[ef4]

I don't think that thread is convincing. The one substantial comment makes assertions with very little evidence. Here's some evidence:

Rockefeller's General Education Board wrote the following in 1906:

  "In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our 
  molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our 
  minds, and unhampered by
  tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive
  folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children
  into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not
  to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of
  letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters,
  musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen,
  of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is
  very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a
  perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an
  imperfect way."

In 1915, the Carnegie and Rockefeller organizations together were spending more to promote and directly fund primary education than the entire government.

President Woodrow Wilson (one of our most academic presidents) said this to a gathering of industrial leaders:

  "We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class,
  a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a
  liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."

It is well-documented that the push for mandatory public education in the US also had a big xenophobic component. Protestants of Northern European descent were horrified by all the "dirty", "drunken", Catholic Southern European and/or Irish immigrants who didn't share their culture. Literal battles were fought over who was going to take those children and indoctrinate them into one culture or another. Mandatory public education was not about uplift per se, it was about conformity. (It's supporters would call it uplift, but only because they were xenophobic bigots.)

[greendestiny]

I don't think that Rockefeller Education board quote supports your position. Education had previously only been necessary for the professions and callings listed - and its not like simply having more schools meant the economy was suddenly going to be composed of 100% professionals. They just want to give to the children what their parents want to give them but can't.

I suspect that factory owners and other bosses would have been scared of a new class of worker that could read and write. In fact I tend to think more education means less docile and easily manipulated people - then and now.

[Camillo]

> Protestants of Northern European descent were horrified by all the "dirty", "drunken", Catholic Southern European and/or Irish immigrants who didn't share their culture.

As a Southern European, I find that idea hilarious. Drunkenness is far more pervasive and culturally ingrained in Northern Europe and in America than in Southern Europe. If all you've ever known is America, you may find it hard to understand just how ridiculously obsessed with getting drunk your culture appears from outside.

[ef4]

The northern Europeans who liked to drink stayed in Europe. It was the Taliban-level Puritan extremists who moved to America to start their own society.

Later waves of immigration were not so Puritan, but the upper classes were still very much associated with those sects well into the 20th century.

And yes, I don't think it's a coincidence that a society founded by Puritans has a binge drinking problem.

[kragen]

That was then, this is now. At the time, they also thought the Germans were lazy and stupid.