Introduction to British and American Studies

References

Depaepe, M. (2012). Between educationalization and appropriation: Selected writings on the

history of

modern educational systems. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Gibb, N. (2017). England’s education reforms. Retrieved from

https://www. gov.uk/government/speeches/nick-gibb-englands-education-reforms

Labaree, D. F. (1997). Public goods, private goods: The American struggle over educational

goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34(1), 39-81. doi:10.2307/1163342

Mauk, D., & Oakland, J. (2002). American civilization: An introduction (5th ed.). New York;
London:

Routledge.

Oakland, J. (2002). British civilization: An introduction (Sth ed.). New York; London: Routledge.

121Introduction to British and American Studies

Between 2009 and 2012 opposition to NCLB from teachers’ core subject

organizations, their unions and from state boards of education grew considerably. The

Obama administration used executive action rather than new or revised legislation to deal

with the mounting dissatisfaction. By mid-2012 Obama and his secretary of education,

Arne Duncan, gave 26 states waivers from participating in NCLB. They became free to

use a combination of other measures to judge and report the progress of their schools.

Many state educational leaders feel relieved that they no longer need to struggle toward

unrealistic goals measured through the inadequate means of centrally made quantitative

tests alone. As one educator expressed it:

NCLB "oversimplifies" what is a far more complex process... Is it more important

(and valuable) to answer a question on an assessment, out of context, or to apply

knowledge and skills successfully in integrated systems (where they will be used to solve

higher level problem)?

A recent development is that in some areas parents can receive grants (or

government vouchers) to pay for tuition at private schools. Especially in the inner cities,
where private schools have a better record than nearby public schools, states have for

some time operated voucher plans. The NCLB Act now makes this a possibility

anywhere a local school repeatedly foils to meet annual improvement goals.

Some private educational institutions o er financial aid to attract students from a

variety of social backgrounds, while others follow a restrictive admissions policy to

maintain a more homogeneous student body. Exclusivity has always been an important

attraction of many private schools. Bussing programs to end segregation contributed to

increased enrolment at all-white private institutions. The Supreme Court’s ban on group

prayers and religious instruction in general in the public schools caused others to turn to

private education. Dissatisfaction with the public schools’ academic standards, lax

discipline, drug abuse or crime convinced yet more parents to pay for private education.

These problems are certainly more avoidable in private schools, since the expulsion of

pupils who cause them is much simpler for private institutions.

How has the American public responded to the NCLB Act and the testing

programs?

120Introduction to British and American Studies

specialize in particular subject areas (such as the fine arts or science) and were given the

funds and sta that, it was hoped, would bring voluntary desegregation by attracting

students from other districts.

By 2000 magnet schools had become commonplace, especially in large urban

school systems, and school choice programs now aim to maintain high standards by

putting these schools in competition with each other. In increasingly large areas,

universal choice completely breaks the connection between a place of residence and the

public school a pupil attends. The NCLB institutionalized school choice by allowing

parents to choose another school if the one nearest their home failed to reach state

standards for improvement.

School choice advocates say the increased number of high-quality programs made
available through choice gives students more chances to develop their abilities and point

to reductions in racial segregation. Opponents argue that school choice relegates most

sta and pupils to institutions that are weaker than ever before because they lack

leadership and positive role models. They also criticize the concentration of the best

faculty and pupils in magnet schools as an elitist approach that contradicts the ideals of

American democracy. In 2008 an estimated 2 million children in the US were being

taught at home because their parents had decided to opt out of institutional schooling

altogether. The number of children in home schooling had increased by 15-20 percent per

year since 2000.

What problems can be observed in American education recently?

What are pointed out as causes for such problems?

What do American public respond to decentralization?

Current Trends in Public School Reform

In recent decades, state boards have increasingly implemented testing programs to

make individual districts more accountable for reaching a certain level of academic

achievement at specified points in pupils’ schooling. The same tests are often used in

many states, and the results for districts and states are publicly available. The state board

and parents are therefore better able to judge the relative success of the local schools in

meeting educational goals. During the 1980s and 1990s, growing numbers of state boards

won approval for statewide tests to measure teachers’ mastery of core subjects and

educational methods.

These trends, the points on the public’s agenda in the 1990s that were included in

the Bush administration’s NCLB education reform package, as well as reactions to it by

2009 have already been outlined. NCLB appropriates more federal money for public

education than any such legislation in decades. It involves an unprecedented degree of

top-down federal intrusion into state and local control over public schools. It requires the

formulation of national and state standards of achievement in core curriculum subjects,

greatly increased use of standardized testing of pupils and teachers to hold individual
schools accountable to these standards, and a system of sanctions against public schools

that do not meet annual targets for improvement. These include vouchers for sending

pupils to other schools, including private religious institutions.

119Introduction to British and American Studies

In the first decade of the 2000s, institutions of higher education in the US found

that a large portion of college-age youth were not among the “college-ready” (high-

school graduates who had completed a minimum of secondary-level courses and scored

at least up to a basic level on a national test). In the high school “class of 2010," for

example, only 33 percent were college-ready, 30 percent had dropped out earlier and 37

percent who graduated did not have the academic achievements to be accepted at a

college. In the fall of that year 36 percent of the class began their college careers.

Roughly two-thirds did not go on to higher education because they had not reached the

necessary academic level and so were not admitted. Whites and Asian Americans had the

highest rates of readiness and attendance, while Latinos, Native Americans and blacks

had lower rates.

The causes of unsatisfactory quality in public education have provoked much

debate. Some commentators on elementary and secondary schools claim that only the

achievement levels of inner-city districts are a problem and that their poor results skew

the national averages. There was agreement, however, that continued ‘white flight’ to the

suburbs and private schools produced increased racial segregation and inadequate

funding in urban areas. Others thought the problem of quality was nearly universal in the

public schools.

Polls from 2003 through 2011 showed that the public linked lowered quality most

to inadequate financial support, lack of discipline in the classroom and overcrowding, or

to schools that were too large to allow students to develop a sense of shared community.

The lack of well-qualified teachers or low pay scales for educators came much farther

down on the public’s list of concerns. In the wake of school shootings from Columbine

through Sandy Hook, the schools continue to strive to improve security as they prioritize

dealing with the causes of violence, such as problems at home, the availability of guns,
violence and the attention given school shootings in the media, teasing and bullying, and

the loss of a sense of community that results from how often American families move.

