There is a deliberate effort in academia to downplay, or in the case of this piece, distort and even place blame on the Protestant Christian educational movements of early America. The Great Awakenings that spurred the creation of U.S. colleges and universal public education were fueled by a moral tradition and were an enormous success. That tradition has nothing to do with todays failing public schools. The author also fails to note that the current American home school movement has explicitly Christian roots.
I noticed that immediately, too. Gray gets an "F" from me on Church history. I realise he's a psychology professor, but he really should have done his homework and read something that wasn't revisionist scholarship. His remarks on the Protestant Reformation are pretty weak gruel, because the presenting cause of the Reformation was to challenge the authoritarian Italo-Papal hierarchy in Western Europe. The Reformation was precisely about questioning authority.
If Martin Luther were to read Gray's remarks today, I think he'd find them patently ridiculous.
Perhaps you should try reading the article and my comment for context, because it's apparent you didn't understand them. I'm saying that Gray is demonstrably wrong about authoritarianism wrt the Reformation, because the Church was not above criticism. The article, and my comment, was on-topic in that regard.
I definitely noted that he made an awfully long string of assertions to not have presented any kind of backing evidence. He presented an entire history of education ... but it could just as easily be a revisionist version as a fact-based one. It strikes me much more as a soapbox than a factual summary.
So how exactly is the author wrong? The first education law in the US, the Ye Olde Deluder Satan Act of 1647, makes it explicitly clear that the purpose of school is to prevent kids from turning to the devil, which is what the author said. The fact that universities also come from a religious tradition is irrelevant.
"The author also fails to note that the current American home school movement has explicitly Christian roots."
Actually that's not quite right. The previous home school movement came out of Christian roots. The more current "trend" tends to be unaffiliated with any particular religious background...
