The purpose of public education?

"At times of falling school budgets any surplus cash should be reinvested in schools rather than into people's bank accounts; this is irrefutable but it is not the core of the argument," Estelle Morris wrote in the Guardian recently about the need to resist any intrusion of "for profit" schools into the United Kingdom. "Profit can drive improvement. But the financial bottom line will never provide the motivation to deliver what we want and need from schools.

"There is a moral purpose that underpins education and, although by itself it is not enough, it must be the driving force. Without it, it's too easy to accept that it's not worth trying, yet again, to help a child to master a skill, or to rationalise that the social class divide is something we'll just have to live with. Understanding this moral purpose for education is not the preserve of those in the public sector; others bring the same passion and determination and share in the same joy success brings, but all this feels strikingly at odds with the drive for profit. Value for money, certainly; careful management of resources, essential; but there can only be one set of shareholders – and that is the children."

The recent drama at the University of Virginia - the "termination" and restoration of President Teresa Sullivan - should push us into a much deeper conversation about the purposes - moral, political, societal - of public education. And if it might do that, then Helen Dragas and her co-conspirators on the UVA Board of Visitors will have done us a great - if fully unintentioned - service.

US News and World Report ranks universities,
even high schools, like commodities,
feeding the worst kinds of pressures on
public education.

"It's tough to condone vandalism, but one can't help but feel a bit of satisfaction at the temporary defamation of the historic Rotunda at the University of Virginia," wrote Susan Milligan in US News and World Report, a publication whose own greed does a steady and continuous disservice to American education.

'"G-R-E-E-D," the vandal spray-painted in a message that was then speedily painted over. It's a message that the board of the university should hear, even if the mode of communication was inappropriate...

"No doubt," Milligan continues, getting to the heart of the matter, Dragas's collaboration with the mandarins of the university's Darden School of Business to force corporate profit-seeking concepts on the nation's oldest public university,  "Universities are a business, and must adhere to budget limitations. But the basic mission of a corporation is to make money for its shareholders. A university is meant to educate people—yes, even people who might run private corporations someday. If an institution of higher education were to conduct itself according to corporate principles, it would only accept students who can pay the entire cost of tuition with no help from the school or government aid. It would give "A"s to those who brought the most money into the school—perhaps by being a great athlete who attracted ticket-payers to the field—instead of to those who performed well academically. It would pay more to professors whose graduates went into higher-paying fields, instead of those who taught liberal arts or music.

Therein lies the heart of the matter best discussed by Irish President Michael D. Higgins in his book Renewing The Republic. As Higgins points out, there is a sphere of "public spaces" which must not be invaded by the greed of the private, the selfishness of the private, even the individual intention of the private. "Public Spaces" which must - if we are to be functioning societies, Irish, English, Scottish, American, whatever - remain as shared, community, unselfish spaces which put "us" ahead of "me."

Education, "Public Education," is one of the spaces, perhaps the most important of those spaces. And as such, it must never be tainted by either of the forms of selfishness prominently on display at the University of Virginia in the past two weeks. The first form was abundantly clear, the refusal of certain "capitalists" to understand the concept of "public space." The other, more obscured, the refusal of certain academics to understand that a "public space" must change with the public.

"President Teresa Sullivan has been reinstated as president of the University of Virginia. There have been a million theories about why she was asked to resign. Many think economic dynamics and political partisanship are primarily at fault. But based on my own research on trustee decision making, I see common human failings at the heart of this crisis. Understanding these failings is the key to drawing the right lessons from these events," writes Michael Bastedo, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, University of Michigan, at Huffington Post, in what I might consider to be a classic academic exercise in trying to make a major issue fit one's area of interest.

"I found many instances, both large and small, of moral and ethical transgressions by trustees. But I also found that trustees rarely intended to act unethically, instead justifying their choices as "win-win propositions" in the best interests of the university. Even the most egregious acts were often covered up by this kind of "justified reasoning." But Bastedo does then raise two key issues which relate to the universal assumption of self-possessed expertise about education: (see Lasic, Thompson, Socol: Why is everyone an expert on education?)

