One of the background bits of information undergirding a lot
of what this blog has to say is the ongoing “debate” between establishment
educators and academic educators. A
simple rundown of what divides them can take the following form: the establishment favors a natural rights
point of view and academia favors critical theory.
The natural rights view summarily
supports individuals holding basic rights and that they can behave to exercise those
rights as long as such behavior does not interfere with others enjoying their
basic rights. Critical theory believes
society is ruled and controlled by monied interests and the resulting
political/economic system is set up and sustained to advance those interests.
Each side strives to move education
toward recognizing the governmental/political, national perspective they
respectively harbor, to pursue policies it sees as ideal, and delegitimize the
related beliefs of the other side. This
leads to a different set of policy preferences:
·
For
establishment educators, policy should support and be directed toward preparing
students for the competitive environment that categorizes the economy.
·
For
critical theorists, policy should encourage the citizenry toward overthrowing the
exploitive society – this can be done peacefully – so it can advance to a
general state of equality in which all will equally share in the economy’s
benefits.
As a short expression of these opposing
ideas, one can simply state what each side’s trump value is: natural rights holds liberty – or what the
literature calls natural liberty or equal condition – and critical theory holds
equality – or what the literature calls equal results. As a point of context, the current political
landscape seems to indicate that the electorate is swinging toward one camp or
the other by abandoning what is usually called the “political center.” Another way to describe this: both sides are getting closer to the extremes
– nationalism and socialism.
As for this posting, the aim is to
see how each side treats educational history in the US. If either can have its view of the past as
the general view, this would lead, among the electorate, to agreements over
many assumptions one makes in promoting one set of policies as opposed to the
other set. This writer believes that
that would be an important achievement by either side as it would “grease” the way
toward being successful in many policy debates.
But before explaining that, here is a
contextual point that needs to be mentioned.
One should not view education as a consumer service. Instead, one should see it as a discipline; in
order to succeed, it demands that a reasonable amount of effort be exerted by
students. This account mentions this
because of its varied implications. When
reformers consider changes in education, they need to remember that this basic
relationship – between students and subject matter – should dictate important
parameters as to what should be considered.
Often, those who discuss reform, be
they establishment advocates or critical theorists, do not take this fact into
consideration. How an educational system
is run, therefore, goes a long way in determining whether the resulting service
is reasonable in its demands in the expected efforts called upon by students,
parents, or other involved adults, such as teachers and school administrators. With those ground rules, what do these
opposing sides view as being the educational history of the nation? Here is a short answer.
Naturally, both sides have differing
historical accounts they favor. So, how
can one see these dual views separately and in comparison, to each other? A central concern of critical theorists can
be used to begin this review. That is: why, to begin with, does an exploitive
nation, such as the US, have a public-school system? Here are the two opposing answers to this
basic question.
The establishment believes that on
the face of it, public schooling allows the masses to become educated and,
through that experience, can improve their competitive posture. In turn, this, with hard work, can lead to
ever higher levels of rewards that lucrative careers can accrue. In short, education can lead to equal
opportunity assuming the educational system works sufficiently well.
This assumption is one of many that
critical theorists question. Critical
theorists do not accept that the above overall aim is true. They argue that an alternate motivation was
at play when the rich agreed to sign up and support a public-school system, an
essential element in instituting such a system.
On the critical theory side, one can
summarize its view by stating that public schooling came about due to how rich
people saw a vast population. That population,
mostly poor, would have little to no motivation to favor, uphold, or otherwise
support the existing, exploitive polity and its economic system. Given their lack of any meaningful stake in
what was, the masses were left to their own devises to not only be antagonistic
toward that system, but also, through lawlessness and outright rebellion,
undermine it.
Chief among the upper class’s
concerns, were behaviors that aimed at destruction. Yes, religion could be counted on to stave
off some of these beliefs or feelings, but on a day to day basis, a more instituted
effort could be made to promote a message of how good the system was and, better
still, that message could be imparted early in life.
