Is the factory model a myth? | Human Restoration Project

It’s my view that the factory model did — and still continues to — exist in the United States. At its core, the model refers to the creation of a standardized, ubiquitous model which trains students to listen to instructions and overall, be submissive to authority. Notably, the factory model isn’t all of education history — there’s obviously way more that occurred. Rather, this is an in-depth look at a particular narrative that took hold.

In long form, there’s much more context. The factory model doesn’t necessarily mean that every person is trained to work “in a factory” (although this was the case for many regions in the Industrial Revolution — where this system was placed on a massive scale). It’s a representation of white male capitalist imperialists who wanted obedience and compliance from citizens. Standardization would be infused with capitalism to create the ultimate workforce. And this has bled into our current schools — we’re centered around control, using a traditional structure to tell children what to do, how to do it, and then expect the same uniform result. In general, very few institutions have made changes toward progressive thought, despite pockets of teachers and some alternative schools.

To say that the factory model doesn’t exist has three major problems:

It ignores the explicit pursuits of capitalist/liberalism/neoliberalism influence on education.
It implies that reformers of the past have been successful in changing the trends of compliance-training in schools.
It overlooks the historical record and influence of industry.

The factory model narrative tends to begin when Horace Mann travels to Prussia and is astonished by their systems of order, control, and engagement — bringing these ideas back to Massachusetts and pushing for their integration into the beginnings of the compulsory education system. Interestingly, Mann was aware that Prussian education had been criticized for the exact things the model is today, but he rejected this was happening. In response to an English magazine’s editorial attacking the Prussian doctrine, Mann explicitly argued against their claims, which were the following:

“…the whole plan of education in Prussia, as being not only designed to produce, but as actually producing, a spirit of blind acquiescence to arbitrary power, in things spiritual as well as temporal, — as being, in fine, a system of education adapted to enslave, and not to enfranchise, the human mind.”

— Seventh Annual Report of Horace Mann, 1843
Mann, 1843

Particularly, Mann was impressed by the system organization. For example, he states,

“They are uniformly divided into class-rooms, and an entire room is appropriated to each class; so that there is no interruption of one class by another. But the rooms themselves are small in every dimension, excepting the distance between the scholars’ seats and the floor.”

— Seventh Annual Report of Horace Mann, 1843
Mann, 1843

As Mann returns to the United States, he reports his findings and shares similar thoughts in his biweekly published Common School Journal:

“A report comes to you that a man has failed in business. Examine his affairs; ten to one, you will find them in utter confusion. He had no order, no system; and, of course, he knew not where he was, but what he possessed, or what he was doing. Order is essential in all business; in none more so than in keeping school.”

— The Common School Journal, Vol. 2, 1843
Mann, 1843

It’s not that Mann wanted students to work in industry. In fact, his main goal was to promote economic equity (for white males). However, as standardization was introduced to our free market system — it became readily apparent that business principles would be integrated. In fact, business principles had already began to circulate. This was documented by Alonzo Potter in the mid 1800s, when he stated the purpose of public education was,

“To make men (a) more industrious (b) more active and systematic…more economical, as producers and preservers of property.” Later he said, “The most certain means of developing the industrial resources of a country, and promoting its growth and prosperity.”

— Alonzo Potter, as cited in Berman, 1983
Berman, 1983

Furthermore, John Kingsbury — a popular author at the time who would best be compared to Doug Lemov (“Teach Like a Champion”), wrote in Lectures on the Failures of Teaching that,

“Teachers ought to possess sufficient knowledge of business affairs, to give them influence with practical men.”

