, but primarily prepared students for subordinate roles rather than promoting upward mobility. Vocational education and community colleges reinforced class divisions. Nasaw observes, "The major problem with the manual, trade, and vocationally oriented high school programs was that they had not been established to prepare young people for the type of work they wanted." Poor families hoped high school would offer advancement beyond wage labor, but vocational tracks often limited social mobility. Community colleges frequently contained students rather than advancing them, maintaining workforce hierarchies.1945-1960s: G.I. Bill and Higher Education
The G.I. Bill expanded public colleges and universities, but its impact was uneven. Many Black veterans and marginalized groups faced barriers to accessing the same opportunities as white veterans. The expansion of higher education under the G.I. Bill served economic management more than educational purposes, absorbing potential unemployment and integrating veterans into a stable workforce. Nasaw critically notes, "The best way to keep veterans off unemployment lines was to send them to school."Central Themes
Nasaw identifies a fundamental contradiction between democratic rhetoric and class division in education. While schools were promoted as vehicles for opportunity, they largely reinforced existing hierarchies. Education functioned as social control, ensuring workers remained "docile and quick" while maintaining economic stratification.
The book explores connections between schooling, capitalism, and governance. Industrialists, reformers, and policymakers viewed education as "property insurance"—a way to manage social unrest and protect economic interests. Schooling produced disciplined laborers rather than independent thinkers, reinforced by vocational tracking that sorted students by class and perceived ability.
Schooled to Order challenges the myth that American public education has consistently promoted equal opportunity, demonstrating instead that schooling has primarily served elite interests by reinforcing social and economic inequalities.
Questions
The book argues that Black people, women and immigrant groups were subordinated to serve white employers' interests. While the text emphasised these economic imperatives as central forces driving marginalization, what other factors mattered?
Nasaw, David. Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States. Oxford University Press, 1979.
I have adapted the questions I used to think about the text from Ali Abdaal. 
