Social Efficiency Part III

(As always bear with the formatting and font issues. No matter what I do it won't format correctly and the more I fix it, the worse it becomes.)

Quick re-cap...what is social efficiency and what does it have to do with schools? To quote author Ann Gibson Winfield, "Reflecting the general societal trend, social efficiency educators were "imbued with the power of science" and believe that the application of business and industrial standard would eliminate waste in education." She goes on to say, " The conduits comprising the interface between eugenic ideology and education was formed through a combination of historical, political, socially Progressive and demographic influences in play during the first decades of the 20th century".

Social Efficiency and the New Nationalism by Joel H. Spring (an author I've found to be quite knowledgeable and unbiased) wrote...

"The common ideological bed shared by the New Nationalists and the

social efficiency educators was made up of an acceptance of a collective

society and a belief that an individual should be devoted to a specialized task

in society. The social efficiency stream in early twentieth-century American

education has recently been pointed out by Edward Krug in The Shaping

of the American High School and in Walter Drost's biography of social

efficiency educator David Snedden. Krug's thesis is that social efficiency

was a combination of education for social service and social control. The

social service aspect of social efficiency education involved the same

type of attack upon rugged individualism that Bowers found as one of

the striking characteristics ofthe social reconstructionists. It was an education

directed at training the individual for a life devoted to the good

of the collective whole"

Again the social efficiency notion of training someone for a specific task or career and nothing more. For example, a person trained to be a carpenter would only know history of carpentry (no need to know of world wars, the constitution, etc), carpentry-based math, etc. This in my eyes does not make a whole person and robs man of the freedom of knowledge. Social efficiency gets as creepy as can be here, as it begins to sound like Mao-era China when Spring says, " social efficiency was a combination of education for social service and social control". When I read that education should be about social control, I think some blood shoots from out my eyes. Education should FREE man, knowledge is power, enlightenment, freedom. If education is control then it is indoctrination as well and I stand against that. This idea goes perhaps even beyond the Prussian idea that education should teach us to bow down to the king. And yet it gets worse...a socialist mantra indeed, that education should train us to devote our lives to the collective whole. Last time I checked, America was founded by the founding fathers that promoted individualism and freedom, not kowtowing to the government for the good of the collective whole.

"The social efficiency educator at the University of

Wisconsin, Micheal V. O'Shea, told teachers in a 1909 textbook entitled

Social Development and Education, "Intense individualistic feelings and

actions must be brought under control, and cooperation must largely

take the place of original tendencies to opposition and aggression."

William C. Bagley went further than this in 1904 when he wrote in his

The Educative Process that a socially efficient man was one who was

willing to "sacrifice his own pleasure . .. when its gratification will not

directly or indirectly lead to social advancement." sociologist,

Edward A. Ross. Ross wrote his book Social Control while at Stanford

during the eighteen-nineties. Insisting

that communities held together by close face-to-face relationships were

rapidly becoming things of the past, he advocated new means by which

society could maintain social order. "Success in social organization," Ross

wrote, "implies that each man, whether watched or unwatched, sticks to his

appointed work, and interferes with no one else in his work." Ross hailed

education as a means of achieving successful social organization. Teachers

could become "an economical system of police." Education for social control

meant training student to fit into a particular slot in the social

organization. “

Here Spring identifies yet again my point of social efficiency being for social control and to teach people just what they need to know, nothing more. The “powers that be” of this era saw, as I’ve mentioned, the family and community unit breaking down and so through social control in the schools, social order could be maintained and everyone would know their proper place in the collective whole.

“ Social specialization was to be achieved through a differentiated curriculum. Courses and course material were to be selected on the basis of the social destination of

the student. Collective harmony was to be achieved through social education.

Within the school the child was to be divested of all selfish individual

interests. Group play and group work were to prepare the individual for

a collective society”

Differentiated curriculum is a buzz word in current education, but if this is its origins, I am weary. This reiterates that schools are to train people for their pre-determined roles, nothing more. And through this brainwashing…I mean “education”, we would reach a utopia of “collective harmony” and we would no longer have individualism or selfish thought. Even our play-time was to be infiltrated and turned into a socialist exercise. Prussia monitored children’s play by creating government run children’s clubs such as judendeutchland (no clue on the spelling) or “Young Germans”.

“Social efficiency education and the New Nationalism were therefore wedded

to the goals of a highly organized society in which efficiency was to be

maintained through social specialization and unselfish devotion to common

social causes. The New Nationalism as a progressive political movement did

not die with Roosevelt's defeat in 1912. As Eric Goldman has pointed out,

New Nationalist thinking became a part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal”

Here it is again- our pre-determined roles, promoted/mandated through our education, will make our society more efficient (easier to control). The “devotion to social causes” sounds innocuous but their social causes here are anything but, as they are all about control and a push for a utopian socialistic mantra of collectivism. For those who claim the New Deal was all about socialism, this to me aligns to that claim, as Spring suggests below;

If this is true, then the question that has to be answered is: Were the social

reconstructionists a new breed of progressive educator or were they in

the tradition of social efficiency education? Though it is true that early social

efficiency educators did not demand a completely planned society in the

manner of the social reconstructionists, it is not difficult to imagine that a

plea for social specialization and collective harmony would move in this

direction under the pressure of a depression. T his question must be answered

before we can come to a clear understanding of what progressive education

was all about.”

