Carol Black
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read

Watters references a different book by Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction; she does not mention the Underground History of American Education. (“Underground History” is a misnomer; Gatto himself explains in the book that he is a teacher, not a historian, and the book should be considered a personal essay, not a work of history.) I don’t agree with all of Gatto’s statements in that book and I think anyone using it as a reference should independently verify his claims; it does make clear, however, that overall he is very familiar with the level of historical detail provided in Watters’ piece and in the Dorn piece she quotes extensively from.

I am not in any way making an ad hominem attack on Ms. Watters; my first comment was that I have enjoyed her thoughtful commentary on education and technology, and I make clear that I fully support her concern about simplistic commercial ed-tech “solutions” to the problems of education.

My problem comes in when she tars people creating genuinely valuable alternatives with the same brush. There is in fact a meaningful relationship between economic and educational structures and values in our society — this should not come as a surprise to any thinking person — and specifically the transfer of the ideas of standardization, efficiency, top-down management, centralized control and planning, and quantitative measurement from industry to schools in the first half of the twentieth century was, in fact, influential in a lasting way.

There are a lot of great people working in public schools, independent schools, and outside of schools who have used the “factory model” phrase as shorthand for that basic argument as they work to counter those forces to create more genuinely humane and personalized approaches to learning. So my concern is that Ms. Watters is undermining those folks as well as those she intends to call out.