Document Type
Issue Area Six
Abstract
Public schools are not now, nor have they ever been, forces for change in society. One need only read The Education of Henry Adams (1918) to recognize that there has been little substantive change in public schools during the last 76 years. While the outward appearances of the classrooms may suggest change, such as students who are using computers instead of slates, the teaching style and philosophy has changed very little.
Students are still herded unceremoniously from one class to the next according to some rigid, arbitrary schedule. Teachers still stand at the blackboard delivering dull lectures while students dutifully copy notebooks full of facts which are irrelevant to anything in real life. Strict discipline is maintained, and the students lives are totally directed by a benevolent dictatorship. Students are told where to sit, when to talk, and what to think. When the students have accumulated enough "seat time" in a specified list of subjects, we declare them "educated," and they are sent out to live as responsible adults into a world for which we have given them little preparation to think for themselves. Henry Adams (1918) stated: "The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught."
Journal Title
Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series
Volume
5
Issue
2
First Page
249
Last Page
251
Publisher
Institute for Educational Leadership, University of Northern Iowa
City
Cedar Falls, IA
Copyright
©1994 Institute for Educational Leadership, College of Education, and the University of Northern Iowa
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Jury, Floyd D.
(1994)
"Public School as a Force for Change,"
Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series: Vol. 5:
No.
2, Article 59.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/iel_monographs/vol5/iss2/59
