John Dewey pretty much had public education figured out in the early 1900s and since then we have just been playing a game where we see how far we can stray from Dewey's ideals before the public education system falls apart. Compulsory public education came about in the later part of the 1800s due to the industrial revolution. The mechanization of farm labor sent millions of Americans from working on farms to factory work in the cities. The major problem was that many rural Americans had little schooling and could not read or do basic math well enough to be able to work in a factory. Compulsory public education sought to remedy that and prepare rural Americans for work in the factories.
Dewey saw a larger social role for public education. Public education wasn't just about makin sure the children of farmers from Kansas would be able to be able to operate industrial machinery. Public education was about preparing children to become ethical participants in a democratic society. Dewey did not want schools to just be about forcing children to master the skill necessary for their future vocations in the factories. Dewey wanted children to become autonomous ethical human beings capable of participating in democratic society. Thus, Dewey's model of education, in short, is more about experiential learning over route memorization and mastery (there is a lot more to it than that).
Today, we are seeing a resurfacing of the idea of "tracking" that Dewey railed against 100 years ago and we are again seeing demands that education to no more than be cost effective way to train a future workforce. Back in the early 1900s, "tracking" was a practice of weeding out children who excelled in academics from those who struggled. The good students continued their studies and went on to higher earning professions. The rest of the students had their education cut short and went to work as laborers. We are seeing this again with calls for pushing struggling students (mostly black and brown children) in to VoTech programs where they can have gainful employment as a hair dresser, diesel mechanic, medical assistant or welder. And charter schools and standardized testing in public education is also another example of the rejection of Dewey's position that public education is about building better citizens. Instead, charter school and standardized testing advocates want school to be a ruthlessly efficient way of filling children with the knowledge necessary to meet the demands of the current job market.
The movement away from Dewey's ideals results in schools that kids hate. My son is as smart as any kid and it only took until about second grade before he decided that he hates school. His school's curriculum is heavily determined by standardized high stakes testing. And the political reason for abandoning Dewey's principles is that students who receive the most brutally efficient knowledge transfer necessary to participate in the modern labor market are people who lack the resources to be able to understand the social problems of our time and be able to participate intelligently in society. As we have seen over the past 4 years, the erosion of Dewey's principles has resulted in a large part of the US population knowing nothing more than what is necessary to earn their paycheck, making them susceptible to manipulation through populist (the bad kind) propaganda to support a government that actively works against their own self interest (and even health and safety). Thus, modern public education's role is now to make sure the masses are compliant to the needs of capital and do not get any funny ideas about a different way to organize society.