It could be better researched. But you don’t need coordinated efforts when the issue speaks to a particular worldview. There’s a cohort within the country that has a particular notion of public education as a way to socialize children into a particular brand of American values, and that cohort dominates both the education profession and journalism. Folks who share this ideology may, for example, have the same visceral reaction to the prospect of home schooling being a way to socialize children in religious values: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/44461/data-contradic.... These folks dominate the professions, especially education and journalism.
In a way, it’s a continuation of the mid-20th century conflict between mainstream Protestants (now their secular children), and Catholics/Evangelicals over public education.
That public school should have a goal of instilling American values is one of the oldest ideas in American society, and the "cohort" in which it dominates might best be described as "Americans".
Your issue is that you disagree with a plurality of educators on what American values should be. That's fine, but it's much more boring than the false controversy you present instead, where a shadowy cartel of educators is twisting what would otherwise be a values-neutral school system. That system never existed, and was never intended to exist. Conservatives just 20 years ago would have recoiled from that sentiment.
> That public school should have a goal of instilling American values is one of the oldest ideas in American society
This is wildly untrue. In fact there was a huge battle to introduce a more "American" civics vs British/Eurocentric history in the early 20th century that wasn't really resolved until World War II when (for better or worse) American patriotism completely invaded public school curriculum.
Most people until ... let's say 1950 ... learned virtually nothing about the Revolution, "manifest destiny", the Bill of Rights (largely untested in court), or any other number of US cultural "values" unless they went to college.
I don't think you're right about this, and I'll present two pieces of countervailing evidence:
(1) Horace Mann's own words, in which he defines "education" as meaning "much more than an ability to read, write, and keep common accounts" --- and goes on to list, at great length, civic and moral virtues.
(2) The deliberate effort at the turn of the century to use public education to inculcate American values & civic culture into immigrants.
At any rate, Rayiner and I agree about this premise. Further, if I'm wrong, I'm clearly not "wildly" wrong.
I agree. Public schools were invented to socialize children into mainstream Protestant values, and by and large that’s still their purpose today. Insofar as what I wrote is ambiguous, my point is that education and journalism are dominated (at the national level), by a cohort that is defined by a particular set of values they share, not by the fact that they want to use schools to teach their values. Certainly, I’m no supporter of educational neutrality myself.
When the consensus was that schools should teach mainstream Protestant values, you were sanguine about it. But it wasn't principle that located public school values there; it was consensus-seeking. The consensus has shifted. It'll shift again. There's nothing improper about any of that. You'll have to argue against the values schools are teaching on the merits, not based on some claim of impropriety.
Schools are still teaching mainstream Protestant values. The theology has just evolved.
I didn’t claim there was anything improper about it, I’m just describing the dynamic that exists. I will disagree with you about “consensus.” I think people who hold this particular ideology are in the minority. But they are dramatically overrepresented in the education and journalism fields.
In a way, it’s a continuation of the mid-20th century conflict between mainstream Protestants (now their secular children), and Catholics/Evangelicals over public education.