Education Through The School Factory
If you’re like me, school was pretty easy for you. Sure, the actual content could get difficult at times but in terms of the basic day to day, it was a pretty straightforward process. Be on time. Dress and behave as has been requested. Complete assignments. Generally, try not to annoy the people around you, especially the person setting the day’s tasks. If those guidelines seem vague and universal, it’s because they are. So much so, that you probably more or less adhere to them as an adult at your job. That’s not a coincidence.
School is a pretty broad concept and accordingly, the origins are varied and go back centuries. There are the ancient Greek schools where Socrates and Plato made their names. The monasteries that are the only reason some information from before 1600 ever saw modern light. Even the one room schoolhouses like the Millerburg exhibited at the Stephenson County Historical Society have an important role in the development of our modern conception of “school.” They would also be a far cry from the structure and content of current academia.
Our current form of education, compulsory and government supported, came about at the same time as and in part, in response to the industrial revolution. As “city life” began to take hold and child labor laws were implemented, something had to be done with these children not old enough to be useful. In addition to Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, schools could be used to prepare productive members of society. Specifically, to be productive factory workers once they reached the proper age. As Sir Ken Robinson has outlined extensively, it can’t be ignored how much modern schools look like their industrial counterparts.
The school day is organized by bells, just like a factory. The different disciplines are segregated, (sometimes into separate buildings,) with only occasional blending because original industry meant you did one task all day. There is often a designated uniform. The biggest similarity is the conveyor belt model. If we put students of about the same age on the belt in kindergarten, give every member of the batch the same treatments through high school, we will have a complete batch of upstanding citizens at the end.
The moving conveyer belt might have worked for Henry Ford, but it isn’t a difficult argument to establish that’s not how you educate.
Possibly because it isn’t promoted as much on college applications, the elementary level has been working against this factory type model. In elementary classrooms no subject is usually longer than 30 minutes, snacks are available, there’s designated time to take your mind off school (recess), the centers strategy, (ask a 2nd grader,) allows for application of different skill sets to the same topic, and they tend to be more self-paced. Every elementary classroom I’ve been in has a leader board showing how individuals are doing on a given assignment to encourage and support but also to underline that we don’t all work/achieve at the same rate.
Some companies have been taking note over the past few years. There have been recent articles outlining the prevalence of odd strategies to boost productivity, worker retention, and overall satisfaction in both Industrial and Corporate America. Some notable examples are: more free form schedules allowing for self-paced work, encouraging interdisciplinary team ups, nap time (I promise I’m not making that one up,) and a relaxation of “business attire.”
Instead of school taking the form of work, shouldn’t work take the form of school? Human engagement for human productivity and growth. Maybe we’ll even start seeing class pets in the break room.