— John Kingsbury, as cited in Berman, 1983
Berman, 1983

The structure of schools changed as well. It wasn’t only students having an increasingly narrow-focus on regurgitating knowledge— capitalist methods seeped into managerial practice. In The School and the Schoolmaster, an anonymous New York philanthropist who published the work offered the suggestion to hire female teachers, making education a “cheap system.” Potter, 1842

An important point throughout education history is that there was pushback. However, as David Tyack and Larry Cuban explain in Tinkering Toward Utopia, their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful in enacting major change:

” Policy elites — people who managed the economy, who had privileged access to the media and to political officials, who controlled foundations, who were educ. Leaders in the universities and in city and state superintendencies, and who redesigned and led org. of many kinds — gained a disproportionate authority over educational reform. These leaders inside and outside educ. generally shared a common vision of scientific management and a similar blueprint for reorganizing the educ. systems.”

— Tinkering toward Utopia
Tyack & Cuban, 1995

Again, there is no implication that every single school in the 1800s was training people to explicitly work in a factory — rather, most schools had influential businessmen who organized districts for efficiency. Because this model was so intertwined with money, it would make sense that business owners would want well-rounded employees that not only had base knowledge, but were able to obey and follow instructions. This is not far off — and one could argue it is worse — from today. Our school systems are so intertwined with neoliberalist thought that Henry Giroux refers to it as the “military-industrial-academic complex.”

In the second half of the 19th century, we begin to see the workings of a full-fledged factory model. One superintendent exclaims,

“the due classification and grading of the schools is but the application of labor that prevails in all well-regulated business establishments, whether mechanical, commercial, or otherwise. It is not only the most economical, but without it there can be little progress or prosperity.”

— H.C. Hickok, 1862
Hickok, 1862

And to add, an author states,

“The false idea accepts acquisition of knowledge as its aim, culture, and scholarship as its ends…the true idea claims the training of every human power and susceptibility as its aim; an energetic, varied, and joyous activity as its end; and the life of a successful businessman, an influential citizen, of a working Christian.”

— Alfred Holbrock, 1872
Holbrock, 1872

These records are consistent. The more one explores the process of teacher training, district policy, and publications — the more infused business principles are apparent with educating children. To exemplify:

“The foreman of a factory is required not merely to keep his eye on the operatives, and to report at stated periods how busy they have been, but he is required to inform the stockholders how many kegs of nails have been made….in a given time, and the amount and condition of unfinished material still on hand…If we examined carefully the annual catalogue of any school of high order, we find, that in its make-up it is near akin to the annual report of the factory manager…”

— A.L. Wade, A Graduating System for Country Schools, 1881
Wade, 1881

And finally (my emphasis),

“The school is a business institution, created for specific purposes. It should be conducted in all of its management upon the principles of business. Its business is to assist; as being one of the many corporations created and fostered by the State. These ends are served when the attending learners are acquiring sound knowledge in the science and the arts; where they are learning to respect authority; when they are cherishing a proper self-respect; when they are understanding their relations to their peers; when they are establishing the imperative habits demanded by business; when they are founding all their dealings on the general principles of law, morals, and religion.

— Seventh Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of California, citing Professor J.H. Hoose, 1876
Hoose, 1876

These are the roots of our systemic model of industry and education. Through the early 1900s, the “efficiency model” proposed by Frederick W. Taylor’s “scientific” approach to management promoted a greater loss of humanity in both business and schools that replicated it. As Professor Maduakolam Ireh explains,

“Taylor’s system was swiftly taken up by business and, shortly thereafter, education with several conditions coalescing to spur the quest for scientific management in industry, education, and beyond: economic philosophy of free enterprise and a growing concern over how to design America’s system of schooling for a diverse society undergoing an influx of immigration.”

— Ireh, 2016
Ireh, 2016

There’s no denying that this narrative exists and many others have listed source after source that demonstrates this history — hence why so many great progressive voices refer to industry, factories, and capitalism and their connection to schools, including Angeline Stoll Lillard, Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, bell hooks, Alfie Kohn, Howard Zinn, Deborah Meier, Edward Krug, Joel Spring, Daniel Pink, Tony Wagner, and Ted Dintersmith — among many others.