'The Book' - Blog 24

Chapter seven continued ...

The book then dives into the emergence of vocational schools. As large numbers of working-class and immigrant children began attending high schools, reformers of the time began to look at a system of stratification with-in the upper levels of education. The progressives of the time were arguing that education should be tailored to the needs of the child. Special curricula was developed for children of working families. The academic side of education was saved for those who might have an opportunity of 'book learning' later in life.

It was here that alarm bells went off in my head..like the British sponsor system, I find it incredible that teachers / educators think that they know who will benefit from 'book learning' way down the line... BUT according to the 'Up series' this actually may not be that far off the mark. After watching the section that corresponds to where individuals are at around 7 years of age, usually determines where they will end up in life, as was discussed in class for three of the individuals that partook in the study this was eerily true, as to where they were at 28. After class I called my mother and sure enough my mom knew where myself, my sister and my brother would end up, due to the way we were at 14 or so. Yet, this idea of tailoring education through the vocational system did not seem like it was based on the idea of it being efficient, or beneficial to the studetns who were receiving this 'specialized' training. It left a sour taste in my mouth. And sure enough, in the next chapter the reasoning behind vocational schools, and why employers were so eager to jump on this band wagon was as follows:

1. Employees of the time were actually starting to gain individual power in places like the shop floor, and employers looked at vocational training as a means to break the workers control over skills training.

2. It offered a useful method of training and labeling the growing sector of foremen to set them above production workers.

The vocational training of the time was used to track and classify races of individuals that lead them into lower level manual labour jobs.

The last section of the chapter is titled Testing and Tracking: Streamlining the Meritocracy.

The blatant openness by which students were streamlined into curriculum tracks due to their race and economic background eventually became quite clear. But by the end of the 1920's this was disguised by the so called 'objective' educational testing. It was these I.Q. tests that allowed ones genetics to get wrapped up in the picture. These tests were SO biased, as was outlined in the class presentation we had on this subject, which concluded that every one from immigrants to single mothers were feeble minded! Pretty much every one besides the elite it seemed was insane, a moron or feeble minded. These so called intelligence tests had big backers such as Rockefeller himself. A small group of individual heavyweights as I like to call them, donated millions...millions of dollars...and back in the 1930's ish this was more than enough money to push them into main stream. This, along with the full support of school administrators, leads us to where we are today with the massive support for standardized testing. I think that these tests are useless and biased, but I know some may disagree with me.

One does need to note here that the Progressive Movement was successful on some levels: It did create new types of social stability. It created some types of education that were public and accessible to all. Yet when it came to equality, it didn't really go beyond the organization that occurred at the turn of the century. The success and failure that has been laid out in this chapter highlight the contradictions of liberal education reform discussed in chapter 2.

The contradiction being: With-in the capitalist economy there is no compatibility with with the egalitarian and developmental functions of education.