The Struggle for the American Curriculum

Curriculum Ferment 1900-Present

A New Vision of Schooling• 1800-1830

– The monitorial method• Teachers monitored or tutored students

– Idiosyncratic– The Lancastrian system

• A course of study– Units of work

– Textbooks• McGuffy readers• Blueback spellers

Standardization• The Lancastrian system led to a

common (standardized) course of study

• Textbooks gave teachers a “default” course of study

• Grades and grade levels– William Harvey Wells- Chicago

Superintendent of schools (1856-1864)

Social Transformation• Social Change resulted in a

radically altered vision of the role of schooling– The standardizing effect of the

“Printed Word”• The penny press• Mass distribution of books

– Utopian and Muckraking novels – Railroads

• Travel broke down aspects of provincialism

• Industrialization – the factory system– Immigration– The Panic of 1893

Edward Bellamy- author of “Looking Backward”

The “Status Quo”1890

• The Doctrine of Mental Discipline– Plato’s Theory of Forms

• The world of ideas (forms) leads to perfect Truth and Good. It is eternal

• The material world is imperfect and constantly changing

– Certain subjects had the ability to strengthen• Memory, Reasoning, Will power,

Imagination, Character– Metaphor- the mind is like a

muscle- it needs the right kind of exercise.

Christian Wolff

1828 Report to the Yale Faculty

• A defense of the traditional curriculum– Jeremiah Day & James K.

Kingsley• Two Main Functions of Education

– “Discipline of the Mind”• The ability to think

– “Furniture of the Mind”• Knowledge

• Discipline of the Mind is most important

James Kingsley

Mental Discipline Curriculum• The Classics

– Greek– Latin– Great Literature– The Trivium

• Grammar, rhetoric, logic– The Quadrivium

ArithmeticGeometryAstronomyMusic

Instruction• Recitation

– Verbal memorization• Skill drills

– Problem sets– translation

• Strict Discipline– Necessary for a disciplined mind

Reform• Theoretical problems

–Why was the classic curriculum necessary for “mental exercise”?

• Professional Educators–The National Education Association

The Struggle for the American Curriculum

• The Humanists– The Curriculum should reflect our Western

Cultural Heritage• The Social Efficiency Educators

– The curriculum should produce an efficient, smoothly running society

• The Developmentalists– The Curriculum should be based upon the

natural order of the development of the child• The Social Meliorists

– The curriculum should bring about social change

Humanists/Mental Disciplinarians

• "Guardians" of ancient tradition tied to the power of reason and the finest elements of Western cultural heritage.

• Humanists sought to reinterpret and preserve "revered" traditions and values in a rapidly changing society.

• Charles W. Eliot– President of Harvard

William Torrey Harris• Basic function of the school

is for the development of reason

• He sought to preserve the humanist ideal by incorporating into the curriculum the finest elements of Western civilization

• The “five windows of the soul” – arithmetic and mathematics– geography – history – Grammar– literature and art

The High School Curriculum

• The NEA Committee of ten– Lead By Charles Eliot (President of

Harvard)• Believed in “Modern Liberal

Arts”• A curriculum that was “College

Prep”• A curriculum that was “Life

Prep”– Four courses of study were

recommended but there was not distinction between college and life preparation

Joseph Mayer RiceRice undertook a survey of the public schools in1892. He published a series of muckraking articles in the magazine The Forum in 1892 and collected into the book “The Public School System of the United States”. His criticism mobilized parents against the corrupt politicians who, in practicing graft and patronage, had allowed many public schools to fall into lamentable disrepair.,"It is indeed incomprehensible ," he wrote, "that so many loving mothers … are willing, without hesitation, to resign the fate of their little ones to the tender mercies of ward politicians, who in many instances have no scruples in placing the children in class-rooms the atmosphere of which is not fit for human beings to breathe, and in charge of teachers who treat them with a degree of severity that borders on barbarism.”

Efficiency and Social Control• America at the turn of the

century– President Teddy Roosevelt,

in his address to the Governors at the White House in 1910, prophetically remarked that "The conservation of our national resources is only preliminary to the larger question of national efficiency.”

– Becoming more “efficient” became a national obsession

Social Control• One reason for the desire for efficiency

was based upon a fear of social chaos.– Immigration brought about a thinly

disguised racism• Edward Ross Social Control

–“Society is always in the presence of the enemy”- i.e. the docile Slav, the street Arab, or the quiescent Hindoo.

– Industrialization unchecked would corrupt the finer instincts of Americanism

The Cult of Efficiency• Frederick Winslow

Taylor and the Scientific Management movement

• Taylor devised a system for getting greater productivity from human labor

The Cult of Efficiency• For Taylor, there was

always one best method for doing any particular job.

