Whether seen as Temple, Factory or Town Meeting, public education has been caught in a decades old, if not centuries old tug-of-war over its mission, mandate and future. by Lew Cypher
(libertarian)
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Public education is and has been under assault for most of the last three decades from both the left and the right. Much of this struggle has been due to widely differing views about the role, mission, mandate and future of public education. In their 1990 book, Understanding Schools, Gary K. Clabaugh and Edward G. Rozycki identify three basic and conflicting images of schools: the Temple, the Factory and the Town Meeting. Close examination of their various tables and descriptions reveals their own preference among the three viewpoints they present. Whether or not their designations stand up as valid, the point that remains valid is that different people view the mission, mandate and future of public schools in America very differently. Even so, accepting the basic premises of Clabuagh and Rozycki that there are three distict images of schools, whether public or private, individual views may reflect a combination of these three basic views rather than complete adoption of one over another.
The School as Temple suggests a very defined role for schools in a society that not only prepares students for future work or continued study but also to participate in the greater society sponsoring the school. The school staff take on the trappings of a secular priesthood from this perspective and students become acolytes. Under the School as Factory view, the administration becomes a corporate board, teachers mere workers and students, raw materials to process into finished products. In Schools as Town Meeting everything is subject to negociation among local stakeholders (community leaders, parents and educators) to shape the mandate, mission and future of the local public school.
President Obama's Race To The Top initiative suggests that Liberals tend to see the School as Temple, especially if schools preach liberal orthodoxy as fact and teachers are forced into the secular priesthood of the union. Conservatives tend to see schools as "Factories" with teachers as mere workers and students as raw material to be shaped into products via a largely impersonal process as demonstrated by the No Child Left Behind law. Educators, students, and parents often see the school as "Town Meeting" because of having to negociate through often conflicting laws, rules and realities to serve the needs of individual students as well as large groups of students. And in fact, most schools in America came into being via real town meetings in the nineteen and early twentieth centuries. From the creation of the first public high school in Boston, MA in 1821 through the early 1920s, the public high school movement was largely a grassroots, community based improvement of local public education.
High schools in America have always served two divergent and competing missions: prepare teens to enter the workforce as young adults and prepare teens to enter university life and learning. A third purpose emerged in the early part of the twentieth century as the High School Movement literally exploded across America: prepare teens to be good citizens and active participants in the political process. Comprehensive high schools with these three mandates or missions are uniquely American. Although most public schools in America emerged under the School as Town Meeting model, with community, families and educators all coming to the table as stakeholders in a local process, America has moved away from the values and benefits of that model of public education.
The School as Temple model is now giving us Obama's Race To The Top (RTTT), whereas George W. Bush and the Republicans gave us the ultimate School as Factory model with No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Both visions pay hommage to the School as Town Meeting origins of our public schools while completely ignoring the pragmatic benefits that come from local stakeholders meeting to shape and then locally control the mandate, mission and future of their local schools. Both NCLB and RTTT make it much harder for small rural communities with long traditions of the School as Town Meeting to continue delivering the balanced, holistic education that shapes young people into contributing citizens, dependable workers and lifelong scholars to this day.
The more federal and state intrusion there is in the local educational process, the harder it will become for the School as Town Meeting to continue in America. And yet, this is the model of public education that Libertarians and Social Conservatives should embrace. The Charter School model is an attempt to rekindle that first model of schools in America, but the question is why must local stakeholders have to jump through Federal and State hoops to end up with the sort of school that all public schools used to be and most small town public schools still are? The answer is as simple and challenging as reducing the role of Federal and state governments in public education.
References:
Gary K. Clabaugh & Edward G. Rozycki (1990) Understanding Schools: the foundations of education Harper & Row
Wikipedia, History of education in the United States
Did you like this article? If you did, Thumb It! 5
thumbs so far
The views expressed
in this article are those of Lew Cypher only and
do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
Lew Cypher is solely responsible for the contents
of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated
with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
