Education and the Cult of Efficiency: A Study of the Social Forces That Have Shaped the Adminstration of the Public Schools

by Raymond E. Callahan

Overview

Raymond Callahan's lively study exposes the alarming lengths to which school administrators went, particularly in the period from 1910 to 1930, in sacrificing educational goals to the demands of business procedures. He suggests that even today the question still asked is: "How can we operate our schools?" Society has not yet learned to ask: "How can we provide an excellent education for our children?"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226216904
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	11/16/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	2 MB

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Education and the Cult of Efficiency

A Study of the Social Forces that have Shaped the Administration of the Public Schools

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By Raymond E. Callahan

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 1962 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-21690-4

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CHAPTER 1

THE PRELUDE 1900–1910

At the turn of the century America had reason to be proud of the educational progress it had made. The dream of equality of educational opportunity had been partly realized. Any white American with ability and a willingness to work could get a good education and even professional training. The schools were very far from perfect, of course: teachers were inadequately prepared, classrooms were overcrowded, school buildings and equipment were inadequate, and the education of Negroes had been neglected. But the basic institutional framework for a noble conception of education had been created. Free public schools, from the kindergarten through the university, had been established.

The story of the next quarter century of American education — a story of opportunity lost and of the acceptance by educational administrators of an inappropriate philosophy — must be seen within the larger context of the forces and events which were shaping American society. For while schools everywhere reflect to some extent the culture of which they are a part and respond to forces within that culture, the American public schools, because of the nature of their pattern of organization, support, and control, were especially vulnerable and responded quickly to the strongest social forces. In this period as in the decades immediately preceding it, the most powerful force was industrialism — the application of mechanical power to the production of goods — and along with that the economic philosophy of the free enterprise, capitalistic system under which industrialism developed in America.

The material achievements of industrial capitalism in the late nineteenth century were responsible for two developments which were to have a great effect on American society and education after 1900. One of these was the rise of business and industry to a position of prestige and influence, and America's subsequent saturation with business-industrial values and practices. The other was the reform movement identified historically with Theodore Roosevelt and spearheaded by the muckraking journalists. These two developments, and the vulnerability of the school administrator, contributed to the conditions in American society which explain the tremendous impact of Frederick Taylor and his system of scientific management, and the continuing influence of the business-industrial ideology upon American society and education after 1911.

The rise of the businessman as the figure of leadership in the American community had its roots in the emergence during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the middle class in Europe, where the free enterprise system, with the achievements of science and technology at its disposal, had tangibly demonstrated its advantages. In wealthy America, the tremendous industrial and material growth under the capitalistic system was clearly visible. Visible too, with their vast fortunes, were the great industrial and financial leaders — men such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Edward H. Harriman, and the rest. By 1900 these men had been accorded top status by most of their countrymen, and quite naturally their values and beliefs (including the economic philosophy which had made it all possible) were widely admired and accepted. Indeed, the acceptance of the business philosophy was so general that it has to be considered one of the basic characteristics of American society in this period. Calvin Coolidge was not overstating the case when he said in 1925: "The business of America is business."

Doubtless, their vast, accumulated fortunes is enough to explain the prestige enjoyed by the leading businessmen and industrialists, but there were other factors partly responsible for their high standing. One of the most important of these was the McGuffey Readers. Millions of Americans in their formative years learned from these books not only the idea that success was a result of honesty and hard work but the idea that success was material success; and the successful individuals used as models were usually bankers or merchants. These ideas were bolstered after 1865 by the tempting, materialistic "success" literature (particularly in popular journals) in which businessmen and business values were lauded. Sometimes these materials were written by such influential leaders as Andrew Carnegie or Theodore Roosevelt, but most often they were written by journalists or professional success writers such as Orison Marden.

It was inevitable that these business values would greatly influence the public schools at the turn of the century, but the extent of this influence was furthered by certain aspects of the great reform crusade. This movement was primarily an attempt to cope with the problems which were a product of rapid industrialization: the consolidation of industry and the concentration of wealth; the ruthless exploitation of the country's natural resources; the corruption and inefficiency in government; the tremendous growth of cities; the flood of immigrants who added to the complexity of the social and political problems in the urban areas; and finally, the fear among the middle class that America would react to these problems in an extreme or radical way (this reaction had of course been predicted by Karl Marx and had been realized, to an extent, in the growth of various forms of socialism in America).

That genuine problems existed in American society at the turn of the century there can be no doubt. But the generation of widespread public enthusiasm and indignation necessary to give force to a reform movement in a democratic society required that the public be aroused and informed. This function was performed so effectively by the muckraking journalists through the medium of low-priced periodicals that one historian has stated that "to an extraordinary degree the work of the Progressive movement rested upon its journalism" and that "it was muckraking that brought the diffuse malaise of the public into focus."

