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Transforming Education
Part 3: School as Factory:
The Greatest Barrier to Transformation
Imagine a government decree ordering the medical profession to institute a "standard" medical assembly line. Doctors will be assigned to a particular station on the line. Every citizen, regardless of his or her initial state of health, will be required to move from station to station through the assembly line at the same rate. Get some vitamins here, get a shot there, get your reflexes tested at the next stop.
The assembly line will move so quickly, and there are so many stations for the patients to visit, that no doctor has time to assess any pre-existing condition or to determine whether a different treatment is required. That's not in the production schedule for this assembly line. In the name of productivity and efficiency, doctors must simply perform their part of the standardized procedures as instructed.
At various stages along this assembly line, everyone must undergo a battery of tests. These tests don't assess the health of the individual person, but how their health compares to a series of standards and to the health of the other patients who have traversed the same part of the assembly line. If patients "fail" those tests, it's either their fault for not trying hard enough or the fault of the doctors, who obviously need more training. The only thing that does not come under scrutiny is the assembly line process itself!
Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? We intuitively know that, while standardized assembly lines may work with inanimate materials, they do not work with living beings possessed of nearly infinite variability. How then did the factory/assembly line approach to schooling become so entrenched? Have educators truly convinced themselves that the differences don't matter? That minds are sufficiently alike that standardized procedures will "work" to an acceptable degree? And if educators recognize that this approach is not only counter to research, but actually detrimental to learning, why is it so difficult to change?
This article will address the metaphor of school as factory and how that metaphor shapes the thinking of educators. It is not intended as a commentary on the present state—the success or failure—of schools in general. Nor should it be used as an excuse for failing to do what we already know how to do—teach every student.
The entire article is available as a PDF document.