A Twitter Thread

For your consideration, a thread from @RebelTeacherNet on Twitter. Hope to hear your thoughts...

@OriginalTweet

The most enduring cliche in education is that while the world has moved on teaching is still based on a C19th industrial model. 

Is there anything about this that is insightful or useful? Just a way for arguing a specifically humanist approach to teaching. 

And not even true.

@RebelTeacherNet

Seems to me, the most robust form of this argument might be not that the education system was "based on" the industrial model, but rather that its development was "rooted in" the industrial context. There are three aspects I can see where influence is possible:

A) the education system was built to prepare workers for the industrial economy. The skills and attitudes that were desirable to keep that economy running were the objectives of the education system—naturally—so if those same objectives persist to date, then they might be outdated, since our context is different now;

B) the industrial model was, at the time, the primary understanding of how to organise a system (alongside the military), which is to say that the education system wasn't designed or built "to be like" industry (or the military), but how else could it have been built? If all you know is how to build hammers...

C) other features were not necessarily intended or designed explicitly to be like industry, but are analogous to industry in ways worth thinking about. An example of this is the "age-groups = batch production" comparison.

This wasn't necessarily part of the design, per se, but it is still valid to question whether it is a good thing that the ed system resembles the industrial model in this way.

A tangential example of this is comparisons between school and prisons. Obviously, schools are not really like prisons. And certainly they weren't designed to be. But if we happen to notice that a feature of school resembles prison in some way, it raises a valid question.

All these points at least deserve consideration, perhaps, before dismissing the notion out of hand..?

You might notice that in this thread, technically I am not endorsing either side of the argument. I am merely trying to present the argument in, what I believe, is the most charitable light. If you agree or disagree, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. But if one is going to argue against a position, then they should attempt to argue against its strongest version. (see: steel-manning)