"This is a moral seduction - a gradual process by which people come to believe more in the fundamental rightness of their own judgements than in the organizational mission as constructed by others. It is a very human process, informed by recent developments in decision theory. As decision makers, we have a number of cognitive biases that cause us to prefer our own judgments over those made by others, and we create rationalizations to justify our desired conclusions.

"We also tend to overestimate the value of our own experiences, and to discount the value of the experiences of others, even when they have better information than we do. We tend to access information that is biased in our own favor, and to employ reasoning that suits our needs at the time. And as these decisions progress, we tend to escalate our commitment to existing actions rather than pay the price for a change in course."

Both sides in the UVA battle suffer dramatically from moral seduction. Both sides dramatically overestimate the value of their own experiences.

Student protest at the University of Virginia

We understand the absurdity of the stockbroker, hedge-fund manager, software executive, lawyer, or doctor assuming they know as much about education as "we" do - after all, they would not allow us to trade their stocks, market their software, try their cases, or do their surgeries just because we have the same experience with their field that they have with "ours." Some of us - maybe a limited number in the United States, understand what is fundamentally wrong with corporate strategies in the public sphere, especially in education, where we believe it is morally wrong to worry about profit and efficiencies when our mission is the future of all humans. But do we truly understand the limitations on our experiences which we accept? which we allow? which schools of education often actually encourage?

My experiences with "Jefferson's University" are limited, but I once spoke to a "Technology Tea" at the Curry School of Education there, a moment apparently (from what I've heard) best remembered for my use use of "the f- word" (I offer apologies, what can I say, I'm from a Land Grant University). But what I heard from the PhD students there was a steady stream of thinking based in the belief that American education consisted almost entirely of students exactly like those in the room, or those on the campus in Charlottesville. With that assumption came a belief that, if change was needed at all, the change should be slow and, to use President Sullivan's word, "incremental."

Now, both Teresa Sullivan's current institution, the University of Virginia (founded 1819 on plans by Thomas Jefferson), and her former institution, the University of Michigan (founded 1817, twenty years before Michigan achieved statehood), are "institutions" in every sense of the word. Tradition-bound "public ivies" where change comes slowly, if at all, and where education - at least this rarefied level of preparation for leadership - is primarily considered a privilege of the elite. But because both institutions see themselves as provinces of America's wealth leadership, they find that America's wealth leadership sees themselves as "stockholders" - by both contributory support and by privilege.

"There can only be one set of shareholders – and that is the children." Morris wrote, and she is right. The children, and our collective future. Every student abandoned because we seek efficiency, or seek to divert money to corporate profit, or divert money to testing which informs us not at all, has incalculable human and societal costs which all of our children will bear. And every student abandoned because schools will not change from what is comfortable and familiar to an older generation has incalculable human and societal costs which all of our children will bear.

And this is true whether the issue is how Education PhDs are given out or what a curriculum for eight-year-olds looks like. It is true whether the issue is money spent on elementary school technology or who gets admitted to the University of Virginia. It is true whether the issue in seventh grade seating or the power of the Graduate Record Exam.

Carl Anderson asked me, at EdCamp-Minnesota, what the purpose of school was, and I answered, "The purpose of school should be that everybody has the most possible choices in everything they do." And morally, politically, societally, I'm going to stick with that.

Because I want our schools to help kids get ready for an unknown future, in a way which will not just make them "good, productive citizens" but happy humans as well. Happy humans capable of making all of our worlds better, whatever the next hundred years brings.

And I'm going to tell you that doing that will cost money, lots of it. It will use up much time - very inefficiently - because the raising of the next generation has never been, and will never be, efficient (no matter what Ellwood Cubberley, Woodrow Wilson, or Bill Gates has thought). And it will require a radical re-imagining of every school, from the local kindergarten to the University of Virginia because the 18th and 19th centuries which informed the structures of both are long, long gone.

If the University of Virginia wants to be something other than a province of a pre-ordained elite, than saying "no" to the corporate interests which wanted Sullivan ousted is just a tiny part of what must happen - neither incrementally nor by top down order - but organically and everywhere in the university.

