Home Good Ideas Southworth Lecture Notes on Kliebard (1995)

Southworth Lecture Notes on Kliebard (1995)

Written by Maryellen Rogusky

Thursday, 02 February 2006

Kliebard’s 'Struggle for the American Curriculum' (1995) Published by Routledge, New York City Adjunct Assistant Professor Robert A. Southworth Jr. Curriculum and Teaching Department Teachers College Columbia University Spring 2003 Lecture Notes The purpose of this set of notes is to make sure to understand the positions of traditional and reform interest groups that will set the tone for the rest of the century, and Dewey’s thinking in and around these reform groups. Content School systems exemplify democratic evolution, said the traditionalists. No, responded the radical revisionists, school systems illustrate the bureaucratic imposition of social control on the working class. Recently, some historians have emphasized that public school systems are the result of contests between conflicting class and interest groups (Kaestle, 1984). There is an imbalance in historical studies in education (Kliebard, 1995, p. xiii). I tried to treat documents, usually issued by major leaders in education or by national committees, not as influencing the course of events, but as artifacts of a period from which one might be able to reconstruct what was actually happening in the teaching of school subjects. (Kliebard, 1995, p. xiv). Instead of one progressive reform movement, Kliebard says, “I came to the conclusion that there was not one but several reform movements in education during the twentieth century each with a distinct agenda for action. Delineating the main ideological positions of the various interest groups and the way they balanced as well as contradicted one another became my main task. In other words, I felt that the evolution of the American curriculum could be interpreted in terms of the interplay among predominant interest groups that saw in the course of study the vehicle for expression of their ideas and the accomplishment of their purpose (Kliebard, 1995, p. xv). Dewey should appear in the book as somehow hovering over the struggle, rather than as belonging to any particular side (Kliebard, 1995, p. xvi). Mental Discipline doctrine, Christian Wolff, 1740, (Kliebard, 1995, p. 4). To a large extent, the belief that the mind was in fact, or at least like, a muscle provided the backdrop for a regime in school of monotonous drill, harsh discipline, and mindless verbatim recitation (Kliebard, 1995, p. 5). Although the demise of mental discipline is often associated with its failure to survive the test of empirical verification, first by William James (1890, pp. 666-667) and later by several experiments conducted by Edward L. Thorndike (Thorndike & Woodward, 1901; Thorndike, 1924), the collapse of mental discipline and the effort to restructure the schooling that was associated with it was most directly a consequence of a changing social order which brought with it a different conception of what knowledge is of most worth (Kliebard, 1995, p. 6). 20th Century curriculum will be fought over by one traditional group and three reform groups: ELIOT / COMMITTEE OF TEN / TRADITIONAL HUMANIST INTEREST GROUP Although, Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard and Chairman of the National Education Association’s Committee of Ten (1892) was a mental disciplinarian, he was the champion of the systematic development of reasoning power as the central function of the schools and he recognized that much of what transpired in schools was simply unrelated to that function. His definition of reasoning power was the process of observing accurately, making correct records of the observations, classification and categorization, and finally, making correct inferences from these mental operations (Kliebard, 1995, p. 9). We Americans habitually underestimate the Capacity of pupils at almost every stage of education from the primary school through university (Eliot, 1892a, pp. 620-621). There should be no curricular distinction between those students who were preparing for college and those who were preparing for life (Kliebard, 1995, p. 10). Committee of Ten holds dear the Liberal Arts Ideal…and all can learn G. STANLEY HALL / DEVELOPMENTALISTS / REFORM GROUP The Contents of Children’s Minds (1883)…careful observation and recording… Hall’s criticism pointed to three fallacies of the Committee of Ten report: the first was that all students could be taught without regard to destination the second was that all subjects were of equal value and could be taught equally well the third was fitting for college was fitting for life (Kliebard, 1995). Committee of Ten came to be thought of as not responding to social change and being overly solicitous of college needs. WILLIAM TORREY HARRIS / HUMANIST / HEGELIANISM / ALSO TRADITIONAL “Windows of the Soul”: Grammar, literature and art, mathematics, geography and history. In his view, the intrusion of