The+One+Best+System+Part+II


 * Return to Reading Response and Discussion**


 * The One Best System: Part II**

This section of the book starts off with populations growing tremendously and urbanization proceeding faster than ever during the years of 1820-1960. Health was also a key factor during this time, not only an individual and family concern but also a public one. This is when the city council started requiring vaccinations for small pox and prohibiting large amounts of garbage and plans to build a sewer system took place. This section goes on to say how the creation of efficient and uniformed police also corresponded with the movement to standardize schooling. Boston was where a lot of these actions started taking place. School reform in Boston illustrated one pattern of educational change at the middle of the century. The Boston School comittee appointed the members of the primary school board. And a very important figure in the history of education was Horace Mann. Horace Mann saw that in Prussian centralized schools were in order as far as: supervision, graded classes, well-articulated curriculumn and human methods of instruction. He thought Boston should try to emulate this. Horace Mann tried very hard to centralize schools, then Samuel Howe was elected to the school committee in 1844. Howe revolutionized the collection of data on the performance of children in grammar schools. He did this by creating a written test and administering it to the top of the class in each of the grammar schools. The results were astonishing and proved that the Boston school system was "wrong in the principle of its organization, inefficient in its operation and productive of little good, in comparison with its expense."( Page 36) The Boston city had become one of the leaders in designing and spreading this one best system. Next John Philbrick wrote a comprehensive survey of city school system in the United States. The purpose of this survey was to accelerate the "uniformity of excellence" in urban education. To Philibrick it was very imortant to perfect urban education because this was the key to the survival and prosperity of the republic.(Up to here was completed by Rebecca Bahr)
 * Summary:**

Overall this section of the book stressed the importance of a need for coordination in urban schools as well as ways to help create this one best system. For example, the purpose of the common school and helping to educate the poor. Progression, along with change emerged as the years went by.

Tyack stresses several reasons for a need of systemization of urban schooling: The school system of the time could not keep up with the rate of this population boom. **There simply wasn't enough room to accommodate the students.** Classrooms were sometimes exceeding over 100 students to a teacher. These classes remained ungraded, with relatively uneducated teachers. Tyack also addresses the fact that **many of these new residents were poor immigrants**, whose children were not likely to attend formal schooling, but instead opted to work.

The effects of this overpopulation and disorganization were the major motivation of a push for reform in the urban school system. Taxpayers seemed to understand the need for improved schooling, and more students were attending. Yet there still was a substantial amount of students not attending, some opting to work, and the need for a degree was not what it is today. This led reformers to push for coercible and required attendance for students.

Tyack also explains the roles of women and men in the hierarchy of the school system. Men often held the leadership roles of superintendent and principal, while women primarily were the teachers. This was mainly due to the opinion of the time that women were subordinate to men, hence only complimenting the idea of a hierarchal system. This and the unequal pay that women would receive for the same work would eventually be looked upon as an injustice of the "one best system" and addressed through state laws and changing school policies. (BC)

How to create the one best system was a question that superintendents tried to perfect the answer to. They established training schools for teachers, evening schools, industrial schools used to help examine and certify teachers. Perfection was sought in the attempts to improve the planning of construction of school houses, and to develop a more rational program of school exams. The superintendents thought it was the responsibility of the school administration and the teachers themselves to know what was being done in the schools outside of their own to fully diffuse public education to the masses. (KC)

An experienced school reformer who was against centralization said "the greatest offense that any citizen can commit is to double the perfection of our schools, and any attempt to improve them, on the part of a committee man, is madness, and is instantly visited by official death." (page 34 Rebecca Bahr)
 * Key Passages:**

Schooling was essential because it adapted people to the new disciplines and incentives of the urban-industrial order and supplied the "directive intelligence" and specialists required in a complex society. (page 29 Rebecca Bahr)

"Convinced that there was one best system of education for urban populations, leading educators sought to discover it and implement it.”(p.28-L.D)

“…Public education in Boston in the mid-1840s seemed to reformers a miscellaneous collection of village schools than a coherent system”. (p. 33-L.D.)

“Organization becomes necessary in the crowded schools in congested districts.”(p. 39-L.D.)

"In too many cases...the parents are unfit guardians of there own children."(pg.68)-explains the need for a school to "teach" social and moral obligations. Tyack calls this the "hidden curriculum."(pg. 49)(BC)

"...Told teachers in 1889 that 'It is obligatory upon everyone engaged in this work to have full knowlege of all that is being done the wide-world over to diffuse public education, and it is their duty to seize hold of these methods, and put them to use here.'...The future of our cities will be largely what education makes it...'" (pg 40) (KC)

"They 'imposed'a curriculum and an urban discipline, but they also opened up opportunities that many of the students might otherwise never have had: to read a newspaper, to compute, to know something of history and geography, to speak standard english. These new skills often created alternatives for the literate that were unavailable to the illiterate. And the structure of the school taught habits of punctuality, obedience, and precision that did help the young to adjust to the demands of the worlds at work." (pg 72) (KC)


 * Important Terminology:** Here are some of the terms introduced or developed in this section:

Horace Mann- intellectual behind "common schools" (pg. 35)-- in 1837 he called for a superintendent to improve all the schools.

