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LITERACY EDUCATION
FOR THE 21STCENTURY: IT'S TIME TO
CLOSE THE FACTORYChristine H. Leland & Wendy C. Kasten
Version of record first published: 07 Jan
2011.
To cite this article: Christine H. Leland & Wendy C. Kasten (2002):
LITERACY EDUCATION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: IT'S TIME TO CLOSE THE
FACTORY, Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties,
18:1, 5-15
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LITERACYEDUCATION FORTHE 21ST CENTURY:
IT’S TIME TO CLOSE THE FACTORY
Christine H. Leland
Indiana University, Ind ianapolis, IN , U S A
Wendy C. Kasten
Kent S tate U niversity, Kent, OH, U S A
M uch of what is done in literacy education today reects the ph ilosophy of the
industrial (or factory) model of education, which evolved during the late
nineteenth and earl y twentieth centuries. This article examines the historical
and theoretical foundations of the factory model and contrasts it to the more
recentl y devel oped inquiry model. Vignettes provide gl impses of how each model pl ays out in a contemporary cl assroom. We argue that the factory mod el
of education is no longer useful since democracy in the twenty-rst century
requires citizen s who are ab le to th ink critical ly and use learning and language
exibl y to construct knowl edge in a number of ways and contexts.
While it sometimes seems that the raging national debate over education is
a phenomenon exclusively endemic to our time and culture, we should
remember that this is not the case. A similar national debate that took placein Japan in the 1880s determined that country’s educational thought and
political action for the next fty years (Bethel, 1973) . In that case, debate
centered on the goal of education—specically, whether education in Japan
should seek to build subjects or citizens. One group argued that a strong
Japan could be built only by citizens, ‘‘only by people educated to be in-
dependent and self-assured’’ ( p. 28). Another group, however, believedthat it was more important to have obedient and loyal subjects in Japan,
and that this should be the main goal of education. The latter group wonthe debate, and, at the risk of sounding trite, the rest was history.
Address correspondence to Christine Leland, 902 West New York Street, Indianapolis, IN
4620275155. E-mail: [email protected]
Reading & Writing Quarterly, 18: 5–15, 2002
Copyright # 2002 Taylor & Francis
1057-3569/02 $12.00 + .00
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Having just crossed the threshold of the twenty-rst century, Amer-ican educators are at a similar juncture today. The major difference is that
the question has changed. While there is now general agreement in this
country that the goal of education is to help people become active and
informed citizens (as opposed to obedient subjects), the debate rages onabout how schools can best accomplish this goal. Some people believe that
maintaining traditional school practices is the best way to inculcate goodcitizenship. They argue that traditional ways worked for them and will work
for their children as well.
Others, like Gardner (1991) and Eisner (1994), believe that American
education is at a turning point. Gardner describes one tension as a move-
ment towards uniformity and conformity. He argues that this view is rooted
in a faulty understanding of human cognition that focuses on ‘‘basic com- petencies,’’ the ‘‘mastery of minimal standards,’’ and the identication of
‘‘essential core knowledge’’ ( p. 203). This view, Eisner notes, is often
‘‘embraced in the name of educational equity as if sameness and equity
were identical’’ ( p. 4). According to Eisner, this paradigm appeals to many politicians interested in school reform because it reinforces the theory that
all schools should be uniform. The problem is that once standardization has
been achieved, it is possible to rank schools and note that some have
achieved ‘‘excellence’’ while others have not. This ultimately leads to seeingeducation as a race or competition that does not serve all learners equitably
in a ‘‘tacit meritocracy’’ ( p. 4).The contrasting paradigm is that of education for individuality, the
recognition of diversity, and multiple ways of knowing. Gardner explains
that this movement is based on the premise that individuals have different
minds and educators need to respond to them in different ways. Tools for
lifelong learning are more critical and less dependent on standards and‘‘minimums’’ (Gardner, 1991). Both Eisner and Gardner see the need for
sweeping changes in the structure and milieu of schooling. They argue that
our educational system is built on a model that is no longer appropriate—a
model that is better suited for making subjects than citizens. This criticism
arises from the fact that much of what is done in education today reectsthe philosophy of the industrial model, which became popular during the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRIAL MODEL
A review of the literature dealing with the industrial model of education
is helpful in understanding how and why it evolved. Like now, schools
at the turn of the last century were expected to do many things. In addition
to providing students with basic skills of literacy and mathematics,
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schools were seen as the nation’s rst defense against the great wavesof immigrants arriving during this time. ‘‘Education provided a vehicle for
the efforts of one class to civilize another and thereby ensure that
society would remain tolerable, orderly, and safe’’ (Katz, 1971, p. 9).
