The False Narrative of Failing Public Schools

Over the weekend, I read an article in the Washington Post that was extremely enlightening. The article is titled, “No, public schools are not modeled after factories. Here’s why Betsy DeVos keeps saying they are”, and includes a long excerpt from the book A Wolf at the School House Door.

Its focus is around the commonly politized premise that public schools are a failing institution because they are built upon outdated teaching methods. There has been a popularized belief that the American school system was built around preparing students to be assembly line workers. Therefore, all the curriculum, school structure, and socialization is built to model a factory. The 8 hour work schedule, 30 minute lunch, moving from class to class, lined lunch in the cafeteria, etc. etc.

Though, when we look through the history and creation of public schools, the story does not add up. Today, we will be looking at this factory narrative of schools and why it is false. Then, I hope to explain about why it is so persuasive.

Schools Prepare Students for Factories

The idea that schools prepare students for factory work is an argument that has been constructed by many politicians from the left and right. It usually goes like this:

During the industrial revolution and post World War II, the U.S. needed an incredible amount of factory and assembly line workers to progress the economy (and to make the 1% insanely rich). To support the development of more factory workers, schools were designed to meet this need by structuring schools as ‘educational factories’. Students would go to school for 8 hours a day, have a 30 minute lunch, be presented material in a procedural fashion, then follow steps to completion. Even the curriculum was designed to be procedural; as long as students followed the steps to get to the answer they would be successful.

Now that we are entering the knowledge economy, there is no way that our educational system can prepare students for the 21st century careers that the U.S. needs. Schools are stripping away student individuality, creativity, and limiting their ability to think critically. Students are not developing the social skills to work in large groups and are unable to think for themselves. The end goal of public schools are student compliance and teach students to do as they are told. Therefore, the public educational system needs substantial disruption in order to provide students with the curriculum and experiences that they need to fill these positions.

Weaponizing a False Narrative

Politicians use this argument to constantly degrade public education as a failing institution. Pay no attention to increases in classroom sizes, growing economic inequality, low teacher pay, increases in child homelessness, extremely confusing state and national standards, lack of curriculum in most schools, and consistent budget cuts to schools since 2008. But beside all of those real factors, why is this a false narrative?

Well the argument itself is persuasive, but the history does not back it up. To answer this question we first need to ask our selves how public education began in the U.S. and how it has progressed.

Beginning of Public Education in the U.S.

In 1830 Horace Mann, a Massachusetts legislator, helped lead and create the first state funded school system called Common Schools. Up until this point, education was mostly administered privately (for the wealthy) or through religious institutions. Common Schools focused upon the three R’s: reading, writing, and arithmetic. The end goal was that by creating a more educated society, it could support the nations economy and provide students with social mobility. By the 1870’s, 78% of children aged 5 to 14 were enrolled in school. (Source)

Though by 1910, only 14% of students had a high school degree. Most students were not finishing high school and earning degrees. From the book, A Wolf at the School House Door, the author describes what is happening:

“It is well documented that the first high schools were created for young people whose families hadn’t already sent them off to work, and that those schools often rivaled colleges and universities in prestige. Eventually, public demand for greater access led to the creation of more high schools, many of which grew quite large in size — perhaps even as large as factories. But at no point did policy makers collectively determine a model of any sort, much less one based on American industry.”

So at no point did the public school system design themselves to fit the assembly line model that many politicians claim that they do. Only wealthy students had the opportunities to pursue high school and college educations. Furthermore, these high school and college graduates in 1910 were not funneling into assembly line work. They were the most educated individuals in America at the time; they pursued knowledge based careers that we see today.

Where Did All The Children Go?

So if children were not in high school earning a degree, where did they go? The factories. Before they were even able to prepare for the assembly line, they were forced into it by need.

Families had many children in order to support their financial stability. By having multiple children, you could send more to work at factories and mills and increase the families overall income. Therefore, by the time students reached middle school most were already working 12 hour shifts at factories to help support their family. Furthermore, it was not until 1918 when children were required to have a minimum amount of public schooling before working and until 1938 when children were unable to work if they were under 16.

So at this point, there was really no incentive to prepare students for factory jobs since they were already there. Children did not even have the opportunity to learn about factory jobs in school, because they were not there.

So the early stages of educations beginning are explained away by origin and life style. Public schools were created for economic development for people, but most children could not achieve high enough learning to pursue higher educated roles because they were already working in factories. So what about the huge manufacturing job increase during World War II?

A Case for Post 1938

Directly after the Fair Labor Standards Act, there is a huge jump in manufacturing roles during World War II. After World War II, there is a bit of a jumpy, but overall increase in the need of employment in manufacturing jobs.

So what is happening during this time? Well, this could be someone’s opportunity to jump and say “The need for manufacturing roles increase, so schools changed direction.” However, there is little to no information that exists on schools changing their focus of education towards preparing students for manufacturing work. Rather, the better explanation for this is women beginning to enter the workforce.

Women Enter The Workforce

During World War II, women began entering the workforce to support the war effort and their families. By 1970, 50 percent of single women and 40 percent of married women were in the work force. Now if your inclination is to say “Well that can’t be a lot of people”, consider that the human race is 50% male and 50% female when it comes to sex. Therefore, we could estimate that half of the U.S. population at that time period just began entering the work force. With a huge influx of people, on top of the baby boom generation entering the word force in the 60’s and 70’s, it is not surprising to see the amount of manufacturing roles increase just from population size.

Assembling it Together

I will say, the argument is persuasive but the history is false. Of course I want students to learn more critical thinking skills and become better at socializing with their peers to achieve their goals. However, ignoring the history of public education makes it easier to criticize and distort the reality of its current issues. At no point in my research and readings did I find that public schools had either been created, founded, or shifted towards producing manufacturing workers. Furthermore, the huge increases in manufacturing workers and jobs during the industrial revolution and post world war II are explained by many other events in history, rather than preparation to enter a factory.

The truth is, public schools are failing because a variety of social factors that our government has chosen to ignore. Teachers are leaving the profession from quitting or retirement, with many not training to become teachers. Social inequality has produced an achievement gap between socioeconomic classes. Most schools I have worked at I am left to find curriculum on my own or make it myself. Class sizes are increasing as there are less teachers to be available to teach. And the amount of children being born is even decreasing because it is so expensive to have a child in America.

But this article is not here to criticize these policy decisions by our elected officials (ok kind of). Rather, let us not degrade an institution that has provided a safe haven for some students for the past decade from a false history and start focusing on the real issues that it has.