A reader called “Retired Teacher” read Peter Greene’s reflections on Amazon as a model of schooling and posted this comment:
Devious DeVos had the nerve to call public schools a factory model of education. It seems to me that rows of zombie students staring at screens and fed content from an algorithm on a screen much more easily qualifies as a “factory model.” Public education is a model whose goal is mostly about being “through and efficient.” It aspires to bring young people access, opportunity and civics preparation in order to become responsible citizens. It is a pubic institution with noble goals, not an Amazon Warehouse.
The so-called “free market” is a scammer’s delight where the strong feed on the weak and the predators hunt for prey. Believing that the free market will solve education’s problems is as naive as it is reckless. Our young people should be valued, protected and taught well to prepare them for the future as they are the future of this country. They must be ready to address our future needs, and they deserve so much more than being considered a monetized line item in some rich person’s portfolio.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Actually the American public school system was based upon Taylor’s business models. And Taylor though of assembly line worked as interchangeable parts in his systems.
Much influence, there, as has been discussed by Diane in several of her works–most notably in Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms Hardcover, 2000, which may be the single most interesting book on education that I’ve ever read. I love this book so much that when I was working in educational publishing and my colleagues and I started a reading group, it was the book I settled on when it came my turn to choose.
The education model pushed by Deformers, mostly with Gates money, reminds me of that contemporary development from the factor model–the boiler room call center sweat shop. In these places, include not only those from which people working for Russian mobsters attempt to swindle old people (we need information to verify your social security account; send money to secure your $12,000 sweepstakes prize) but sales rooms run by established companies (cable television companies are particularly egregious).
So, the parallels:
Employees spend all their time at computers, responding via headsets to autodialers.
Everything is scripted and based on pre-established quotas.
The managers are reduced to roles a) ensuring that the machines are working, b) monitoring real-time reporting of employees’ time-on-task and gritfulness, and c) responding to goad employees who fall behind by seconds.
The work is monotonous and utterly unrewarding.
It’s all about the data.
These places have taken “scientific management” to unprecedented levels. It’s very much as though employees were hamsters placed on a wheel from which they allowed a 1/2-hour break once a day for lunch. NB: During the horrific Arne “Dunkin'” Duncan maladministration of the Department of Education, Gates funded a study, and Duncan’s slavish fools breathlessly reported, of using real-time monitoring by teachers of data from galvanic skin response bracelets, retinal monitors, and movement sensors to ensure students’ gritful attention to task while completing on-screen depersonalized education exercises.
Good enough training for Prole children. Teach them to attend servilely, gritfully, to whatever inane, dehumanizing, alienating task is served up to them by an algorithm, over and over, day in, day out, for the rest of their lives. Gritful obedience despite alienation from the work, from themselves, and from their peers. Just what the oligarchy ordered. “Yes, Sir, Mr. Gates. Will you be taking that coffee on the verandah, Mr. Gates? Of course, Mr. Gates. Whatever you say.”
But importantly, Diane discusses in Left Back, and many other works, the alternatives to Taylorism that emerged throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Fascinating stuff.
Probably the best book on business influences on schools up until the 1960s is Ray Callahan’s classic “Education and the Cult of Efficiency”.
I don’t know how I managed to miss this book! Ordering a copy. Thank you, Duane!
I was arguing with some of my fellow teachers and an administrator for this same Eleanor Rooseveltian model for public education just a week ago. Yes, public education should “bring young people access, opportunity and civics preparation in order to become responsible citizens”. I lost the argument. Our community and our school board don’t want responsible citizens. They want high GPAs and professional career prep.
Public schools have produced a great number of highly successful individuals in science, business, the arts and elsewhere. Diane graduated from a public school in Texas. It is through the propaganda of the past twenty years that the public has been misled to believe that public schools are dumpster fires.
Thank you, retired teacher.
Reagan and his cronies are so wrong. Never forget Reagan and what he did.
IS PUBLIC EDUCATION A CASUALTY OF REAGANOMICS: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/15/education/is-public-education-a-casualty-of-reaganomics.html
Now we have public education run by RICH folks who only want to make money and see their names in light … as if they are heroes and heroines … NOT.