new values by industrial society made it even more imperative that the school become a haven for the tried and true virtues he so deeply cherished (Kliebard, 1995, p. 15). HERBART SOCITTY / CHARLES DEGARMO / DEWEY / REFORM GROUP WITH PROMISE Example of using Robinson Crusoe as a way of unifying all the studies in the third grade. “Concentration” as a term was meant to refer to practice of using a particular subject, such as history or literature, as a focal point for all subjects, thereby achieving the unity in the curriculum they sought (Kliebard, 1995, p. 16). Colonel Francis Parker, who had by this time earned a national reputation as an educational reformer, was only a fringe member of the Herbartian group, but he unequivocally made his sympathies clear, comparing Harris’ report to “the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out” (“Discussion,” 1895, pp. 165) (Kliebard, 1995, p.17). The (1895 meeting of NEA in Cleveland) clash between Harris and the Herbartians marked the beginning of a realignment of the forces that were to battle for control of the American Curriculum (Kliebard, 1995, p. 17). Was this the death of the old order and the birth of the new? (Butler, quoted in Drost, 1967, p. 178) (Kliebard, 1995, p. 17). JOSEPH MAYER RICE / SOCIAL EFFICIENCY EDUCATORS / REFORM INTEREST Rice initially shared with the developmentalists the idea that in scientific data on the child lay the key to the relatively successful classroom techniques as well as to a rational curriculum. But he also attacked superintendents of schools for their lack of knowledge of Pedagogy and for the superficial attention they gave to what was really going on in classrooms (Kliebard, 1995, p. 18). Rice was seeking comparative data that would indicate why some schools and teachers were more successful than others in these subjects. In this respect, Rice is the acknowledged father of comparative methodology in educational research (Kliebard, 1995, 19). Supervision, for example, would take the form of seeing to it that the achievement of students reached a clearly defined Standard (p. xvi) and school administration, generally ought to be governed, Rice claimed, by a “scientific system of pedagogical management (that) would demand fundamentally the measurement of results in the light of fixed standards (Kliebard, 1995, p. 20). LESTER FRANK WARD / SOCIAL MELIORISTS / REFORM INTEREST GROUP Power of intelligent action to change things for the better (Kliebard, 1995, p. 22). In many respects, Ward foreshadowed in his 1883 work (Dynamic Sociology) significant elements of John Dewey’s educational influence (Kliebard, 1995, p. 22). The key to progress and the great undertaking that lay before us was the proper distribution of cultural capital through a vitalized system of education…Ward himself noted that the most perceptive review of Psychic Factors was Dewey’s and Dewey certainly believed that in education lay the key to social progress…to correct social evils and promote social justice (Kliebard, 1995, p. 23). HARRIS / HUMANISTS / FIGHTING / HALL / CHILD DEVELOPMENTALISTS In 1894, Harris and the Humanist defenders of western curriculum were fighting for public opinion with Hall and the child developmentalists: Harris had, more or less, succeeded Eliot as the central figure among those forces that sought to preserve the humanist ideal by incorporating into the curriculum the finest elements of Western civilization even in the face of the rapidly increasing population of students then enrolling in American Schools. Hall, whose personal goal was to become known as the Darwin of the Mind, was the epitome of the new breed of social scientists who saw the schools as in need of drstic reform in order to bring their program of studies in line with scientific findings about the nature of child life (Kliebard, p. 30). As early as 1880, Harris was proclaiming the centrality of the curriculum in educational matters. “The question of the course of study,” he said, is the most important question which the educator has before him (Kliebard, p. 32). Harris’ “Five windows of the soul” (Kliebard, p. 32). HALL / CHILD-CENTERED / CONNECTS WITH HERBARTIANS Child-centered reform movement takes over from Herbartians… Parker’s pedagogical reforms were largely instinctive…Hall, on the other hand could bring to bear the authority of science to the growing belief that the child’s own natural impulses could be used as a way of addressing the question of what to teach…When Hall published “The Contents of Children’s Minds” in 1883, it quickly became a kind of model for scientific pedagogy (Kliebard, p. 37). Whatever the form, however, there was common agreement that ever more data on the child needed to be gathered (Kliebard, p. 38). Cultural-epochs theory posited the notion that the child recapitulates in his or her individual development the stages that the whole human race traversed throughout the course of history (Kliebard, p. 