Action for Democratic Education

A subtle, yet noticeable, shift is occurring in recent debates over the reform of public schooling. In response to the reform reports of 1983 which stressed the need for schools to prepare workers, more recent reports have instead focused upon the preparation of citizens—in particular, the preparation of democratic citizens.* This new wave of proposals echoes a traditional resistance against the scientific management ethos of the early 1900s. Then, as now, proposals for school reform emphasized the preparation of workers in order to generate industrial power. The emphasis was on more efficient use of resources—more hours, group drill, tracking, testing, and the like. As a direct result of these reforms, centralized, bureaucratic, and anti-democratic administrative structures were put in place.2 Opposition to earlier reform proposals arose from a variety of fronts. Margaret Haley, head of the Chicago Federation of Teachers, argued in 1924 that the factory was an inadequate metaphor for education, "the factory system carried into the public school . . . needs only the closing time whistle to make complete its identification with the great industrial p l a n t s . E l l a Flagg Young, Chicago Superintendent of Schools, saw in 1916 "a tendency toward factory-evolution and factory-management, and the teachers, like children who stand at machines, are told what to do. The teachers, instead of being a great moving force, educating and developing the powers of the human mind in such a way that they shall contribute to the power and efficiency of this democracy, tend to become mere workers on the treadmill. . . Perhaps the most articulate and well known of the critics of scientific management was John Dewey.