Kevin Carrie-Knight reviews The American Model of State and School, by Charles Glenn.
At root, The American Model of State and School tells the story of a gradual centralization of many local models of schooling in America into an increasingly uniform system with increasing government involvement. Before the Whig reformers of the 1830’s and 1840’s succeeded in ushering in common schools, “the state role in schooling – apart from the rhetoric of state constitutions – was long a matter of financial bookkeeping than of determining how education would be provided and for what purposes” (p. 125). Using a wide array of primary and secondary sources, Glenn shows how reformers (with the best of intentions) evolved a school system that became more centralized and standardized and less responsive to American diversity and parental input.
Some random thoughts:
1. Goldin and Katz describe the expansion of schooling in America from the early 1800s through 1950 as a highly decentralized process.
2. I do not know if Glenn gets into this, but the consolidation of school districts since the 1940’s has played a major role in making schools more centralized and less responsive to parental input. It is doubtful that school district consolidation resulted from the sort of grass-roots reform movements that drove earlier efforts to standardize education.
3. When I saw this:
American public education should be “disestablished,” just as state churches were in the decades after the revolution.
I thought of Ivan Illich, who used the same term and made the same plea in 1971. It appears (based on a search at Google books) that Glenn mentions Illich, but only once and not in the section of the book quoted in the review.
4. Lately, I have been puzzling over the relationship between coercion and education. Do we not often act as if we believe that education must involve coercion? If left to themselves, young people would not learn what “we” think they should? If left to themselves, parents would not educate their children? If left to themselves, teachers would not teach the “right” curriculum? If left to themselves, local school principals would not promote quality education? It seems to me that beliefs like this implicitly underly the American education system today.
For much of American history, there’s been an insistence that public schools should not simply educate an elite, but also “Americanize” the children of immigrants. I.e., kids born in, or raised by parents born in Russia and Germany and Japan and Mexico and Ghana had to be taught to sit in chairs without unneccessary movement like “proper” American kids and raise their hands in the proper fashion to be recognized by a teacher; they had to learn to read and speak unaccented English; they had to learn to hammer nails like real American boys and sew dresses like real American girls; they had to learn to be respectful to policemen and gentlemen in suits; they had to learn why landlords and bankers won court cases and people like themselves didn’; they had to learn to shoot marbles rather than encourage dogs to fight, etc. It was nice if they picked up some history and arithmetic and science along the way, but the emphasis was on building good citizens rather than intellectuals and leaders.
In short, the link between education and coercion in America dates back to the 1880’s rather than the 1940’s.
As to whether this was a completely bad thing, I’d say “No,” Granted, it might have been done with more subtlety, more attention to individual cases, more appreciation of the learning and culture immigrants actually started with. But imposing at least a surface layer of common culture on native and foreign-born children alike has had innumerable benefits — imagine how splendidly the 20th century might have gone if strong ethnic movements had battled for control of US foreign policy during WWI, WWII, and the Cold War!
I’ll note as well that strong central control of education is found in some European states. It used to be a matter of pride in France some decades ago that students in every fourth grade class in the nation opened the same textbooks at the same time of the day and learned the same material — what better way to ensure that all children were equally French!
John Dewey writes extensively and unselfconsciously ca. 1900 about designing public schools as a means to de-ethnicize and specifically de-Catholicize children of immigrants.
I know you’ve already found John Holt, but I will recommend (or recommend again?) his early book How Children Fail which is less about theory and more about his observations the dysfunctional culture of school and how children learn strategies to avoid being put on the spot instead of learning the material — drawn from his experience teaching math at an elite school in Colorado in the 1960s.
Other worthy sources might include John Taylor Gatto, who has very strong opinions but is not entirely wrong.
As someone who homeschools his children (ages 9,6,6) I have found a great deal of benefit from various voluntary organizations (loosely like minded groups of homeschoolers) which do not compel participation; a sort of civil society of alternatives to school events. I would very much like to see a ‘Crisis of Abundance’ style criticism of the school system..
I second this–How Children Fail is a great book.
Also, I hope more libertarians learn about the Sudbury Valley School, where children are free to follow their interests in any way they see fit. Surprisingly, most students don’t just shift aimlessly between video games and tv; instead, they focus deeply on their true passions to a far greater degree than the typical force fed curriculum would allow.
Some great videos:
Real student government, not the sham familiar to most of us:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg9lf7wyQRo
Self-directed learning–way more than a buzzword. Isn’t this beautiful?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxPnvJE0V2E
“evolved a school system that became more centralized and standardized and less responsive to American diversity and parental input.”
“the expansion of schooling in America from the early 1800s through 1950 as a highly decentralized process.”
Are those meant to be in opposition? If so, I’m not sure they are.
The expansion of schooling could have been highly decentralized, while at the same time the system was becoming more centralized and standardized. Don’t we see this in just about every industry? As demand grows for a product or service, the expansion to meet that demand is often decentralized as many players are trying to supply the goods, and at the same time, the larger players are consolidating and standardizing. Once the expansion phase is over when the product matures (as demand is met), the consolidating and standardizing continues for some time.
In Los Angeles County, there are two huge suburban valleys, the San Fernando Valley and the San Gabriel Valley. The former is part of the city of Los Angeles and under the control of the gigantic Los Angeles Unified School District. The latter is broken up into many small municipalities with their own school districts.
When I was young, Asians were sprinkled here and there all over both Valleys. Today, affluent, education-focused Asians have concentrated overwhelmingly in the San Gabriel Valley, in large part because of the smaller school districts. They can take over a place like Arcadia and evolve the schools to meet their needs. Arcadia High now has about 30 National Merit Scholars in each class. They avoid the San Fernando Valley because LAUSD doesn’t see itself as competing against many other school districts.
#4 is a really great paragraph.
We seem less and less to trust people educate themselves and their families, to care for their own health and even spend their own money(food stamps over EITC).
The movement to get the children into schools earlier (universal preschool) bothers me. When I hear advocates of universal preschool I take that to mean that they think that a significant percent of parents do not care enough or a are not capable enough to raise their own children and that he Government can do it better and so must step in.
Does anyone here know of any studies of Sudbury schools? It seems like a great idea (although probably not very scalable) that breaks with the very intuitive idea that some degree if coercion is necessary in schooling young children.