Our Education has been Manufactured.
EduFactured is an examination of how the Industrial Revolution has shaped the way our Education system is today.
We will also look at how modernity is demanding deviation from this Factory method to Education.
"They [current policies] treat education as an industrial process rather than as a human one. They are driven by a culture of testing and standardization that has narrowed the curriculum and sees students as data points and teachers as functionaries rather than as living breathing people." Sir Ken Robinson
"To improve our schools, we have to humanize them and make education personal to every student and teacher in the system. Education is always about relationships. Great teachers are not just instructors and test administrators: They are mentors, coaches, motivators, and lifelong sources of inspiration to their students." Sir Ken Robinson
"Our educational system is not a public service but an instrument of special privilege; its purpose is not to further welfare of mankind, but merely to keep America capitalist." Upton Sinclair cited by Anthony G. Picciano
Sir Ken Robinson
The most common explanation for the cause of the Industrial Revolution was that certain technologies (the steam engine and textile technologies in particular)
Factories were business owner's way to cut costs by employing very low-paid (underpaid) workers.
Long Hours, No breaks, Etc - Assembly Line Work Methods. Each person has one task.
Production of goods are not customized, but standardized.
Products Deviating from the Standard are Rejected.
Horizontal Integration - the business focuses on 1 good in a given market. ie. Rockefeller and OIL
Vertical Integration - the business focuses on integrating multiple related goods. Carnagie and the Railroad, the steel, the workers etc.
The Business Mind - The new wealthy business owners saw that they could collude and charge ridiculous prices. and people would have to pay them. The Sherman Anti Trust Law of 1890 eventually put an end to this, but the idealogy of profit maximizing - and at the expense of poor factory workers gives you the idea of the Business.
Author Patricia Ryaby Backer wrote on the causes of the Industrial Revolution and suggested that it was not necessarily that technology created capitalism, but rather that the Capitalist created the technology.
Regardless, with that technology and cheap labor - Capitalism prevailed. The appeal to America is that one can work hard to obtain wealth, which is our proof of social mobility. We disregard nobility in exchange for evidence that you have worked hard and succeeded.
Factory work and the Industrial revolution gave opportunity to women to find other employment options but ultimately women, children, and the new immigrants were exploited and treated unfairly. Much of their plight is the reason for the workers unions we have today.
Cities exploded with population, as factories attracted people to them. This created the need for tenement housing. Urban life was born. The population Boomed.
During Lincoln's Presidency, the Morrill Land Grants were passed, which incentivized the wealthy to invest in land grants as long as they built and supported institutions for education: Colleges.
Business Men - with all their acquired knowledge from their businesses, set forth a standard of education. The Classroom became a numbers game. The Day you were born was your manufacture date, and we send you off to school when you've ripened, or should have by some arbitrary year. We push you in through the factory of school.
As you would in a factory, you test your product. Constant testing is done in areas of memorization - despite your own learning growth rate, or despite your learning method.
We don't admire collaboration in the factory of school. And when it happens it's poorly done. Everyone's education is to be measured, calculated, standardized. There's almost nothing to set you apart, when examining a GPA.
If you learn at a different rate or find other passions, they have nothing to do with school. You must have ADHD.
Nowadays, you can learn and use technology so much more efficiently that the factory method is almost obsolete.
"The digital revolution has hit education, with more and more classrooms plugged into the whole wired world. But are schools making the most of new technologies?" Allan Collins & Richard Halverson
The Modern Employer is looking for something beyond the standardized student.
In this modern day of technology and knowledge at our fingertips, anyone can be an encyclopedia. Not everyone can be creative. I don't mean that only the commonly attributed creative people either - such as the arts..
No, actually, great mathematicians, great surgeons, great teachers, and great entrepenuers will still need to hone their skills - but those with creativity for the application of their skills will fair the best. Don't believe me? Look at the job market now.
Alan Watts
Credits.
For Hist 109 - American History @ Grossmont College. By Angela Murrell
Sources
Collins, Allan & Halverson, Richard. Rethinking education in the age of technology. Teachers
College Press, 2009.
Berube, Maurice R. American Presidents and Education. ABC-CLIO, 1991.
Picciano, Anthony & Spring, Joel. The Great American Education-industrial Complex:
Ideology, Technology, and Profit. Routledge, 2013.
Robinson, Sir Ken. Why We Need to Reform Education Now. Huffington Post, 2013.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sir-ken-robinson/reform-american-education_b_3203949.html