On Modern Educational Thinking, Part 1

Last week I ruminated on the evolution of my thinking about educational research. In short, I had joined my thinking to a large number of educators, policymakers, and researchers who valued quantitative measures as the best way to make decisions about education. This is a view I developed while working as a special education teacher and because I had to develop ways to redesign my entire classroom around teaching literacy. I spent time looking at handbooks of research and methodologies developed, largely, by educational psychologists, language pathologists, and cognitive linguists. The approaches were clinical. The research was clinical too - in one case I was reviewing FMRI results showing how reading, writing, listening, and speaking reinforced neural pathways and, in some cases, built new ones. These handbooks and articles were fairly uniform in their literacy recommendations: students should receive direct instruction in the specifics of phonemes, phonics, and grammar. These handbooks and articles were fairly uniform in their philosophy of education: the best practices emerged from quantitative measures of student performance. These could be full on experiments (and many of the articles were high quality randomized double blinded trials on students in literacy clinics) or they could be more practical research situated in classrooms or schools.

I am not totally divorced from the legitimacy of this kind of research. In fact, I think it offers the best option for students who need literacy interventions because they are not acquiring the reading and writing skills they need as they progress through grade levels. However, I made far too much of a connection between these kinds of studies and the larger testing apparatus. In part, I was chasing test scores too. My students improved dramatically in their literacy over the course of a few months of receiving direct instruction and the final measure, the one that would validate my work in the classroom, was the annual ELA exam given by my state. Because I assumed that my teaching was scientifically supported, I felt the test (and all high stakes testing) had some degree of scientific validity. It was a bit of flawed inductive reasoning on my part and motivated by my desire to do some good.  It turns out that my thinking wasn't unique or even that new. Indeed, the pursuit of more "scientific" curriculum and more "measurement" of learning is as old as modern education.

In the late 1800s, as Western countries rapidly industrialized in the wake of the industrial revolution, education moved from the domain of the wealthy and the connected to the masses. This was the result of a variety of forces but the primary motivator was economic. Manufacturing demanded a large and competent labor force able to mange valuable machinery. Laborers sought higher wages and prosperity, often best achieved through working in factories or other industrial activities. These pressures combined with a social impetus toward a more representative politics throughout Europe and America meant that the classical education of earlier centered came under pressure. Up to that point, education was largely along the lines of what we would today call a "classical" education or a "humanist" education. Students would learn Greek and Latin and would study the mythology, philosophy, mathematics, and history of both those ancient cultures in the ancient languages. Even the youngest of students would master the languages before mastering the remainder.

As that century closed, this view of education came under pressure from a movement for more scientific education. The masses would not value from mastery of the classics and weren't well served by learning ancient languages in elementary school - the average level of attendance was low and mostly through the early grades. What good would Latin do a young boy working mechanized looms in a Manhattan factory? The emerging science of psychology sought to answer these new demands. Becoming ever more separate from philosophy as a discipline, psychologists urged for schools to adopt a scientific approach to curriculum. The Kliebard text form which I am pulling some of this history calls this branch of reformers developmentalists.

Championed by G. Stanley Hall, developmentalists believed that schools ought to teach students in accordance with their mental development. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. A lot of our current education, especially literacy education, is driven by a focus on students progressing through a variety of stages (probably the biggest name in modern literacy development is Jeanne Chall). At that time, Hall and his contemporaries were heavily influenced by German pedagogical models which had their origins in pre-unification Prussia. Although less militaristic than the German versions, Hall brought back the "science" of child development and pushed for major education reforms based on those ideas.

I should probably mention at this point just how unscientific Hall's science was. The developmentalists followed a theory of development called "culture-epoch theory." You see, "science" taught them that the brain developed through stages just as human society had evolved. A young child was like a cave-man and should learn content similar to that which would be of interest to a cave man - put them outdoors, let them draw, learn sounds, or play at hunting. Then, as the child progressed through to the "ancient" epoch they could begin learning famous mythology and stories from the bible. Eventually the child's brain would reach the renaissance and then the modern era as they entered early adulthood. This strange view was initially the most dominant challenge to a classical education and much of early psychological science was built on testing students to determine their "culture-epoch" and deliver appropriate content. Much of it was driven, too, by social Darwinism which argued that many people (read brown people, women, some immigrants) would never reach the modern era and didn't need to be in school for very long.

There were two reasons this view was so popular. First, it was built on established "science" of the day and was widely respected. At this point, schools of education were not common and often existed as subsidiaries to psychology or philosophy departments. Those departments often set the agenda for research and recommendations about policy or curriculum. Second, the culture-epoch theory offered a model to organize schools for the masses. Children could be broken up largely by age and the content delivered and apportioned according to their mental and social evolution. In an era where there was little or no continuity from one school to the next or one state to the next, a uniform curriculum was something people recognized as a way to exert control - especially in states where universal compulsory education was enacted. This "legibility" was seen as a way to make schools accountable. If kids were progressing through the epochs, it was generally seen as an evidence of teachers and schools doing their jobs. Since the developmentalists relied heavily on testing, schools and their overseers were able to keep a close eye on performance.

This whole approach sounds decidedly current - with the exception of the weird culture-epoch thing. But, let me pose a question: As I noted last week, there is very strong evidence that our current testing regime is totally invalid and contributes to the marginalization of minorities, especially black men. Is our high-stakes testing regime any more valid than the developmentalist approach of the 1880s? For me, it seems like the answer is no. Both offered a solution to accountability and both led to significant abuses which resulted in a system supportive of white supremacy.

Thankfully, the humanists and developmentalists were not the only game in town during the construction of our modern education system. Another scientific approach to education was in the offing, social efficiency.. Sharing the developmentalist fondness for measurement, the social efficiency crowd sought to educate the masses specifically for employment. In my next post, I'll take a closer look at the ideas underpinning social efficiency and how they compare to our "new" focus on educating children for the workforce.

Minor edits for clarity because I don't proofread! -J