The Education Industrial Complex
October 2nd, 2010 at 10:06
Not sure who coined the phrase “Education Industrial Complex”, a play off the more famous “Military Industrial Complex” used by President Eisenhower in a 1961 speech. I kept thinking it was radical educator and public school critic John Taylor Gatto, but in my research on the Internet could not find any confirmation of that. I did find a use of the term by Paul Peterson, director of Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard Kennedy School, in a 2008 commentary…
Around 1970 or thereabouts, the educational-industrial complex was hammered into place: School boards gave teachers collective bargaining rights. State governments assumed greater responsibility for financing the schools. The courts instructed schools on the civil liberties of their students. Regulations multiplied. America gained a federal Department of Education. And state and federal dollars poured into the system.
Behind your perhaps unassuming neighborhood public schools is a true leviathan of money, power, politics and influence that supports (or feeds on, depending on your point of view) the maintenance of a national institution that manages the compulsory twelve years of schooling for some 50 million American kids. An institution that may employ as many as 25 million adults in the school system itself and the plethora of vendors that support it in various ways.
According to education blogger Dave Chandler from his piece “More of the Same: Obama and Schools”…
Our ‘education’ establishment is very much about preserving a multi-hundred-billion-dollar spending machine. Corporations make tremendous profit from selling high tech hardware and software to virtually every school district in the nation. Textbook companies and testing companies and education consulting companies and pension investment advising companies and public relations firms and bond dealers… Then there are the politicians who get campaign contributions from the above mentioned special interests and the ‘educrat’ administrators who make hundred thousand dollar a year salaries.
Like any other area where so much money is involved, the effort tends to be torqued towards protecting (if not outright corrupted by) the vested interests that reap a financial reward from maintaining the status quo. In the case of the American public school system, that business as usual seems to have become a perpetual inside-the-box “reform” that involves the development, marketing and mass consumption of the latest textbooks and social-science-based learning programs and an entrenched bureaucratic hierarchy of educational staff above and beyond the actual teachers that interact with the actual students.
I found it thought provoking to read some of the text from Eisenhower’s 1961 speech from the Wikipedia article on the “Military Industrial Complex”…
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we mus not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
What Eisenhower called out as new in 1961 appears to be replicating in the business of education, for not unlike defense spending, it is difficult for any politician on either side of the political spectrum to oppose ever increasing funding.
I regularly scan the articles featured on-line in Education Week magazine, which I understand to be the most widely read education “industry” publication in the country. Its pieces focus on developing and implementing curricula, training and managing teachers and principals, standardized testing and how to finance it all. Given that all these things are intended to facilitate student success, there seems to be very little in its pages directly about those students.
All this focus on education as big business I think leads to the kind of thinking expressed by Ellwood P. Cubberley, Dean of Stanford’s School of Education and a textbook editor at Houghton Mifflin, in the 1922 edition of his book Public School Administration…
“Our schools are … factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned …. And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.”
What I find particularly disturbing as a parent (whose kids spent a number of years in public schools) is that with all this focus on education as a major “industry”, I fear that the development of individual young human beings gets lost in the shuffle of focus on making incremental improvements in standardized testing statistics of large populations of our youth. How does that translate into a unique young soul having an enriched environment to pursue their own development?
My fear is expressed by social critic H.L. Mencken’s words from The American Mercury in 1924…
The aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. … Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim … is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
As a parent I don’t think we should have to surrender our kids to a huge impersonal system that is more about its financial bottom line, political posturing and testing statistics than providing an enriched environment for our youth to best pursue their own development.
For a continuation of this thread, see my follow-up piece, The Human Pursuit of Learning in the Education Industrial Complex.
Tags: education business, education industrial complex, education industry, educational industrial complex, military industrial complex
October 10th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Nice piece, Coop, especially the analogy to the military industrial complex. If one takes Eisenhower’s ’61 speech and replaces ‘military’ with education, there are some eerie parallels. Your inclusion of Cubberly’s quote, identifying children as a “raw product”, shows how little has changed in the past 88 years.
The education analyst for CNN, Steve Perry, summed it up best a few weeks ago when he said that schools had become a convenience for the adults at the expense of educating children.
It will take a generation to restore US schools to among or the world’s best – and only if we make it a priority. Finland, ranked #1 worldwide in test scores, took about that long. There has to be a balance between robotic testing and ensuring each student individual learning freedoms. The first step is to model what has proved successful in other countries. Modeling failure – essentially what we’re doing now – obviously doesn’t work.
