The Struggle for the American
Curriculum
Curriculum Ferment 1900-Present
A New Vision of Schooling
• 1800-1830
– The monitorial method
• Teachers monitored or tutored students
– Idiosyncratic
– The Lancastrian system
• A course of study
– Units of work
– Textbooks
• McGuffy readers
• Blueback spellers
Standardization
• The Lancastrian system led to a common (standardized)
course of study
• Textbooks gave teachers a “default” course of study
• Grades and grade levels
– William Harvey Wells- Chicago Superintendent of schools (18561864)
Social Transformation
• Social Change resulted in a radically altered vision of
the role of schooling
– The standardizing effect of the “Printed Word”
• The penny press
• Mass distribution of books
– Utopian and Muckraking novels
– Railroads
• Travel broke down aspects of provincialism
• Industrialization – the factory system
– Immigration
– The Panic of 1893
Edward Bellamy- author
of “Looking Backward”
The “Status Quo”
1890
• The Doctrine of Mental Discipline
– Plato’s Theory of Forms
• The world of ideas (forms) leads to perfect Truth and Good. It is
eternal
• The material world is imperfect and constantly changing
– Certain subjects had the ability to strengthen
• Memory, Reasoning, Will power, Imagination, Character
– Metaphor- the mind is like a muscle- it needs the right
kind of exercise.
Christian Wolff
1828 Report to the Yale Faculty
• A defense of the traditional curriculum
– Jeremiah Day & James K. Kingsley
• Two Main Functions of Education
– “Discipline of the Mind”
•The ability to think
– “Furniture of the Mind”
•Knowledge
• Discipline of the Mind is most important
James Kingsley
Mental Discipline Curriculum
• The Classics
–
–
–
–
Greek
Latin
Great Literature
The Trivium
• Grammar, rhetoric, logic
– The Quadrivium
Arithmetic
Geometry
Astronomy
Music
Instruction
• Recitation
– Verbal memorization
• Skill drills
– Problem sets
– translation
• Strict Discipline
– Necessary for a disciplined mind
Reform
• Theoretical problems
– Why was the classic curriculum necessary for
“mental exercise”?
• Professional Educators
– The National Education Association
The Struggle for the American Curriculum
• The Humanists
– The Curriculum should reflect our Western Cultural Heritage
• The Social Efficiency Educators
– The curriculum should produce an efficient, smoothly running society
• The Developmentalists
– The Curriculum should be based upon the natural order of the development
of the child
• The Social Meliorists
– The curriculum should bring about social change
Humanists/Mental Disciplinarians
• "Guardians" of ancient tradition tied to the
power of reason and the finest elements of
Western cultural heritage.
• Humanists sought to reinterpret and preserve
"revered" traditions and values in a rapidly
changing society.
• Charles W. Eliot
– President of Harvard
William Torrey Harris
• Basic function of the school is for
the development of reason
• He sought to preserve the humanist
ideal by incorporating into the
curriculum the finest elements of
Western civilization
• The “five windows of the soul”
–
–
–
–
arithmetic and mathematics
geography
history
Grammar
– literature and art
The High School Curriculum
• The NEA Committee of ten
– Lead By Charles Eliot (President of Harvard)
• Believed in “Modern Liberal Arts”
• A curriculum that was “College Prep”
• A curriculum that was “Life Prep”
– Four courses of study were recommended but
there was not distinction between college and
life preparation
Joseph Mayer Rice
Rice undertook a survey of the public schools in1892.
He published a series of muckraking articles in the
magazine The Forum in 1892 and collected into the
book “The Public School System of the United States”. His
criticism mobilized parents against the corrupt
politicians who, in practicing graft and patronage, had
allowed many public schools to fall into lamentable
disrepair.
,"It is indeed incomprehensible ," he wrote, "that so
many loving mothers … are willing, without hesitation,
to resign the fate of their little ones to the tender
mercies of ward politicians, who in many instances
have no scruples in placing the children in class-rooms
the atmosphere of which is not fit for human beings to
breathe, and in charge of teachers who treat them with
a degree of severity that borders on barbarism.”
