                                                              
| 2007 - Introduction to Change Over Time |
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| Written by Robert A. Southworth Jr. |
| Monday, 05 December 2005 04:40 |
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change in Schools is Part of Change in Society Schools have changed for many different reasons over the years, and the hopes and dreams of school reformers must be considered along with the social and practical realities of why schools change, how schools change, and how change occurs anyway without help from reformers. Schools are part of our larger society and all of its changes. Local Control and Central Authority Perhaps the most enduring conflict in education is the tension between local control and central authority. As universal schooling takes hold, the standardization creates many schools without the vision or understanding of the meaning of good education. It is Joseph Mayer Rice's appraisal of American education in the 1890s that next calls for reform of a bleak system of schooling (rote memorization, disconnected lessons, etc.) when he finds hopeful examples of "competent, progressive, teachers attempting to introduce the idea of unification of the subjects into the curriculum, combining the several subjects so they may acquire more meaning by being seen in their relations to one another." (Cremin, 1961, p. 5). “The Struggle for the American Curriculum” (Kliebard, 1995) becomes a national discussion in the 1890s with social reformers such as, William Torrey Harris, Granville Stanley Hall, and the appearance of John Dewey and continues to this day. American Efficiency As the American century (1900-2000) begins, progressive education's high hopes for talented teachers to draw out student learning of integrated curriculums, which is John Dewey's dream, gives way to a much more practical reality of a young industrial country developing its manufacturing strength. The factory model influence of organizing institutions overtakes progressive thinking and leads to the social efficiency movement in the 1920s. The American century is defined by this efficiency in response to World Wars I & II, the Russian launch of Sputnik in 1957, and the cold war. In between, the country turns to national commissions, the great society legislation during the 1960s civil rights movement, the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk, the Goals 2000 legislation enacted in 1998, and the No Child Left Behind Act passed by congress in 2002 to drive school reform in the United States. |