If your school or school district or division seeks to be something other than an institution of social reproduction and wealth preservation, then it must not just say "no" to corporate intentions but also "no" to teachers or administrators saying "no" to change in order to preserve their own comfort.

What is the purpose of public education? Why should any student attend our school? What is the ethos which drives us? If we can not answer these questions coherently, if we can not act on our beliefs coherently, we must step aside, as perhaps everyone in the leadership of the University of Virginia ought to do.

- Ira Socol

Designed to Fail - Education in America: Part Four

part one   part two   part three    part five

Social Reproduction.

"The basic reproductionist argument was that schools were not exceptional institutions promoting equality of opportunity; instead they reinforced the inequalities of social structure and cultural order found in a given country. How they were understood to do so depended on the theoretical perspective of analysts, the sites they prioritized for study, and a varying emphasis on top-down structural determination versus bottom-up agency by individuals or small groups. Early research on educational reproduction provided structuralist accounts, identifying systematic features of language, culture, and political economy, which were reflected in the conduct and organization of classrooms and curricula and assigned a causal role in perpetuating linguistic, cultural, and economic inequalities (Bernstein 1975, Bourdieu and Passeron 1977, Bowles and Gintis 1976)."

"Although the reproductive thesis is simple to state in academic terms, it has been and continues to be quite unpalatable to many of those who work in schools or educational systems more generally (Rothstein 2004). This is probably because it presents a direct challenge to meritocratic assumptions and seems to dash egalitarian aspirations. Early arguments and analyses of reproduction were also of their era, the 1960s and early 1970s, when economic and social stability seemed more secure than it has in recent decades. They were also formulated with a structuralist intellectual confidence that has not survived the intervening decades of reflexive, postmodern uncertainty (Bauman 1997). By the early 1990s, there was a turning away from arguments about social reproduction and education, whether focused on economic, cultural, or linguistic dimensions. This is puzzling in some respects because the problem of inequality remains a central feature of the contemporary world, within nations and on a global scale (Henwood 2003; Stiglitz 2002), and the centrality of straightforward economic factors in school performance appears little changed over more than 40 years (Coleman 1966, U.S. Dep. Educ. 2001)." - James Collins, Social Reproduction in Classrooms and Schools (2009)

"This is probably because it presents a direct challenge to meritocratic assumptions and seems to dash egalitarian aspirations." Indeed. Social Reproduction is not commonly discussed in American education, and the socially reproductive systemic designs of Henry Barnard and Ellwood Cubberley are not discussed - even by the type of elite educational leadership which resides at Stanford University, perhaps because it is(a) so uncomfortable, (b) so challenging to American Civil Religion, and (c) because it makes education seem, in deep ways, hopeless.

But how do we solve the persistent problems if we refuse to engage the basic issues?

Say what I will about Diane Ravitch, and say it I have (welcoming her to the fight, but still very bitter over the damage she and her collaborators wrought in the 1980s and 1990s), but when she tweeted on Sunday night, "Focus on teacher evaluation is red herring spurred by Billionaire Boys Club & Duncan to avoid social, econ[omic] issues," she was absolutely right.

In fact, today's "educational reformers" will discuss absolutely everything except the system of American education and its social reproductivity. They will argue for and against teacher training (teachers are not well-trained enough, six weeks of Teach for America training is plenty), for and against increased teacher pay (it is essential, teachers are paid too much), for and against privatization (we must use the business model, federal involvement in education is required), but they will not touch the essential unfairness of American society or its economic system.

America had better things to do with its lower class children than to educate them.
Child coal mine workers, 1900

And so both Ellwood Cubberley and Social Reproduction have vanished from the conversation, and even those who should really know better, like to trumpet the memory of Woodrow Wilson - a clueless racist whose international naiveté led directly to World War II - and the "progress" of his age. It is, of course, the progress of the Wilsonian age, the conceits of White American superiority and our belief in measuring the world against that, which still bedevils us almost a century later.

It is important to recall that the system designed was never intended to educate all equally, and the structure developed was designed to ensure that.