Social Efficiency Part 1

(Sorry in advance for the yellow highlighting, changing it here and/or in my original document just won't work so I apologize as it looks quite ugly)

Social Efficiency In Education...

First a related note on the efficiency movement which relates to social efficiency; from wikipedia, "The Efficiency Movement played a central role in the Progressive Era in the United States, where it flourished 1890-1932.^[4] Adherents argued that all aspects of the economy, society and government were riddled with waste and inefficiency. Everything would be better if experts identified the problems and fixed them."


As explained and explored by many, I am going to explore it in a few posts.

This first one is the least "shocking".

From "Education for social efficiency: a study in the social relations of education" By Irving King...
"It was devised as a means of insuring that the child should learn certain things which he would not be able to learn satisfactorily if he were left to pick up things for himself by imitation and simple contact with the life that was going on daily about him. As culture increased in complexity, more and more of the burden of education had to be shifted to formal agencies, specifically to the school"
I wonder how much people can learn without "formal agencies". Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin sure were intelligent and successful without a full formal education, as are many home-schooled children.

The last century, however, has immensely increased the reach of human life. Man's vocational activities have broadened in their scope. More and more has he been led out of the narrow, primitive relation of family and neighborhood and drawn into contact with larger and larger groups of people...While, therefore, the old-time society educated its children informally, the new social order presents such difficulties of social adjustment that the present-day child is scarcely able to fit into it, and live a really satisfactory life, unless these new social relations are made a more conscious element in his formal training. He needs, in other words, a distinctively social training. The social relations and opportunities of school and neighborhood must be utilized to prepare him for the complex life he must live
The movement of social efficiency(and often progressives) saw the new industrial, urban world as so far removed from family and community that the institutions had to teach people how to socialize and had to make up ofr lack of family and community. This brings to mind my readings of John Taylor Gatto who I recall mentioning the removal of family and community, replaced with state controlled schools.

Indeed, more and more it becomes apparent that modern society needs to be humanized and moralized, if it is to endure, just as this was needful in the simple primitive community. The moralization of the primitive community was accomplished without any definite reflective purpose. It gradually developed under the influence of natural selection
Call me off but saying society needs to be humanized and moralized is, for lack of better terms, creepy. I just don't feel the state should be moralizing the population.

development of a social morality which is adequate to these new conditions; a social morality which can unify diverse and conflicting interests and conserve human welfare in the midst of the great modern machine of production, distribution, and consumption, which man himself has constructed; a social morality which will, in a word, save man from the monster of his own creation.

Using heavily connotative words (such as "monster", "unify") sways and pulls at the reader's emotions to almost say, yeah, I agree, let's save the world from destruction! However, the evil behind this is social control and management, as if people cannot do it themselves and need the status quo, the elite, those in power, to manage them.

All of this must be accomplished through education, meaning by education the entire process by which human nature is trained and instructed. And this education must be largely wrought out through the school. The ideal of a social life adequate to modern conditions of living must take its place as an object of explicit and conscious training, just because it is too complex and difficult to attain in any other way.

And here, my friends, is social control through indoctrination...oops I mean brainwashing....wait no, I mean education. Family and community can no longer provide what they once did, so let the state decide whay to provide, and do it through the school system.

If it is to be adequately met it must be through a complete reconstruction and utilization of every element and factor in the educational process.

Social efficiency cannot be escaped as it will infiltrate every aspect of education.

. For the lower classes there already exist large numbers of "nature readers", which boys and girls of the country need quite as much as do those of the city, that their eyes may be opened to what is going on about them in forest, field, and stream.

For the upper classes there are masterpieces of literature which present the idealistic side of agriculture and interpret nature from the standpoint of country life.*

This is saying that there will be a seperate education for the lower and upper classes, further stratifying our society. Also, the mention here of "country life" and "field and stream" relates to an idea I will discuss more later; that education should be so differentiated and specialized that it only teaches from the narrow view of the child's life knowledge (i.e. a country child would only learn of country topics such as farming and nature) and that view prepares them for a pre-set position and career in life.

This book does not go as deep and dark into social control and efficiency as others but it is a good introduction. It is not full of shock-and-awe and you almost find yourself agreeing with it until you realize it is about control, and not freedom, which is against social justice.

Social Efficiency Part II

For simplicities sake, instead of a complex multi-source literature review or article on social efficiency, I will just tackle a book/article or two per post. At some point in life I will combine all the ideas into a coherent single unit of writing but for now...some article/book reviews, my editorial opinion on them.

Education and the Cult of Efficiency: A Study of the Social Forces That Have Shaped the Administration of the Public Schools. by Callahan, Raymond ...

"These two developments, and the vulnerability of the school administrator, contributed to the conditions in American society which explain the tremendous impact of Frederick Taylor and his system of scientific management, and the continuing influence of the business-industrial ideology upon American society and education after 1911. "

This kind of "proves" my connection of the efficiency movement to social efficiency in schools as mentioned briefly in my post on Social Efficiency Part 1.