An emphasis on explicit rules and regimented behavior helped ‘‘to investthe poor with the values of compliance, punctuality, cleanliness, and
knowing one’s place in society’’ (Cuban, 1972, p. 8). In addition, a primarygoal of public education was to prepare young people for factory jobs
that required them to perform some relatively simple task over and over
again. Young people being prepared for such ‘‘cog’’ jobs ‘‘had to be trained
to comprehend and accept instructions, and then to implement them
conscientiously. Discipline and reliability were the core virtues’’ (Reich,
1989, p. 97).When public education tacitly accepted the tasks of civilizing the
immigrant masses and preparing future factory workers, it simultaneously
assumed the role of maintaining the status quo. Our present system of
public education ‘‘was not designed, as many of us were taught, to be thegreat social and economic equalizer and the promoter of our democratic
values. It was designed rst and foremost to be the Great American Aca-
demic and Social Sorting Factory’’ (Clinchy, 1993, p. 606). Although edu-
cational literature and spokespeople have claimed that schools are symbolsof opportunity, ‘‘their slitted or windowless walls say clearly what their
history would reveal as well: they were designed to reect and conrm thesocial structure that erected them’’ (Katz, 1971, p. xviii).
Systematizing Schools
As schools struggled to keep law and order and prepare an industrial
workforce, they were criticized for not doing the job efciently. One re-sponse to this criticism was that educators looked to science to improve
their image. ‘‘If one is under re, the appeal of scientically ‘proved’
methods for increasing productivity is great. By wrapping themselves in
the mantle of science, school administrators could protect themselves
from criticism and, at the same time, appear ‘up to date’ ’’ (Eisner, 1994,
p. 12) . A number of leading educators became convinced that there mustbe one best system of education for urban populations and made it their
lifework to identify and implement this system. Tyack (1974) reports that
some educators were impressed with the order and efciency of the new
technology and forms of organization they saw about them. ‘‘The division
of labor in the factory, the punctuality of the railroad, the chain of command and coordination in modern businesses—these aroused a sense
of wonder and excitement in men and women seeking to systematize the
schools’’ ( p. 28). These educators described their school systems as
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factories and called themselves superintendents, as in industry. Theystudied the hierarchy, the division of labor, and the intensive professional
supervision in the industrial model and worked to design similar struc-
tures and practices for schools. ‘‘If those methods worked in industries as
diverse as textiles and railroads, why would they not work in education’’(Katz, 1971, p. 68)?
THE CHILD AS PRODUCT
Reimagining the school as a factory led to reconceptualizing students as
products on the assembly line. In 1916, inuential educator E. Cubberly
wrote: ‘‘Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products(children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the var-
ious demands of life’’ (in Kliebard, 1971, p. 75). Students were initially
assessed to determine what they lacked, then were ‘‘drilled until skilled’’
(Fosnot, 1989, p. 5). Teachers—the production workers—had little dis-cretion over what they could do to each batch that passed through; ‘‘stu-
dents passively received whatever was doled out. Inspectors tried to weed
out the defects, sometimes returning them to an earlier step for reworking’’
(Reich, 1989, p. 100). Since the content of what an educated person shouldlearn was assumed to be universal, all learners received the same curri-
culum and were expected to achieve the same understanding. An em- powered learner in this model was ‘‘both unwanted and dangerous’’
(Fosnot, 1989, p. 5).
There was also a widely held belief at this time that operating schools
like factories would increase their efciency and lead to nancial savings.
Within grammar schools, the system of age-grading had begun in 1847. Ten years later, the superintendent of the Boston schools recommended that
each teacher take a different class each year rather than remain with the
same group of pupils throughout its entire school career. ‘‘Reformers ar-
gued that graded schools yielded enormous increases in educational ef-
ciency, and effectiveness, and their blueprints featured carefully designedsequences of schools of which a high school formed the apex’’ (Katz, 1971,
p. 35). The ‘‘platoon school’’ was another idea that resulted from the effort
to increase efciency and save money. According to this plan, savings re-sulted from departmentalizing classes and keeping the rooms in constant
use. Precision timing was accomplished through the use of a bell system as
children moved from class to class. The day was broken into two 90-minuteclasses of basic skills and six 30-minute classes of special subjects. At the
peak of its popularity in 1929, 1,000 schools in 41 states were operating on
this plan, although there was never any evidence that platoon schools had
any educational advantages over other schools (Callahan, 1962).