The Eton lads get their education,
so do the kids at Sidwell Friends

When Wilson said, "We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks," we know which groups were automatically consigned to the latter class - African-Americans, Catholics, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and anyone who would today be considered "disabled."

In fact, the system was designed to fail most, dumping three-quarters of students before they ever reached high school. The Prussian System of age-based grades replaced the individually structured, multi-age, peer tutored one-room schoolhouse model because it would give students the means to defeat students who might learn at a different rate. The accompanying industrialized model of mass education was created to consign non-compliant students to the lowest paying jobs in society. The results were clear. On the verge of American entry in World War II only 25% of Americans had completed high school, and less than 5% had completed college. It would only be after the liberalization of education and the integration of the 1960s that high school graduation rates would cross the 50% mark. Students, then as now, fell behind when measured against the "ideal" standards of "age-based" learning, and, unable to catch up in the graded, age-segregated system, dropped out as soon as that was possible or legal.

America, in the century after 1840, as Wilson, Cubberley, Adams, and Barnard all said, needed little in the way of 'distributed leadership' and - from the top - wanted less. Unschooled tinkerers (Edison, Ford) were one thing, but an educated population - as Germany and France were proving - and land-grant education in the US was suggesting - seemed to create socialists, and union leaders, and potentially an angrier agricultural class which might overturn the system. [1]

So that imported Prussian System, with its age-based steps and grade-level standards, was introduced as a filtering system.  As Jefferson had noted at the start of the 19th Century, the separation by ages would find the gems and give the rest, "an education proportional to the condition and the pursuits of his life," which, in the Social Darwinism of Wilson and Cubberley's time, meant the capabilities to be a miner, a millworker, a railroad construction crew member, a shipyard worker. Get to eighth grade (or not) and you went to one of those laboring jobs. Get through high school and you could work on Main Street. That five percent who went to college - they would lead.

Setting the standards for those age-based grades, then as now, was critical to maintaining the nation's class structure.

The standards? It is difficult to imagine how, if the age-based standards are accurate measures of anything, the majority of children could be "below grade level." Since all of our achievement levels, from the IQ test through every large assessment, is based in an "age-based norm" - shouldn't that "norm" at least be the median?

67% of Fourth Graders are at or below "proficient" for reading. How is "proficient" defined for this age?

Yes, it is "a median," but not "the median." The age-based standards are developed based on upper-middle-class white children living in suburbs or expensive urban neighborhoods and functioning "normally" - that is, without "disability," without language issues, without safety issues, without poverty issues, without family stress, etc. The class Wilson and Cubberley were willing to educate in the days of the Great War, are still the socio-economic class we create schools for.

And this is exactly what the powerful get out of an education system designed to fail: They get (a) to control the measuring devices and design them for themselves, and they get to (b) reduce economic competition.

By establishing "measuring sticks" which declare their own superiority, the wealthy and powerful - the Ivy Leaguersof America - get to win before the race they so enjoy is run. And by winning, they get to preserve the fruits of victory for themselves and their offspring - the best schools, the Ivy League educations [2], the top-paying jobs in the economy, and the agenda-setting jobs in government.

[Considering top university admissions, "the odds of getting into the pool of credible candidates for admission to a selective college or university are six times higher for a child from a high-income family than for a child from a poor family; they are more than seven times higher for a child from a college-educated family than they are for a child who would be a first-generation college- goer," While at Ivy League and 'Ivy equivalent" institutions, "Low-income students constituted about 11 percent of those admitted to the nineteen institutions that were studied; first-time college goers made up 6 percent. Students who fit both categories made up just 3 percent of enrollment at these schools, even though such students represent roughly 19 percent of the U.S. college-age population."]

In simple terms, the system works remarkably well for those who currently have wealth and power. When people decry the educational system in the United States they are really not discussing Scarsdale, New York or Greenwich, Connecticut or Sidwell Friends in Washington or Evanston, Illinois or Santa Barbara, California or St. Ann's in Brooklyn. All of these schools do fine, public or private, unionized or not, longer or shorter school days/years, and no matter the teacher pay structure.