Not only could such a schooling institution
do these things, but it could also socialize people to except such exploitive
practices as forcing the working class to submit to the factory system, in
which manufacturers forced workers to earn a subsistence wage. By the way, schools used the factory model to
physically structure their operations.[1]
The promotors of public schooling
could and finally did sell this essential message to the rich. It has been further supported, critical
theorists would say, with the underfunding that public schooling has struggled
through the years since its inception.
Of course, because of funding formulas across the country, one can
readily see the results of such funding when one compares the physical resources
schools in lucrative areas have compared to say inner city schools where struggling
people live.
That, in a few sentences, summarizes
why critical theorists argue the rich – in this nation and in just about all nations
that have public education systems – supported initiating and funding such expensive
operations among the states of the US.
Of course, lately the rich are thinking of ways to lighten that financial
burden. Critical theorists are apt to
see such “reforms” in this light, and one can easily see why the critical
theorists might question the motivation behind moves toward some alternate
school models such as charter schools.[2]
On the other side, natural rights
advocates favor a different history.
They might see some of the above counterproductive practices – e.g., the
factory system model for structurally arranging schools – but usually chalk those
up to how people generally saw education at a given time. They instead look and emphasize those actors
and movements that strove to make education available to the public.
And they proudly point out those
cases where people of modest means have been successful in an array of professional
careers. For example, the head of Amazon
went to high school in the Miami-Dade school system.
In addition, they like to tout the
efforts of such historical characters as Horace Mann who in the 1800s “believed
passionately in the value of public schools and common education for the
children of Massachusetts and defended his proposal in flowery … terms.”[3] But, one should note an issue that bogged down
a harmonious beginning to the public-school system.
Among the populous, initial efforts found
a lot of disagreement over any normative elements being included in the resulting
public-school curriculum. What one needs
to keep in mind, initial efforts at public schooling emanated from a time when
there was broad concern over any educational effort especially those involving
moral content.
Most insisted any resulting
curriculum should include moral content based on sectarian foundations. But, the founders of the public system faced
a public strongly divided – for one thing, Roman Catholics who objected to the
Protestant bias started their own generally affordable system.[4]
Despite this divergence, American schooling
evolved into a homogenous product. Here
is Toni Massaro’s summary:
Despite this resistance, compulsory
schooling came to dominate the educational landscape during the 1900s. By 1918, every state had adopted a compulsory
school act. In the 1920s, Cremin
reports, “over ninety percent of American children between the ages of seven
and thirteen were reported as enrolled in school,” and the vast majority of
them were enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools. Moreover, the content of this education
became reasonably, though never completely, coherent.[5]
This writer argues that the resulting
curriculum up until roughly the 1960s had a strong moral component. Cremin lists various moral strains which categorized
the content among the various state systems that include: New Testament values, Poor Richard’s Almanac
wisdom, and Federalist Papers’ political messaging. This writer feels this ended in the sixties
and that a more natural rights bias has become dominant and has instilled a
less communal content-based curriculum that generally avoids dealing with moral
questions.
Part of adopting federation theory to
guide educational efforts, especially in civics, is a call for a communal curricular
base that actively deals with moral questions, but on a secular basis. This blog has argued that the federalist view
can and should be seen as a compromise between both the natural rights view and
critical theory. Again, the nation seems
to be edging toward the extremes of these views and that, in turn, can result
in dire consequences.
[1] Here’s the analogy:
The raw material was students, they were submitted to timed sessions,
they were molded and passed on the assembly line of different workers/teachers
and were submitted at the end of the assembly line as finished – educated –
products. In addition, production areas,
the classroom, were to be arranged in neat rows to better keep oversight on how
well the material was progressing.
[2] These semi-public, semi-private schools are often
seen as just means of draining public resources away from regular public
schools to provide cheaper semi-private schools to affluent families that
usually do not have the oversight to which regular schools are subjected.
[4] For an account of this division, see Robert
Gutierrez, “Some Initial Rancor over Education,” Gravitas: A Voice for Civics, December 1, 2017,
accessed July 25, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2017/12/some-initial-rancor-over-education.html .
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