Expert analyses of the causes of decline of school quality focus on curriculum

changes. Some critics assert that students neglect basic skills because they are allowed to

choose too many excessively vocational or undemanding electives. Such criticisms

provoke heated responses, especially when they are linked with allegations that

pluralism, the introduction of women’s non-western ‘multicultural’ components, has

weakened the core curriculum in schools. Revision of the academic canon is ongoing, as

many institutions adjust their sense of the essential, learn to function according to newly

required state standards under the NCLB Act, and implement stricter standards to meet

yearly improvement targets.

Proposals for policy changes in public elementary and secondary schools show

the conflicting opinions about decentralization. In Gallup polls, large majorities support

requiring local schools to follow a central standardized national curriculum and to

conform to national achievement standards. The same polls reveal strong support for

school choice programs, which often involve further decentralization. School choice

allows families, rather than school authorities, to select the schools their children attend.

Choice programs began with the decentralizing of school districts by giving individual

schools the autonomy to design their own curricula. The first autonomous public schools

were so-called magnet schools in inner cities. These institutions were allowed to

118Introduction to British and American Studies

women and minorities contributed to American history and culture. History and literature

books, especially, changed as a result of this e ort.

The hiring of sta on all levels was also a ected because governments required

educational institutions to become equal-opportunity employers. That meant hiring more

teachers from minority groups at elementary and secondary schools and more women

professors at universities and colleges. By law, educational institutions must encourage

minority group members to apply for teaching positions. They must be sought out and

interviewed or the school might lose government funding. Finding qualified women and
minority group members for positions became somewhat easier after the 1970s because

of a irmative action plans for teacher-training programs and the increased number of

students from these groups who completed university degrees.

Two a irmative action programs were designed to help “disadvantaged” pupils succeed in

primary and secondary schools. Head Start provides preschool tutoring to children in

educationally deprived families to help them begin formal schooling at the same level as

those in more fortunate families. Upward Bound supplies remedial teaching, private

tutoring and work-study programs for older children. While Upward Bound su ered

repeated funding reductions, Head Start is considered a success and has continued to
receive

additional congressional appropriations. It benefits close to a million children today.

A irmative action programs in education provoked a number of US Supreme

Court decisions. These did not call for the end of a irmative action, but changed the

methods used to put it into e ect. The best-known court cases in this area involved

complaints from white males denied admission to university programs, in their opinion,

because female and minority group applicants were given preferential treatment. In the

Bakke decision (1978), for example, the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to

increase the number of students from racial minorities 1n university programs by setting

numerical quotas. In the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, voters ended a irmative

action programs in several states by supporting propositions at elections to eliminate

them. The Supreme Court ruling in cases involving the University of Michigan in this

period more strictly limited admission policies that favored minorities in the interest of

recruiting a diverse student body at institutions of higher learning.

Recent Problems and Policy Debates

“State of the nation” evaluations have become a regular part of public debate

about American education. Presidential candidates, federal commissions and the US

secretary of education, associations of the states, organizations of educators and private

foundations regularly identify problems and suggest policy changes. Concern over the
quality of schooling at all levels has been the common theme in expert reports and public

opinion polls in recent decades. E orts at reform have stabilized falling test scores on

national public school tests and college entrance examinations but have not raised them

significantly. Average achievement levels in language skills, mathematics and science

have remained lower in the US than in many other developed nations, according to

comparative studies of secondary pupils, which also show that American students spent

less time doing homework.

117Introduction to British and American Studies

Supreme Court backed down, saying no tradition in American public education was more

deeply rooted than the local control of schools. Thus bussing stopped being e ective for

school desegregation.

The trend towards increasing integration of the races in the schools slowed and by

the late 1980s the trend had reversed. Re-segregation of the schools began. By 2006,

more than 40 percent of the schools were mostly or entirely African American. An even

larger percentage was ‘racially segregated’ if the definition includes schools that were

predominantly Latino, Asian and African American. Most of these schools were located

in the North, West, or Southwest, because the court integrated Southern schools first and

did not support bussing between the suburbs and inner-cities of the North after 1974. Not

only the end of bussing, but the continued “white flight” (now to the outer suburbs) and

decades of high immigration of the non-white, poor Latinos and Asian Americans

contributed to the growing segregation of the schools. As the portion of these minorities

who were middle class grew in the first decade of the twenty-first century, however, the

diversity of the student body increased in many regions of the country, even in suburban

areas.

What is the significance of the Brown v. Board of Education case?

Why did re-segregation happen?

A irmative Action and the Schools

Starting in the 1960s, the federal authorities fought the e ects of preyudice and the

related problems of poverty through involvement in educational programs. In 1963,

Congress began providing money for college and university buildings. In 1964, it decided

that federal funding was available only to educational institutions that proved they did not

discriminate on the basis of race, religion or national origin. The Higher Education Act of

1965 helped minority and ‘disadvantaged’ students get college loans. State and federal

grants to poorer public schools generally came in two ways. First, laws made the income

levels in local districts the basis for distributing public funds. “Low income” areas

qualified for extra grants and special programs to attract good teachers. Second,

governments more than tripled their contribution to the general budgets of cities with

social and educational problems.

In general, federal government policy aimed to implement the principle of

a irmative action that President Lyndon Johnson expressed in his commencement speech

at Howard University in 1965:

You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate

him, bring him up to the starting line of a race, and then say, “You are free to compete

with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

A irmative action programs to improve women’s and minority groups’ access to

education proliferated during the early 1970s. On the primary and secondary levels of

public education, a irmative actions first led to a redesigning of teaching programs and

textbooks. Discriminatory references to women and minorities were replaced with even-

handed treatments or, more often, with “positive role models” and examples of how

116Introduction to British and American Studies

and Senator Joseph McCarthy (among others) attacked the universities as hotbeds of

communism. Education became a patriotic obligation as well as a right.

How did the GI Bill alter American higher education?

How did the Cold War influence American education?

Race and School Desegregation

The Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision struck down the

principle of separate-but-equal education facilities for the races in 1954. One year later

the court ruled that public school districts all over the nation had to present plans for

achieving “racial balance” in their schools. Federal school policy began to show a

profound change in national priorities.

For almost 20 years, from 1955 to 1974, the court tried to desegregate America’s

public schools. It settled on bussing as the most e ective way to integrate schools. Until

very recently, one universal rule in America had been that pupils attended the school

closest to their homes. Since African Americans and whites lived in di erent residential

sections of US cities, they attended di erent school districts. Residential segregation

produced segregated schools. Therefore, the Supreme Court decided to “bus” students to

other districts until “racial balance” in all city schools resulted.