The schools which are struggling - and educators, from William Alcott then to Deven Black, Alice Mercer, Dan McGuire, Dave Britten now, know this - are struggling because of a lack of resources, and/or having differing resources - in the students' homes, in the community, and in the school itself. The students "in trouble" rarely enter with fewer skills, they enter with different skills, built to function in a different environment.

Here is the "colonial" issue: The English child raised on the estate in Essex, with parents speaking "The Queen's English," begins that "race to the top" half-way there. This child knows the language, the rules of rugby, the proper way to drink tea. The child growing up in Derry or Bombay, Lagos or Port Elizabeth, comes with differing language, differing sport, differing eating habits. If school is about that British language, those British customs, and those British manners, the children from "the colonies" begin way behind. Unless that kid from Essex falls asleep under a tree, as in The Tortoise and the Hare, and has no one to wake him up, it is simply inconceivable that the colonial kids will ever catch up.The best they can hope for, if they run all their lives, is to be second-class Brits.

Michelle Rhee laughs about
taping kids' mouths shut, and her audience
laughs with her.

Similarly, the child raised in Scarsdale or Greenwich or Santa Barbara, or at Sidwell or St. Ann's, begins the race more than half-way there. They know the language, the rules of classroom play (including how to bully), the proper way for a parent's note to excuse them from work or school itself. And if they mess up, they have the resources to escape any trouble. The child attending school with Deven or Alice, Dan or Dave, knows how to navigate city streets, often how to function on a highly adult level, often how to be their own caregivers, how to communicate in a wide range of circumstances. But they do not know what that first group of kids knows, and if they get into trouble they are on their own, and if they are abused, people will joke about it. So unless the kids in Scarsdale or Greenwich or Santa Barbara, or at Sidwell or St. Ann's die, the best these colonial kids can be, if they run all their lives, is second-class Americans.

The problem is, if these "colonial" schools leveraged these differing entry abilities, and supported differing learning paths with equitable resources, then the path to homogeneity, to the "one America" - behaving consistently no matter what race or ethnicity or national origin, would not come into existence. Remember Francis Adams? "The school has more to do than to educate the children: it is the mill, so to speak, into which go children of English, Scotch, Irish, German, Russian, Italian, and Scandinavian parents, and come out Americans. Africa contributes its negroes, and now Asia is sending its Chinese. All must learn English, and the result will soon be that the population of the United States will be the most homogeneous of nations." And this was echoed Monday morning by NBC's David Gregory and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie: "@GovChristie: RT @davidgregory: Education reform is a new form of patriotism; it's not just about our kids but our country." About our country, yes, but not about learning or our children, rather, it is about U.S. worker consistency and national "competitiveness." The perspective comes from the U.S. Secretary of Education, who opened the "Education Nation" conversation by saying, "What the president fundamentally gets is we have to educate our way to a better economy."

And yes, if the colonial children could leverage what they bring to school, if they might find their own path to success rather than stumbling along in another's wake, well they might not just compete, they might come out on top (see Irish Literature within the English language for proof of this).

So that path is blocked. While "white" kids get creativity and stories in their early grades, teaching them about the world and giving them dreams, "poor" kids get KIPP and scripted instruction, chants and memorizations. If they ever get past that, they find themselves so far behind their "white" peers that continuing the race seems genuinely hopeless.

Next: What we know and why the U.S. isn't doing it...

- Ira Socol

[1] The one place in 19th Century America where the need for 'distributed leadership' was seen as essential, the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, ran their own institutions of higher education.

[2] I'm not much of a Gladwell fan - doubting his typical statistical analyses, but this is an interesting meta-analysis of Ivy League admissions - and consequences. You might also want to read Atkinson and Pelfrey on the question of Ivy League admissions, also Caroline Hodges Persell and Peter W. Cookson, Jr. "Chartering and Bartering: Elite Education and Social Reproduction" - Social Problems Vol. 33, No. 2 (Dec., 1985), pp. 114-129, and Paul William Kingston and John C. Smart. "The Economic Pay-Off of Prestigious Colleges."

