Why Has the “School as Factory” Metaphor Persisted?
Why has the image of tax-supported public schools looking like and operating as factories stuck?
In an earlier post, I traced the history of the metaphor since the early 1900s and its 180-degree switch from a positive to negative meaning. Over the past century, the metaphor of school-as-factory has served the interests of two sets of perennial reformers (yes there is a third group that borrows from each side but I will stick with the two major groupings).
The Incrementalists
There are reformers (e.g., policy elites, practitioners, parents, researchers, and donors) who see the age-graded school and its standardization of curriculum, instruction, and student behavior in need of improvement to make it work as it was intended, particularly for poor and minority students.Thepurpose of schooling is to prepare the young for a demanding and ever-changing workplace and future civic duties.
Former U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan made that point initially in 2010 and again in 2018:
About 100 years ago, America made secondary education in high school compulsory. That was almost unprecedented, a massive leap forward, and it drove a lot of our economic boom over the past 100 years. The problem is we haven’t moved past that and we haven’t adjusted the model. Obviously, the world is radically different from that time, but unfortunately education isn’t much different. And you see other nations out-educating, out-investing, out-innovating us. Not only have the skills needs changed dramatically, but we now have a globally competitive economy, a flat world. It’s no longer Iowa versus Indiana versus Montana CONTINUE READING: Why Has the “School as Factory” Metaphor Persisted? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