Oliver L. Brown, was a parent, a welder in the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad, an assistant
pastor

at his local church, and an African American. Brown's daughter Linda, a third grader, had to
walk

six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe Elementary, her segregated black school
one

mile (1.6 km) away, while Sumner Elementary, a white school, was seven blocks from her
house

In 1951, a class action suit was filed against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka,
Kansas

in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. The plainti s were thirteen
Topeka

parents on behalf of their 20 children.

The suit called for the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation. The Topeka
Board

of Education operated separate elementary schools under an 1879 Kansas law, which
permitted

(but did not require) districts to maintain separate elementary school facilities for black and
white students in 12 communities with populations over 15,000. The plainti s had been
recruited

by the leadership of the Topeka NAACP.

On May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the landmark
case of

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Court’s unanimous decision overturned

provisions of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which had allowed for “separate but
equal”

public facilities, including public schools in the United States. Declaring that “separate
educational

facilities are inherently unequal,” the Brown v. Board decision helped break the back of state-

sponsored segregation, and provided a spark to the American civil rights movement.

In city after city across the nation, parents, school authorities and politicians of

both races protested and resisted, but the court held firm, with the result that whites fled

to the suburbs in greater numbers and the small percentage who could a ord it sent their

children to private schools. Federal authorities decided that bussing plans could produce

integrated schools only if they included the “lily-white” suburban schools around major

cities. After such plans resulted in white pupils being transported into city schools, the

public outcry grew louder. By 1974, the nation’s mood had become strongly anti-bussing,

and when asked to decide whether a city-and-suburbs bussing plan was constitutional, the

115Introduction to British and American Studies

that emphasized vocational education. Some immigrant parents criticized progressive

education because they felt electives took time away from academic subjects. They also

objected to the frequent assumption that immigrant children did not need academic

studies, since they would not go on to higher education.

After 1865, private church-related colleges, often founded by European immigrant

groups, rapidly increased in number, especially in the Midwest. Coeducational higher

education (colleges open to both men and women) became the norm there during the

Civil War, when fee-paying women were necessary to replace men who joined the Union
armies. Coeducation continued to spread, and by the 1920s, almost half of American

college students were women. Further east, however, the so-called Ivy League

universities (Harvard and other prestigious schools from the colonial period) remained

men’s institutions and, hence, benefactors established separate women’s colleges in that

region. Racial segregation extended to higher education during this period, when colleges

for African Americans, such as Howard University and the Hampton Institute, were

founded in the South after the Civil War. In 1890, a new Morrill Act provided the region

with land for African American public colleges that emphasized manual and industrial

education.

What were public schools expected to do in the 1880s?

What was/ were characteristic of progressive education?

How was class tradition maintained in the progressive education?

When did coeducational institutions begin? Institutions for the African

Americans?

The Second World War and the Cold War

The Second World War was a watershed in American higher education. To ease

the return of war veterans to civilian life, Congress passed the Servicemen’s

Readjustment Act (the so-called “GI Bill’) in 1944. Under the Act, the federal

government paid tuition and living costs for veterans in higher education and directly

funded the expansion of study programs for the first time. Within two years, half the

people in college were veterans, many of them form working-class families with little

education. More students graduated than ever before, and the typical student ceased to be

a member of the upper-middle or upper class. By 1971, when the program ended, nearly

2.5 million veterans had benefited from its provisions. Higher education in the US had

become mass education and was regarded as a right rather than a privilege.

The launching of the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957 spurred another increase 1n

the federal’s role in public education. Now the schools were enlisted in the Cold War and

called on to meet the challenge of Soviet technology. The National Defense Education
Act (1958) provided federal money for research and university programs in science and

technology, as well as loans to college students. The legislation also allotted federal funds

for teaching science, mathematics and foreign languages in high schools.

After 1958, federal money was targeted for college-level foreign-language

teaching, the equipping of language laboratories, and eventually for the humanities in

general. In the 1950s, state after state required teachers to sign “loyalty oaths” to the US,

114Introduction to British and American Studies

1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson

The case came from Louisiana, which in 1890 adopted a law providing for “equal but separate

accommodations for the white and colored races” on its railroads. In 1892, passenger Homer

Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car. He was brought before Judge John H. Ferguson of the

Criminal Court for New Orleans, who upheld the state law. The law was challenged in the

Supreme Court on grounds that it conflicted with the 13th and 14th Amendments.

By a 7-1 vote, the Court said that a state law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between
the

two races did not conflict with the 13th Amendment forbidding involuntary servitude, nor did
it

tend to reestablish such a condition.

The Court avoided discussion of the protection granted by the clause in the 14th Amendment
that

forbids the states to make laws depriving citizens of their “privileges or immunities,” but
instead

cited such laws in other states as a “reasonable” exercise of their authority under the police

power. The purpose of the 14th Amendment, the Court said, was “to enforce the absolute
equality

of the two races before the law.... Laws ... requiring their separation ... do not necessarily
imply

the inferiority of either race. The argument against segregation laws was false because of the

“assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a
badge

of inferiority. If this be so, it is ... solely because the colored race chooses to put that
construction

upon it.”

Following the Plessy decision, restrictive legislation based on race continued and expanded
steadily, and its reasoning was not overturned until Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in

1954.

The Reader’s Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors.
Copyright

© 1991 by Houghton Mi lin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Overcrowded, poorly maintained schools and sta shortages were typical of

American public schools between the 1880s and 1920s. Opening teaching to women

(often the daughters of immigrants) provided the new teachers, and ‘normal schools’ to

train them grew rapidly in number. Around 1900, public school teaching was not

considered a profession. The average annual salary for teachers was lower than that of an

unskilled worker, and many teachers had no more than a high school education

themselves. Yet real progress was made in teacher preparation in the decades after

compulsory attendance laws were passed. States set standards for teaching licenses,

which increasingly included a college degree with courses in pedagogy. After the 1920s,

‘school marms’ and ‘schoolkeepers’ (again more often joined by men) were members of

a profession called ‘educators’. Salaries for teachers, however, remained low, and the

profession was regarded as one of the least prestigious.

In the same period, reformers assigned the schools new priorities and duties. John

Dewey and others held that curricula and teaching methods had be changed. Instead of

moralistic piety and rote memorization, the schools had to give pupils practical skills

suited to their environment and the habit of discovering knowledge for themselves.

“Learning by doing,” personal growth, and child-centered rather than subject-centered

teaching became the goals.