"It was inevitable that these business values would greatly influence the public schools at the turn of the century, but the extent of this influence was furthered by certain aspects of the great reform crusade. This movement was primarily an attempt to cope with the problems which were a product of rapid industrialization: the consolidation of industry and the concentration of wealth; the ruthless exploitation of the country’s natural resources; the corruption and inefficiency in government; the tremendous growth of cities; the flood of immigrants who added to the complexity of the social and political problems in the urban areas; and finally, the fear among the middle class that America would react to these problems in an extreme or radical way (this reaction had of course been predicted by Karl Marx and had been realized, to an extent, in the growth of various forms of socialism in America)."

This again is social efficiency- with a new world of industry and corruption and many social ills the Progressive Era sought to fix, social efficiency was part of "the fix". The irony here is, the evil industrialists (according to some progressives) were the problem, and yet it seems they were also the solution, along with government control (but not supposedly inefficiency...if these progressives have any influence today, I don't see it in government since it is quite inefficient but that's another story...). The flood of immigrants was seen as a problem especially by the eugenicists (who were often proponents of Progressivism and Efficiency) who saw that they would cause racial impurity and social ills because they were inferior peoples intellectually, socially, etc and needed control. Some even proposed not just immigration sanctions but segregation and sterilization. Social efficiency would "fix" the immigrants by putting them in their place...whatever that might mean. Then quoting Marxism, the elite feared a middle class uprising. I then think, of you mold education just so, similar to the Prussian model, you can tweak the system just so, and the middle classes will be dumbed down into subservience.

"The business influence was exerted upon education in several ways: through newspapers, journals, and hooks; through speeches at educational meetings; and, more directly, through actions of school boards. It was exerted by laymen, by professional journalists, by businessmen or industrialists either individually or in groups (e.g., the National Association of Manufacturers), and finally by educators themselves. Whatever its source, the influence was exerted in the form of suggestions or demands that the schools be organized and operated in a more businesslike way and that more emphasis be placed upon a practical and immediately useful education. "

I am not exactly arguing against the influence of business in education. The deep down and dirty truth is, when people leave the safety net of schools, they go into the "real world" and end up working for businesses. Therefore businesses know what they want and we should as educators provide that. (However, I argue we provide more than just laborers, but thinkers, innovators, etc...) When does cause me hesitation as to the influence of business in education is the removal of local control, teacher freedom, bottom-up management that comes about through the implementation of business influences such as textbook and testing companies that now run our schools as if they know better. And when the author said "a practical and immediately useful education" he meant something more than that, as that sounds all fine and dandy. He and others of his movement wanted to train people just for an exact career and nothing outside of that. I argue this robs our people of free thought, will-power, freedom to do and think what they want. Knowledge is power!

"Year by year after 1900, the pressure for a more utilitarian education continued. By 1907, school superintendents were being praised by the President of the Commercial National Bank in Chicago for their contribution to America’s great material progress. As a guest speaker at their annual convention, he told them this progress was “a result of getting away, to an extent, from the mere scholastic education, and developing the practical side, making the school the place to learn how to manufacture."

Schools were not praised or encouraged to teach complex thought- the "scholastic education" as that was left to the elite private schools. Just like Prussia, our schools were to teach "how to manufacture", that is, how to do simple tasks for simple people, the common man's labors and nothing more.

"Along with these demands to make the academic program practical went an intensive campaign to introduce and extend vocational education in the public schools. Although the adoption of the German system with its early differentiation between academic students and vocational students was avoided, the drive for vocational education was quite successful."

See...here's Prussia rearing her evil head. The author claims yes, we adopted the vocational education of Prussia but not her tracking system; however, I disagree as we had and still have GATE, special ed, etc. and encourage our children to take just what they need to graduate, or, extra course work for college prep.

"Some fourteen million immigrants had come to America between 1865 and 1900. After 1900, they came at a rate of about one million a year. The majority of these people remained in the eastern cities, where their children were entered — with increasing frequency because of the improvements in child labor laws and compulsory school attendance legislation — in the public schools. Coming predominantly from the poorest socioeconomic groups in southern and eastern Europe, these uprooted, non–English-speaking children from semiliterate families with diverse cultural backgrounds constituted an educational problem unparalleled in human history...Into this difficult and potentially explosive situation an American educator — not a businessman or muckraking journalist — threw an incendiary bomb in the form of an allegedly scientific study of retardation and elimination, published in 1909, Laggards in Our Schools. The author, Leonard Ayres, said, that “for every child who is making more than normally rapid progress there are from eight to ten children making abnormally slow progress.”he held the schools responsible, charging that their programs were “fitted not to the slow child or to the average child but to the unusually bright one.”

This is the immigration issue again, that these immigrants were "retarding" our schools and social efficiency would cure this, especially since these children had to attend school because of the compulsory school law. Ayres here says something surprising, that the schools were too advanced for these students of retarded status; this makes sense upon reflection because it promotes a common school for the common man, dumbing down education.

pass the barf bag

External Locus of Control

I made myself sick today. I found out P - 20 isn't preschool-20 (college) as I thought. Oregon, Michigan, Kansas ( and likely every state) have websites about P - 20 which state it is prenatal - college. Yes, prenatal. To quote http://www.michiganschildren.org/Speaking-Up-For-Kids/what-is-p-20.html,

"p 20 is a cradle-to-career approach to education recognizing that education does not start and end at the classroom door". 