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THE INDUSTRIAL MODEL TODAY
The ‘‘cult of efciency’’ is still alive in the contemporary controversy over
the issue of ‘‘accountability’’ (Oliver, 1976, p. 18). To reward or penalize
individual teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores is to judgetheir efciency in turning out a satisfactory product. It is no accident thatmodern schools are run like businesses and even employ many of the same
terms: ‘‘production performance, output gures, projected increased rates
of success, effectiveness of teachers, and student standardized test out-
comes’’ (Van Manen, 1991, p. 511). Another vestige of the industrial model
is the continued reliance on what Goodlad and Anderson refer to as‘‘grouping by litter,’’ the practice of assigning children of the same age to
the same grade (cited in Eisner, 1994) . Children who do not make therequired amount of progress during a specied amount of time are treated
much as ‘‘rejects’’ on the assembly line: they are pulled out and sent
through again. The industrial model also fosters a spirit of competition.
Much like competing business associates, children soon learn that there ismore to be gained from working alone than from sharing ideas. Finally, the
type of literacy required by the industrial model is still evident in the focus
of many teachers and instructional materials on decoding and analyzing the
smallest parts of language: According to Myers (1996) , one of the new
literacy demands that occurred during the early part of the twentiethcentury ‘‘was the treatment of language as an object to be analyzed into
objective parts . . . separate from the responses of readers and from the
intentions of the author’’ ( p. 89).
Vignette 1 shows what the industrial model looks like in a con-
temporary, racially diverse urban classroom:
Although it was very quiet when I entered Ms. Webb’s rst grade classroom,
it seemed that every head turned to look in my direction. Ms. Webb was
standing at the chalkboard, leading the class in the ‘‘Daily Oral Language’’
exercise. She pointed to a sentence on the board that contained a number of
errors and asked who would ‘‘be the rst’’ to identify what was incorrect. The
sentence read: mr and mrs brown will go to phoenix on tuesday After-
noon. Several children raised their hands immediately, and when the teacher
nodded in her direction, Kate said that ‘‘mr’’ and ‘‘mrs’’ both needed to start
with a capital letter. Another student added that ‘‘mr’’ and ‘‘mrs’’ also neededto have a period. As I looked around the room, I noticed a child (Kevin) who
was intently focused on removing a knot from one of his shoelaces. He looked
neither at the teacher nor the chalkboar d and appeared to be paying no
attention to the ‘‘Daily Oral Language’’ exercise. Ms. Webb must have seen me
watching him because she called on him to nd another error in the sen-
tence. Kevin glanced at the board and said that he had a Mr. and Mrs. Brown
in his neighborhood and one day their dog got loose and attacked the man
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who lived in the big brick house on the corner. The teacher responded by
telling Kevin ‘‘now is not the time for stories’’ and asking if he could point out
another error in the sentence. When Kevin simply shrugged, she shook her
head and asked Brian to ‘‘help Kevin.’’ Brian gave Kevin a scornful look and
announced that of course the ‘‘b’’ in ‘‘brown’’ needed to be capitalized since‘‘brown’’ was a name in this sentence. When the teacher turned her gaze to
another part of the classroom, Kevin continued working on the shoelace.
After the sentence had been dissected to the teacher’s satisfaction, each
student was given a worksheet with similar examples to correct in-
dependently. Kevin looked at the paper briey and then turned his attention
back to the knot. Ten minutes later, when the teacher collected the work-
sheets and found that Kevin’s was still blank, she sighed and told him that he
would ‘‘have to miss recess again.’’
This vignette illustrates many important characteristics of the industrialmodel’s legacy to education. First, in terms of organization, this was a
graded classroom. Everybody was about the same age and was supposed to
be learning=doing the same thing. The expectations were the same for
everyone, and Kevin, the struggling learner, was allowed to fail. Literacyand curriculum, contextualized by the teacher as sets of predetermined
skills, were operationalized in this instance as conventions to be learned.
The sentence in the lesson was presented as a decontextualized piece of language that served no purpose other than a starting point for dissection.