Efficiency and Social Control
•
America at the turn of the century
– President Teddy Roosevelt, in his
address to the Governors at the
White House in 1910,
prophetically remarked that "The
conservation of our national
resources is only preliminary to the
larger question of national
efficiency.”
– Becoming more “efficient” became
a national obsession
Social Control
• One reason for the desire for efficiency was based
upon a fear of social chaos.
– Immigration brought about a thinly disguised
racism
•Edward Ross Social Control
– “Society is always in the presence of the
enemy”- i.e. the docile Slav, the street Arab,
or the quiescent Hindoo.
– Industrialization unchecked would corrupt the finer
instincts of Americanism
The Cult of Efficiency
• Frederick Winslow Taylor
and the Scientific
Management movement
• Taylor devised a system for
getting greater productivity
from human labor
The Cult of Efficiency
• For Taylor, there was always
one best method for doing
any particular job.
• This method could be
determined only through
scientific study
The Cult of Efficiency
• Taylor believed that men was
innately lazy and would always
do less work than they were
capable of unless they were
strictly monitored
• Effective management was
necessary to bring about
efficiency
The Principles of Scientific
Management
• Time and motion studies must determine the
elements of each man’s work
– (eliminate all false, slow, and useless
movements)
• Workers must be selected and trained to do their
job in the most efficient manner
– (test them to see who is fastest with fewest
errors)
• There must be an equal division of work
throughout the system
– (division of labor insures quick and efficient
training)
• Management and workmen must work together
with common goals in mind
– Workmen are paid to “do” not to think
The Principles of Scientific
Management
• The most important role for
management was to:
– Analyze
– Plan and
– Control the whole manufacturing
process in minute detail
Education and Efficiency
School efficiency experts advocated programs
of study that prepared individuals specifically
and directly for the role that they would play as
adult members of the social order. To go
beyond what someone had to know in order to
perform that role successfully was simply
wasteful. Social utility became the supreme
criterion against which the value of school
studies was measured...
Social Efficiency Movement
• John Franklin Bobbitt
• David Sneeden
• Elwood C. Cubberley
• Leonard Ayres
• School Survey Movement
– The Boise Study
Administrative “Trust”
• Housed in Education
Departments in Colleges
and Universities
•Teachers College at
Columbia University was
the center for
Administrative training
on the East Coast
•Stanford College of
Education was the center
on the West coast
Elwood P. Cubberly
• Cubberly was the first
Dean of the College of
Education at Stanford.
•He wrote the curriculum
and the textbooks that
became the standard for
preparing public school
administrators
•By the 1930’s, thousands
of Superintendents and
Principal had been trained
by Cubberly.
•He was a leader of the
“School Survey” movement
Franklin Bobbitt
Proponent of platoon system
developed by Superintendent
Willard Wirt in Gary, Indiana.
Bobbitt saw students as "raw
materials" that need to be trained
for future roles that they will
perform in society they "should not
be taught what they will never use”.
That was waste. In order to reduce
waste, educators had to institute a
process of scientific measurement
leading to a prediction as to one's
future role in life. That prediction
would then become the basis of a
differentiated curriculum“"The
elimination of waste in education"
(1912);
David Snedden
Worked "to enlarge the scope of
vocational education & to create
socially efficient curriculum".
Curricula built around specific
needs of future jobs with
objectives of teaching what was
need to function in the future
role. Viewed Junior High School
as a time when differences in
student abilities become apparent,
therefore requiring differentiated
curricula.
Leonard Ayres
Laggards in our schools (1909)
Studied effects of retardation in schools
(retardation = atypical progression
through grades) Findings: "retardation
represented a great loss in efficiency"
this was because the 'college-repertory'
curriculum that had held sway from so
long needed to be replaced by a
curriculum attuned to the needs of a new
population and a new industrial order".
He develops the Index of Efficiency for
determining the productivity/efficiency
of schools.