Yes....no sugarcoating here, they overtly mentioned a government sanctioning of cradle to grave control.
Here I thought all along, phew I have my kiddos until pre-school or kindergarten. I have them for their most influential formative years, go me! Take that, government! My dreams were shattered today. No longer are my children my own, but part of the state, parens patriae, the idea of the state as parent, since, apparently, these elitist experts know best. No more mommy knows best...this world is too "complicated" for us simple folks, an idea dating back to the Utopian goals of the Progressive Era and the notion of social efficiency.

Let me provide a disclaimer and interjection. I do not inherently see a problem with prenatal care and early childhood education. Our infant mortality rate and pregnancy complication rates are quite dismal for a first-world country. As a mother of two, I am all for prenatal care. As a teacher, I am all for early childhood education. During my first year of teaching, I found out that many kindergartners in my poverty stricken school neighborhood came to school utterly unprepared. Many had never used crayons or held a pencil. They had never even heard the ABCs and did not know their own name (often called mijo/a, baby, etc at home). I kid you not. These children are the most in need of intervention and the most targeted for such things. Therefore I wish to reiterate that I advocate prenatal care and early learning.

The Factory Model

But if history means a darned thing, this scares me... targeting the most at risk populations can mean they receive a stellar education that teaches them to think, ask questions, create, innovate, argue. Or it can teach them job skills like how to ring up a burger and fries and how to operate a vacuum, you know, skills that CC offers through the 70% weight of informative text in Language Arts courses.

The idea of scientifically managing the population to control them, as part of a Utopia, is hardly new. It originated in Prussia (see http://3rseduc.blogspot.com/search?q=prussia for background info on Prussia's influence on our education system) as noted at http://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/09/john-taylor-gatto/the-prussian-connection/ A concept called

"psychological parenthood" began to take shape, a radical notion without legal precedent that would be used down the road to support drastic forcible intervention into family life. It became one of the basic justifications offered during the period of mass immigration for a compulsion law intended to put children under the thrall of so-called scientific parenting in schools"

This idea that the families of the nation were ill-equipped to raise children; that scientific management thereof could save us, is prominent in the past and perhaps today.

in "Education for social efficiency: a study in the social relations of education" By Irving King (1915),

"It was devised as a means of insuring that the child should learn certain things which he would not be able to learn satisfactorily if he were left to pick up things for himself by imitation and simple contact with the life that was going on daily about him. As culture increased in complexity, more and more of the burden of education had to be shifted to formal agencies, specifically to the school"

From the same document,

"And this education must be largely wrought out through the school. The ideal of a social life adequate to modern conditions of living must take its place as an object of explicit and conscious training, just because it is too complex and difficult to attain in any other way"

For a nice outline of the Progressive Era and the influence on society and education, visit http://people.uncw.edu/ricej/education/The%20Progressive%20Era%202%20Social%20Efficiency.htm

As the Progressive Era rolled in, social efficiency reared its ugly head. I don't like using wikipedia as a reliable source, but instead of quoting ten separate sources to validate wiki, I will give you the wiki definition of social efficiency- I could not have said it better.

Social efficiency educators" such as theorists Ross, Bobbitt, Gilbreth, Taylor, and Thorndike were aiming to design a curriculum that would optimize the “social utility” of each individual in a society. By using education as an efficiency tool, these theorists believed that society could be controlled. Students would be scientifically evaluated (such as IQ tests), and educated towards their predicted role in society. This involved the introduction of vocational and junior high schools to address the curriculum designed around specific life activities that correlate with each student’s societal future. The socially efficient curriculum would consist of minute parts or tasks that together formed a bigger concept. This educational view was somewhat derived with the efficiency of factories which could simultaneously produce able factory workers. Critics believe this model has too much emphasis on testing and separating students based on the results of that testing.

Social efficiency keeps at it; A.H. Lauchner, a principal in 1951, said,

 "not every child has to read, figure, write and spell...that many of them cannot or will not master these chores." 

Meaning, why teach true academic curriculum to certain children to whom it would be a waste?

Okay so my point here is this, social efficiency used the "science" of test scores to drive curriculum to scientifically manage the populace, to determine which students were to be doctors and which were to be laborers. With the p-20 data tracking system, a student with behavioral issues, an IEP, low math test scores may be pigeonholed- on purpose- into becoming a manual laborer, even if their dreams and skills are in interpreting law or motivating students or what have you.

Sire, you say, this cannot happen. Or perhaps it is an old fuddy duddy idea that never came to fruition and never will. To re-quote one of my posts from this year,

From http://www.wiche.edu/info/publications/FrameworkForAMultistateHumanCapitalDevelopmentDataSystem.pdf

"The workforce sector wants information about prior training in
high school and postsecondary institutions as a foundation for
working with both education sectors to address identified skill gaps
in the workforce, as well as to identify equity gaps with respect
to demographic representativeness by job category. Knowing the
education sectors’ capacity to respond (i.e., by increasing the flow
of graduates with particular skill sets) will also help the state decide
whether to invest in education to address skill gaps or establish
incentives to induce more workers with needed skills to move
into the state. Moreover, linking with the education sectors would
provide labor market analysts with a wealth of data that would be
useful for examining equity in employment."