38). Not only Hall, but virtually all the child-centered and Herbartian reformers—Parker, Charles and Frank McMurray, Charles DeGarmo—gave culture-epochs theory their firm endorsement (Kliebard, p. 39). A strong believer in hereditary determinism, Hall advocated differentiated instruction based on native endowment and even separate schools for “dullards” in the elementary grades (Kliebard, p. 40). DEWEY / HOVERING ABOVE / BETWEEN THE REFORMERS It cannot be said that the particular curriculum ideas Dewey tested there (the Lab school at University of Chicago), actually became translated, as is commonly believed, into widespread practice (Kliebard, p. 27). …his actual influence on the schools of the nation has been seriously overestimated or grossly distorted. It was his fate to become identified with a vague, essentially undefinable, entity called progressive education, either an inchoate mixture of diverse and often contradictory reform or simply a historical fiction (Kliebard, p. 27). Dewey came under the influence of George Sylvester Morris who instilled in him a commitment toward German Idealism and a lifelong antipathy toward British empiricism (Kliebard, p. 28). Finally, and most important to the development of Dewey’s theory of education, he became associated with the American Herbartians (Kliebard, 1995, p. 29). HARRIS AND HALL Harris’s interpretation of Hegelian philosophy permitted him to see industrialization with its profound effect on America’s social institutions, not in any apocalyptic sense, but as part of the unfolding of the Divine Will (Kliebard, 1995, p. 31). As early as 1880, Harris was proclaiming the centrality of the curriculum in educational matters. “The question of the course of study,” he said, is the most important question which the educator has before him (Kliebard, 1995, p. 32). The child-study movement threatened Harris…Adams’s high praise for Colonel Francis Parker….the appeal of a pedagogical system based on sound scientific principles must have been enormous at that time (Kliebard, 1995, p. 36). Parker’s pedagogical reforms were largely instinctive…Whereas Hall published “The contents of Children’s Minds in 1883…doctrine of cultural-epochs (Kliebard, 1995, p. 38). In general, the elementary curriculum would be dominated, at least until the age of eight, by play, with special care taken not to overtax the child with meedless and potentially harmful intellectual tasks (Kliebard, 1995, p. 41). DEWEY Dewey seemed to be making the case for a child as a striving, active being capable of intelligent self-direction under the proper circumstances (Kliebard, 1995, p. 48). Dewey saw in the child and the adolescent, not the possibility of a mystical union with a primitive paradise or the eventual realization of a super race, but the potential for intellectual mastery of the modern world. In this respect, Dewey was not as far removed from the humanists’ emphasis on the development of the intellect as is sometimes imagined (Kliebard, 1995, p.49). The rational center is the student himself…and pedagogy should be the science of assisting youth to organize their contacts with reality…but for both thought and action (Albion Small, in (Kliebard, 1995, p. 53). The ultimate problem of all education is to co-ordinate the psychological and the social factors…one way of achieving such a coordination, Dewey believed, was to make the school a miniature community, where the child lived, participated, and contributed—where in effect, the child’s emerging individuality was at one and the same time used to enrich the social community and tested against the dictates of social reality (Kliebard, 1995, p. 54). The process of leading the child from the present interests to an intellectual command of the modern world, however, remained for Dewey a controlling purpose, and the critical problem was to construct a curriculum that best facilitated that process. It was with this in mind that Dewey conceived of the proposed school as a laboratory by which theoretical designs for how this could be accomplished would be tested in a world of real teachers and real children (Kliebard, 1995, p. 55). Dewey objected to the culture-epochs curriculum’s using the cultural products of the historical period as the basis of what was taught (Kliebard, 1995, p. 58). “The occupations” Dewey said, “determine the chief modes of satisfaction, the standards of success and failure. Hence they furnish the working classifications and definitions of value. So fundamental and pervasive is the group of occupational activities that it affords the scheme or pattern of the structural organization of mental traits” (pp.219-220) (Kliebard, 1995, p. 61). For Dewey, then, a curriculum built around fundamental social occupations would provide the bridge that would harmonize individual and social ends—what for him was the central problem to be resolved in any educational theory (Kliebard, 1995, p. 61). The introduction of carpentry work was not for the purpose of developing the skills of sawing and hammering, but because it presented an excellent opportunity for introducing calculation within a natural context and for the opportunity it provided in cultivating a genuine number sense.