A historical review of antidemocratic social thinking since 1885 and its educational consequences: compulsory education managed by a central bureaucracy rather than by individuals in local communities, and a gradual "narrowing" of the definition of democracy through state-regulated mind control by schools. (SAS)

Traces current educational philosophy and practices to 19th-century philosophers who proposed the "mudsill theory," the notion that ordinary children could not be intellectually successful and must be coerced and prepared for work by compulsory schooling. Points to the success of relatively underschooled self-sufficient Lancaster Amish…