The vehicle for muckraking was the popular magazine — McClure's, Munsey's, the Ladies' Home Journal, the Saturday Evening Post, and later the American, which were attractively printed and directed toward popular appeal. (The Saturday Evening Post, for example, emphasized business, public affairs, and romance, while the Ladies' Home Journal's keynote was "intimacy" — "Heart-to-Heart Talks," "Side Talks to Girls," and "Side Talks to Boys.") Most important, the magazines were low in price, and circulations ran to the hundreds of thousands; two of them, the Ladies' Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post, sold over a million after 1910. By 1905 there were twenty such magazines with a combined circulation of over five-and-a-half-million. These journals were published not by literary men but by business promoters, and their editors were newspaper editors. Whereas the older monthlies had been books in magazine form, the new journals were newspapers in magazine form.

The most famous of the muckraking journals, McClure's, featured Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, and Ray Stannard Baker as staff writers. S. S. McClure's innovation was to pay his writers for the research necessary to present a thorough, factual exposure. He claimed that none of the articles by Steffens on bossism and the connection between business and corruption in city politics, by Miss Tarbell on the Standard Oil Company, or by Ray Stannard Baker on the railroads, cost less than $1,000, more than half cost $2,500, while each of Miss Tarbell's articles cost about $4,000. But the expenditure paid off handsomely as circulation increased rapidly.

With McClure's demonstration in 1902 and 1903 of the profits of exposure, other popular journals joined in the endeavor. In the next decade, America was flooded with muckraker material as every aspect of American life came under attack to such extent that even the most complacent were prodded into discontent. Some of the muckrakers, such as Steffens, Baker, and Tarbell, combined the accuracy and thoroughness of the research scholar with the qualities of a good reporter, but others were neither so painstaking nor so responsible and many of the articles degenerated into sensationalism. The positive result of this effort was legislation curbing monopolies, controlling child labor, establishing conservation agencies, extending the income tax, and, in general, helping to correct the more flagrant abuses of industrial, democratic America. But there were other outcomes which were not so positive. The irresponsible, shot-gun type of criticism hurt many an innocent victim, among them some dedicated schoolmen. Even more unfortunate, this type of criticism in the popular journals stirred the public to clamor for change and often vulnerable school administrators were stampeded into actions which did great harm to American education.

In the course of the reform movement, much of the exposure and criticism of the muckrakers was directed at big business — the "captains of industry." Indeed, some Americans, including one prominent businessman, James P. Munroe, went so far as to label these "captains" as "exalted thieves" and "corrupters of public morals." The result, as one historian put it, was that some of the gilt was scraped "from that favorite idol of the late nineteenth century, the successful big businessman." But, despite the indictment of these business leaders, neither the muckrakers nor Americans generally condemned the capitalistic business system as such. They regarded these evils as the aberrations of a few greedy men and took the view that if these men were controlled, the country would be restored to a healthy condition.

As Richard Hofstadter has pointed out, the muckrakers were moderate men, not radicals, and they were working in a period (despite the problems) of general prosperity. They did not intend to stir the American people to drastic action which would transform American society. They did not attack the business system; indeed, and very important to our story, their solution to many of the problems was the application of modern business methods. This was especially true in regard to corruption and inefficiency in government. For example, in October, 1906, McClure's published an article by one of the leading muckrakers, George Kibbe Turner, entitled "Galveston: A Business Corporation" in which he described the new five-man business corporation-type government in the Texas city. Turner judged the experiment a "brilliant success" on the basis of its financial record. The following April in an editorial, McClure's compared Chicago unfavorably with Galveston and, to prove its point, printed Charles Eliot's statement that "Municipal Government is pure business and nothing else — absolutely nothing else." In the next three years McClure's printed several articles on the same topic — all of them lauding the new plan and claiming great financial saving, the elimination of corruption, and strong popular support. Meanwhile, the Outlook published an article on "The Business Mayor of Scranton" in September, 1906. The new mayor ran on a platform of business, not politics, and governed the city by business rules and business principles. For, the author said, "The city is a corporation; why run it any other way than you would a corporation?"

So the business ideology was spread continuously into the bloodstream of American life. It was strengthened, not weakened, by the muckrakers as they extolled "modern business methods" and "efficiency" and connected these in the public mind with progress and reform. It was strengthened, too, by the vigorous conservation movement because the emphasis upon conservation blended into and reinforced a corollary drive to eliminate waste, and the elimination of waste was connected with modern business methods. It was, therefore, quite natural for Americans, when they thought of reforming the schools, to apply business methods to achieve their ends.

The Schools in a Business Society

The business influence was exerted upon education in several ways: through newspapers, journals, and books; through speeches at educational meetings; and, more directly, through actions of school boards. It was exerted by laymen, by professional journalists, by businessmen or industrialists either individually or in groups (e.g., the National Association of Manufacturers), and finally by educators themselves. Whatever its source, the influence was exerted in the form of suggestions or demands that the schools be organized and operated in a more businesslike way and that more emphasis be placed upon a practical and immediately useful education.