This document is a modern document, written sometime between 2009-2013, and it states that schools can increase the flow of graduates with certain skills. How might they do this? If society needs more engineers, or fast food workers, how will it "increase the flow" without either data manipulation (suddenly Johnny's test scores plummet and his education is individualized to send him into fast food) or using tracking to label students (everyone who struggled in science gets to work in fast f

Your Secret is Safe With me

Everyone keepos saying the data collected will remain anonymous, and will solely be used to improve prenatal care, career readiness programs, etc, But of course the data will be shared with any government organization or third party vendor or person in education (textbook companies, educational consultants) which will remain anonymous once out of the school level. Students will be numbered, data will be meta data, and it will be secure. (Just like our IRS records, social security info, etc which surely has never been compromised...ha ha).

"Anonymous" meta data is extrapolated from identifiable data, those "80% have graduated on time" had names and identities attached to them.  Collect some meta data such as addresses, parent's names, etc and enough datamanipulating can lead back to the student. Or, if anyone decides to be evil, a school official could leak identifiable student data, or how to access it (ie that student #642t50 is Jane Plain). But don't worry,,,your data is "safe".

Which leads back to social efficiency... whitehouse.gov had said,

Pearson will share data into the Learning Registry about many of their existing teaching resources including those that support CCSS so that they can be used n each students' personal learning path

Yep, right back to pigeonholing students in a certain direction as part of social efficiency, or as we call it now, human capital.  From http://www.csctulsa.org/content.php?p=195 we bring you,

The P-20 concept is a way of thinking and acting that promotes systematic aligning of multiple education, health, and social support resources to best advance human capital development from prenatal through postsecondary and employment, and on to sustained lifelong well-being...

See, my long-winded post does all come together right there. And it scares me. It is wrapped up in a pretty package- who doesn't want "sustained lifelong well-being"? But the question is, who decides what well-being means? Perception is everything and one man's well being could be another man's hell. Is the government's idea of my well being what I desire? Likely not, since obviously life- and my own well being- are "human capital" and must be micromanaged and decided for me.

Social Efficiency Part IV

Here are some excerpts and my two cents regarding " Social Efficiency Reexamined: The Dewey-Snedden Controversy" by Walter H. Drost

“W. W. Charters and Franklin Bobbitt both

sought to discover just what those skills [social efficiency] were so that the curriculum

might convey them most efficiently; they too were advocates of social

efficiency. But David Snedden carried the principle further. Snedden,

who spent much of his influential career first as Massachusetts's Commissioner

of Education and then as a professor of educational sociology at

Teachers College, Columbia University, urged that the schools project

the probable social and occupational destination of each student and prescribe a curriculum to fit him efficiently to his place. Among the

various adherents of schooling for social efficiency, Snedden was the most

prolific writer.”

As we keep encountering, social efficiency sought to prepare students for their place in society- nothing more. What is disconcerting is that Snedden among others, was in an influential place in regards to education’s history and making. He was not just some “nut case” but a bonafide educational leader just like Cubberley, Terman etc. His teaching at Columbia’s Teacher College certainly was tainted by his perspectives, which affected the practices of the best and brightest teachers. His ideas had to affect his policies as the Commisioner of Education…as stated below;

“In an attempt to overcome the rift between the vocational schools and the schools of general education, a new consolidated Board of Education was created. The new

state board brought in a young adjunct professor of educational administration

from Columbia University, David Snedden, as its first Commissioner

of Education .Most of all he was impressed by the new science

of sociology which promised through manipulation and control to improve

human lives, particularly those of the poor.”

Call me crazy, but as an empathetic person, manipulating and controlling the poor is simply wrong and makes we quite livid. End of story.

“It was there, in the classroom of Professor Edward A. Ross, that Snedden first

encountered the doctrines of social control. [Edward Ross was a eugenicist]

At the Stanford graduation of1900-in his first major address, entitled "Education for the Rank and File"-Snedden urged that the common man be educated for a life of

practical efficiency through an entirely different program of courses from

that of the elite. He urged that training in the trades and business was a

legitimate function of public education and necessary for the broad efficiency

of the individual. Social control, he argued, should replace individual

choice and prevent the "immense wastage" resulting from individual

trial and error.

Again, I am rendered nearly speechless…the audacity! Snedden promotes tracking and the Prussian idea of a school for the masses and a separate one for the elite. If these ideas infiltrated his teaching which they may have, then countless students of his, soon to enter the workforce, perpetuated his ideas like little drones, creating a system of haves and have nots, set-up for an achievement gap. And to say social control should replace individual choice, how un-American, an educator should not promote such despotism.

Education Leaders Unmasked: Elwood Cubberley part 2

Changing Conceptions of Education in America

By Ellwood Cubberley 1909

(Any typos are those of the transcriber not myself. Ignore formatting/font issues, but my words are always in Times New Roman 12 font, not italicized, as seen here.)

"the home altogether too often is unintelli- gent or neglectful in the handling of children, and not infrequently it has abdicated entirely and has turned over to the public school the whole matter of the training and education of the young.”

As you will see later in this post, Cubberley is promoting state takeover of children, not complaining that children are the burden of schools or what have you. Remember that Cubberley is a “pioneer” for administration, ( and who runs the school? The administration) and was Dean at Stanford, a very influential school and position. Keep this in mind as you read on… Cubberley is still referenced in teaching colleges today.

