A quote from “A People’s History of the United States”

This is a great work by Howard Zinn, highly recommended.

From Page 263: “The rich, giving part of their enormous earnings in this way, became known as philanthropists. These educational institutions did not encourage disent; they trained the middlemen in the American system – the teachers, doctors, lawyers, administrators, engineers, technicians, politicians – those who would be paid to keep the system going, to be loyal buffers against trouble.
In the meantime, the spread of public school education enabled the learning of writing, reading, and arithmetic for a whole generation of workers, skilled and semiskilled, who would be the literate labor force of the new industrial age. It was important that these people learn obedience to authority. A journalist observer of the schools in the 1890s wrote: “The unkindly spirit of the teacher is strikingly apparent; the pupils, being completely subjugated to her will, are silent and motionless, the spiritual atmosphere of the classroom is damp and chilly.”

This is not just in the 1890s of course… the same model is used today.