Charles S Meek
Boise in 1908
Boise 1919
Steunenberg Assassination
Trial of the Century
Defense Team
Prosecution Team
National Media Attention
Boise Boosterism
709 Thatcher
Tourtellotte and Hummel
Plans for Boise High
Boise High - East Wing
Boise High
Main and East Wing
First Survey 1908
Dr. George Strayer – Teachers College
Second Survey 1913
Dr. E. C. Elliot – University of Montana
A “Practical”
Curriculum
A “Practical”
Curriculum
George D. Strayer
Jessie Sears
1919 Boise Survey
Efficient organization
Efficient organization
More Male Administrators
Standardized Tests
Spelling Results by School
Retardation and “laggards”
Eugenics
Racial Purity
I.Q. Testing
Science and the Measurement of
Man
• Edward Thorndike
– He was a student of
William James
– Whatever exists, exists
in some amount and
can be measured.
Science and the Measurement of
Man
• Phrenology
• Franz Joseph Gall
– 1758-1828
Phrenology
• The brain is the organ of the
mind.
• The mind is composed of
multiple distinct, innate
faculties.
• Because they are distinct,
each faculty must have a
separate seat or "organ" in the
brain.
Phrenology
• The size of an organ,
other things being equal,
is a measure of its power.
• The shape of the brain is
determined by the
development of the
various organs.
Phrenology
• As the skull takes its
shape from the brain,
the surface of the skull
can be read as an
accurate index of
psychological aptitudes
and tendencies
Phrenology
• Pseudo-Science
– Racial bias
– Cultural bias
• Combined with Eugenics
– A dangerous combination
Eugenics
• The social philosophy that the human race can be
improved by encouraging human reproduction of
the best people and traits and reduction of the
reproduction of reproduction of the least desirable
people and traits
Measuring Intelligence
• Alfred Binet
– Asked by the French Ministry of
Education to devise a way to identify
children who needed special
education
– He devised a series of tasks and a
scale to assess those tasks
Louis Terman
H.H. Goddard
H.H.
Goddard, said in his book
Human Efficiency (1920) that
government schooling was about
"the perfect organization of the
hive."
He said standardized testing was
a way to make lower classes
recognize their own inferiority.
Idiots,
Like
Imbeciles, Morons
wearing a dunce cap, it
would discourage them from
breeding and having ambition.
I.Q. Testing WWI
I. Q. testing WWI
•
There were two
forms of the test
administered to the
soldiers
– Form “A” Alpha for
those who were
literate
– Form “B” Beta for
those who were
illiterate
Example Questions on the
Alpha Test
•
1.
Crisco is a:
•
•
•
•
A)
B)
C)
D)
patent medicine,
disinfectant,
toothpaste,
food product
• 2.
Washington is to Adams as first is to . . .
• 3.
Christy Mathewson is famous as a:
•
•
•
•
A)
B)
C)
D)
writer,
artist,
baseball player,
comedian.
Beta Test
• On this section,
test takers were
asked, “What is
missing?
– Notice the cultural
bias for many of
the questions.
What were the results?
• The average mental age of
White adults was 13
– This was the upper range for
“moron” according to
Goddard
• The average MA for
Southern/Eastern Europeans
was 11
• The average MA for Black
men was 10.4
Domination of Administrative
Progressives
• Structure of Schooling
– Schooling broken into specialized parts
•Kindergarten
•Elementary
•Junior high
•High school
•Vocational education
•College
•Graduate or professional school
Domination of Administrative
Progressives
• Hierarchy of authority established
• Administrative power is extended
–
–
–
–
Power over budgets
Curricular control
Teacher evaluation- hiring and firing
Workplace conditions
• Teacher response
– Compliance
– Establishment of unions
• NEA
– Emma Flagg Young
– Margaret Haley in Chicago
Domination of Administrative
Progressives
• Social differentiation
• Tracking by social/economic class
– I.Q. and other standardized testing
• Behavioral Psychology dominates
• Schools operate as bureaucracies
– Administrators
• Central
• School
– Teachers
» Support Staff
B. F. Skinner
Child-Study Movement/Developmentalists
• Curriculum should allow for the natural order of development
of the child.
• Scientific data important with respect to different stages of
child and adolescent development and also to nature of
learning.
