History Of Educational Reform

History of Educational Reform

Today new school reforms have been formulated. These reforms are created to form individuals into becoming financially advanced and globally competitive persons. The very means to gauge the progress of the new reform is through test scores. Standardized tests and the test scores are now tantamount to accountability, transforming the educational system into a dehumanized market institution. The school is seen as a capital investment and is now measured according to financial value. Today's school reforms have seemed to do away with the notion of schools "helping to create people who are fully developed as human beings and as democratic citizens." (Tyack D. 1997) However, amidst the prevailing regress in today's education and contentions on reforms, Americans hold schools as the means to change and influence society. No other institution in the culture is solely devoted to developing mental powers, and the existence both of powerful means of psychological and political influence through the organized media and of an intellectually complex culture and economy amply justifies, and indeed compels, a focus on the effective use of one's mind. Furthermore, intellectual training is eminently useful: it opens means to educate oneself in any sphere of interest or importance. Without it, one is crippled. With it, one can gain, on one's own, that comprehensive learning that so attracted the predecessors in the past. The belief is still the same: "education holds the key to the future". Indeed, the future of the United States of America, of any similar country, depends to a huge extent on what goes on in the schools, whose membership (teachers and studies) comprised a large percentage of the nation's population. Any reform, any revolution - of ideas, of hearts and minds, of attitudes - could very well take root in the school system. The school is obviously the most potent vessel of the development of a pole and its culture. The academic community of parents, teachers, support staff, and students forms a formidable nucleus of the socio-economic, political and cultural life of the entire community that it serves. After all, a great majority if not all of the current community leaders and people of note received their formation and training in school. Those who man the most sensitive posts in the community organization have their children in the school. Would it not be logical, then, to expect that a school worth its name (from the Greek Schole, that means a place where leisure - contemplation of reality - takes place) develop the greatest sensitivity to the urgency and importance of building a national culture of excellence? Would it not be reasonable to envision that the school shape the wherewithal that would enable a community, a town, a city, an entire country, to persevere in and sustain its pursuit of excellence? Would not the school be likewise the best venue to formulate, define, and refine the basic nuanced signposts and standards of excellence? And the most important question, "Who is the principal agent of the school to instigate this very fundamental change or reform?" (Tyack D. and Cuban, L. 1997)

The early history of educational reforms can be traced back as far as the time of John Dewey, William Heard Kilpatrick and the Teachers College of Columbia University and the influence on public school policy and practice. That was the time when the Progressive reform theory was first conceived for the promise of educational equity that according to Hirsch was a failure. (Hirsch, E.D. 1996) The educational theories of John Dewey along with some proponents in educational reforms in the early 19th century were so influential in the United States but strikingly parallel to the regimented State-planned educational program of the Soviet Union. John Dewey was perhaps the most influential of all modern American educationalists and reformists. In his view the purpose of education is not the communication of knowledge but the sharing of social experience, so that the child shall become integrated into the democratic community. Dewey in spite of his secularism, had a conception of education which was almost purely religious. Education is not concerned with intellectual values, its end is not to communicate knowledge or to train scholars in the liberal arts. It exists simply to serve democracy; and democracy is not a form of government. Rather it is a spiritual community based on the participation of every human being in the formation of social values. Thus, every child is a potential member of the democratic church and it is the function of education to actualize his membership and to widen his powers of participation. Under the influence of John Dewey and other educational philosophers, William Heard Kilpatrick in the early 1900s emphasized individualism, interest and rejected transfer of learning. Like John Dewey he proposed the progressive system in education. (Sherman, R. 1999) Similarly, The Teachers College of Columbia University pioneered in espousing American democratic education in the same line of Dewey's philosophy. It seemed though that amidst criticism, the educational reform at that period manifested success. It was in the 1940s as remembered by that generation as the good old days in education when the United States Educational system held the prestigious status of being better if not best. The professional leaders in the 1940s centered their pursuit towards excellence through their programs for the public. As such the public school system then was considered to be performing good and getting better.

During the mid 1950s the country's educational system was already experiencing drawbacks. Progress in education began to swing back rather slowly. In contrast to popular belief or progressive education during that period, there was an adverse reaction to the anti-academic and even anti-intellectual formulations of the leaders of the life adjustment movement that was already underway before Sputnik was launched on October 5, 1957. The American system of education suffered vitriolic attack on anti-intellectualism of the American education. By that period there were those bent on working on reform programs that were practically antithetical to life adjustment education. When Sputnik was launched, it became an instrument to place education in the media spotlight making the system more of a national issue. It became the vital attributing factor in the legislation of the National Defense Education Act that was passed in congress in less than a year after the Sputnik launching. The reform was a vast difference from life adjustment education in terms of what it saw as the proper role for schools in American society. The new program was characteristically a deviation from traditional