• This method could be determined only through scientific study

The Cult of Efficiency• Taylor believed that men

was innately lazy and would always do less work than they were capable of unless they were strictly monitored

• Effective management was necessary to bring about efficiency

The Principles of Scientific Management

• Time and motion studies must determine the elements of each man’s work– (eliminate all false, slow, and

useless movements)• Workers must be selected and trained

to do their job in the most efficient manner– (test them to see who is fastest

with fewest errors)• There must be an equal division of

work throughout the system – (division of labor insures quick and

efficient training)• Management and workmen must work

together with common goals in mind– Workmen are paid to “do” not to

think

The Principles of Scientific Management

• The most important role for management was to:– Analyze– Plan and– Control the whole

manufacturing process in minute detail

Education and EfficiencySchool efficiency experts advocated programs of study that prepared individuals specifically and directly for the role that they would play as adult members of the social order. To go beyond what someone had to know in order to perform that role successfully was simply wasteful. Social utility became the supreme criterion against which the value of school studies was measured...

Social Efficiency Movement • John Franklin Bobbitt• David Sneeden• Elwood C. Cubberley• Leonard Ayres• School Survey Movement

– The Boise Study

Administrative “Trust”

• Housed in Education Departments in Colleges and Universities

• Teachers College at Columbia University was the center for Administrative training on the East Coast

• Stanford College of Education was the center on the West coast

Elwood P. Cubberly• Cubberly was the

first Dean of the College of Education at Stanford.

• He wrote the curriculum and the textbooks that became the standard for preparing public school administrators

• By the 1930’s, thousands of Superintendents and Principal had been trained by Cubberly.

• He was a leader of the “School Survey” movement

Franklin BobbittProponent of platoon system developed by Superintendent Willard Wirt in Gary, Indiana. Bobbitt saw students as "raw materials" that need to be trained for future roles that they will perform in society they "should not be taught what they will never use”. That was waste. In order to reduce waste, educators had to institute a process of scientific measurement leading to a prediction as to one's future role in life. That prediction would then become the basis of a differentiated curriculum“"The elimination of waste in education" (1912);

David SneddenWorked "to enlarge the scope of vocational education & to create socially efficient curriculum". Curricula built around specific needs of future jobs with objectives of teaching what was need to function in the future role. Viewed Junior High School as a time when differences in student abilities become apparent, therefore requiring differentiated curricula.

Leonard Ayres Laggards in our schools (1909) Studied effects of retardation in schools (retardation = atypical progression through grades) Findings: "retardation represented a great loss in efficiency" this was because the 'college-repertory' curriculum that had held sway from so long needed to be replaced by a curriculum attuned to the needs of a new population and a new industrial order". He develops the Index of Efficiency for determining the productivity/efficiency of schools.

Charles S Meek

Boise in 1908

Boise 1919

Steunenberg Assassination

Trial of the Century

Prosecution Team

Defense Team

National Media Attention

Boise Boosterism

709 Thatcher

Tourtellotte and HummelPlans for Boise High

Boise High - East Wing

Boise High Main and East Wing

First Survey 1908

Dr. George Strayer – Teachers College

Second Survey 1913

Dr. E. C. Elliot – University of Montana

A “Practical” Curriculum

A “Practical” Curriculum

George D. Strayer

Jessie Sears

1919 Boise Survey

Efficient organization

Efficient organization

More Male Administrators

Standardized Tests

Spelling Results by School

Retardation and “laggards”

Eugenics

Racial Purity

I.Q. Testing

Science and the Measurement of Man

• Edward Thorndike– He was a student

of William James– Whatever exists,

exists in some amount and can be measured.

Science and the Measurement of Man

• Phrenology

• Franz Joseph Gall– 1758-1828

Phrenology• The brain is the organ

of the mind.• The mind is composed

of multiple distinct, innate faculties.

• Because they are distinct, each faculty must have a separate seat or "organ" in the brain.

Phrenology• The size of an

organ, other things being equal, is a measure of its power.

• The shape of the brain is determined by the development of the various organs.

Phrenology• As the skull takes

its shape from the brain, the surface of the skull can be read as an accurate index of psychological aptitudes and tendencies

Phrenology• Pseudo-Science

–Racial bias–Cultural bias

• Combined with Eugenics–A dangerous

combination

Eugenics• The social philosophy that the human

race can be improved by encouraging human reproduction of the best people and traits and reduction of the reproduction of reproduction of the least desirable people and traits

Measuring Intelligence• Alfred Binet

– Asked by the French Ministry of Education to devise a way to identify children who needed special education

– He devised a series of tasks and a scale to assess those tasks

Louis Terman

H.H. GoddardH.H. Goddard, said in his

book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about "the perfect organization of the hive."

