As I slowly make my way through Diane Ravitch's Left Back, I am continually struck by her account of how modern pedagogy was born a little more than a century ago. I haven't time to do all the details justice--readers who want highly particular history should go read Ravitch herself and then work backward from her bibliography to the writings of Dewey and others. But I'll just summarize and excerpt a couple of telling quotes.

In the early chapters of Left Back, Ravitch writes extensively about the debates that surrounded the rise of the progressive education movement during the early decades of the twentieth century, paying particular attention to those progressives who (quite unprogressively, it seems to me) argued that it is basically not possible to train the mind to reason well and remember much. They used this premise to justify a socially deterministic tracking curriculum that barred all but the most elite, college-bound children from a traditional academic curriculum, and that instead emphasized vocational training. Learning for its own sake was considered impractical and elitist even as the rationale for not teaching academic subjects was itself elitist: The subjects taught in the traditional academic curriculum--Latin, Greek, algebra, and so on--were felt to be well beyond the abilities of most people, who could neither reason nor remember well enough to master them. Progressive education as it was initially conceived and implemented by educationists across the country was thus in many ways profoundly conservative, even reactionary, in its conception of human potential and in its correspondingly rigid notion of school not as preparation for life as a thinking citizen but as preparation for specific manual jobs.

A tellingly extreme example: one progressive educationist took this reasoning to such an extreme that he actually proposed tracking high school-aged kids into a host of highly specialized vocational schools that would teach such skills as "tailoring, jewelry salesmanship, poultry farming, coal cutting, stationary engine firing, waiting on table (hotel), cutting (in shoe factory), automobile repair, teaching of French in secondary school, mule spinning, power machine operating (for ready made clothing), raisin grape growing, general farming suited to Minnesota, linotype composition, railway telegraphy, autogenous welding, street car motor driving, and a hundred others" (quoted in Ravitch, 85). As extreme as this image is, its shadow has been retained by many public schools--I recall taking required courses in home economics, wood shop, and metal shop in junior high school; my high school ran (and still runs) a "career center" that offered training in such practical vocational skills as typing, auto repair, and construction work. I think that's a good thing. But I'm also appalled by the narrowness of the philosophy that made it possible. It's one thing to be able to choose to learn these skills as part of one's education. It's another to be relegated to learning these skills because one has been designated incapable or unworthy of traditional academic study.

For balance, the prescient comment of an early opponent of progressive education: "the great drift of American education and life toward absorption in the fascinating spectacle of the present has not been, perhaps cannot be, checked .... The majority still believe that modern civilization can find not only entertainment but also all the instruction and all the culture which it requires in the contemplation of moving pictures of itself, whether in the five-cent theater or the ten-cent magazine or the one-cent newspaper" (quoted in Ravitch, 117). That was written in 1910. Interesting to consider how the deterministic pedagogy of progressive educational tracking arose alongside the present-centered narcissism that has come to define so many aspects of American social and political life. Interesting, too, to consider how old these trends--which, in our present-centeredness, we think of as fairly recent--really are.

I read Ravitch for a doctoral class (I'm a candidate in education and public policy). She is loathed in many corners of the education world because she believes in traditional, academic education for all. She also tends to blame educators for the failure of schools, rather than students, Congress, parents, etc.

What's interesting about her book is that it exposes the sheer lack of shared practice and knowledge about teaching among educators. It appears that the entire work of progressive educators was to sort students based on their abilities when they entered school, and then prescribe appropriate courses of study. There is no mention of educators actually influencing a student's capacity for knowledge, or enhancing a student's ability to learn. In other words, the dumb remain dumb in the minds of progressives, and the smart remain smart. School does nothing to change that. And educators were not compelled to improve the work of teaching because, in the progressive world, it didn't much matter.

I would argue that the progressive mindset still prevails in many places, and influences educators as well as civilians. For example, in the Learning Gap, Stevenson and Stigler found that American parents tended to believe that children did well in school because they were smart, while Asian parents tended to believe students did well in school because they worked hard. That's a big difference in perception, and makes the school a very powerful place in Asia.

I could go on. Ravitch is interesting.

My nieces and nephews in Germany were funneled into vocational tracks from elementary school onward. A couple of years ago I took an undergrad class on diversity in modern Germany, and our lecturer, who was German, discussed their educational system at length; he seemed a bit defensive about it. "People are happy," he insisted. And if someone wants to go to the university after having been pegged for a carpenter, they can always try to make up the prep work they missed.

Sounds as if the progressives really caught on in Germany, and possibly elsewhere in Europe (or, I wonder, did the ideas originate there and come here?).

It is interesting that learning to be an auto mechanic is consider "vocational" whereas learning to be a lawyer or a doctor is not. I question whether the average student pursuing a law degree or an MD has any more interest in *knowledge for its own sake* than does the average aspiring mechanic.

Everyone, regardless of their career plans, needs to learn something about history, literature, science, etc. And also: it wouldn't hurt for those who are pursuing an academic or "professional" path to learn something about a trade or two. No less a figure than Peter Drucker wrote about how much value he got out of wood shop at his elementary school (in Austria), as discussed here:

http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_photoncourier_archive.html#106294796553762831

Also, I believe that in vocational education, a distinction should be made between courses that represent a broad and sustainable field of knowledge, versus those that represent a relatively narrow and possibly-transient skill. Metalworking, to consider one example mentioned above, is a vast area of human activity and knowledge. A person who took a good machining class in 1960 would still find a lot of his knowledge relevant in today's world of computerized machine tools. On the other hand, what happens to the person who specialized in linotype machine composition or streetcar driving? Nothing good, most likely.

Schools offering vocational training should try to focus on the first category rather than the second...not that it's always easy to tell which is which without the benefit of hindsight.