(p. 72) (Kliebard, 1995, p. 62). Dewey was trying to resolve “child vs. curriculum.” (Kliebard, 1995, p. 63). The unnatural dualism between subject matter of experience and the mental operations involved in dealing with it (Dewey, 1897c, p. 357). What Dewey did not anticipate at this point was that the rise of standardized achievement tests in the twentieth century would sharply accelerate the tendencies in the teaching of the three R’s that he so much deplored and would help make his own emphasis on the relationship between reading and human purposes the object of scorn and caricature (Kliebard, 1995, p. 68). The way to accomplish this, according to Dewey (1899b), was to create in the school, “a miniature community, an embryonic society,” (p. 28) (Kliebard, 1995, p. 69). “The underlying theory of knowledge,” he said of the Laboratory School, “emphasized the part of problems, which originated in active situations, in the development of thought and also the necessity of testing thought by action if thought was to pass over into knowledge. The only place in which a comprehensive theory of knowledge can receive an active test is in the process of education” (Dewey, 1936, p. 464) (Kliebard, 1995, p. 70). Written two years before he left the University of Chicago, Dewey’s The Child and the Curriculum is unquestionably the best known and, in most respects, the clearest exposition of his theory of curriculum (Kliebard, 1995, p. 71). The standard for what is taught lies in the child not with bodies of subject matter (Kliebard, 1995, p. 72). What was being reconstructed in the curriculum, therefore, was not the stages in the development of human history as the Herbartians advocated, but stages in the way human beings gained control of their world through the use of intelligence—stages in the development of knowledge (Kliebard, 1995, p. 72). Nowhere do we find a coherent and lasting attempt to implement his course of study (Kliebard, 1995, p. 73). He considered the general question of school reform and why it fails…(Dewey, 1901)…Every movement for change whether it be a new way of teaching arithmetic or a new subject such as manual training is seen as isolated and independent from the rest of the curriculum; what we have is a multiplicity of standards for judging the worth of each reform, and these standards can easily work at cross-purposes. Secondly, Dewey called attention to what he called “the mechanics of school organization and administration” (p. 337)…as long as the grouping of students, the selection of teachers, and the system of rewards remain the same, the reform is doomed (Kliebard, 1995, p. 74). The changes that Dewey sought in the curriculum were so sweeping and so revolutionary that they had to be accompanied by an equally great transformation in the way schools were run, and the key organizational features of any school are far more permanent affairs than any branch of study in the curriculum (Kliebard, 1995, p. 74). With remarkable prescience, Dewey predicted that, “Without considered attention to the processes of change itself, we shall be forever oscillating between extremes: now lending our selves with enthusiasm to the introduction of art and music and manual training because they give vitality to the school work and relief to the child; now querulously complaining of the evil results reached, and insisting with all positiveness upon the return of good old days when reading, writing, spelling, and arithematic were adequately taught.” (Kliebard, 1995, p. 75). SCIENTIFIC CURRICULUM-MAKING Social efficiency for most people held out the promise of social stability in the face of cries for massive social change, and that doctrine claimed the now potent backing of science in order to insure it (Kliebard, 1995, p. 77). We find an almost world-wide drift from religion toward education as the method of indirect social restraint (Edward Ross (1901) Social Control) (Kliebard, 1995, p. 80). The art of bricklaying…Every movement of expert bricklayers was analyzed, and, through the elimination of waste, a standard and carefully laid out sequence of movements toward the accomplishment of that standard was established. Increasing production at lower costs was the goal for Frederick Taylor, the so-called father of scientific management (Kliebard, 1995, p. 83). No one epitomized the new breed of efficiency minded educators more than John Franklin Bobbit (University of Chicago) where he introduced a course simply called “Curriculum.”