Letter to Administrators (2)
This scenario may have happened early in the last century. Leading industrial magnets, in a back room around a conference table, invoked the spirit of Frederick Winslow Taylor. One of them offered a proposal:
“Why don’t we set up schools to prepare citizens to work in factories? We will design the buildings to mirror assembly lines. We’ll make long straight hallways with rooms on each side. Each room will have children’s desks set in rows and columns. We’ll place the teacher’s desk in front with a blackboard behind.
“As we do in industry, we’ll build the system from the top down. We’ll hire men to be superintendents to organize each school and each classroom. They will hire other men to be principals to oversee each building. The principals will hire women as cheap labor to be teachers and place each one in a room where they will carry out the superintendent’s plans.
“We will assign children to grades based on their age. The superintendent and his board will determine the curriculum, textbooks, and the sequence of lesson plans. Teachers, in turn, will deliver these lessons and ask students to memorize and regurgitate the material. Each room will have a door with a clear-glass panel to enable the principal to check on teachers.
“We will require children to attend what we’ll call public schools. We will allow for those families who can afford it to send their children to private institutions, which we will endow. Public schools will select their best students to attend college or to train for professions, such as medicine and law. Families with means can prepare their children pursue business interests.
“The primary focus of the public schools will be to prepare children for the workforce. Here they will learn to accept authority, follow instructions, complete repetitive tasks, and know their place in society. They will be indoctrinated in the American way: loyalty first to factory, then to their family, to the community, and finally to the nation.”
This model has stayed with public education into the 21st century. Despite efforts at reform, e.g., John Dewey’s progressive education and the Open Education Movement, the hierarchy has held. Cultures are a challenge to change. We––teachers and the public––have a lot of work to do if we are to have the schools we need and deserve. But, as Tom wrote––his assertion we should follow––administrators administrate, teachers teach.
Given that “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward” (Kierkegaard), I write this Substack to bring ideas and methods from my life as a teacher in the latter half of the 20th century to help teachers and the public to “live forward” in this century. I welcome comments here or by email at frankthoms3@gmail.com.