Public schools were to become community centers and the means of social

progress. About this time, progressive education introduced physical education, music

and fine arts, and vocational subjects (training in skilled occupations) as electives

(optional courses). These educators also developed the after-school extra-curricular

activities, such as team sports, that became a typical aspect of American education. In
1917, the federal government o ered financial support to any public secondary school

113Introduction to British and American Studies

state universities. Equally important, it promoted the higher education of larger numbers

of students and called for college-level courses in agriculture and technical and industrial

subjects, in order to attract students from the working class. The first college to admit

African Americans and women also opened before the Civil War.

What functions did the founding fathers expect public education to fulfil?

What did reformers like Horace Mann promote?

When did church and state become separated?

What was significant about the Morrill Act?

Immigration, Assimilation and Segregation, 1865 — 1945

The rapid pace of urbanization, industrialization and immigration brought a

turning point in American education after 1865. In the popular print media, the immigrant

slum children became the symbol of the dangers of these processes, and the public

schools were asked to remedy the situation.

Assimilation through schools seemed increasingly necessary as immigrants from

southern and eastern Europe and several Asian nations arrived in large numbers. The

schools were expected to Americanize these exotic newcomers by teaching English, the

principles of American democracy and the skills needed for the workplace. Just as

importantly, the schools would also get immigrant children out of unhealthy tenement

housing, o the streets, out of factories and away from gangs. To accomplish these goals,

compulsory school attendance was soon adopted. By 1880, almost three-quarters of

school-aged children were in school.

These laws also applied to racial minorities. After the Civil War, the federal

government’s Freedman’s Bureau and other Northern organizations founded many

schools in the South for the former slaves. But whether African, Asian or Native

American, minority students everywhere were placed in separate schools. In 1896 the
Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson ruling gave legal backing to the segregation that

already existed.

112Introduction to British and American Studies

Building a society along the frontier also motivated the early development of

schools. Because they were few and the wilderness vast, the settlers discovered that law,

order and social tradition broke down unless people cooperated to establish the basic

institutions of society. Thus, “school-raisings” became as much a standard part of

cooperative community building as house- or barn-raising.

Who should be responsible for children’s education?

What are the “three Rs”’?

What is “school-raising”’?

Before the Civil War

Nonetheless, only five of the 13 original states included provisions for public

schools in the constitutions they wrote during the War for Independence. In 1830, none

o ered statewide, free public education. Support for common schools was strong,

however. Thomas Je erson, Benjamin Franklin and other founding fathers insisted that

universal public education was essential to produce the informed citizenry on which a

democracy depended.

Je erson envisioned replacing Europe’s aristocracy of birth with a school-bred

meritocracy of talent. In the 1830s, President Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Party

opposed that ideal as elitist, and supported schools as an equalizer that would give every

man a chance to rise in society. Around the same time, reformers in the Northeast, such

as Horace Mann, publicized the notion that public schools could reduce the growing

crime, poverty and vice of the cities by helping to assimilate their growing immigrant

population. Towards those ends, Mann led a movement to lengthen the school year, add

‘practical’ subjects, raise teachers’ salaries and provide professional teacher training. By

the Civil War, all states accepted the principle of tax-supported, free elementary schools.
Every state had such schools in some places, but most teachers were poorly trained, and

the quality of the schools was considerably low in the South and West. Most children

went to school sporadically or not at all. In the North only one out of six white children

attended public schools in 1860. In the South, the figure was one in seven, and it was

illegal to give slaves schooling.

As the states abolished religions in the half century after the revolution, church

and state became separated. Only gradually, however, did Protestant instruction disappear

from public schools. In the North and Midwest, immigrant groups began to establish

parochial (private, church-related) elementary and secondary schools in the 1840s to

preserve their ethnic heritage and avoid pressure to assimilate in public schools.

The pattern of higher education was transformed before 1865. The Supreme Court

distinguished between public and private colleges in 1819 and freed private institutions of

higher education from state control. Thereafter hundreds of private experiments in higher

education appeared, even though public funding dropped to very low levels. During the

Civil War, the Morrill Act (or Land-Grant College Act) set a revolutionary precedent by

laying the foundation for the state university. The beginning of the federal government’s

involvement in public higher education, the Act gave each state huge land areas for

higher education. The result was dozens of land-grant colleges, which developed into

111Introduction to British and American Studies

In England, this debate has coincided with dramatic improvements across the

country. There are 1.8 million more children being taught in good or outstanding schools

than in August 2010, with that number rising by 38,000 in just 4 months, but nearly 1

million children are still taught in schools which are less than good. Disproportionately,

these children are from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Secretary of State has described social mobility as our defining challenge —

by levelling up opportunity and making sure that all pupils get every chance to go as far

as their talents will take them.

To support this aim, the Secretary of State recently announced 12 ‘opportunity

areas’. The government will invest up to £72 million to support local education providers

and communities to drive up social mobility and provide greater opportunities for pupils

living in these areas. We will further develop an evidence base for what works to tackle

the root causes of educational inequality and we will spread excellence to all parts of the

country, to the benefit of all pupils.

The reforms that the government has enacted since 2010 demonstrate what it is

possible to achieve when you provide teachers and head teachers with the autonomy,

within the right framework of incentives, to drive improvement. By setting teachers free

to innovate, spreading what works in these innovative schools and cultivating a culture in

the profession that is prepared to challenge and engage with research, education will

flourish.

Gibb (2017)

AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL HISTORY

The Colonial Period

Local control over education developed early in America and remains

characteristic of its educational institutions. During the colonial period, the British

authorities did not provide money for education, so the first schools varied according to

the interest local settlers had in education. The common view was that parents were

responsible for children’s education. In the Southern colonies, schooling often came from

a private tutor, if the family could a ord one. Each town tried to build a school in

colonial New England and Pennsylvania.

The colonialists expected the schools to teach religion, and a skill in reading was

highly valued because it allowed people to read the Bible. Puritan Massachusetts founded

the first American public school under a law entitled the “Old Deluder Satan Act.”

Reading, writing and arithmetic (the so-called “three Rs’’) were the core subjects and,

through them, pupils prepared for local religious, economic and political life.

Higher education also began early in the colonial period. In 1636 Harvard College

was founded, only six years after the Puritan migration to America began. By the
Revolutionary War, nine colleges prepared a small elite of men for the ministry and

leadership in public life. At this point, church and state were not separated, and

essentially private institutions of higher education regularly received public funding.