He said standardized testing was a way to make lower classes recognize their own inferiority. Idiots, Imbeciles, Morons

Like wearing a dunce cap, it would discourage them from breeding and having ambition.

I.Q. Testing WWI

I. Q. testing WWI• There were two

forms of the test administered to the soldiers– Form “A” Alpha

for those who were literate

– Form “B” Beta for those who were illiterate

Example Questions on the Alpha Test

• 1. Crisco is a: • A) patent medicine,• B) disinfectant, • C) toothpaste, • D) food product

• 2. Washington is to Adams as first is to . . .

• 3. Christy Mathewson is famous as a: • A) writer, • B) artist, • C) baseball player, • D) comedian.

Beta Test• On this

section, test takers were asked, “What is missing?– Notice the

cultural bias for many of the questions.

What were the results?• The average mental

age of White adults was 13– This was the upper

range for “moron” according to Goddard

• The average MA for Southern/Eastern Europeans was 11

• The average MA for Black men was 10.4

Domination of Administrative Progressives

• Structure of Schooling– Schooling broken into specialized parts

• Kindergarten• Elementary• Junior high• High school• Vocational education• College• Graduate or professional school

Domination of Administrative Progressives

• Hierarchy of authority established

• Administrative power is extended– Power over budgets– Curricular control– Teacher evaluation- hiring and

firing– Workplace conditions

• Teacher response– Compliance– Establishment of unions

• NEA

– Emma Flagg Young– Margaret Haley in Chicago

Domination of Administrative Progressives

• Social differentiation• Tracking by social/economic

class– I.Q. and other standardized testing

• Behavioral Psychology dominates

• Schools operate as bureaucracies– Administrators

• Central• School

– Teachers» Support Staff

B. F. Skinner

Child-Study Movement/Developmentalists • Curriculum should allow for the natural order of

development of the child. • Scientific data important with respect to different

stages of child and adolescent development and also to nature of learning.

• General agreement among the developmentalists was that schools thwarted the child's basic need for activity by treating children as passive receptacles and presenting them with a program of studies that ran contrary to their natural tendencies and predilections

G. Stanley Hall• Schools are in need of drastic reform

in order to bring their program of studies in line with scientific findings about the nature of child life

• The contents of children's minds (1883)– The child recapitulates in his or her

individual development the stages that the whole human race traversed throughout the course of history (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny)

• Play until the age of eight• Read myths and legends during the

“savage” stage.– “The guardians of the young, should strive

first of all to keep out of nature's way, and to prevent harm, and merit the proud title of defenders of the happiness and rights of children.”

Child-Study Movement William Heard Kilpatrick

• Foundations of Method (1925) – The Project Method- “Education [should] be

considered as life itself and not as a mere preparation for later living.”

– The child was the key to revitalized curriculum – Curriculum planning starts with life... with

subject matter brought in only incidentally as it bears on real problems

– Learning is synonymous with purposeful activity

Social Melorists • Individuals have a moral

responsibility to work for social justice

• Schools are a major force for social change and social justice.

• Schools were the vehicles to create a new social vision and to empower the young

Lester Frank Ward

Dynamic Sociology 1913

Social Meliorists• Schools are a major force for

social change and social justice. Schools were the vehicles to create a new social vision.

• George Counts– Response to Sumner-“The Absurd

Effort to Make the World Over”(1884) with “Dare the School Build a New Social Order?” (1932)

• Harold O. Rugg– Social Reconstructionism

• Boyd Bode– Progressive Education Association

George S. Counts - Social Meliorist

• Dare the School Build a New Social Order?– He was among the first to reflect on the

undercurrent of uneasiness about American society during the 1930’s and connect it to American schools

– He argued that the American school system preserved and maintained the existing social order

• Counts challenged schools to meet the social issues of the day

John Dewey• Dewey tried to

synthesize the positions of the four interest groups

• Humanists• Developmentalists• Scientific Efficiency

Educators• Social Meliorists

Dewey began as a philosopher/psychologist/sociologi

st• Pragmatism/

Instrumentalism– Philosophy must be useful– Psychology must be about

the individual and the social– Sociology must be used to

improve social institutions

Dewey’s Problem-Solving Approach

• Avoid “Either-Or” positions

• Always consider the consequences of a decision

• Experiment – The scientific method

• Identify the problem• Create an hypothesis• Gather evidence• Experiment• Accept/reject/revise

hypothesis

Purpose of Education• What is the “problem”?

