The Beginning of Modern School, and How Little Has Changed

One of the more fascinating of the chapters in what is becoming a favorite book of mine: "American Childhoods" by Joseph E. Illick is the chapter about urban middle class childhood in industrial America. There are quaint facts about how children were raised in this environment and how the roles of the family members were changing from the farm families of the previous generation. Interesting, but the most intriguing information to me was about school. These institutions were just coming in from their farm community existence. While they used to be someplace to send the kids in winter to do some basic learning of reading, arithmetic and respect, they were now coming into the city to have a unique function in forming the community necessary for factory life. Along the way some sacrifices were made.

Pg 69: "The family, which in earlier centuries had been the primary economic, educational, and emotional unit in its residents' lives, was diminished and mutated by these losses; its major function became an emotional and nurturing one. Meanwhile, schools were assigned a mission they could seldom fulfill."

Schools from the beginning were facing a daunting challenge and the most effective and efficient way they knew to fulfill their mission became a strict hammering of knowledge into stationary, quiet children:

Pg. 69: "Historian Pricilla Clement observes: 'Classrooms were scenes of military-like drill and were staffed by teachers who commonly attributed 'intellectual failure' to 'moral laxity'."

The schools quickly became, not just the imparter of knowledge but the molder of the entire lives of students and the changers of American youth for the foreseeable future, for better or worse.

Pg. 71: " High schools emulated the social as well as the academic practices of colleges, and in extending control over extracurricular life they did even more to undermine student autonomy. Simultaneously, the young people's movements that already existed in the churches were greatly expanded, and in the course of this growth every effort was made to take over the spare time activities of youth."

Pg. 73: "Schools could, however, be places of order and discipline. This would not be an easy achievement in high schools if adolescents were the turbulent creatures described by Hall, yet that was the rationale for taking charge. It is clear that control was an important issue. But given American frugality when it came to funding education, order and discipline would have to be achieved in heavily populated classrooms, usually by undereducated teachers.

The critiques of this first government organization of school are eerily similar to critiques we hear regularly in the present.

Pg. 73: " Educator John Dewey, addressing what he saw as a conflict between liberty (for creativity) and order, in 1900 condemned the suffocating regimen, the enforced passivity, the mass audience approach of the typical classroom and called for an ideal school as an enlargement of the ideal home: ' The life of the child becomes the all-controlling aim.' Psychologist Arnold Gesell, once a student of G. Stanley Hall's, argued in 1912: 'Nature endowed the six-year-old with an impulse to investigate, pry into and discover. Some primary schools are veritable tombs of deadened curiosity and initiative.'"

Pg. 74: "Characterized by testing and the consequent categorization of student, a practice running counter to the ideals of Dewey and Gesell, schools focused on reading, arithmetic, language, spelling, penmanship, and geography. 'We went to school for facts and got them,' recalled Henry Seildel Canby. Students sat still and silent. Corporal punishment was on the decline, at least officially, but the atmosphere was repressive."

Pg. 74: "If schools simulated society in some ways, they contributed to changing it in others, most notably by age grading students. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the high school. Despite class, ethnic, and gender differences, the isolation of peers together at a time in the student's life when identity was in process of formation led to group conformity and homogenization of thought: by providing mutual reassurance through mutuality if interests, it also eased the way from childhood to adulthood. "

Reading this the first time and realizing that the problems we find in schools now have always been present was eye-opening for me. It is lovely that reformers have ideas that will be good for students, and make them more productive citizens. Am I going to wait around for schools to implement these changes? No. Apparently reformers have never been taken seriously when it comes to education. I don't see the point in expecting reform during my lifetime. I also don't know how effective mere reform could be on a institution that has never accomplished its goal very well, and now in current times is completely outmoded. It seems to me that school needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up. I love learning, and I think it is vital, but these days we must take a different approach. School relies on students memorizing facts, and becoming adults that are homogenous, and agreeable to an industrial societal system, but this is no longer useful in the world today. Every fact we could want to know is at our fingertips. It is a complete waste of time to memorize the year North Carolina became a state when every one of our kids will have a smart phone capable of isolating this information in seconds. Our kids now need to learn how to get to that information and what to do with it in a variety of situations so they are relevant to the job world. The theme I keep hearing when I look at information about the modern job market is flexibility. Take this quote I read recently in the modern business magazine "Fast Company". pg. 66 "From classrooms arranged in rows of seats to tenured professors, from the assembly line to the way we promote executives, we have been trained to expect an orderly life. Yet the expectation that these systems provide safety and stability is a trap." This came from an article by Robert Safian called "Generation Flux". The whole point of this extensive article was that the current generation is facing competition in businesses that blow through business models like like my kids go through Cheetos. Individual people are switching from jobs in the private sector to government to self employment to working for a major corporation, and this is normal. People are not just teachers or lawyers or factory workers. They evolve and change. While this idea completely freaks out people from my parents generation, those in my generation are getting used to it, and our kids will find it normal. What does the current school situation have to contribute to people facing careers that are undefined. Very little.

I know everyone has had that stimulating teacher they still remember: that glimpse of hope in the dismal cavern that is school, and that is great. I know there is that wonderful freedom-writer type teacher who is willing to buck the system and sacrifice her marriage to inspire some lucky kids to write. That is great, but that is the exception. Even with these glimmers, there are huge problems in the current system of education, and I don't have all the answers. I think one step in the right direction would be to allow parents to choose where the money that is attached to their children is spent, because parents often see what their kids need to succeed better than the slow, rutted system. I think competition among schools may inspire some of the creative thinking that is necessary to help our modern children compete. I believe that charter and magnet schools are a good sign, but just a beginning. I know that the kid in a home where the parents don't care about his education is going to have a tough time of it no matter what. His parents won't encourage him now in the current system, and they won't choose to send him to a better school in the voucher system. That is a tough one. Maybe his poor school will shut down and force his parents to send him to a better school because that is the only place the bus is going. Some kids will have it tough no matter what system we have. I am sorry for those kids, and I wish I could help their parents understand that their kid needs their support, even if all that means is they take five minutes between their work shifts to show an interest in what their kid is doing in school.

I know how hard parents who care have to advocate for their children in the current system. So I can imagine how hard it is for the kid who doesn't have an advocate. I am one of the lucky parents. I married a guy who has chosen to work hard and make enough to allow me to teach my own kids. I am really blessed and I know it. I would love for all kids to have the freedom to learn that my kids have. There are people who do have faith that schools can rise to the challenge. One example is this essay written by Seth Godin. It goes into the history of school a bit, gives critiques of the current system and then some suggestions. It is a bit redundant, but it has good insight if you want another perspective.

School has become a roadblock to success that parents these days are forced to combat as much as anything. As with most things entwined with the government, the road to making it a real contribution to kids' lives is going to be long and rough. I hope one day the reformers will win out and every kid will have equal access to an education that truly unlocks their potential in a quickly changing world.