110Introduction to British and American Studies

The government inherited a national curriculum stripped of knowledge and we

were determined to tackle this injustice. Pupils, regardless of where they are born or how

much money their parents have, deserve an education in ‘the best that has been thought

and said’. All deserve a grounding in the history of their country and the world, a deep

and broad understanding of science and a rich arts education that gives them a deeper

appreciation of their culture. For real social justice and for social mobility to occur, all

pupils must have access to the rigorous curricula that characterise our world-renowned

independent schools.

Prior to 2010, this was not a widely held view within the education establishment

in England. It was widely believed that the curriculum should focus on generic skills such

as problem solving and critical thinking. But greater diversity in the school system

coincided with the beginnings of a great debate in the profession.

With the growth of social media, teachers have been more able to discuss the

evidence that informs their practice with fellow professionals beyond the sta room in

their school.

Ben Newmark, a history teacher and blogger, exemplified the importance of this

debate in a recent blog post:

Twitter was a revelation. It wasn’t long before I realised that there were successful

teachers who not only taught like me but were proud to do so. Of course not all the

people I came to admire agreed with each other about everything but none seemed to

share my ideological shame. I read Hirsch (who I’d heard of but saw as some mysterious,

childhood-devouring American ogre), Willingham, Didau and Christodoulou. I was

helped tremendously by people who disagreed with what I was reading but were able to

articulate ideas and draw on a store of knowledge to defend their views I just didn’t have.
Put most simply, I’'d been plugged in and found myself learning and thinking about

pedagogy, and specifically the pedagogy of history teaching, in a way I’d never done

before, because I’d realised that debate and disagreement existed and were allowed.

There 1s now a vibrant online community of teachers who are challenging

education’s prevailing orthodoxy. Classroom teachers are taking to the internet to

contribute and lead the education debate. And thanks to this online community, teacher-

led research conferences have sprung up around the country.

The past 2 years, I have spoken at the ResearchED annual conference. I have been

struck by the quality of debate at these conferences and the drive from teachers to

interrogate and discuss evidence. These conferences — which now take place across the

globe, including here in Australia — demonstrate that education research can no longer be

dislocated from classroom practice, as it has been too often in the past. Instead, teachers

are demanding practical research that is relevant to their teaching practice.

And bloggers from Australia play an important part in the online debate. Greg

Ashman, who is here tonight, is a prolific writer, as well as a researcher and classroom

teacher. His blogs dissect constructivist and so-called ‘child-centred’ teaching approaches

with robust research and he advocates powerfully for evidence-led practice in schools.

His blog site, ‘Filling the pail’, is a must-read for anyone following the education debate.

109Introduction to British and American Studies

e at least 2 sciences

e ahumanity (either history or geography)

e alanguage

This combination of subjects provides pupils with a broad academic core of

knowledge and provides pupils with the best opportunity of being admitted to the UK’s

most prestigious universities.

The percentage of pupils taking each of these subjects and the percentage of

pupils passing this combination of subjects is published each year. Since the introduction
of this policy, the proportion of pupils sitting examinations at 16 in this combination of

academic subjects has increased from just over one-fifth to just under two-fifths.

This policy is helping to reverse the drift away from academic subjects that took

place in previous years, providing more pupils with the solid academic grounding they

need.

Secondly, the government introduced Progress 8 — a measure of school

performance based on the amount of progress pupils make at secondary school.

Previously, schools had been judged based on the proportion of pupils reaching a

threshold, leading to a number of perverse incentives. Schools were not incentivised to

stretch their most able or their least able pupils. Instead, schools were encouraged to

focus disproportionately on pupils with a chance of moving from a D-grade to a C-grade.

Thanks to Progress 8, schools are now incentivised to provide a broad, balanced

and stretching curriculum to all of their pupils.

In primary schools, reforms are still underway, but one low-stakes test has had a

dramatic improvement on standards.

There is a substantial body of evidence that demonstrates that systematic synthetic

phonics is the most e ective way of teaching children to read. Yet, previous governments

moved too slowly to ensure all pupils were being taught to read using this method.

As well as mandating early phonics instruction in the national curriculum, the

government introduced the phonics screening check — a teacher-led assessment of year |

pupils’ ability to decode simple words.

In 2012, just 58% of England’s 6-year-olds met the expected standard in the

phonics screening check. By 2016, thanks to the hard work of teachers and the use of

phonics, this rose to 81%. This amounts to 147,000 more 6-year-olds on track to become

fluent readers than in 2012.

There are few — 1f any — more important policies for improving social mobility

than ensuring all pupils are taught to read e ectively. Literacy is the foundation of a

high-quality, knowledge-rich education. Those opposed to the use of systematic synthetic

phonics are standing between pupils and the education they deserve.

By combining autonomy, intelligent accountability and the best teaching methods,

dramatic improvements have occurred in England’s schools. However, possibly the most

important component of the reforms in the last Parliament was raising expectations for all

pupils.

108Introduction to British and American Studies

French, e ortlessly using the subjunctive; teaching is done from the front of the

classroom, with frequent whole-class response to check understanding; the curriculum 1s

knowledge-rich; and the results are extraordinary. I have never been to a school quite like

it.

Michaela’s pupils are fiercely knowledgeable and proud of it. And they are some

of the happiest pupils you could hope to meet.

Homework consists of pupils self-quizzing. And pupils are rewarded not for their

attainment, but for the e ort they put in. Whatever a pupil’s ability, prior attainment or

background, Michaela believes there is nothing preventing pupils trying their best. And

pupils strive to work as hard as they can. Teachers at Michaela do not focus on engaging

pupils. E ort is expected and it becomes a habit and part of every pupil’s character.

Engagement is a by-product of pupils yearning to reach these high expectations.

Michaela Community School shows what it is possible to achieve. It is a

challenge to everyone’s expectations of pupils.

The greater autonomy enjoyed by schools was twinned with a measured

accountability framework, designed to ensure all pupils received a high-quality, academic

education.

The government responded quickly to restore faith in national examinations. For

over a decade, exam results rose year on year as the achievements of pupils were inflated

so much that the public and media greeted every national results day with increased

incredulity — quite rightly.

Grade inflation was not the only thing to shake public confidence in the

examination system. The scourge of so-called ‘equivalent’ qualifications,

disproportionately taken by pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, meant that league

tables were gamed by schools at the expense of pupils taking the most valuable

qualifications for their futures. In all, 96% of non-GCSE and 1GCSE qualifications have

been removed from the school performance tables since 2010.

To support our ambition to ensure pupils get the best, the government is in the

process of phasing in new GCSE qualifications that will put England’s qualifications on a

par with those in the highest performing countries in the world.