Good point, retired teacher/
Public education in the 20th Century was based upon the factory–Taylor–model. But, don’t forget the intervention of progressive education, John Dewey, and others who humanized and socialized (in several senses) many of our schools. Public schools were and are very diverse. In Flint, MI, for instance, schools encouraged lots of student participation–such as an entire junior high school becoming a political convention in 1952. In Columbus, Ohio, at the University School, students wrote their own textbooks. The Columbus Public Schools of the ’70’s developed numerous alternative schools, racially and socially integrated, based on themes, such as Spanish emersion, where that language was emphasized, in every class, etc. Teams of teachers, administrators, and others–chosen by the Administration and the Association planned the schools. Some teachers–such as myself–utilized mock trials, mock legislatures and city councils, etc. The “Project Method,” with students in small groups, utilizing cross-curricula skills, was used in many places across the country. But this very democratization for teachers and students was resisted and rebelled against by authoritarian people in business, politics, and religion. A powerful mythology was built up by such groups, culminating in the Reagan Administration’s “A Nation at Risk,” which claimed to show American schools “falling behind” those in other countries. More rigor was needed. More testing and comparisons of schools. More robotization. Some in the civil rights community supported the testing ideas as a way to illustrate and access the racial and economic discrimination that did exist. So we got Goals 2000, promulgated by Bush I and Clinton, then No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top, by Bush II and Obama. Technology intervened, making it possible to test kids across the land with the same tests–however unrelated to what kids need–and compare them. This served the interests of conservatives seeking to weaken teachers and other unions, and thus the whole union movement. It also provided an access to education dollars for profit and kids minds for propaganda, whether political or religious. The combination of super wealth, conservative reaction against “government schools,” and well-intentioned reformers is VERY strong. We may not recover our more democratic schools, but we can’t afford to give up the fight. Our kids, our nation, and our world are really at risk now!
Well said. Over the years public education has been responsive to various political, social and theoretical perspectives. Yet, the mission remains to serve the public to the best of its ability. Public schools are diverse, not just in terms of race or class. Public schools have trained professionals that can serve a variety of student needs. Public schools can be adapted to serve the needs of classified students, ELLs, the homeless, at risk youth, and other vulnerable populations. Why anyone could believe that business amateurs can do a better job is beyond me? They do not have the expertise and training for this challenge. Despite all the disruption and false claims, they fail unless they select ideal students. It is easy to claim success when schools choose the best and brightest and throw away those that are expensive or difficult to educate.
Retired teacher, excellent comment.
The so-called “free market” in the United States is defined by cutthroat capitalism, a form of piracy based often on lies, deceit, and fraud, not quality and competence. If we have learned anything about and from Traitor Trump, it’s how he kept winning for decades while losing, mostly based on his endless lies, deceit, and fraud.
Cutthroat capitalism is best compared to big fish eating smaller fish until all that’s left is the killer whales eating the smaller sharks. When there’s nothing left to eat, the killer whales eat each other.
That begs an answer for this question: Is cutthroat capitalism any different than a Ponzi Scheme until nothing is left but one big terminal cancer of a corporate government that has swallowed all of its competition?
Once the terminal cancer of greed known as Cutthroat Capitalism reaches the end of its journey, what’s left is a ruthless corporate dystopian civilization known as a kleptocracy, always teetering on the edge of collapse while many suffer and the very few prosper in consumer gluttony, with whatever they want no matter the price: yachts, jets, mansions, et al.
Cutthroat Capitalism is similar to an Ironman Triathlon. Even during the pandemic, more than 2,000 athletes competed in the 2021 Ironman race, but only ONE won! That is basically how cutthroat Capitalism works, too.
Before the pandemic, in 2018 Ironman had over 300,000 entrants worldwide, but still, only ONE wins each triathlon.
School students/ actual factory labor-
“Interns” may be as much as 15% of China’s workforce. They are workers without labor’s rights (such as they are in China). Some are unpaid and some have been denied the right to leave their positions (Sixth Tone, 6-10-2021, “In the Workplace Rights Debate, Who’s Looking Out for China’s Interns”). China’s interns may be facing even more dire circumstances in the future.
American business has found a way to profit from or, to create the “most exploitive business models on the planet.”
Enlightenment or, not so much?
The 17-state religious school chain, tailored to a demographic, which received funding from the Waltons and Bill Gates.
Why are educated Americans still paying attention to anything B DeVoss has to say? That sinking ship has, thankfully, sailed!