The "history of Education" goes as far as two 2500 years ago, when Socrates created the Academy, or Confucius created the equivalent in China, and other people in India.
In between we have lots of things, like the creation of the Library of Alexandria, personal master disciple, the creation of guilds, Universities...
There were very different models for learning.
The factory model did exist long long time ago. Romans teached legionaries this way 2000 years ago.
The main difference today is that today this model is the only model in lots of countries. If I want to teach(I am engineer and studied economics too) my children in Germany on my own(homeschooling) I go to jail. That is the Prussian model, forcing the same model onto everybody without alternatives.
If I want to teach [...] my children in Germany on my own(homeschooling) I go to jail.
As far as I understand the legal situation in Germany (please correct me if I'm wroing), you are free to set up your own school with qualified teachers and teach your children. The law exist to ensure that all those who teach children posses teaching qualifications.
The argument against "factory education" was against compulsory state-run education with a one-size-fits-all curriculum and overarching social goals. It was criticized because it was intended as a pipeline to push Americans into a very narrow social and economic model of American citizenship beneficial to the state and industry. So it is not so much turning education into a factory, but integrating education as a high quality tool in the factory that is the state. Industrialism needed workers, America had a bunch of farmers.
I won't claim to be an expert on this or even correct, but I tried to read what Dewey was trying to do in his own words. It didn't come across quite as menacing as Gatto made it out to be, but I believe he got the intention right. I agree with the author that the term has been misused, you can't make sense out of the way Khan uses the term.
"School is a Prison", 45 min interview with Prof Peter Gray, Boston College, author of "Free to Learn" about democratic free schools and non-compulsory education.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_DJAZ-ByV0
I don't know about Khan's claims, but having read Gatto, he very much openly acknowledges that it took well until the first half of the twentieth century before the present compulsory schooling system we know today took root, and that the beginnings were relatively decentralized and bound on the state level.
Indeed; the idea that there was some intentional shadowy conspiracy to generate docile adults to meet the demand of the state is quite far-fetched. But the idea that the growing demands of the state gradually shaped the educational system seems nearly unavoidable.
Because of the human need for narrative, people always try to frame these stories in terms of heroes or villains and the actions they took. The truth is this kind of thing happens through a kind of emergent behaviour; no one person makes these choices, but they're forced into them through the structure and needs of the organizations they're a part of. On the one hand this seems more mundane and dull, but on the other hand in a way it's more sinister since a human can be stopped or reasoned with, but an organization usually cannot.
Agreed. The Prussian model was designed to turn the product of the entire state into a machine that supported the military, so that it was on constant war footing. The idea that it was primarily for industrial purposes is incorrect. In addition, the author completely misses mentioning the sophists, who started doing this kind of highly manipulated education 2000+ years ago. The author probably would have been served better if she had read Quigley, and understood the ideas that Gato presents in full, rather than argue against Khan, who doesn't seam to understand that this is the way that certain structures maintain their base of power, by creating heiarchy. As Gato puts it, it all comes own to the Calvinist idea that only the elect and few are saved. https://youtu.be/Ho7PPR93XJk
Of course there will be variation, and even outliers, when you compare data from a large geographic area over a long time. But just because there is variation doesn't mean that the generalization is wrong. Generalizations are just that: statements about a larger phenomenon that necessarily ignores internal variation.
I don't think Sal Khan ever insinuated that there has never been a single non-factory model educational system in the West in the last ~150 years. If that's the proposition you're trying to refute, you're arguing against a straw man.
What I think Sal Khan was getting at -- and what I think the other authors mentioned in the article are trying to say -- is that the general social milieu from which the modern educational system arose was biased toward excessive standardization, categorization, and homogenization. After all, that was the world view of industrial modernism. Standardize everything, bin things into neat categories, and throw away products that don't meet the spec.
When you've got an entire generation obsessed with that modernist hammer, everything looks like a nail, including education. No wonder modern schools (and prisons, as another commenter mentioned) ended up with uncanny similarities to modern factories. It needn't have been intended. It needn't have been a conspiracy. It needn't have been imposed from the top down. It could have just emerged spontaneously all over the place. That's how trends and world views work.
Nowadays, commerce is king. Everyone is obsessed with ROI, everyone wants to hire an MBA, everything is explained in terms of supply and demand, and every relationship looks like that between a buyer and seller. Just like the industrial mindset gave birth to last century's schools, this new mindset is shaping today's schools. Schools, and universities in particular, are becoming more and more like a business. Students and parents are being treated as customers, and are being ripped off just like Comcast customers. But the commercial mindset hasn't replaced the industrial mindset; both are alive and well, interacting with each other in very dangerous ways.
Just because there are exceptions doesn't mean that this general trend doesn't exist. In fact, it would be very strange if a society's mindset didn't influence the design of its educational institutions. And if we're ever going to start thinking about the big picture and come up with long-term solutions, somebody needs to raise awareness about general trends, even at the risk of ignoring variation.
>Nowadays, commerce is king. Everyone is obsessed with ROI, everyone wants to hire an MBA, everything is explained in terms of supply and demand, and every relationship looks like that between a buyer and seller.
It is very important to remember this isn't akin to a natural process such as weather nor to cultural evolution. The decisions made over the past 20 years to mischaracterize education as a commercial process are, above all, political decisions and increasingly proven to be the ideological line of hyper-wealthy persons who are actively defunding and destroying public education under the rubric of "reform".
Good to read a counterpoint to these claims about the "Prussian factory model"! I recall being disappointed reading Gatto and Khan, because there's too much asserted and too little analyzed/cited. (Or perhaps I missed it...)
Can anyone recommend a good resource for understanding the history of education, both worldwide and in the United States? Goals, philosophies, implementations, outcomes?
In between we have lots of things, like the creation of the Library of Alexandria, personal master disciple, the creation of guilds, Universities...
There were very different models for learning.
The factory model did exist long long time ago. Romans teached legionaries this way 2000 years ago.
The main difference today is that today this model is the only model in lots of countries. If I want to teach(I am engineer and studied economics too) my children in Germany on my own(homeschooling) I go to jail. That is the Prussian model, forcing the same model onto everybody without alternatives.