Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 3; May 03

The Heart of the Matter
US Educational Models

Lou Spaventa, California, USA

In my last column, ( January 2003), I discussed the influence that the educator Caleb Gattegno had on me, and I also discussed how I thought the sense in which he mentored me was different from the current sense of mentorship prevalent in education. In that column, I was examining the influence of an individual, Gattegno, upon another individual, the present writer. Now, I would like to examine something broader and more diffuse – that is the influence that certain models of human thought have upon the profession of teaching. Thus, I am looking at a phenomenon that touches all of us who teach. In discussing the words of Henry Ford, Calvin Coolidge and E.L. Thorndike, I am taking their expression as indicative not of an individual viewpoint, but rather of a collective American viewpoint that these men articulated publicly and famously. It was and is American in the U.S. sense of that word's usage. Hence, I will use it that way in this particular column while intending no slight to Canadians, Mexicans, or any other Americans.

Henry Ford, noted in United States history textbooks for introducing the assembly line and mass producing automobiles, was famously quoted to the effect that “History is more or less bunk.” While academics and intellectuals might have decried then, and still decry now, Ford's myopic sense of the human condition, I believe Ford was speaking for a decidedly U.S. strain of anti-intellectualism, reacting to longstanding European criticism of the American character. That criticism was that Americans didn't understand history as a real force in the shaping of their destinies; that they were convinced that any man could change his lot in life if he had the courage to do so. At the time of Ford's comment, Americans were still reading Horatio Alger stories in schools, stories full of amazing success as poor shoeshine boys rose to entrepreneurs and schoolboys changed their dreary working class families into perfect expressions of the American ideal by bringing home seeds in little paper cups, precipitating the sunshine that brightened the lives of the whole family.

What this sort of refusal to accept historical forces and historical conditions has done to the American school system, to the conception of a teacher's role in the classroom, and to the student's responsibility is manifold. First, it created the illusion of a level playing field in which anyone could succeed if they tried hard enough. Second, it reduced the role of intellectuals in public life because their intellectual capital was devalued. This capital was the ability to understand, analyze and articulate the past and present. Third, it opened a place for a different model of learning. If history was not important, then what was? The answer was business, which brings us to the rather lackluster U.S. president, Calvin Coolidge, who understood himself as a booster of U.S. business interests.

“The business of America is business,” said Coolidge, inadvertently including both hemispheres in his statement, as later those in the southern hemisphere would learn. What Coolidge's statement meant was that the government was to be at the service of business interests. Its main agenda was to advance those interests. When one looks at the U.S. in the world today, it is hard to dispute the foresight Coolidge displayed, even though his statement was about his own place and time. Well, if America was to be the nation of businessmen, what effect would this have on schooling?

If we look at American schools from the early turn of the twentieth century until today, we can clearly see the influence and persistence of the business model of education. Efficiency, standardization, mass production, and strategic investment became hallmarks of “well run” schools. It is no coincidence that at the same time Henry Ford was mass producing his automobiles, universities were creating new schools of educational administration, staffed by educators who expounded the business model of education. Everything in schools became part of a business equation. In tertiary education, extracurricular activities and sports teams became assets to attract customers (students) when enrollments began to drop. Today, it almost seems that at a large majority of large universities, extracurricular activities and sports teams create the public character of the institution, with academics running far behind. Also today, we have the somewhat confusing circumstance of having private educational corporations bid to take over schools and school systems that have failed their students and families. We also have quasi-commercial television invading classrooms across the country. In the end, as Marx pointed out, everything becomes commodified.

E.L. Thorndike was an educator and psychologist who believed strongly in the strength of numbers. His work was extremely important in shaping the educational atmosphere of early twentieth century America. Thorndike claimed that “Everything that exists exists in some quantity and therefore can be measured.” One wonders if he were also thinking of compassion, empathy, and love or perhaps of beauty and truth, but no matter. I am sure that Thorndike could have devised a scale for measuring them. His work led to testing of masses of immigrants and soldiers. Measurement also led directly to sorting people into groups; hence, it enabled education to take on a social gatekeeping function. Those who were smart, as determined by intelligence tests, might go through the gate to better, more challenging classes or perhaps, if the gate led to military service, not to be cannon fodder in the Great War, but officer material instead. It led to the American conviction that the outcome of education must and should be measured in order to determine whether it has been effective. In language teaching, it led to word lists and a sense that certain words, through shear iteration, were more important than others.

When one looks around the world at how language is taught in modern educational institutions, both public and private, it is hard to argue that Ford, Coolidge and Thorndike have not captured the essence of what goes on. First Ford and history as bunk. Consider language teaching methodology. It is common for method A to lose its importance when method B comes into being even though much of what method B proposes is a reaction to and an adaptation of method A. This is true of the audiolingual and communicative approaches, for example. We would do better to focus on the links among chronological methods than to focus on dissociating them. It would make us better teachers with fuller repertoires. Coolidge's prophetic words about business are reified in the practice of educational administration today. There are lots of graduate schools of education, producing thousands of graduates primed to administer schools based on a business model. Cut costs. Improve efficiency. Translation: fewer full time staff, larger classrooms. A pedagogical approach has been left to the teachers, those who need management. A business approach is taken by the educational managers. Finally, Thorndike's legacy has been the hegemony of standardized tests, which are “objective,” and are often claimed to be the only sort of tests able to give us fair and standardized measurement of achievement. These tests are portable, can be transmitted easily across the world, are measurable, have good psychometric qualities, and are nearly foolproof to administer.

As an exercise in creative pedagogy, sit down and write the propositions “History doesn't matter;” “The business model is the best model for schools;” and “Educational outcomes need to be measured.” Then write their opposites. For me, these would be “History is important,” “A pedagogical model is the best model for schools,” and “Real education represents qualitative change.” From there, build a method, a training program for teachers, a school system. Wouldn't they look very different from what exists now? Wouldn't you prefer that difference?