White Collar by C. Wright Mills — Read

The American belief in the value of universal education has been a salient feature of democratic ideology; in fact, since the Jacksonian era, education for all has often been virtually identified with the operation of a truly democratic society. Moreover, the hope for more education has slowly been realized. Eighty years ago a little over half, but today over four-fifths of the children of appropriate age are enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools.

This massive rise in enrollment has strengthened the feeling of status equality, especially in those smaller oities where all the children, regardless of social or occupational rank, are likely to attend the same high school. It has aided immensely in Americanizing the immigrant. And it has spread and generally strengthened old middle-class ideologies, for teachers represent and reinforce middle-class attitudes and values, manners and skills. Yet, in spite of this reinforcing of old middle-class mores, mass education has also been one of the major social mechanisms of the rise of the new middle-class occupations, for these occupations require those skills that have been provided by the educational system.