William T. Harris: "The modern industrial community cannot exist without free popular education carried out in a system of school ascending from the primary grade to the university" (29). He became the super of schools in St. Louis, then the US Commissioner of Education. He was the most outstanding intellectual leader in American education between death of Horace Mann and John Dewey. In 1874 he and Duane Doty wrote __The Theory of Education in the United States of America__. They stressed on the importance of 1. punctuality, 2. regularity, 3. attention, and 4. silence.

Samuel Howe- elected on the Boston school comittee and created a written test that helped to centralize schools. (Rebecca Bahr)

John Dore- the first superintendent of schools (Rebecca Bahr), (pg. 38) Chicago's first superintendent. He struggled to examine each child and assign them to a particular level, keep attendance, require uniform textbooks, hire school janitors, and persuade parents to send children to school regularly.

John Philibrick- wrote a comprehensive survey of city school systems (Rebecca Bahr) - Somber bureaucrat: meaning he was very serious and devoted ( p.63-L.D) (pg. 39) Wrote __City School Systems in the United States__. He wanted the establishment of a training school for teachers, the adoption of a better method of examining and certifying teachers, a more ration program and system of school examinations. He also created the "egg-crate school" (pg 44) when he was the principal at Quincy School in 1848. Each teacher had a separate classroom for one grade--56 students/12 rooms. Teachers were divided according to tested proficiency. Teacher assistants were in each room and there was a sub-principal. John D. Philbrick- wrote "City Schools Systems in the United States" a survey which illustrated the poor state of urban schools, where he concluded 3 points to the "perfecting of the system itself." 1.Certification, and training of teachers. 2.Better school houses, in construction and overall facilities. 3.Rationalization of testing and curriculum(BC)

William Harvey Wells- superintendent of Chicago schools 1856-64. Published "A Graded Course of Instructions with Instructions to Teachers" which outlined specific curriculum and guidelines for grading classrooms, but also prescribed proper teaching methods.(BC) (pg. 45) Superintendent in Chicago 1856-64. Divided over 14,000 children into 10 grades and put 123 teachers to the grades. The teachers all followed a uniform schedule. In 1862 he created __A Graded Course of Instruction with Instructions to Teachers__. It gave the teachers not only specific items to teach but also teaching methods.

-Samuel Gridley Howe continued Mann's battle. He revolutionized the collection of data on the performance of children in grammar school. He also devised written tests for the highest class in grammar school. The test was made out of required textbooks but the children did horribly.

-Joseph Lancaster (pg. 41) Created hierarchy of offices: student, monitor, monitor-general, assistant teacher, teacher, principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent. He also created a system of small steps for learning pupils.

Mary Abagail Dodge- waged a campaign for equality of women in education.(BC) National Council of Education- formed in 1880, and sought to prescribe what was "wise and unwise" for educational policy for the nation.(BC)

"toe the line"-phrase that refers to idea that teachers paid as much attention to posture and obedience while standing in line as to the actual academic skills a student would portray(BC) Primary Schools- these schools were founded in 1818 and were to prepare children to enter the grammar schools. Primary schools were usually one-room and had only one teacher and they were scattered across the city. (Rebecca Bahr)

Bureaucracies- administrative system, especially in a government, that divides work into specific categories carried out by special departments of nonelected officials. (Encarta Dictionary-Rebecca Bahr)

Urbanization- to make an area of countryside or villages into a town or part of one. (Encarta Dictionary-Rebecca Bahr)

Standardize- to assess something or determine its properties by comparing it with a standard. (Encarta Dictionary-Rebecca Bahr)

Centralize- to remove political or administrative power from local or subordinate levels and concentrate it in a central authority. (Encarta Dictionary-Rebecca Bahr)

Schoolmen- A man who is a professional educator or scholar.( Freedictonary.com -L.D)

NEA - National Education Association (KC)

Attendance - The number of persons present (KC)

High school - The people's college, thought to be a school that prepared for the duties of life for a small proportion of the children who were rich, intelligent, or were not needed for labor at home. Olympic Games - What people referred to the tests held for kids to get into secondary schooling or high school. Usually held for the smartest kids in the school. (KC)


 * Discussion Guiding Questions:**

Why cities first? Why would reformers attempt to change the vastness of an urban school system, before a trial on smaller rural schools?(BC)

Do you think the centralization of urban schools was important? Why or Why Not? (Rebecca Bahr)

Where did the bureaucrats, in their attempt to perfect the one best system, in the 19th century fall short/mess-up/fail in their plans? Where did they succeed? (KC)

Do you agree with the argument of Mary Abigail Dodge on a women’s role in the schooling system? Explain. (L.D.)

How have the ideas of the one best system evolved and transformed into what is the educational system of today? What ideas are still strictly used?(BC)