But the real success of the school accountability system has been the refinement

and improvement of the accountability measures, removing perverse incentives for

schools to enter pupils into low-value qualifications and instead rewarding schools to

providing all pupils with a stretching academic curriculum.

Two secondary school accountability measures have had a significant impact on

the approach schools took to the curriculum.

In order to encourage schools to enter more pupils into rigorous academic GCSEs,

the government introduced the English Baccalaureate, a combination of academic

subjects:

e maths

e English

107Introduction to British and American Studies

Academies are former local-authority maintained schools now run by charitable

trusts instead of the local authority and fully funded by central government. With this

new structure comes greater freedom over such things as the curriculum and

administration of the school. Similarly, free schools — which are newly established

schools that benefit from the same freedoms as academies — provide groups of teachers,

parents or charities with the opportunity to shape the next generation of England’s

schools, promoting diversity and innovation.

Academies now make up over 3 in 5 secondary schools in England and around |

in 5 primary schools. Strong schools that chose to become academies — known as

converter academies — continue to outperform local-authority maintained schools. And

struggling schools that were taken on by a sponsoring multi-academy trust with a track

record of success — known as sponsor academies — are improving outcomes for pupils at

the fastest rates.

But the government was determined that all teachers had the burden of

bureaucracy lifted from their shoulders. Alongside the greater freedoms made available to

teachers in free schools and academies, the government scrapped 20,000 pages of

unnecessary central guidance, freeing teachers to focus on teaching.

And the government also wanted to empower all teachers to tackle poor

behaviour. Clearer powers were given to teachers and head teachers to deal with poor

behaviour and, importantly, the government granted teachers anonymity if they faced

allegations from parents or pupils.

Whilst there is plenty of data to demonstrate the success of the academies and free

schools programme, the most compelling evidence for providing teachers and schools

with greater freedom comes from visiting some of the highest performing academies and

free schools in England.

Whether you look at Reach Academy Feltham, Michaela Community School,

City Academy Hackney, King Solomon Academy or Harris Academy Battersea, there are
some obvious similarities.

All of these schools teach a stretching, knowledge-rich curriculum. Each has a

strong approach to behaviour management, so teachers can teach uninterrupted. And all

of these schools serve disadvantaged communities, demonstrating that high academic and

behavioural standards are not — and must not — be the preserve of wealthy pupils in

independent schools.

And the government is keen to see behaviour standards rise further still. Last

month, Tom Bennett released Creating a Culture, an independent report commissioned by

the Department for Education to spread best practice in schools. The government

understands that good behaviour is the bedrock of excellent results in schools.

Michaela Community School is arguably using the academy freedoms more

radically than any other in the country, particularly with regard to behaviour and the

curriculum. A month ago, I was fortunate to visit this remarkable school.

Marking 1s kept to a minimum; behaviour is immaculate; children move briskly

and silently between lessons, cordially greeting teachers as they go; children have a

voracious appetite for reading; months after arriving at Michaela, pupils can converse in

106Introduction to British and American Studies

In 2009, Michael Gove, soon-to-be Secretary of State for Education, explained

how the British people’s common sense aligned with the soon-to-be government’s belief

in what education is for: “The British people’s common sense inclines them towards

schools in which the principal activity is teaching and learning, the principal goal is

academic attainment, the principle guiding every action is the wider spread of excellence,

the initiation of new generations into the amazing achievements of humankind.”

Since 2010, the government has stuck to this evidence-based, common-sense

approach:

greater autonomy was given to head teachers — those best placed to implement

evidence-based improvements to education — to innovate and improve their

schools
increased autonomy was twinned with intelligent accountability that supported

best practice in schools

a culture of innovation in schools coincided with the growth of online

communities of teachers determined to spread evidence-informed teaching

practice

the government overhauled a curriculum that was denying pupils the core

academic knowledge and reformed the examination system, breathing confidence

back into national qualifications

and as improvements have been seen across the country, the government is now

focusing its attention on driving social mobility in remaining cold-spots that need

further support

The previous government had been swept to power on the echoes of ‘education,

education, education’ in 1997. Despite the best intentions and huge investment,

England’s foremost education academic, Rob Coe, concluded the following: “The best I

think we can say 1s that overall there probably has not been much change.”

A change in direction was badly needed. In 2010:

schools were shepherding pupils — disproportionately from disadvantaged

backgrounds — into taking so-called ‘equivalent qualifications’ to inflate the

school’s ranking in the league tables

the growth of ‘equivalents’ coincided with a sharp decline in the take up of some

highly valued academic subjects, including modern foreign languages

grade inflation was rife, undermining national confidence in our national public

qualifications

and — despite the birth of the academies programme — the freedoms associated

with the academy programme were only being enjoyed by a few hundred schools.

Whilst academies were first introduced by the previous government — under the

stewardship of Lord Adonis — their roots hark back to reforms by Lord Baker in the

1980s, demonstrating that politicians on both sides of the political divide recognised the

importance of empowering teachers to deliver improvements in education.

105Introduction to British and American Studies

The intention of the 1944 Act was to provide universal and free state primary and

secondary education. Day-release training at local colleges was also introduced for

employed people who wanted further education after fifteen, and local authority grants

were given to students who wished to enter higher education. It was hoped that such

equality of opportunity would expand the educational market, lead to a better-educated

society, encourage more working-class children to enter university and achieve greater

social mobility.

However, it was felt in the 1950s that these aims were not being achieved under

the selective secondary school system. Education became a party-political battlefield. The

Labour Party and other critics maintained that the eleven-plus examination was wrong in

principle; was socially divisive; had educational and testing weaknesses; resulted in

middle-class children predominating in grammar schools and higher education; and thus

perpetuated the class system.

Labour governments from 1964 were committed to abolishing the eleven-plus,

selection and the secondary school divisions. They would be replaced by non-selective

‘comprehensive schools’ to which children would automatically transfer after primary

school. These would provide schooling for all children of all ability levels and from all

social backgrounds.

The battle for the comprehensive and selective systems was fierce. Although more

schools became comprehensive under the Conservative government from 1970, it

decided against legislative compulsion. Instead, LEAs were able to choose the secondary

education which was best suited to local needs. Some decided for comprehensives, while

others retained selection.

But the Labour government in 1976 intended to establish comprehensive schools

nationwide. Before this policy could be implemented, the Conservatives came to power

in 1979. The state secondary school sector thus remains divided between the selective

and non-selective options since a minority of LEAs in England and Wales do not have

comprehensives and there are some 166 grammar schools left. Scottish schools have long
been comprehensive, but Northern Irish schools are divided into selective gram- mars and

secondary moderns.