• General agreement among the developmentalists was that
schools thwarted the child's basic need for activity by treating
children as passive receptacles and presenting them with a
program of studies that ran contrary to their natural tendencies
and predilections
G. Stanley Hall
• Schools are in need of drastic reform in order to
bring their program of studies in line with
scientific findings about the nature of child life
• The contents of children's minds (1883)
– The child recapitulates in his or her individual
development the stages that the whole human race
traversed throughout the course of history (ontogeny
recapitulates phylogeny)
• Play until the age of eight
• Read myths and legends during the “savage” stage.
– “The guardians of the young, should strive first of all
to keep out of nature's way, and to prevent harm, and
merit the proud title of defenders of the happiness
and rights of children.”
Child-Study Movement
William Heard Kilpatrick
• Foundations of Method (1925)
– The Project Method- “Education [should] be considered as life itself
and not as a mere preparation for later living.”
– The child was the key to revitalized curriculum
– Curriculum planning starts with life... with subject matter
brought in only incidentally as it bears on real problems
– Learning is synonymous with purposeful activity
Social Melorists
• Individuals have a moral responsibility to work
for social justice
• Schools are a major force for social change and
social justice.
• Schools were the vehicles to create a new social
vision and to empower the young
Lester Frank Ward
Dynamic Sociology 1913
Social Meliorists
• Schools are a major force for social
change and social justice. Schools were
the vehicles to create a new social vision.
• George Counts
– Response to Sumner-“The Absurd Effort to
Make the World Over”(1884) with “Dare the
School Build a New Social Order?” (1932)
• Harold O. Rugg
– Social Reconstructionism
• Boyd Bode
– Progressive Education Association
George S. Counts - Social Meliorist
• Dare the School Build a New Social Order?
– He was among the first to reflect on the undercurrent of
uneasiness about American society during the 1930’s and
connect it to American schools
– He argued that the American school system preserved and
maintained the existing social order
• Counts challenged schools to meet the social issues of
the day
John Dewey
• Dewey tried to
synthesize the positions
of the four interest
groups
• Humanists
• Developmentalists
• Scientific Efficiency
Educators
• Social Meliorists
Dewey began as a
philosopher/psychologist/sociologist
• Pragmatism/Instrumentalism
– Philosophy must be useful
– Psychology must be about the
individual and the social
– Sociology must be used to improve
social institutions
Dewey’s Problem-Solving Approach
• Avoid “Either-Or” positions
• Always consider the
consequences of a decision
• Experiment
– The scientific method
• Identify the problem
• Create an hypothesis
• Gather evidence
• Experiment
• Accept/reject/revise hypothesis
Purpose of Education
• What is the “problem”?
– Industrial organization has
replaced the home and the
neighborhood
• Schools must change to provide
learning that is:
– Real
– Immediate
– Able to initiate children into the
social world
• Create a miniature community
Criticism of Humanist Curriculum
• He rejected the idea that the interests
of the child should be subordinated to
future “rewards”
• He rejected Harris’s “five windows to
the soul” because:
– They didn’t address human experience in
a unified way- they were formal, artificial,
separated
– They were presented as “given” and
“finished”
Criticisms of Developmentalists
• The Culture-Epochs model was
too simplistic
• The curriculum was imposed in
the same way as the humanist
curriculum
Criticisms of Scientific Management
• The school is not a factory
producing a product
• Not all children learn in the
same way at the same time
• Bureaucratic processes are
dehumanizing
Criticisms of Social Meliorism
• Schools are not just an
institution for “social
engineering”
• There are aspects of the current
social order that should be
retained
The Dewey School
• A “Laboratory” school
• “Occupations”
– Evolution of basic social
activities
• Growing food
• Constructing shelter
• Making clothing
– Traditional subjects taught by
“doing” not telling
• Harmonize individual and
social ends
The Dewey School
• A “Laboratory” school
• “Occupations”
– Evolution of basic social
activities
• Growing food
• Constructing shelter
• Making clothing
– Traditional subjects taught by
“doing” not telling
• Harmonize individual and
social ends
The Dewey School
• A “Laboratory” school
• “Occupations”
– Evolution of basic social
activities
• Growing food
• Constructing shelter
• Making clothing
– Traditional subjects taught by
“doing” not telling
• Harmonize individual and
social ends
Colonel Francis Parker
Applied Dewey’s principles to a create
a Progressive school in Chicago.
