Letter to the Editor: Critic of 'Factory Schools' Is Partly Right

Summary

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Consultant and writer Julia Steiny gets it partly right with her overview and critique of American public education in "School based on factories bound to fail." As her reference to Ellwood Cubberly suggests, such an educational system was the progeny of social engineers who, influenced by Henry Ford's assembly line, created a paradigm that deliberately reduces many of its worker-students into a malleable, obedient mass. Within such a system, students are not critical, creative or conscionable, but rather submissive, sycophantic and vapid. Clearly, this is reprehensible.

However, while Steiny adopts a somewhat elevated rhetoric, her solution never transcends the bombastic. If we "dismantle the factories," we will "give teachers what they want: successful students." What precisely does this denote? What does it mean to "dismantle the factories"? How radical should we get? What type of model will supplant the antiquated model? What's more, how will a newer, presumably more progressive model generate "successful students"?

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Letter to the Editor: Critic of 'Factory Schools' Is Partly Right

Steiny's most concrete solution is to give...

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