The comprehensive/selection debate continues. Education is still subject to party-

political and ideological conflict. Opinion polls suggest that only a minority of parents

support comprehensive education and a majority favour a selective and diverse system of

schools with entry based on continuous assessment, interviews and choice. It is often

argued that the long-running arguments about the relative merits of di erent types of

schooling have not benefited schoolchildren or the educational system. But reforms to the

state school system are still being made by the Labour government.

How did the 1944 Education Act change the education system in Britain?

What debate continues until today?

England’s Education Reform

The text below is the original script of a speech on England's education reforms

delivered by Nick Gibb. It was released by Department for Education on April II 2017.

104Introduction to British and American Studies

grants) for clever poor children and some state funding for secondary schools were

provided, and more state secondary schools were created. But this state help did not

appreciably expand secondary education, and in 1920 only 9.2 per cent of thirteen-year-

old children in England and Wales were able to enter secondary schools on a non-fee-

paying basis. The school system in the early twentieth century was still inadequate for the

demands of society, working-class and lower-middle-class children lacked extensive

education and hard-pressed governments avoided any further large-scale involvement

until 1944.

What role did the church play in the school history of Britain?

What can be said about the involvement of the state in education before 1944?
The 1944 Education Act

In 1944, an Education Act (the Butler Act) reorganized state primary and

secondary schools in England and Wales (1947 in Scotland and Northern Ireland) and

greatly influenced future generations of schoolchildren. State schooling became free and

compulsory up to the age of fifteen and was divided into three stages: primary schools (5-

11 years), secondary schools (11-15) and further post-school training. A decentralized

system resulted, in which a Ministry of Education drew up policy guidelines and local

education authorities (LEAs) decided which forms of schooling would be used in their

areas.

Two types of state schools resulted from the Act: county and voluntary. Primary

and secondary county schools were provided by LEAs in each county. Voluntary schools

were mainly those elementary schools which had been founded by religious and other

groups and which were now partially financed or maintained by LEAs, although they

retained their religious a iliation. Non-denominational schools thus coexisted with

voluntary schools.

Following the 1944 Act, most state secondary schools in England, Wales, and

Northern Ireland were e ectively divided into grammar schools, secondary modern

schools and technical schools. Some grammar schools were new and state-funded, while

others were old foundations, which now received direct state funding and were known as

grant-maintained schools. The placement of pupils/ students in this secondary system

depended upon examination result. The eleven-plus examination was adopted by most

LEAs, consisted of tests which covered linguistic, mathematical and general knowledge

and was taken in the last year of primary school at the age of 11. The object was to select

between academic and non-academic children and introduced the notion of “selection”

based on ability. Those who passed the eleven-plus went to grammar school, while those

who failed went to secondary modern and technical schools.

Although all schools were supposed to be equal in their respective educational

targets, the grammar schools were equated with a better (more academic) education; a
socially more respectable role; and qualified children (through national examinations) for

the better jobs and entry into higher education and the professions. Secondary modern

schools emphasized basic schooling, initially without national examination. The third

type of school (technical school) educated more vocationally inclined pupils.

103Introduction to British and American Studies

Other schools were also periodically established by rich individuals or monarchs.

These were independent, privately financed institutions and were variously known as

high, grammar and public schools: they were later associated with both the modern

independent and state educational sectors. But such schools were largely confined to the

sons of the rich, aristocratic and influential. Most people received no formal schooling

and remained illiterate and innumerate for life.

In later centuries, more children benefited as the church created new schools;

local areas developed secular schools; and schools were provided by wealthy

industrialists and philanthropists for working-class boys and girls. But the minority of

children attending such institutions received only a basic instruction in reading, writing

and arithmetic. The majority of children received no adequate education.

By the nineteenth century, Britain had a haphazard school structure (except for

Scotland). Protestant churches lost their domination of education and competed with the

Roman Catholic Church, Nonconformist churches and other faiths. Church schools

guarded their independence from state and secular interference and provided much of the

available schooling. The ancient high, grammar and public schools continued to train the

sons of the middle and upper classes for professional and leadership roles in society. But,

at a time when the industrial revolutions were proceeding rapidly and the population was

growing, the state did not provide a school system which could educate the workforce.

Most of the working class still received no formal or adequate education.

However, local and central government did begin to show some regard for

education in the early nineteenth century. Grants were made to local authorities for

school use in their areas and in 1833 Parliament funded the construction of school
buildings. But it was only in 1870 that the state became more actively involved. An

Education Act (the Forster Act) created local school boards in England and Wales, which

provided schools in their areas. State elementary schools now supplied non-

denominational training and the existing religious voluntary schools served

denominational needs. By 1880 this system provided free and compulsory elementary

schooling in most parts of Britain for children between the ages of five and ten (twelve in

1899). The Balfour Act (1902) later made local government responsible for state

education and gave funding to voluntary schools. But, although schools provided

elementary education for children up to the age of thirteen by 1918, this was still limited

to basic skills.

Adequate secondary school education remained largely the province of the

independent sector and a few state schools. But people had to pay for their services. After

a period when the old public (private) schools had declined in quality, they revived in the

nineteenth century. Their weaknesses, such as the narrow curriculum and indiscipline,

had been reformed by progressive headmasters such as Thomas Arnold of Rugby and

their reputations increased. The private grammar and high schools, which imitated the

classics-based education of the public schools, also expanded. These schools drew their

pupils from the sons of the middle and upper classes and were the training grounds for

the established elite and the professions.

State secondary school education in the early twentieth century was marginally

extended to children whose parents could not a ord school fees. Scholarships (financial

102Introduction to British and American Studies

we invest educationally in the productivity of the entire workforce. Social e iciency,

then, is the perspective of the taxpayer and the employer, from which education is seen as

a public good designed to prepare workers to fill structurally necessary market roles.

The social mobility approach to schooling argues that education is a commodity,

the only purpose of which is to provide individual students with a competitive advantage

in the struggle for desirable social positions. The aim is get more of this valuable

commodity than one's competitors, which puts a premium on a form of education that is
highly stratified and unequally distributed. This, then, is the perspective of the individual

educational consumer, from which education is seen as a private good designed to

prepare individuals for successful social competition for the more desirable market roles.