Kevin’s attempt to personalize the grammar exercise by relating the sen-tence to the Mrs. and Mrs. Brown in his own life was seen by the teacher as
engaging in off-topic behavior. In factory terms, Kevin could not be al-
lowed to stray from the assembly line (Newkirk & McClure, 1996) . By
asking ‘‘who would be the rst’’ to answer her question, the teacher
stressed competition more than collaboration. This focus was later
reafrmed by the type of ‘‘help’’ she provided for a student who was
not meeting her criteria for success. Throughout the interaction, theteacher assumed the role of manager (or factory foreman) rather than
facilitator.
ALTERNATIVE TO THE FACTORY: SCHOOL AS VILLAGE,
STUDENT AS INQUIRER
Goodlad (1984) rejects the ‘‘relatively simplistic input7output factory
model’’ and argues that schools are better understood as ‘‘little villages in
which individuals interact on a part-time basis within a relatively con-
strained and conning environment’’ ( p. 113). In accordance with Good-
lad’s analogy, Reich (1989) argues that students (inhabitants of the village)
should learn how to ‘‘share their understandings and build on each other’s
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insights’’ rather than being trained for a type of high-volume standardized production ( p. 102). Another point of connection between a classroom and
a village can be made in terms of how the people in the village conduct their
lives. Put in simple terms, they pursue what they nd interesting. A villager
might decide to sh for a living if s=he has a consuming desire to go shingevery day. Similarly, a villager might decide to become a cook if s=he loves
to mess around with ingredients and utensils and often comes up with tastyresults. Generally speaking, villagers have some degree of choice relating to
how they will spend their time. Dewey (1916) supported the same line of
thinking when he described school as primarily a social institution that
should represent real life. He viewed schools as institutions that functioned
best as authentic social communities (Archambault, 1964). This, then,
differs greatly from classrooms based on the factory model, where few realchoices are offered. Students like Kevin, who choose to spend their time in
ways that the teacher has not sanctioned, are seen as decient in terms of
both their behavior and their development of essential skills.
A classroom based on the inquiry model of education, however, ismore like a village, as Dewey also proposed. Because the teacher has not
predetermined the entire curriculum, students are invited to participate
in making decisions about how they and others in the class will spend
their time. In addition, classrooms based on the inquiry model exist not tosilence students but rather to provide opportunities for hearing their
voices (Harste, 1994) . This model evolved from constructivist learningtheory, which states that ‘‘humans construct knowledge for themselves,
drawing from their experiences, and with or without the guidance and
support of others’’ (Weaver, 1994, p. 341). Teachers in inquiry classrooms
see their role as facilitating students’ learning rather than directing it.
Copenhaver’s (1993) description of ‘‘Explorers Club’’ in a fth-gradeclassroom and Harste and Leland’s (1998) description of an inquiry-based
teacher education program are instances of this model in practice. These
examples support Eisner’s (1990) argument that while uniformity of
outcome was regarded as a major educational virtue in traditional models,
the ‘‘cultivation of productive differences’’ is an important goal in aninquiry model.
Vignette 2 shows how the inquiry model plays out in a contemporary
racially diverse urban classroom:
My rst observation upon entering Ms. Hill’s multiage classroom was that
nobody looked up or paid the slightest attention to my arrival. The room was
not quiet as children were working in groups and talking about the research
for their chosen inquiry projects. I joined a group that included two eight-
year-old boys (Sam and Joe) and a six-year-old girl (Holly). These children
were working together because they were all interested in learning more
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about the brain. As I pulled up a chair, the boys were taking turns reading
from a reference book and Holly was listening and sketching a diagram of the
brain from a different book. The technical text was challenging for Joe, but
with Sam’s help, he was able to gure most of it out. Every few minutes, the
reading stopped and all three children discussed a point that had been madeor a question that they had. Although their conversations sometimes strayed
from the topic (as when Sam said that his uncle liked to eat cow’s brains and
he thought that was really gross but wondered what they tasted like), none of
the children seemed to think this was a problem, and eventually the group got
itself back on track.
After a while, Holly said that she wanted a turn reading and Joe assumed
the role of helper for her. Sam moved over and leafed through another re-
ference as he listened and made occasional comments. When Ms. Hill stopped
by to check their progress, all three children chimed in with what they hadlearned about the brain that day. The teacher took notes as they talked and
didn’t interrupt when Joe’s observations about parts of the brain were
somewhat confused. Instead, she suggested that they might want to construct
a model of the brain next time and asked them to gure out what materials
would be best for doing this. As the time for cleaning up and going to lunch
approached, the three collaborators decided that ‘‘Play Doh’’ would work for
the model, and that each of them would take a book home that afternoon to
continue ‘‘nding out stuff’’ about the brain.