Designed to Fail - Education in America: Part Three

part one   part two  part four    part five

With the exception of John Taylor Gatto and a few others, "contemporary" (since 1980) historians of American education ignore Ellwood Cubberley [1]. They also significantly limit their interest in Henry Barnard. Instead, future teachers hear a great deal about Horace Mann and John Dewey, who, I may argue, are among the "losers" in the educational wars of the United States.

Yet, to understand the debate in America today you need to think of two names: Ellwood Cubberley and Rudyard Kipling. Mann is sweet, Dewey brilliant, Barnard essential to the process, but it is Cubberley who made the U.S. educational system virtually unchangeable and it is Kipling who may offer the explanation re: why?

Let's take a look - just to turn them into examples - at Camilo Acosta [2] ("TheRebull" on Twitter) and Mark Zuckerberg [3]. These two might be seen as "typical" America's young generation seeking to lead on minority education. Acosta through prodigious fundraising for Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C. (though why a highly paid, and wealthy-by-inheritance schools superintendent needs fundraising has never been obvious to me), Facebook CEO Zuckerberg through his recently concocted ties to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and Oprah Winfrey.

I do not pick these men because they are intellectual or policy leaders, but specifically because they are not. The question of why they feel compelled to join this crusade, without knowledge or study, is what is illuminating.

Both of these young men grew up with the resources of exceptional wealth, and attended exceptional schools - schools completely unlike those they advocate for the poor of color in America. Both are the products of America's "Ivy League" universities. Both are fully willing to embrace Kipling's White Man's Burden [4] or, that is only partially true, neither will actually risk anything themselves to shoulder that burden, not even in political/career terms as Benjamin Disraeli or William McKinley might have. But they are fully willing to "Take up the White Man's burden--, Ye dare not stoop to less--, Nor call too loud on Freedom."

And they are fully happy to do this, because Cubberley made the American education system not just something for missionaries (Mann), and not something just for economic policy (Barnard) but literally "pleasurable" for those born to power, just as - in Edward Said's grand explanation, Rudyard Kipling made British colonialism pleasurable for Britain's upper class young men.

[Edward Said (1935-2003) is an important author in understanding this construction. Said was the leading intellectual bringing postcolonial literary theory together with politics and human actions "on the ground." In part, this series, and this blog as a whole, is inspired by something he said in a 2001 interview: "But I don't write about just anything - I don't think I'm capable of doing that. I write about things that matter to me, and obviously one of those things is the idea of tribalism - one's origin, and the place that I was born in. But never without clarifying it in as dispassionate a way as possible, and always with some commitment to greater values - more universal values than just the ones of nation, tribe and family. Those issues would be issues of justice, oppression, giving a historical context when it's lost." For a wonderful appreciation, and place to begin, I recommend Terry Eagleton's review of Said's last book.]

Cubberley does not sound joyful. He has none of the soaring oratory of Mann, nor even the ability of Barnard to conjure the future, but he is clear and absolute:

"It is the attempt to remould the school and to make of it a more potent instrument of the State for promoting national consciousness and political, social, and industrial welfare that has been behind the many changes and expansions and extensions of education which have marked the past half-century in all the leading world nations, and which underlie the most pressing problems in educational readjustment to-day. These changes and expansions and problems we shall consider more in detail in the chapters which follow. Suffice it here to say that from mere teaching institutions, engaged in imparting a little religious instruction and some knowledge of the tools of learning, the school, in all the leading nations, has to-day been transformed into an institution for advancing national welfare. The leading purpose now is to train for political and social efficiency in the more democratic types of governments being instituted among peoples, and to impart to the young those industrial and social experiences once taught in the home, the trades, and on the farm, but which the coming of the factory system and city life have deprived them otherwise of knowing." - The History of Education (1919) pp. 737-738

In Cubberley's world the education system has not been either a political or an economic decision, but has naturally "transformed" into "an institution for advancing national welfare." It is also, again as Said says regarding Kipling, an instrument of benign imperialism. "When the United States freed Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines from Spanish rule, a general system of public education, modeled after the American educational ladder, was created as a safeguard to the liberty just brought to these islands, and to education the United States added courts of justice and bureaus of sanitation as important auxiliary agencies. As a result the peoples of these islands have made a degree of progress in self-government and industry in three decades not made in three centuries under Spanish rule" (p. 740). We "comfortably" skip over the brutal Philippine War, and the destruction of representative government in Puerto Rico, and the occupation of Cuba, in order to "prove" the perfect progressivism of the system.

