Designed to Fail: (1): a history of American education
Part One: Why do we have the schools we have?
Education in America was designed, from the start, to fail children. That is not our fault. It is our fault if we don’t change that system.
“Schools should be factories in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products. . . manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry.” — Ellwood Cubberley’s dissertation 1905, Teachers College, Columbia University
“We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” — Woodrow Wilson
“…they won because supporters of comprehensive high schools defined equal education as equal access to different and unequal programs. Guided by the new IQ tests (which did as much as any single thing to convince American educators that tracking was not only possible but preferable) and the rise of guidance and counseling programs (which could match young people with the curriculum track best suited to their“scientifically” determined…