– Industrial organization has replaced the home and the neighborhood

• Schools must change to provide learning that is:– Real– Immediate– Able to initiate children into

the social world• Create a miniature

community

Criticism of Humanist Curriculum

• He rejected the idea that the interests of the child should be subordinated to future “rewards”

• He rejected Harris’s “five windows to the soul” because:– They didn’t address human

experience in a unified way- they were formal, artificial, separated

– They were presented as “given” and “finished”

Criticisms of Developmentalists• The Culture-Epochs

model was too simplistic• The curriculum was

imposed in the same way as the humanist curriculum

Criticisms of Scientific Management

• The school is not a factory producing a product

• Not all children learn in the same way at the same time

• Bureaucratic processes are dehumanizing

Criticisms of Social Meliorism• Schools are not just an

institution for “social engineering”

• There are aspects of the current social order that should be retained

The Dewey School• A “Laboratory” school• “Occupations”

– Evolution of basic social activities

• Growing food• Constructing shelter• Making clothing

– Traditional subjects taught by “doing” not telling

• Harmonize individual and social ends

The Dewey School• A “Laboratory” school• “Occupations”

– Evolution of basic social activities

• Growing food• Constructing shelter• Making clothing

– Traditional subjects taught by “doing” not telling

• Harmonize individual and social ends

The Dewey School• A “Laboratory” school• “Occupations”

– Evolution of basic social activities

• Growing food• Constructing shelter• Making clothing

– Traditional subjects taught by “doing” not telling

• Harmonize individual and social ends

Colonel Francis Parker

Applied Dewey’s principles to a create a Progressive school in Chicago.Dewey sent his own children to Parker’s school

Pockets of Progressivism• New York 1920-1940

– The Activity program • An experimental program involving 69

elementary schools and over 70,000 students

– Child centered– Flexible scheduling– Activity or project based curriculum– Freedom for teachers to determine instruction

– Dalton Plan• High school

– Individualized learning programs

Pockets of Progressivism• Denver 1920-1940• The eight year study

– Experimental design• Core curriculum (areas of living)

– Personal living– Immediate personal/social relationships– Social/Civic relationships– Economic relationships

• Integrated, project-based – Teachers controlled the curriculum

The 1950s-1960s• Post World War II saw a growing

criticism of American Education• Sputnik (1957) gave evidence that

Russia was doing a superior job of educating it’s youth.

• Cold War implications

1950’sHumanists after Sputnik

(Soviet satellite launched in 1957)

• Curriculum reform projects are from academic departments in major universities.

• The attempt to replace the academic subject as the basic building block of the curriculum was brought to abrupt end

• Longstanding emphasis on local efforts at curriculum change replaced by pattern of centrally controlled curriculum revision.

• “Back to Basics” movement

The 1950s-1960s

• Arthur Bestor– “Educational Wastelands”

• Rudolf Flesch– Why Johnny Can’t Read

• Admiral Hyman Rickover– Education and Freedom

The 1950s-1960s• Admiral Hyman Rickover

– Education and FreedomDewey's insistence on making the child's

interest the determining factor in planning curricula has led to substitution of know-how subjects for solid learning and to the widespread tendency of schools to instruct pupils in the minutiae of daily life--how to set a table correctly, how to budget one's income, how to use cameras, telephones, and consumer credit--the list is endless.

Add to this that Dewey insisted the schoolroom must mirror the community and you find classrooms cluttered with cardboard boxes, children learning arithmetic by keeping store, and education stuck in the concrete and unable to carry the child from there to abstract concepts and ideas. Our young people are therefore deprived of the tremendous intellectual heritage of Western civilization which no child can possibly discover by himself; he must be led to it."

Influence of the Federal Government

• 1954- Brown vs. the Board of Education- Topeka, Kansas– Rejection of the “separate but equal”

clause• 1958- National Defense Education

Act– Federal funds to improve science, math,

foreign language instruction• 1965- Elementary and Secondary

Education Act– Johnson’s “War on Poverty” (Title 1)

Advocates of “Child-Centered” Progressive Education

• John Holt– How Children Fail

• Children are subject peoples. School for them is a kind of jail.

• Do they not, to some extent, escape and frustrate the relentless, insatiable pressure of their elders by withdrawing the most intelligent and creative parts of their minds from the scene?

• Is this not at least a partial explanation of the extraordinary stupidity that otherwise bright children so often show in school? The stubborn and dogged "I don't get it" with which they meet the instructions and explanations of their teachers--may it not be a statement of resistance as well as one of panic and flight? ...