To young people of privilege, this is a grand game they want to be in on. To miss it is to miss the flow of history. So whether Acosta - who seeks to be a colonial apparatchik, or Zuckerberg - who will use his great wealth to endow a school in a colonial backwater, or all those who seek the resume line "Teach for America" (the contemporary equivalent of that old post in the Foreign Service), these silver spoon children seek out the joys of what Said calls "orientalism" and "adventure" while getting the powerful feel that they are riding the wave of history - which is more appealing to self-identity than seeing yourself as a passive inheritor of wealth.

It is a grand game, but it is not played on a level field. And like those who joined that old British Foreign Service (you may want to watch Lawrence of Arabiafor some clues), today's education colonials see themselves as always superior, and always knowing what is best for those beneath them. The result is the fawning response to power and the brutal dismissal of the powerless one sees most clearly now in D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee:

'"I think part of the problem in public education to date has been that we all have to feel good; let's not ruffle too many feathers," Rhee told a group of bigwigs gathered at the Newseum recently for the premiere of the documentary "Waiting for 'Superman,' " which features her as a hero.

"What Rhee didn't say is that she has gone all out to make residents who live in the wealthier, predominantly white parts of the city feel good. And if their feathers got ruffled and needed smoothing, she went so far as to visit their homes for coffee klatches and pep talks.

"So what happens when black residents on the other side of town start waving their hands - don't forget about us; we'd like to feel good, too? Rhee holds them up for ridicule. School reform is not "warm and fuzzy," she says." - Courtland Milloy, Washington Post

Cubberley, like his university-level and political parallel Woodrow Wilson, was remaking the world as safe for the white elite. Creating a rational, stable planet for both the business of America and its middle class joys. What was being done for "the other," whether that was working class children or Czech independence proponents, was being done for a potent combination of the economic self-interest of the powerful (nations economically and militarily dependent on France, a stable and low-wage workforce) and the "feel good" warmth of liberal accomplishment. Thus Cubberley, and Wilson embarked on a systemic re-design of the world - Cubberley through schools, Wilson through borders and government structures - which would be permanent because they were inevitable. It does not matter whether one is discussing "technique of instruction" (p. 749) and "the scientific organization of education" (p. 824) or "defensible borders" and "national self-determination" - both are the products of logical evolution in a "just" universe.

Just how enduring this inevitability is can easily be seen in both education and political spheres. In education "we" continue to pursue the scientific and the "proper technique" (though we now say "evidence-based practice") despite never finding an actual way to measure human learning. In the global political realm we continue to pursue "self-determination" unless - of course - we don't for reasons of "defensible borders" and the status of allies (Kosovo good, Catalonia bad. Georgia good, South Ossetia bad).

And our young continue to be called into service for both missions - educational and global military - and are both demonized if they fail to achieve results which remain as impossible now as they were in 1899 or 1917.

Still not "English"

The issue which joins these failings of the "American Century" together, lies in the very concept underlying both. Whether nations are to become "American" in form and substance, or differing American students are to become "White" in form and substance, neither group can ever catch up. Just as, no matter what the Irish, the Indians, the Nigerians, the Kenyans did, they could never truly become "English." And this impossibility, crafted by forcing "the other" to continually chase a moving objective, manufactures a permanent inequality.

"Through analyses of colonial schooling, anthropology, and the formation of academic subjects instrumental in the expansion of empire (history, geography, science, language and literature), Willinsky argues that education was and is the research and development arm of imperialism. Drawing on contemporary classrooms and materials, he considers how schools continue to educate the young within the "colonial imaginary." Through primary texts, cutting-edge scholarship and students' voices, Willinsky examines schooling itself, arguing for the incorporation of the imperial legacy into a multicultural education that does not dismiss the achievement of the West but gives an account of the divided world that achievement has created."