…Bobbit’s 1912 article was devoted to extolling the virtues of the school system that had been developed by Superintendent Willard Wirt in Gary, Indiana, a city having been practically created by the U.S. Steel Corporation…Wirt had devised the platoon system (Kliebard, 1995, p. 84). Bobbit extended the factory model metaphor to the question of how a curriculum should be constructed (Bobbit, 1912, p. 269). Ayres developed his famous Index of Efficiency which he applied to fifty-eight urban school systems (Kliebard, 1995, p. 89). Thorndike…what mattered was native intelligence…a differentiated curriculum was needed in line with the determination of native capacities that a scientific system of mental measurement would provide (Kliebard, 1995, p. 93). Cardinal Principles Report (1916) ends 25 years of reform…and is more cited than Eliot’s Committee of Ten report. Theory of curriculum starts with Bobbit in 1918…it will have objectives…that are numerous, particularized…etc….the curriculum will then be that series of experiences which children and youth must have by way of attaining those objectives (Kliebard, 1995, p. 99). Trait studies by Charters (1926b) and other activity analysis almost inevitably resorted in the end to consensus…whatever may have been the scientific procedure used to create the list of activities originally, they were incapable of standing on their own as elements in the curriculum without the Intervention of human judgment (Kliebard, 1995, p. 103). Moreover, the scientific curriculum-makers’ conception of education as preparation for what lies ahead has become thoroughly infused into contemporary educational thought…the prominence and persistence of the basic ideas of the scientific curriculum-makers indicates that someone like the relatively obscure Bobbit may have been far more in touch with the true temper of his times than the world-renowned Dewey (Kliebard, 1995, p. 105). SUBJECT REALIGNMENT AND VOCATIONALISM The large-Scale incorporation of the junior high school into the American Educational ladder is one more instance where the success of an important innovation benefited by the fact that the ideas of two or more powerful interest groups intersected at that point (Kliebard, 1995, p. 108). History, for example, was gradually being replaced, or at least supplemented, by other social studies, some of which were aimed directly at the development of efficient citizenship (Kliebard, 1995, p. 108). Thomas Jesse Jones, Director of the Department of Research for the Hampton Institute, evolved a new social studies at Hampton that was designed to equip America’s underclass with the skills that would bring them to the level of the white middle class (Kliebard, 1995, p. 108). The most dramatic and, in the long run, the most far-reaching of the successful curricular innovations was vocational education…many existing subjects, particularly at the secondary level, were becoming infused with criteria drawn from vocational education… (Kliebard, 1995, p. 111). A turning point came when John O. Runkle and some of his colleagues attended the Russian exhibit at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876…Under Runkle, the President of MIT and Calvin Woodward, Dean of the O’Fallon Polytechnic Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, the manual training movement met with almost unprecedented success (Kliebard, 1995, p. 112). W.E.B. Du Bois, for example, the first black man to be awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard University, argued that the sort of hand labor being promoted at Tuskegee was essentially an anachronism in modern industrial society and that blacks were being denied the intellectual training and professional skills that a twentieth-century economy demanded and therefore being denied a chance at true equality (Kliebard, 1995, p. 115). Education must keep broad ideals before it, and never forget that it is dealing with Souls and not with Dollars (Du Bois, 1902, p. 81 in Kliebard, 1995, p. 115). By 1917, the main direction of vocational education was sealed—job skill training in the public schools supported generously by the federal government (Kliebard, 1995, p. 124). Dewey was critical, saying, “the system of education that had been developed in Germany was openly and directly a means to this means, which as a model of educational Policy he described as extraordinarily irrelevant to American conditions…making their instruction significant to them and not to turn schools into preliminary factories supported at public expense” (Kliebard, 1995, p. 125). Alluding to other untenable dualisms, theory and practice, body and mind, mental states and the world, Dewey thought that much of the confusion over vocational education was derived from an unwarranted opposition between labor and leisure…Dewey was thus trying to superimpose his own broad conception of an occupation “a continuous activity having purpose” on the common use of the term, a ploy which probably led to further misinterpretation of his position (Kliebard, 1995, p. 127). FROM HOME PROJECT TO EXPERIENCE CURRICULUM The Project Method (Kilpatrick, 1928b), at 60,000 reprints