Dewey sent his own children to
Parker’s school
Pockets of Progressivism
• New York 1920-1940
– The Activity program
•An experimental program involving 69 elementary
schools and over 70,000 students
–
–
–
–
Child centered
Flexible scheduling
Activity or project based curriculum
Freedom for teachers to determine instruction
– Dalton Plan
•High school
– Individualized learning programs
Pockets of Progressivism
• Denver 1920-1940
• The eight year study
– Experimental design
•Core curriculum (areas of living)
–
–
–
–
Personal living
Immediate personal/social relationships
Social/Civic relationships
Economic relationships
•Integrated, project-based
– Teachers controlled the curriculum
The 1950s-1960s
• Post World War II saw a growing criticism of
American Education
• Sputnik (1957) gave evidence that Russia was
doing a superior job of educating it’s youth.
• Cold War implications
1950’s
Humanists after Sputnik
(Soviet satellite launched in 1957)
• Curriculum reform projects are from academic
departments in major universities.
• The attempt to replace the academic subject as the
basic building block of the curriculum was brought to
abrupt end
• Longstanding emphasis on local efforts at curriculum
change replaced by pattern of centrally controlled
curriculum revision.
• “Back to Basics” movement
The 1950s-1960s
• Arthur Bestor
– “Educational Wastelands”
• Rudolf Flesch
– Why Johnny Can’t Read
• Admiral Hyman Rickover
– Education and Freedom
The 1950s-1960s
• Admiral Hyman Rickover
– Education and Freedom
Dewey's insistence on making the child's interest the determining
factor in planning curricula has led to substitution of knowhow subjects for solid learning and to the widespread tendency
of schools to instruct pupils in the minutiae of daily life--how
to set a table correctly, how to budget one's income, how to use
cameras, telephones, and consumer credit--the list is endless.
Add to this that Dewey insisted the schoolroom must mirror the
community and you find classrooms cluttered with cardboard
boxes, children learning arithmetic by keeping store, and
education stuck in the concrete and unable to carry the child
from there to abstract concepts and ideas. Our young people
are therefore deprived of the tremendous intellectual heritage
of Western civilization which no child can possibly discover by
himself; he must be led to it."
Influence of the Federal Government
• 1954- Brown vs. the Board of EducationTopeka, Kansas
– Rejection of the “separate but equal” clause
• 1958- National Defense Education Act
– Federal funds to improve science, math, foreign
language instruction
• 1965- Elementary and Secondary Education Act
– Johnson’s “War on Poverty” (Title 1)
Advocates of “Child-Centered”
Progressive Education
• John Holt
– How Children Fail
• Children are subject peoples. School for them is a
kind of jail.
• Do they not, to some extent, escape and frustrate
the relentless, insatiable pressure of their elders by
withdrawing the most intelligent and creative parts
of their minds from the scene?
• Is this not at least a partial explanation of the
extraordinary stupidity that otherwise bright
children so often show in school? The stubborn
and dogged "I don't get it" with which they meet
the instructions and explanations of their teachers-may it not be a statement of resistance as well as
one of panic and flight? ...
Advocates of “Child-Centered”
Progressive Education
• John Holt
– How Children Fail
• We encourage children to act stupidly, not only by scaring and confusing
them, but by boring them, by filling up their days with dull, repetitive tasks
that make little or no claim on their attention or demands on their
intelligence.
• Our hearts leap for joy at the sight of a roomful of children all slogging away
at some imposed task, and we are all the more pleased and satisfied if
someone tells us that the children don't really like what they are doing. We tell
ourselves that this drudgery, this endless busywork, is good preparation for
life, and we fear that without it children would be hard to "control."
