America’s Upside-Down Doctrine of Education: Albert Jay Nock’s Theory of What Has Gone Wrong — Or Is It Right?

Abstract

We often do not realize that we are making important and sometimes unjustified assumptions when these have become so habitual and natural for us to assume that we must strain even to question them. The American system of education makes such assumptions, which were questioned and criticized nearly a hundred years ago by author and educational theorist Albert Jay Nock. In this essay, we consider Nock’s theory of American education in order to bring attention to bear on our unexamined assumptions about the objectives of education and how to attain them. We shall find that certain of these assumptions stand greatly in need of the support of evidence.