In an important way, all three of these goals are political in that all are e orts to

establish the purposes and functions of an essential social institution. But one major

political di erence among them 1s positional, with people in di erent positions adopting

di erent perspectives on the purposes of education. The democratic equality goal arises

from the citizen, social e iciency from the taxpayer and employer, and social mobility

from the educational consumer. The first goal expresses the politics of citizenship, the

second expresses the politics of human capital, and the third expresses the politics of

individual opportunity. Of the three approaches to schooling, the first is the most

thoroughly political in that it sets as its goal the preparation of students as actors in the

political arena. The other two goals, in contrast, portray education as a mechanism for

adapting students to the market. And this suggests another major di erentiating factor,

the way in which each goal locates education in the public-private dimension. For the

democratic equality goal, education is a purely public good; for social e iciency, it is a

public good in service to the private sector; and for social mobility, it is a private good for

personal consumption.

Labaree (1997, pp.41-43)

BRITISH EDUCATIONAL HISTORY

The complicated nature of British (particularly English) schooling and current

educational controversies have their roots in school history. To simplify matters, this

section concentrates on the largest school element, that of England and Wales, with

comparative references to Scotland and Northern Ireland. State involvement in education

was late and the first attempt to establish a national system of state-funded elementary

schools came only in 1870 for England and Wales (1872 for Scotland and 1923 for

Northern Ireland). But it was not until 1944 that the state supplied both primary and

secondary schools nationally which were free and compulsory.

However, some church schools have long existed. After England, Scotland,
Ireland and Wales were gradually converted to Christianity in the fifth and sixth

centuries, the church’s position in society enabled it to create the first schools. These

initially prepared boys for the priesthood. But the church then developed a wider

educational role and its structures influenced the later state system.

101Introduction to British and American Studies

length proximity... It is also for this reason that the concept of educationalization in the

history of education literature has generally taken on a rather negative connotation. And

nonetheless there was a positive side inevitably attached to that educational action —

albeit mostly in the form of “unintended side e ects.” With the imparting of knowledge,

pupils and students not only gained an understanding of all kinds of social structures

(including the educational structures in which they had ended up), but also developed

tools enabling them to think for themselves (as well as the taste for doing so!), something

that cannot be kept in check, let alone controlled, by any disciplining, standardizing or

civilizing authority or any other power whatsoever. This partly explains why all

dictatorial systems are eventually susceptible to implosion from within. So let that also be

a part of the joy we are sharing in today; like it or not, education and teaching always

have had an emancipating e ect, even though it was di icult to plan what the final result

of this would be. In no case did it follow the rules laid down by the policymakers.

Adapted from Depaepe (2012, p.167 & pp.11-12)

Three Goals of Education

Like other major institutions in American society, education has come to be

defined as an arena that simultaneously promotes equality and adapts to inequality.

Within schools, these contradictory purposes have translated into three distinguishable

educational goals, each of which has exerted considerable impact without succeeding in

eliminating the others, and each of which has at times served to undermine the others. I

call these goals democratic equality, social e iciency, and social mobility. These goals

di er across several dimensions: the extent to which they portray education as a public or

private good, the extent to which they understand education as preparation for political or

market roles, and the di ering perspectives on education that arise depending on one's

particular location in the social structure.

From the democratic equality approach to schooling, one argues that a democratic

society cannot persist unless it prepares all of its young with equal care to take on the full

responsibilities of citizenship in a competent manner. We all depend on this political

competence of our fellow citizens, since we put ourselves at the mercy of their collective

judgment about the running of our society. A corollary is that, in the democratic political

arena, we are all considered equal (according to the rule of one person, one vote), but this

political equality can be undermined if the social inequality of citizens grows too great.

Therefore, schools must promote both e ective citizenship and relative equality. Both of

these outcomes are collective benefits of schooling without which we cannot function as

a polity. Democratic equality, then, is the perspective of the citizen, from which

education is seen as a public good, designed to prepare people for political roles.

The social e iciency approach to schooling argues that our economic well-being

depends on our ability to prepare the young to carry out useful economic roles with

competence. The idea is that we all benefit from a healthy economy and from the

contribution to such an economy made by the productivity of our fellow worker. As a

consequence, we cannot allow this function to be supported only by voluntary means,

since self-interest would encourage individuals to take a free ride on the human capital

investment of their fellow citizens while investing personally in a form of education that

would provide the highest individual return. Instead, society as a whole must see to it that

100Introduction to British and American Studies

CHAPTER 6: EDUCATION SYSTEMS

- Modern education systems: What is education for?

- What key moments have shaped the US and the UK educational systems?

- What have been proposed as solutions to educational issues? What debates are there

regarding the solutions?

MODERN EDUCATION SYSTEMS: WHAT IS EDUCATION

FOR?
Educationalization & Modernization

In several Western societies we witness today an increasing tendency to

‘educationalize’ social problems. As an institution, the school is, among other things,

held accountable for solving social inequalities (related to class, race, and gender); for

reducing tra ic deaths, obesity, teenage sex, and environmental destruction; and for

enhancing public health, economic productivity, citizenship, and even performances in

sport contests such as the Olympic Games. Pushing these kinds of ‘social’ responsibilities

on schools is a process that has been under way for a long time and coincides with the

role of education in the formation of the modern nation-state. ‘Educationalization’ can be

used as the general concept to identify the overall orientation or trend toward thinking

about education as the focal point for addressing or solving larger human problems.

Over the last few centuries, education has set itself up as a major player in the

modernization of society. The school was the socialization institute par excellence,

through which the coming generations were to find their place. So it was that education

and teaching proved not to be aimed primarily at equality of opportunity or emancipation

of the masses, but rather at social control, disciplining and standardization of behavior.

Just as pupils had to learn to write between the lines of their exercise books at school, so

this institution had taken on the task of seeing to it that its students conducted themselves

within the bounds of what was morally desirable and socially acceptable. The impulsive

brute violence of the masses had to be tamed, come what may, and the revolutionary

potential of the lower classes kept in check or suppressed. In colonial and post-colonial

contexts — the historical configuration with which several of the graduates of the program

will identify themselves — this socialization took on an extra dimension, in the sense that

from the outset it also prevailed as a kind of ‘civilizing o ensive’. Western civilization,

which was deemed to be superior, had to be disseminated to so-called ‘underdeveloped’

regions, often as a subcomponent of a more wide-ranging understanding of missionary

work and evangelization. Nevertheless, this modernization, or as the case may be

‘educationalization’, did not immediately imply the pursuit of equality. Rather, the

reverse was true: the question as to how far we could, ought to and were allowed to go in

this respect was forever lurking just around the corner. The indigenous population was as

a rule not expected to play a top-rank role in the social ‘progress’ that was being made.
As docile helpers in that process, they were sooner to be kept within a kind of arm’s-

99