made Kilpatrick the most popular professor in Teachers College History with 35,000 students taught (Kliebard, 1995, p. 137). Dewey did not have enough of a following…to address the isolation of subjects he felt that needed some linking to each other’s broad fields (Kliebard, 1995, p. 154). Dewey expressed dissatisfaction with the religion of prosperity and so it was Counts who helped advocate a curriculum of social reconstructionism (Kliebard, 1995, p. 160). Seven Principles of the Progressive Education Movement…clearly developmentalist (Kliebard, 1995, p. 164). Individual success versus Social Reform…The Progressive Education Association members were struck hard by Count’s speech where he berated his audience for feeling themselves of a superior breed who do not want their children to mix too freely with the children of the poor less fortunate races (pp. 258-9)(Kliebard, 1995, p. 167). Well known professors, drawn largely from Teachers College Columbia University began to take over the reins of the organization from the headmasters of private schools and interested lay people who had founded the Association, and they succeeded in giving it a different character (Kliebard, 1995, p. 168). But beyond that, Rugg’s individual achievement (selling four million copies of his book and workbooks of Man and His Changing Society) represents the single greatest victory in the attempt by the social reconstructionists to reform the school curriculum in line with their social ideals (Kliebard, 1995, p. 175). Not necessarily a particular curriculum doctrine but curriculum change itself was becoming a popular and widespread phenomenon (Kliebard, 1995, p. 179). Many of the curriculum reforms that were emerging in the decade of the thirties represented not so much a victory for one position over the other as a hybridization of what were once distinct and easily recognizable curriculum positions (Kliebard, 1995, p. 180). The most lasting legacy of the Denver program was the emphasis given to active teacher participation in curriculum reform (Kliebard, 1995, p. 182). The Eight-year study, with 3600 students in matched pairs, in 30 high schools, was a landmark research project directed by Ralph Tyler. Whatever would be the outcome of the matched-pair race between the students in experimental “unshackled” schools and their counterparts from the traditional ones (and some say it was a tie), the popularization of the core curriculum as a resilient hybrid was to emerge as one of the long-term outcomes of the Eight year study (Kliebard, 1995, p. 188). Under Hollis P. Caswell’s direction a new and radically different course of study for elementary teachers was created, including the scope and sequence chart (Kliebard, 1995, p. 191). Caswell became the first head of a department of Curriculum and Teaching, at Teachers College (Kliebard, 1995, p. 194). Dewey’s concept of “occupations” was, he hoped, a way of restoring organized knowledge to its human origins (Kliebard, 1995, p. 203). LIFE ADJUSTMENT EDUCATION Life adjustment was driven by social efficiency in 1940s and the nightmare of federal control of the educational system presumably could be avoided if the schools could demonstrate their capacity to realign the curriculum along the immediately functional lines (Kliebard, 1995, p. 210). The road to prosperity, social reform, and even national security, it seemed, was tied not to adjustment to existing conditions but to intelligent action (Kliebard, 1995, p. 226). Arthur Bestor (1953) in “Educational Wastelands,” seemed to realize what other critics did not—that life adjustment education was not a descendent of reforms that Dewey had advocated (Kliebard, 1995, p. 233). One of Rickover’s major themes was that the gifted and talented of the country were being neglected as part of the effort to increase the holding power of schools…the development of the intellect was not so much a good in itself or a way of giving the individual a way of mastering the modern world but a direct avenue to victory in the Cold War. That, more than the standard humanist arguments, had strong appeal and helped convert what had been a rather limited battle between academicians and professional educators over control of the curriculum into a matter of urgent national concern (Kliebard, 1995, p. 227). The entry on a massive scale of the federal government in the battle for the curriculum of American Schools dramatically altered the relative strength of the various interest groups…the one fortress that proved virtually impregnable was the school subject (Kliebard, 1995, p. 230). REFERENCES Eliot, C. (1892a). Shortening and enriching the grammar school course. Paper presented at the Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the National Education Association, Session of the year 1892. Kaestle, C. (1984). Class schools. Chicago History, 13(71), 2. Kliebard, H. (1995). The Struggle for the American Curriculum. New York: Routledge.