Factory-Model Schools and Progressive Education

​In 1897, John Dewey—often hailed as the father of Progressive Education—published his “Pedagogical Creed,” in which he emphasized that one of the primary purposes of education was to teach children to “share in the social consciousness, and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.”

Dewey believed his philosophy embodied the ideals of both individualism and socialism. It was individualistic, he said, not because it encouraged the child to develop his own unique interests and abilities, but “because it recognizes the formation of a certain character as the only genuine basis of right living.” His philosophy was “socialistic” because “this right character is to be formed by the influence of a certain form of institutional or community life upon the individual, and that the social organism through the school, as its organ, may determine ethical results.”

Thirty years later, Dewey visited Stalin’s Soviet Union, and he wrote glowingly of the educational system he found there. “The Russian school children [are] much more democratically organized than our own, [and] are receiving through the system of school administration a training that fits them for later active participation in the self-direction of both local communities and industries.”

Dewey and other Progressives wanted to train children for social activism by perfecting factory-model education. Nineteenth-century educational reformers wanted schools as efficient and impersonal as America’s impressive manufacturing facilities, so they established a system that treats children like industrial workers. Under the watchful eye of an overseer, students toil silently until a bell signals their opportunity to eat and briefly socialize. Unlike factory workers, though, students take unfinished work home to complete before the following day.

Progressives, however, viewed children not as workers, but as commodities. In his 1916 treatise on Public School Administration, Ellwood Cubberley described schools as “factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped into products to meet the various demands of life. The specifications for manufacturing come from the demands of civilization, and it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.”

Cubberley dreamed of a national educational system modeled after giant corporations. He was inspired by Frederick Winslow Taylor’s theories of “Scientific Management,” which sought to enhance industrial output through centralized management, strictly regimented work, and regularized performance measurements. Following Taylor’s lead, Cubberley hoped to improve education through centralized administration, uniform curricula, and standardized testing.

Cubberley’s dream became a reality in the second half of the twentieth century, as the national government increasingly asserted its authority over America’s public schools. Progressive were confident that professional educators and government schools would produce better outcomes than parental education at home. The question for the twenty-first century, therefore, is which method of education has produced the best results?

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