The "colonial imaginary" is what Cubberley brought into full-flower in American schooling, taking disparate intentions - moral and commercial, religious and imperial - and merging them into a coherent whole which the American intellectual elite could fully enjoy and feel good about. As Wilson sent Americans off to fight to "make the world safe for democracy," Cubberley sent them to build the American ideal: "The problem of the twentieth century, then, and probably of other centuries to come, is how the constructive forces in modern society, of which the schools of nations should stand first, can best direct their efforts to influence and direct the deeper sources of the life of a people, so that the national characteristics it is desired to display to the world will be developed because the schools have instilled into every child these national ideals" (p. 837).

The world, and all within America, would be reconstructed on the American ideal. And the young vanguard of American society would, then as now, set out to accomplish this.

The problem, then as now, is unequal beginnings on that path to either Americanness or Whiteness. Not only is a single conception of life, of government, of learning, of behavior, declared "correct" and thus all others declared "incorrect" ("It’s worth thinking about not matching the child’s supposed learning style to how they are supposed to learn, but rather think about the content and what is it about this content that I really want students to understand and what’s the best way to convey that.” – Daniel Willingham). Not only does it encourage racially-based labelling of behavior ("When white burnouts give wedgies to white A students, the authors argue, it is seen as inevitable, but when the same dynamic is observed among black students, it is pathologized as a racial neurosis." - Paul Tough in The New York Times Magazine). Unless Americans and Whites choose to stagnate, stand still, or regress, it is simply not possible for others to ever actually catch up. The further you start from the expressed ideal the further "behind" you are, and the further behind you will remain.

Next: What those in power get from the failure of education...

- Ira Socol

[1] As noted in Part Two of this series, Cubberley, who dominates the "post war" histories of American education by Cremin and others, is barely mentioned in Tyack's work or that of other contemporary authors.

[2] Acosta in his own words: "Before starting Root Orange, Camilo worked for his mom’s government communications company,The Media Network, where he introduced newfangled tools young people use like Facebook and Twitter to the company’s communications offerings. Years later, the federal government is still figuring out how to use social media. He also oversaw the company’s website re-design, which introduced him to the headache of website re-design. Camilo’s previous gigs include stints at the Corporate Executive Board and New Vantage Group, a venture capital firm in Northern Virginia.
"During the rare times he is not working on Root Orange, Camilo does fundraising and advocacy work for education reform efforts, a cause both he and Frank fervently support. He was almost assaulted once by an angry mob of former public school teachers while testifying at a D.C. City Council hearing. Camilo enjoyed the experience and The Washington Post found it newsworthy.
"Camilo received his B.A. in Politics from Princeton University, where his thesis on micro-finance in South Africa inexplicably managed to receive the Picard Prize. He is a graduate of the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C, where he enjoyed pasta dinners with Al Gore at the Vice President’s residence and seeing Hillary Clinton in frumpy mom clothes."

[3] Mark Zuckerberg in his own words: "Mark Zuckerberg is the founder and CEO of Facebook, which he started in his college dorm room in 2004 with roomates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.
"Zuckerberg is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for Facebook. He leads the design of Facebook’s service and development of its core technology and infrastructure.
"Earlier in life, Zuckerberg developed a music recommendation system called Synapse and a peer-to-peer client called Wirehog. However, he abandoned both to pursue new projects.
"Zuckerberg attended Harvard University and studied computer science before founding Facebook.
'While at Harvard, Zuckerberg created Facemash, a website that compared students’ dorm photos side-by-side in a fashion similar to HOT or NOT. Harvard administration was not amused, and Zuckerberg faced subsequent disciplinary action. Less than three months later, he launched Facebook.
"Zuckerberg won the 2007 Crunchie Award for ‘Best Startup CEO.’"

[4] The White Man's Burden (1899) - the poem was written as a critique of the U.S. colonial conquest of the Philippines.
"Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!"