Factory life has also made it undesirable that children should labor. The result is that a boy or girl in our modern life has so little real home life, so much unprofitable leisure, and ac-quires so much through the eyes and the ears anc learns so little by actual doing, that the problem of providing a proper environment and of utiliz- ing this excess leisure time in profitable training has become one of the most serious as well as one of the most difficult problems now before us. The school, begun at first as a means of impart- ing to children the common rudiments of learn- ing, has gradually been transformed into one of the most important institutions of democracy and has been called upon to offer some practi- cable solution of the situation created. This has caused us to look at education in a new and a larger light.

I often reference John Taylor Gatto in my writings and recall reading in his book The Underground History of American Education, something along the lines of the fact that American compulsory education was a way to control people, to remove them from their own intellectual pursuits or musings or evne non-intellectual leisures and to guide young minds in a certain direction. I found this far-fetched but with Cubberley’s quote here, I begin to confirm such indications. Cubberley sees school as the end-all do-all of society, the shaper of democracy and our future, more than as a place of intellectual stimulation. Schools are to replace our failing home lives, and to replace our leisure time with profitable training.

The idea that free education was a right, and that universal education was a necessity, began to be urged and to find acceptance. The landgrants of Congress to the new states for the benefit of common schools greatly stimulated the movement. The published reports of those who

had visited Pestalozzi's school in Switzerland, and had examined the new state school system in Prussia, were extensively read. The moral and economic advantages of schools were set forth 'at length in resolutions, speeches, pamphlets," magazines, and books.

Free education did not come about easily. Americans were hesitant to pay taxes towards school, finding it to be one’s own decision to pursue and pay for (when it was not free). I often wonder if Americans had suspicions of the free compulsory school model, perhaps “nothing comes free” rang true in their minds, and for good reason. (Read my Prussian post http://3rseduc.blogspot.com/2011/03/to-prussia-with-love-or-prussians-are.html for more info). Here Cubberley admits our education is modeled after the Prussian state school system.

A new conception of free public education

as a birthright of the child on the one hand, and as an exercise of the state's inherent right to self-preservation and improvement on the other, had taken the place of the earlier conception of schools as merely a cooperative effort, based on economy, and for the instruction of youth merely in the rudiments of learning. The large immigra-

tion of illiterate Irish and clannish Germans which set in in the late forties gave particular emphasis to this point of view.

Here Cubberley is a little racist, showing his dark eugenic-friendly side of which you will read more of. He didn’t seek to educate the illiterate Irish or clannish Germans out of empathy but rather to try and either get them to conform to the racially superior Northern European societal norms of America, or to train them for menial labor.

The overwhelming success of the Prussian armies in the War of 1870 with France called new attention to the importance of public education. "The

Prussian schoolmaster has triumphed/' was as- serted on all sides.

Here again, in case one doubts my claims of our Prussian-modeled system, Cubberley cites the wonders of the Prussian education system.

In the early [eighteen]seventies, the kindergarten idea came to America from Germany, and was soon recog- nized as a valuable addition. In the eighties, the Herbartian conception of education, with its emphasis on proper psychological procedure and on character-building as the aim of education, began to reshape our educational theory.

One may think that this quote is benign but kindergarten is a Prussian concept. Recall the earlier quote about the home no longer being the rightful place for a child; the concept of “get them while they’re young and impressionable” prevails here. Also, I must ask, should education be a psychological function? If we are using psychological procedures in schools, that sounds to me like me are psychologically manipulating or shaping young minds instead of letting them shape themselves with some guidance. This sounds like a lighter shade of brainwashing to me. Character building has a similar function, to train children how to act because obviously the parents, church, community are not doing good enough of a job (or perhaps they are doing a job gone unchecked). I may be out on a limb here, but Mao Tse Tung re-educated the wealthy and had quite a character-building repertoire.

The new interest in school hygiene and the physical welfare of the child indicates a new and a commendable desire to care for the bodies as well as the heads of our children. The great educational lessons to be learned from a study of the educational, political, and industrial

progress of the German Empire during the past forty years are at last beginning to take root with us. Above all, the new and extensive interest in industrial and vocational training is especially significant of the changing conception of the function of the school and the classes in society which the school is in future expected to serve.

When I read John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education, I came across Cubberley’s name and this quote which shocked me; from his 1905 Columbia dissertation, “[schools were to be factories] "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products... manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry." This quote and Cubberley’s quote above confirm to me what Gatto is trying to tell the reader: the founders of our educational system saw our children as products, not people, as slaves to the state and the corporations, to be trained to bend to the will of these powers, to indoctrinate.

school curriculum bids fair, too, to experi- ence many modifications during the next one or two decades, and chiefly along a line that will lead toward preparation for increased social efficiency.