Advocates of “Child-Centered” Progressive Education

• John Holt– How Children Fail

• We encourage children to act stupidly, not only by scaring and confusing them, but by boring them, by filling up their days with dull, repetitive tasks that make little or no claim on their attention or demands on their intelligence.

• Our hearts leap for joy at the sight of a roomful of children all slogging away at some imposed task, and we are all the more pleased and satisfied if someone tells us that the children don't really like what they are doing. We tell ourselves that this drudgery, this endless busywork, is good preparation for life, and we fear that without it children would be hard to "control."

• But why must this busywork be so dull? Why not give tasks that are interesting and demanding? Because, in schools where every task must be completed and every answer must be right, if we give children more demanding tasks they will be fearful and will instantly insist that we show them how to do the job. When you have acres of paper to fill up with pencil marks, you have no time to waste on the luxury of thinking.

Advocates of “Child-Centered” Progressive Education

• Johathan Kozol– Death at an Early Age

• I noticed this one day while I was out in the auditorium doing reading with some children: Classes were taking place on both sides of us. The Glee Club and the sewing classes were taking place at the same time in the middle. Along with the rest, there was a 5th grade remedial math group, comprising six pupils, and there were several other children whom I did not know about simply walking back and forth.

• Before me were six 4th graders, most of them from the disorderly 4th grade and several of them children who had had substitute teachers during much of the previous two years. It was not their fault; they had done nothing to deserve substitute teachers. And it was not their fault now if they could not hear my words clearly since it also was true that I could barely hear theirs. Yet the way that they dealt with this dilemma, at least on the level at which I could observe it, was to blame, not the school but themselves. Not one of those children would say to me: "Mr. Kozol, it's too noisy." Not one of them would say: "Mr. Kozol, what's going on here? This is a crazy place to learn."

Advocates of “Child-Centered” Progressive Education

• James Herndon– The way it spose to be– How to survive your native land– Grouping by ability, formerly anathema in

the district, has caught on. We group them high, low, and average in math and science; English teachers are waiting their turn. Below that we've tried "remedial" classes, and above that, "enrichment." (The remedial kids complain that they ain't learning nothing but that baby stuff, and the enriched that they do the same thing as the other kids, just twice as much of it.)

– We "experiment" a lot. We teach Spanish experimentally to everyone, then drop it experimentally. We experiment with slow learners, with nonachievers, with core programs, team teaching, with "innovative" programs. These programs, being only "experiments," remain on the fringe of things; the general curriculum, not being an experiment at all, isn't affected by them.

Advocates of “Child-Centered” Progressive

Education• Herbert Kohl– 36 Children– I put an assignment on the board before the children

arrived in the morning and gave the class the choice of reading, writing, or doing what was on the board.

– At no time did any child have to write, and whenever possible I let the children write for as long as their momentum carried them. Time increasingly became the servant of substance in the classroom. At the beginning of the semester I had tried to use blocks of time in a predetermined, preplanned way--first reading, then social studies, arithmetic, and so forth. Then I broke the blocks by allowing free periods. This became confining and so I allowed the length of periods to vary according to the children's and my interest and concentration.

– Finally we reached a point where the class could pursue things without the burden of a required amount of work that had to be passed through every day. This meant that there were many things that the class didn't "cover"; that there were days without arithmetic and weeks without spelling or my dear "vocabulary."

– Many exciting and important things were missed as well as many dull things. But the children learned to explore and invent, to become obsessed by things that interested them and follow them through libraries and books back into life; they learned to believe in their own curiosity and value the intellectual and literary, perhaps even in a small way the human, quest without being overly burdened with a premature concern for results.

The Open Classroom Movement

1970’s• The British Influence

– A.S. Neill & Summerhill• The British Infant Schools

– Joseph Featherstone• Where Children learn

• Alternative schools• “Free schools”

The Open Classroom Movement

• Vito Perrone- – Dean of the Center for

Teaching & Learning, University of North Dakota

• “Open Classroom”– Learning centers– Team teaching– Active – project based

learning– “multi-media”– Child-centered curriculum

The Open Classroom Movement

• Vito Perrone- – Dean of the Center for

Teaching & Learning, University of North Dakota

• “Bottom Up” reform– Teacher training– Workshop model– Mass distribution of

materials

TodayDoes Progressive Education

Exist?• Pockets on the margins• Hybrids

– Cooperative learning– Project based education– Middle School model

• James Beane• Current research from Cognitive and

Developmental Psychology• School “Choice” models

– Charter schools– Alternative schools