The procedure for bringing about a more businesslike organization and operation of the schools was fairly well standardized from 1900 to 1925. It consisted of making unfavorable comparisons between the schools and business enterprise, of applying business-industrial criteria (e.g., economy and efficiency) to education, and of suggesting that business and industrial practices be adopted by educators. In 1903, for example, the Atlantic Monthly published an article which was devoted to an attack on politics in school administration and which recommended the adoption of a business organizational pattern. After warning educators that "school administration should be economical" and that the "peoples' money should not be wasted," the author stated, "The management of school affairs is a large business involving in a city of 100,000 inhabitants an expenditure of probably $500,000 annually; the same business principles adopted in modern industry should be employed here." Evidence of business influence appeared again in 1905 at the annual meeting of the National Education Association; a symposium was held on the question "What Are at Present the Most Promising Subjects for Such Investigations as the National Council of Education Should Undertake." Significantly, the first topic was a "Comparison of Modern Business Methods with Educational Methods," and the first speaker, George H. Martin, secretary of the State Board of Education in Massachusetts, told his audience, "the contrast between modern business methods and the most modern methods in education is so great as to suggest some searching questions. In the comparison, educational processes seem unscientific, crude, and wasteful."

By 1907 there were indications that aspects of the business ideology had been accepted and were being applied by educators themselves. In that year William C. Bagley, one of the leaders in American education for the next three decades, published a textbook on education entitled Classroom Management, which was saturated with business terminology. Bagley stated, for example, that the problem of classroom management was primarily a "problem of economy: it seeks to determine in what manner the working unit of the school plant may be made to return the largest dividend upon the material investment of time, energy, and money. From this point of view, classroom management may be looked upon as a 'business' problem." In this book, which was written for teachers in training and which went through more than thirty reprintings between 1907 and 1927, Bagley, in stressing the need for "unquestioned obedience" as the "first rule of efficient service," said the situation was "entirely analogous to that in any other organization or system — the army, the navy, governmental, great business enterprises (or small business enterprises, for that matter)."

The commercial-industrial influence was, of course, not limited to the elementary and secondary school but was felt in higher education as well. Business pressure upon these institutions from 1900 to 1910 was in fact greater than it was on the lower schools, although it appears that the higher institutions were better able to defend themselves and that the extent of business influence on higher education was not as great. Even so, the Atlantic Monthly stated in 1910, "our universities are beginning to be run as business colleges. They advertise, they compete with one another, they pretend to give good value to their customers. They desire to increase their trade, they offer social advantages and business openings to their patrons."

Although much of the pressure was applied through the journals and through the appearance of businessmen before educational meetings, it also came very directly through school boards, which were dominated increasingly by businessmen. Before 1900, most city school boards had been large, unwieldy organizations governed to some extent by politics. Gradually they were reorganized along lines which paralleled the municipal reform movement, e.g., in Galveston. This meant not only a reduction in membership (in Boston from twenty-four to five) but, in the spirit of municipal reform, a change in composition over to businessmen who were to run the schools along business lines. Thus the superintendent of schools was hired and fired by and responsible to a small group of businessmen.

All these changes were to have important and far-reaching consequences for the schools and especially for the administrators. The self-image of these men began to change. All through the nineteenth century leading administrators such as Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, and William T. Harris had conceived of themselves as scholars and statesmen and, in professional terms, the equal of the lawyer or the clergyman. After 1900, especially after 1910, they tended to identify themselves with the successful business executive. That this business orientation was a prerequisite for success and tenure on the job was clear, and the schoolmen knew it. As early as 1900, for example, the President of the National Educational Association prophesied that "the real educational leaders of the age whose influence will be permanent are those who have the business capacity to appreciate and comprehend the business problems which are always a part of the educational problem."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Education and the Cult of Efficiency by Raymond E. Callahan. Copyright © 1962 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

1. The Prelude 1900-1910
The Schools in a Business Society
Setting the Stage for the Efficiency Expert
2. Reform-Conscious America Discovers the Efficiency Expert
The Principles of Scientific Management
The Mechanisms of Scientific Management 
Schmidt, Pig Iron, and First-Class Men
3. Criticism and Response in the Early Years of the Efficiency Era
Mounting Criticism of Education 1911-13
The Vulnerability of School Administrators
Administrators Respond to the Demands of Efficiency
4. American Educators Apply the Great Panacea
The Dollar as Educational Criterion
Management and the Worker in Education
5. The Educational Efficiency Experts in Action
Efficiency Measures for the Schools
The School Survey
The Unavailing Dissent
6. The "Factory System" in Education—the Platoon School
The Gary Plan and Scientific Management
The New York Story
A Question of Motive
7. Instruction Follows Accounting
Demonstrating Efficiency through Records and Reports
Educational Cost Accounting
The Education Balance Sheet and Child Accounting
Binding Education in Red Tape
8. A New Profession Takes Form
The Captains of Education
The Study of Educational Administration in the Universities
The Education of the School "Executive"
The Insecurity Down Below
Seeking Security Through Professional "Expertness"
The New Profession—the School Executive
9. Efficiency's Progeny
Selling the Schools to the Public
The Educational Service Station
Mass Production in Education
The Descent into Trivia
10. An American Tragedy in Education
The Great Diffusion
America Reaps the Whirlwind
A Look Ahead
Index