Social efficiency related to eugenics movement and the Progressive movement’s Efficiency Movement which “played a central role in the Progressive Era in the United States, where it flourished 1890-1932.^[4] Adherents argued that all aspects of the economy, society and government were riddled with waste and inefficiency. Everything would be better if experts identified the problems and fixed them” (wikipedia). Eugenics was a scientific approach to improving social efficiency, seeking to solve the ills of poverty, alcoholism, feeble-mindedness, etc often through not just education but sterilization. Therefore, when curriculum is designed for social efficiency, it makes one leery. Wikipedia states, in regards to curriculum theory- specifically the social efficiency theory of Franklin Bobbitt, Edward Ross, Cubberley and others, “these theorists believed that society could be controlled. Students would be scientifically evaluated (such as IQ tests), and educated towards their predicted role in society”. Yes, it has been stated: education according to Cubberly (among others) is to manage society. I further this idea below,

Our city schools will soon be forced to give up the exceedingly democratic idea that all are equal, and that our society is devoid of classes, as a few cities have already in large part done, and to be-

gin a specialization of educational effort along many new lines in an attempt better to adapt the school to the needs of these many classes in the city life. City, town, and country schools alike have, in the past, directed most of their training to satisfying the needs of the children of the well- to-do classes, and those headed for business life

or the professions. More recently, most of the larger cities have provided some form of work leading to preparation for the executive positions in technical pursuits.

If we remove the notion that we are all equal, we can more easily segregate the populous. Cubberley prescribes to the notion that our society should marginalize people and when you combine this notion with that of standardized achievement testing, you have the recipe for ability, class, or ethnicity based schooling, proving the eugenic “science” that “less thans” are exactly that, because we create a society where they can be nothing but “less thans”. Cubberley also admits here that certain schools of his time have already implemented a social efficiency curriculum, where children are pre-destined for greatness or not-so-greatness and the educational institutions ensure the progression of these pre-assigned roles. Cubberly bashes the notion of an academically challenging education for all as once existed, and promotes ability-based learning/role training. http://ezinearticles.com/?Social-Efficiency-versus-Democratic-Equality&id=175582 explores social efficiency further, and argues that schools often implement the social efficienct model for minority students- no wonder we have an achievement gap!

Instead of a study of school methods and management only, the work has

changed into a phase of political science, — that of a study of means of improving the state and of advancing the public welfare. Nearly all of our universities and colleges now have such chairs or

departments, and the state universities and our more democratic private institutions are now or- ganizing professional schools for the training of teachers and educational leaders for the state.

Cubberley is stating that teacher colleges ensure that their professors and department chairs practice the social efficiency model of education; if teacher colleges encourage these practices, that means the teachers they train further this model.

Each year the child is coming to belong more and more to the state,

and less and less to the parent. In all that relates to proper care, kindness, education, and advan- tages, the child belongs to the parent; but when neglect, abuse, and the deprivation of the child of any natural right takes place, the child belongs to the state. The right to reasonably good treatment, proper care, an education, pro- tection from vice, and protection from labor be- yond his strength and years, the state will soon guarantee. The plea in defense that " the child is my child " will not be accepted much longer by society. Our future welfare is too thoroughly in the keeping of the child to permit of such a policy.

This quote is demonstrating the will of Cubberly and like minds to control the child, to remove the power of parenting from the parents and replace it with that of the school. One must wonder if programs such as the school lunch program, school health screenings, and other school welfare programs exist purely to help those in need or if they exist as a way to have the school “keep the child” and promote state welfare under the social efficiency model- leaving parenting to the scientifically-trained experts (teacher-college trained teachers) and way from those who are not the experts (parents).

through all the complicated machinery of the school, some way must be found to awaken a social consciousness as opposed to class consciousness, to bring out the important social and civic les-

sons, to point out our social and civic needs, and to teach our young people how to live better and to make better use of their leisure time.Read- ing, Writing, Arithmetic, Grammar, Geography, and History, the staples of the elementary cur- riculum, are really of little value except as they are closely related with the needs and problems

of our social, civic, and industrial life.

Cubberly argues that school is to awaken a social consciousness, to be conscious of the greater good and welfare of the collective instead of one’s own needs or desires. Schools must teach children what to do with their lives and how to do it because only the experts know what’s good for you. Core curriculum is not important per se, but it must be framed around the idea of social responsibility and pre-determined societal roles as determined by the “experts”.

If our schools are to become more effective social institutions, our teachers must become more effective social workers.

Again, the notion that schools and the properly trained teacher are to encourage social welfare. When the term “social worker” is used, I think of the worker helping people that need “intervention” and that’s the point.

The overeducated man is scarcely possible if an education adapted to his needs and station in life is given him. The work of public education is with us, too, to a large de- gree, a piece of religious work. To engage in it is to enlist in the nation's service. Its call is for those who would dedicate themselves in a noble way. Those who would serve must be of the world, with red blood in their veins ; they must

know the world, its needs, and its problems ; they must have largeness of vision, and the courage to do and to dare ; and they must train the youth with whom they come in contact for useful and efficient action.

Mirroring the Prussian system, everyone gets a free compulsory education but only is trained and educated to a point, so not to be “too educated”. Too much education could challenge the status quo and educating someone of the lower class would be seen as a waste of time and effort because science proves they are less-than. Cubberley encourages a tracking system in education, where roles are determined and never challenged. He calls upon teachers with such emotionally charged buzz words as “blood in their veins”, “dare”, “vision”, “useful”, and “action”; the propagandized words seek to further the agenda under the utopian pretext of passion and a desire to solve the world’s problems.

