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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
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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 (1856-1864)
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.
Trial of the Century Defense Team Prosecution Team
First Survey 1908 Dr. George Strayer – Teachers College
Second Survey 1913 Dr. E. C. Elliot – University of Montana