I, conversely, was "college material". No consideration was given to my fascination with hot rods and sports cars; I was denied access to auto shop and had to push to be allowed to take drafting.

Was anyone else (say, our host, most particularly given her recent job change) struck by how undignified secondary-school teaching was conceived? Sandwiching 'teaching of French in secondary school' right between 'automobile repair' and 'mule spinning' (whatever that is!)

I think the original quote was "mule skinning". Not much help - especially esthetically.

In terms of "tracking", I think there's a good case for it - as long as it's not overdone.

A simple example is that of my old high school - a Jesuit-run college prep school. There were (and probably still are) 3 tracks: the really bright kids took Greek, the middle kids took Latin, and the less-than bright took Spanish.

Otherwise, the curriculum was the same.

But it is certainly true that some people are "cut out" to be plumbers and auto mechanics, and others to be brain surgeons and high-energy physicists.

One of the problems comes from our attitudes toward professions. Plumbers and auto mechanics may not be invited into the Yacht Club, but their services are needed, and they make a good income.

For some inexplicable reason, only teachers are unrecognized, both with status and pay.

In my experience people who live by mechanical skill (such as auto mechanics or carpenters) and by pushing words around (such as lawyers) tend to regard each other as idiots. There's a lesson in there somewhere, but I don't know what it is.

I'll have to get Left Back and read it. I certainly enjoyed Ravitch's Language Police.

Take a look at the writings of John Taylor Gatto, the maverick prize-winning teacher turned critic of our public school system. Despite some mistakes of fact and some overwrought rhetoric, he makes a good case that the "progressive" educationists were doing the work of the corporate barons (and still are)--the goal of public education is to produce docile workers and consumers, not intelligent and self-reliant citizens.

Warning: pure wonkiness ahead.

I expect it actually *was* "mule" spinning. A "mule" was a piece of textile equipment, similar in function to a spinning wheel but much more automated. The name derives, I believe, from the fact that it was a hybrid of two previously-developed spinning devices.

No, "mule skinner" simply means a mule driver, the term presumably arising by synecdoche from its use to describe his whip.

Some thoughts on educational theory. I remember reading Dewey, and about Dewey's theories of education during undergraduate and graduate courses. I taught high school English fifteen or so years ago. He is well regarded by many in education. During Dewey's time education was for the elite. Classical schooling in languages and arts was for the leisure class. Comprehensive secondary education for the masses is a fairly young experiment.

"Hands on" learning is still a very much alive concept. A hundred years ago school aged children were most likely working five and a half or six days a week. Literacy and skills to improve their futures were the goals of "Sunday" schools. Those schools met on the one day off. What we know as junior high and high school grew out of the Progressive movement. Dewey helped grow the idea of a comprehensive secondary school. It only seems like the idea has always existed.

Gatto, while interesting at times, comes off as paranoid. His local criticism of public schooling is interesting. His notion that its the "central government" keeping kids stupid is, well, stupid.

Far better is Jean Anyon's *Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work*, which argues convincingly that class determines the type of education one receives. We are trained for the jobs for which our economic pedigree makes us eligible. This was certainly true at our high school, where kids were locked up in tracks based on how much bling-bling their parents had.

As far as Greek, Latin, and Spanish go, at my high school, it was the ass-kissing rich kids who took Latin or Greek, in hopes that it would boost their SAT scores. The smart, indie-rock kids took French or Spanish. We also wore better clothes and listened to better music. And we drank a lot more and took far more drugs. And, we ultimately got into better colleges than the rich, ass-kissing rich kids. So screw them.

does the web dubois/ booker t washington debate over the best means for african american advancement fit historically with this progressive education controversy?

Twenty years ago I read several books by Richard Mitchell, who wrote a newsletter called The Underground Grammarian at a teacher's college in Missouri, in which he gleefully skewered both the pretensions and the prose of what he called the "educationists." One of his books -- The Graves of Academe -- although largely a compendium of Underground Grammarian columns, had a history of the early 20th century educationists.

Apparently one of the "progressive" education pioneers was named Wundt; one of Mitchell's chapters was entitled "The Wundter of It All."

It's probably out of print, but I would recommend it if you can find it. Mitchell had (has?) a wicked wit.

first a linotype machine compositor, then a photo typesetter, then (maybe) a programmer.

I've been wading though some family papers. Out here in the West, there really wasn't much public education available till after the turn of the century--how eager many were for some furnishing for the mind!

My father (the grandson of a guy who did not graduate from high school because he was too busy working, but who had a library at home) was astonished in WWII with the lack of knowledge of the common sailor he met. These guys were the graduates of PS 10X or whatever. But their world, and their expectations, were bounded by the neighboorhood. Put 'em on a little ship in the middle of the Pacific and some grew, some didin't.

Do not overlook the changes in public health that have occured in say Jimmy Carter's lifetime--a lot of rural kids were parasite ridden and boarderline malnourished, not a great state for intellectual achievement.

The spectacle of the present...well, it is easy to overlook how different just a few decades past indeed were, in terms of the raw material that came into the classroom.

"I question whether the average student pursuing a law degree or an MD has any more interest in *knowledge for its own sake* than does the average aspiring mechanic."

That's certainly a fair assessment of a good number of my classmates in law school. To many of them, it wasn't really of any particular interest beyond getting them into a lucrative career. Which is pathetic in multiple ways: if all one is interested in is money, there are (I'm told) easier ways to get it than practicing law, even if you insist on getting a prestigious paper credntial first.

Now, in fairness, this may not be true at EVERY law school. The further up the "prestige" scale and, I suspect, the greater the percentage becomes of people whose interest is using the law to "change the world" rather than just enrich themselves. I'm not sure which category is worse.