This vignette illustrates many components of the inquiry model. Instead
of showing a graded classroom where children are grouped by age, this
classroom shows the learning that can occur when older and younger children work together. Curriculum in this instance is built around the
interests and inquiry questions of the learners, and choices have been
provided for them. Literacy in this classroom is contextualized as a way
to explore topics of personal interest while building and negotiating
meaning with others. In terms of individual difference, there are differ-ent expectations for each child and struggling learners are supported.
Instead of competing with each other, the learners engage in a form of
collaboration that benets all of them. The teacher in this classroom
serves as a facilitator, not a manager. Her major role of interaction is to
provide the means for enabling the students ‘‘to learn from engaging in
activities that pose problems to be solved’’ (Wells & Chang-Wells, 1996, p. 158) .
The two vignettes highlight the major differences between the factory
model and the inquiry model of education. These differences are sum-
marized in Table 1.
What remains to be determined is the potential long- and short-termeffects of each of the two models. One result that seems clear is that many
children, especially struggling readers and writers, are left behind in the
factory model. While a case can be made for the efcacy of providing
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outside help for struggling learners like Kevin, the fact remains that this
help must be molded to t the demands of the classroom. As long as theclassroom experience is unengaging and unconnected for Kevin, he most
likely will not look like a successful learner. Replacing the factory model
with the inquiry model, on the other hand, provides more opportunities for
all children to succeed.
WHAT DO WE REALLY WANT?
As early as 1904, people like Margaret Haley were already well aware of the problems that would inevitably result from the movement to make
schools more like factories. Almost a century later, her words are still ir-
onically relevant:
Two ideals are struggling for supremacy in American life today: one the in-
dustrial ideal, dominating through the supremacy of commercialism, which
subordinates the worker to the product and the machine; the other, the ideal
of democracy, the ideal of the educators, which places humanity above all
machines, and demands that all activity shall be the expression of life. (cited
in Myers, 1996, p. 85)
TABLE 1 Characteristics of Factory and Inquiry Models
Industrial Model Inquiry Model
Purpose of education ° Conformity, obedience ° Critical thinking, creativity
° Prepare learner for factory job
° Prepare learner for information=technology
Learning model ° Behaviorism ° Social constructivism
S tructure ° Classes graded by age ° Multiage classes
° Homogeneous groups ° Heterogeneous groups
Curriculum ° 3 R’s, narrow, fact-based ° Multi-faceted, problem
solving
Instruction ° Text-based, transmission ° Multiple sources,
transaction Assessment ° Uniform, standardized ° Authentic, diverse
Role of Learner ° Passive, receive knowledge ° Active, construct
knowledge
Role of Teacher ° Foreman, clerk ° Co-learner, facilitator
Role of Parents ° Follow dictates of school ° Partner in decision-making
Role of Administrator ° Supervisor, manager ° Instructional leader,
co-learner
Type of literacy required ° Decoding, defining, analyzing ° Translation, critical
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Perhaps the ideal of democracy is where our conversations and plans allneed to begin. It seems safe to assume that the future holds many chal-
lenges and that citizens of the twenty-rst century will have to work to-
gether to meet these challenges. In addition, it became increasingly clear
during the waning years of the twentieth century that memorizing factsdoesn’t solve problems, and that people need to be able to use knowledge
exibly in different contexts. If this is true, then the factory model hasoutlived its purpose and cannot provide what we now need. As Clinchy
(1993) notes, asking an educational system based on that old model to take
on the task of preparing our children for twenty-rst century life ‘‘is like
asking a Model T Ford to compete in the Indianapolis 500’’ ( p. 608). None
of us wants to drive a car that was engineered with technology from 100
years ago; none of us wants to have surgery based on medical knowledgefrom 100 years ago. As educators, we know that the industrial model has
been and still is the source of myriad problems both for us and our stu-
dents. It is time to reinvent the factories that charade as schools—and the
schools that charade as factories.What do we want for our children—all of our children? Can we serve
all our children with an archaic model that was intended for manufacturing
merchandise? How can we provide a setting designed to nurture the
growth, development, and education of human beings? These are some of the questions that are addressed in this issue. The answers lie in how
successful we are in removing factory-type expectations from schools andreplacing them with expectations to teach, assess, and value children as
individuals. As educators who are dedicated to all of our students, this is
something we must do.
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