• But why must this busywork be so dull? Why not give tasks that are
interesting and demanding? Because, in schools where every task must be
completed and every answer must be right, if we give children more
demanding tasks they will be fearful and will instantly insist that we show
them how to do the job. When you have acres of paper to fill up with pencil
marks, you have no time to waste on the luxury of thinking.
Advocates of “Child-Centered”
Progressive Education
• Johathan Kozol
– Death at an Early Age
• I noticed this one day while I was out in the auditorium doing
reading with some children: Classes were taking place on both sides
of us. The Glee Club and the sewing classes were taking place at the
same time in the middle. Along with the rest, there was a 5th grade
remedial math group, comprising six pupils, and there were several
other children whom I did not know about simply walking back and
forth.
• Before me were six 4th graders, most of them from the disorderly 4th
grade and several of them children who had had substitute teachers
during much of the previous two years. It was not their fault; they had
done nothing to deserve substitute teachers. And it was not their fault
now if they could not hear my words clearly since it also was true that
I could barely hear theirs. Yet the way that they dealt with this
dilemma, at least on the level at which I could observe it, was to
blame, not the school but themselves. Not one of those children
would say to me: "Mr. Kozol, it's too noisy." Not one of them would
say: "Mr. Kozol, what's going on here? This is a crazy place to learn."
Advocates of “Child-Centered”
Progressive Education
• James Herndon
– The way it spose to be
– How to survive your native land
– Grouping by ability, formerly anathema in the district,
has caught on. We group them high, low, and average in
math and science; English teachers are waiting their
turn. Below that we've tried "remedial" classes, and above
that, "enrichment." (The remedial kids complain that
they ain't learning nothing but that baby stuff, and the
enriched that they do the same thing as the other kids,
just twice as much of it.)
– We "experiment" a lot. We teach Spanish experimentally
to everyone, then drop it experimentally. We experiment
with slow learners, with nonachievers, with core
programs, team teaching, with "innovative" programs.
These programs, being only "experiments," remain on
the fringe of things; the general curriculum, not being an
experiment at all, isn't affected by them.
•
Advocates of “Child-Centered”
Progressive
Education
Herbert Kohl
– 36 Children
– I put an assignment on the board before the children arrived in the morning and
gave the class the choice of reading, writing, or doing what was on the board.
– At no time did any child have to write, and whenever possible I let the children
write for as long as their momentum carried them. Time increasingly became the
servant of substance in the classroom. At the beginning of the semester I had tried
to use blocks of time in a predetermined, preplanned way--first reading, then social
studies, arithmetic, and so forth. Then I broke the blocks by allowing free periods.
This became confining and so I allowed the length of periods to vary according to
the children's and my interest and concentration.
– Finally we reached a point where the class could pursue things without the burden
of a required amount of work that had to be passed through every day. This meant
that there were many things that the class didn't "cover"; that there were days
without arithmetic and weeks without spelling or my dear "vocabulary."
– Many exciting and important things were missed as well as many dull things. But
the children learned to explore and invent, to become obsessed by things that
interested them and follow them through libraries and books back into life; they
learned to believe in their own curiosity and value the intellectual and literary,
perhaps even in a small way the human, quest without being overly burdened with
a premature concern for results.
The Open Classroom Movement
1970’s
• The British Influence
– A.S. Neill & Summerhill
• The British Infant Schools
– Joseph Featherstone
• Where Children learn
• Alternative schools
• “Free schools”
The Open Classroom Movement
• Vito Perrone– Dean of the Center for Teaching &
Learning, University of North
Dakota
• “Open Classroom”
–
–
–
–
–
Learning centers
Team teaching
Active – project based learning
“multi-media”
Child-centered curriculum
The Open Classroom Movement
• Vito Perrone– Dean of the Center for Teaching &
Learning, University of North
Dakota
• “Bottom Up” reform
– Teacher training
– Workshop model
– Mass distribution of materials
Today
Does Progressive Education Exist?
• Pockets on the margins
• Hybrids
– Cooperative learning
– Project based education
– Middle School model
• James Beane
• Current research from Cognitive and Developmental
Psychology
• School “Choice” models
– Charter schools
– Alternative schools