Changing Conceptions of Education in America can be found at http://www.archive.org/stream/changingconcepti00cubbuoft/changingconcepti00cubbuoft_djvu.txt

Common Core Deja Vu

The Common Core Standards  (CCSS) movement, which prepares students to be work or college ready, is a facet of the P20 pipeline- the process of managing education and outcomes of children from preschool through college, the workforce, and perhaps beyond. This idea, however, is hardly new. Just think of it as Human Capital Management 2.0. Yep. Human capital is a buzzword of the CCSS and especially P20 pipeline, and it is synonymous with social efficiency. Now, in the 21^st century, we have metadata to track, plot, assess, and manage every person’s every action if we wish…something we lacked with the Human Capital Management 1.0 version, but have now with longitudinal data systems in place.

 

I want to give a brief overview of Human Capital Management 1.0 , aka Social Efficiency, an essential tenet of the Progressive Era, circa approximately 1890-1930. You can read up on Social Efficiency here http://3rseduc.blogspot.com/search?q=social+efficiency but basically it is the scientific management of society to make a more efficient, almost utopian society with everyone in their place, everything running like a well-oiled machine.  Author Joel Spring said it well;  social efficiency educators was made up of an acceptance of a collective society and a belief that an individual should be devoted to a specialized task in society. An educational pioneer, Elwood Cubberley, stated in his 1905 disseration, “schools were to be factories] "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products... manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry” This meant, for education, the advent of IQ testing, SATs, and the backdrop for the standardized testing movement. Add in a splash of eugenics, and the dream was to assess students, track them, and find their perfect role in society. This often meant, at the time, that the more inferior peoples such as blacks or women, were pigeonholed into an education that denied them of classical education; no more algebra, philosophy, Latin, Greek mythology….and instead an education to train them for the workforce such as manual labor or homemaking.  An educational pioneer, Elwood Cubberley, stated in his 1905 dissertation, “schools were to be factories] "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products... manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry”  Does this sound a little familiar, or at least echo our fears of CCSS? It should.

I could go on and on about this but will instead just leave you with a few websites and quotes to engage your mind; you can connect the dots if you will.

“The standards establish clear and consistent goals for learning that will prepare America’s children for success in college and work”  and  "With common standards and assessments, students, parents, and teachers will have a clear, consistent understanding of the skills necessary for students to succeed after high school and compete with peers across the state line and across the ocean." http://www.corestandards.org/articles/8-national-governors-association-and-state-education-chiefs-launch-common-state-academic-standards

 

“P-20 initiatives connect educational systems for increased student performance, greater efficiency, improved outcomes, and smoother pathways throughout a student's career. These factors are of critical importance in a competitive global economy.

The Missouri Department of Higher Education (MDHE) is working on several fronts to help ensure that connections between early childhood, elementary and secondary education, and higher education can create a more seamless pipeline for Missouri students. “….and….”MDHE is committed to improving linkages between K-12 and higher education data systems to facilitate data-driven decision-making. As the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is transitioning to their unique-identifier, unit-record student and teacher data system (MOSIS), both departments are working to insure that MDHE's EMSAS data and DESE's MOSIS data will facilitate appropriate and meaningful longitudinal data analysis on student performance and teacher excellence.” …and….” MDHE's commitment to streamlining educational systems across the P-20 spectrum extends to the formative education and critical transitions in early childhood education. “   http://www.dhe.mo.gov/p20/  (each state reflects a similar mission)

 

“The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is a consortium of 22 states plus the U.S. Virgin Islands working together to develop a common set of K-12 assessments in English and math anchored in what it takes to be ready for college and careers. These new K-12 assessments will build a pathway to college and career readiness by the end of high school, mark students’ progress toward this goal from 3rd grade up, and provide teachers with timely information to inform instruction and provide student support. The PARCC assessments will be ready for states to administer during the 2014-15 school year.” http://www.parcconline.org/about-parcc

 

“Online Assessment Roadmap 2014 to learn how using more innovative question types, online delivery, automated and artificial-intelligence powered scoring engines, and immediate web-based reporting of results can transform learning. This concrete planning and implementation resource will help states and districts navigate and mitigate the challenges of transitioning to online assessments. “http://commoncore.pearsoned.com/index.cfm?locator=PS11Uz and, “Evidence-based standard setting resources to understand and plan for how to shift use of cut scores to track progress toward college and career readiness.”  (Which links to a fascinating article full of “gold” via the pearson ed site )http://www.pearsonassessments.com/hai/images/tmrs/Bulletin21_Evidence_Based_Standard_Setting.pdf

“This project, “Ho‘okele,” will develop a P20 statewide longitudinal data system (P20 LDS) to track

individuals’ participation, progress and performance from early childhood education to the workforce.1

The project will enable use of the longitudinal, inter-agency data to improve educational and workforce

development outcomes, achieving Hawai‘i’s goal for human capital development”  … and…”The P20 LDS application proposes six major outcomes representing a range of investments—human

capital, financial, technological, and institutional—to develop a robust P20 LDS that supports improved

student outcomes and educational attainment. The outcomes include a multi-state data exchange among

western states encompassing K-12, postsecondary and workforce longitudinal data from Hawai‘i, Idaho and Oregon; the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) will coordinate the “Multi-State  Human Capital Development Data System.”” http://archive.jan2013.hawaii.gov/labor/wdc/P20LDS_HIApp_1209_execsum.pdf

 

I strongly encourage you to visit each referenced site and explore all that is there; the drive for change and control of our children is very overt and evident if you just do a little digging.