The Classroom is a Factory, But What's the Product?
This morning I read Bob Barsanti's powerful commentary "The Classroom Is Not a Factory" Education Week (12/1/10).
"Everything I needed to know about modern teaching, I learned in a factory. In the summer of my 18th year, I made plastic drink stirrers on the night shift at Spir-It Inc.... Many of the current reforms in education aim to turn the schoolhouse into that plastic-products factory. .. The machinery heats and molds our children, then stamps, bags, and packages them to a professional uniformity."
So What's the Real Product?
I agree with Barsanti that schools have been turned into factories. But they don't produce students, they just work there. In truth, schools are factories that harness the labor of students to toil at a bubble-test assembly line producing "achievement" data.
Schools mask the child labor with noble mission statements that claim they are
