Ideas matter, and they cast shadows for centuries. In his latest book, Paul Theobald argues that American education in the twenty-first century continues to be shaped by ideas from the eighteenth century—and that those ideas did not serve democracy very well in the first place.

Theobald, a scholar of the history and philosophy of education, holds Buffalo State’s Woods-Beals Chair in Urban and Rural Education in the School of Education. The American Educational Studies Association awarded its 2010 Critics Choice Award to his book Education Now: How Rethinking America’s Past Can Change Its Future. In it, Theobald explores the intersection of education, economics, and politics from colonial America to the present.

According to Theobald, America’s founding fathers were influenced heavily by the dominant ideas of their time. According to those ideas, human beings are, first and foremost, economic beings, competing with each other to obtain necessary food and shelter. While those who held this conception of human nature had the upper hand at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the notion of “pre-political” man was hotly contested. In fact, the evolution of “common schools” in the early nineteenth century reflected a shift away from a conception of  “economic man” toward an older “civic republican” conception of  “social man,” according to Theobald, resulting in many “democratic political reforms.”

“The right to vote was extended to more people,” he explained. “At the time of the American Revolution, just one in seven white males was entitled to vote, but male suffrage spread in the early 1800s. Even women’s suffrage was being discussed, and the abolitionist movement became widespread. Parks were built, and prisons were reformed.” He writes that free schools of that era provided a common curriculum to their students to provide them with the “intellectual wherewithal” to participate in a democracy.

Then, in 1859, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published, and its idea of natural selection affected the social sciences as well as the natural sciences. Sociologist Herbert Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest,” and the idea of human beings destined to compete against each other for economic profit once again gained ascendancy. The ideas of democracy and equality lost ground.

“That gave birth to the era of the robber barons,” said Theobald. “And we haven’t gotten out of it yet.”

In the last three chapters of Education Now, Theobald demonstrates how to develop and nurture those ideas that make economic, political, and educational endeavors once again democratic. Such ideas could move America and its people beyond the control of global corporations, in his view the robber barons of the twenty-first century. One such idea is to take control of schools away from the federal government and return control to local communities.

Faith in democracy—people ruling themselves—is central to Theobald’s personal creed. In concluding his book, he says that changing the way we educate our children is a crucial component of reinvigorating democracy and establishing a sophisticated consumer ethic among citizens, both of which are required to pave the way for the day when we “throw out our undemocratic system and replace it with one not only derived from the people, but truly of, for, and by the people.”

Theobald will be the keynote speaker at a community forum on public education, “Race to the Top: Hope or Flop?” The forum will be held on January 20 (snow date January 27) at 7:00 p.m. at the WNED Studios in downtown Buffalo. The discussion, which will be presented by the League of Women Voters and moderated by Marian Deutschman, professor of communication, will explore the role the federal government should play in public education. The forum, sponsored by Buffalo State and the American Association of University Women, is free and open to the public.