LIBERADIO(!)

I feel pretty. Oh so pretty.

I suggested before that if you liked the dated views of the Tennessee Republican Party and their spokesantediluvian, Bill Hobbs, then you shoulda put a corset on it.

Turns out I was wrong. It’s the 19th, not the 20th, century that Hobbs idealizes:

Incidentally, home schooling was widespread in the United States until the 1870s, when compulsory school attendance laws and the development of professional educators created the institutionalized form of education we think of today as “school.” Among the historical figures who were home-schooled: Presidents George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt, plus Thomas Edison, General Robert E. Lee, Booker T. Washington, and Mark Twain.

As if the above mentioned legends had a choice.

Although Thomas Jefferson advocated for an “elaborate, publicly supported systems of mass education” that would ensure an educated populace, it wasn’t until the mid-1800’s that the general public and not just the very wealthy had access to any kind of “school” at all. And widespread public education did not become a reality until the beginning of the 20th century.

So according to Hobbs, “school” is not just for the elite anymore – but he sure does wish it was!

(H/T: Pith in the Wind)