Ben Franklin started a school in the 1750’s, which eventually became the University of Pennsylvania. He did so because parents were sending their kids to Europe for their education, and they returned unable to perform the jobs that need to be performed. Franklin was particularly agitated by the practice of teaching Latin when it was no longer necessary, since most of the great works had long been translated into English.

He called for a curriculum of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, rhetoric, grammar, literature, history, drawing, handwriting, accounting, geography, morality, logic, natural history, mechanics, and gardening, all of which he thought were useful for future generations to earn a living and be good citizens. Franklin’s new school lost its way as the Latinists took over, and he withdrew his support.

Two hundred and fifty years later, the U.S. faces the same challenges.  We are not requiring our kids to learn Latin, but we are sending them to high schools and  colleges that violate the Hebrew proverb “Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in a different time.”

Today the U.S. K-16 system is heavy on the ornamental and light on the useful just as in Franklin’s day. Historians teach history as an experience in exploring the past rather than what the past can tell us about our present or our possible futures.  Mathematicians teach math as a form of art often using abstract, contrived problems. Scientists teach disciplines rather than how science can help us live a more healthy life or how our environment can be protected. English teachers are focused on content rather than writing and speaking skills.  Defenders of the ornamental may genuflect to the goal of usefulness by claiming they are teaching “critical thinking.” But making historians, mathematicians and scholars is their real goal.

Franklin might be delighted by the growth of professional schools. He might also applaud career-minded undergraduate powerhouses like the University of cincinnati, Northeastern University and his hometown Drexel.

Always the optimist to the world around him, Franklin probably would not say “it’s about time.”

But he would be thinking it.