My first thought, when starting to research for this blog post, was, "I have only heard of two of these people, and only one of those two do know who they are! I should be ashamed!" Being in education, you would think that I would be aware of who at least some of the people were that helped shape the very profession that I so lovingly arrive at every weekday (except for holidays and snow days ... and the occasional "mental health day").
With that said, I dove right in, reading about the innovators. Who knew Linda Brown Thompson was “Brown v. Board of Education?” I didn’t. I know, I know, I should be ashamed (I already said that). Also, I thought Horace Mann was an insurance company (well it is, but that all I thought it was). I had no idea Horace Mann was such an influential person in the history of education.
When I started reading about the “Makers,” I initially thought the web-site was a sort of conspiracy theory, with all the talk of, “Teachers and principals, “scientifically” certified in teachers college practices, were made unaware of the invisible curriculum they really taught,” and of schools becoming, “psychological laboratories where training in consumerism was the central pursuit.” As I read on, my thoughts didn’t really change much. Gatto’s angry about this, huh? If not angry, he sure is passionate about it (I can’t wait to read Weapons of Mass Instruction). I suppose if a person bought into this line of thinking, education is way out of whack. I, for one, don’t think it is. I don’t think I’m in the minority, either. I think most teachers would agree it needs some work, but I hope the majority don't think it's as messed up as Gatto does. We teachers owe it to our students to try and teach them to the best of our ability every day. I realize that that “best” is different from one teacher to another, but most of it is in the effort. The idea that American schools have become what Gatto suggests is, well, kind of hard for me to believe. I admire Mr. Gatto for his passion about his beliefs, I just don’t necessarily think it’s as bad as he does.
Now let’s move on to the difficult task of choosing one innovator and one maker to talk about. Both choices were difficult for me, but for completely different reasons. Choosing an innovator was difficult because all of them made sizable contributions to modern-day education. Choosing a maker was difficult because I don’t know if I really think the choices had all that much to with education today (at least not in the way that Gatto seems to think they have). At least this was my original thought.
My choice for “Innovator” is Jose Angel Gutiérrez. I know, I know, some of you are probably thinking that if I were going to choose a person that went against the system, I should have chosen Booker T. Washington or Linda Brown Thompson. Well, you may be right, but I have a reason for choosing Gutiérrez. Jose Angel Gutiérrez went head first against (in a highly Hispanic-populated area), what the article calls the “Anglos,” and was able to organize a student strike, stage an upset in a school board election, and institute many changes in the school system where he served, including hiring teachers and administrators that were Spanish-speaking. My initial thought about Gutiérrez is that he is a sort of modern day Booker T. Washington, at least as far as the Hispanic education movement in this country is concerned.
My choice for “Maker” (although a difficult one) is … well it could be any of the four listed on Gatto’s website. Okay, okay, I picked Carnegie, but I could just as easily have picked any of the other three, but not for the reasons you might be thinking. I don’t buy into Gatto’s ideas, but I do believe that men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan (among others) did have an influence on education, but I think their influence can more easily be tied to vocational education than to general education. You see, I’m a vocational teacher, and I haven’t really thought of this before, but these men did have an influence on what I’m doing. The fact that they owned these huge companies that manufactured things that were absolutely necessary for the day-to-day operations of this country and that they wanted a work force that was educated in the trades necessary for their companies to be successful, tells me they wanted trade-education in schools. Carnegie was no exception. The only problem … Carnegie wanted to take over control of the school system and force students to learn only what he wanted them to learn. A sort of "Hitler" approach to educating our children. According to http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=FinalWarn02-5#Education, students would be taught “only what the social engineers of this country wanted them to know.” The fact that Carnegie was a Scottish immigrant, was never a US citizen, but still thought he could take over the education system of country such as the United States of America, is why I chose him over the others. The gall!
This post turned into a pretty interesting one (Dr. Young has a way of making that happen), especially as I expanded my research to some other places on the internet. Please post your comments so that I can improve on my next post.
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