Finland had 3 teachers per classroom, a goal which could work in the US. Finland requires teachers to have a masters degree. And, I believe most important, two other criteria: ALL Finnish teachers graduated in the top 10% of their class (47% of US teachers graduated in the bottom 50% of their class) and teachers were paid exceptionally well.
The US teachers would have to change, too. Removing low performing teachers needs to be far easier and quicker. Tenure would be granted after 5-10 years, not 2 years.
Students should not be grouped into grades by age, but by ability. A wider variety of classes should be available, especially after 6th grade. Nor should school be mandatory. Those who choose to drop out, however, might have to contribute to society in other ways (volunteerism, military, financial).
There are many other changes which could be made. More parental involvement would certainly be beneficial. The bottom line is that something so important to our future – our children’s education – needs to be updated and its 18th century roots obliterated. I wonder if our country has the courage, insight, and desire to do so.
October 10th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
First of all Luke… thanks for giving me the inspiration to right this piece and the follow-up one. I second a lot of your thoughts, particularly one about not having school be mandatory, that by itself would be such a profound change, but is a very scary idea to most people, who think if kids aren’t coerced to learn, they won’t.
The one thing I would add to your list is to allow for profoundly different types of schools, that would be options for kids and their families if the conventional instructional school was not right for them Have say charter schools wlth more holistic curricula and free schools that are completely learner-driven. No “flavor” of school is right for everyone… many paths for many souls.
Thanks for your comment. I don’t get many on my blog. I get a lot more on the Daily KOS version at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/10/909312/-My-Schooling-Versus-My-Job-Skills-Provenance
February 10th, 2011 at 12:34 am
I found your article, along with others, by googling “Education-Industrial Complex.” I’m disappointed–because I thought I had coined the term myself a few weeks ago in writing a scene for a novel, then find that others have beaten me to it!
Anyway, I have mixed feelings about how the term is being employed. I read Peterson’s piece before yours, and when he complains about “throwing money at the problem” and talks about state standards subverting teachers responding to community standards, I detect code words favoring right-wing bias against paying teachers a decent wage (with the behavior of many students in some schools, you couldn’t possibly overpay teachers), and the attitude of some local rubes that students shouldn’t be taught no evolution nonsense, nor nothin’ else that contradicts their infallible scripture. These types want indoctrination, not true education: inculcating within students the joy of learning and ways of critical thinking.
On the other hand, there do seem to be major structural problems with our educational system. But I’m not sure the problem is solved by “removing low performing teachers”–simply because by what standard do you measure such, without succumbing to the same kind of pressure that led to the No Child Left Behind “Teach to the Test” response? If the students don’t perform well, is that because the teacher is bad, or because s/he was stuck with the worst of the students? This is a common reaction of teacher’s unions, and I think it’s a legitimate one.
Yet, I’m not convinced that the current mantra of “more computers in the classroom” is not an artifact of succumbing to the pressure of said Education-Industrial complex. Computer literacy is important, but I’m not convinced that students need to spend more than an hour or two a day at school using them to gain the skills needed for modern life (and certainly not at the expense of other kinds of skills such as art, music, and shop classes).
I also reject the idea that everyone should go to college immediately after high school, for I think having real world, earn-your-own-minimum-wage experience is invaluable first, with a good dose of manual labor. Too many young college students waste valuable tuition screwing around when they first begin because they haven’t developed sufficient self-reliance skills. They can learn that by trying to party and hold a job, and learn those consequences with less expense. The idea that parents should pay for their adult kids’ college education seems to me also a part of the complex: How about reducing administrators and making college affordable so that kids can work themselves through college, with no prejudice toward them if they take more than four years to complete a bachelor’s degree?
And how about widespread implementation of an idea sure to rock the university establishment: Granting credit for passing exams in subjects that one has learned on their own, even if you never attend a particular university, and paying no more than reasonable examination fees for same? With a detailed syllabus available to anyone in advance, including recommended readings, so that anyone could gain most of their college credits without paying such high fees?
Footnote: I mentioned at the outset that I thought I had just coined “Education-Industrial Complex.” Double-checking on the draft of my novel, I see that the term I used was directed at higher education, “University-Industrial Complex.” Someone else also thought that one up before me, at least as far back as 1986, in the context of biotechnology industries. Drat.
February 11th, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Again… honoring your extensive comment with a hopefully comparable response…
Ah well… it is too good a phrase to avoid coinage this long!
I am familiar with some of those code words and don’t know if Peterson is trying to transmit them between the lines. I do find myself siding often with more conservative types in pushing for educational liberty vs being socially engineered by the state. My own kids ended up “homeschooling rather than high schooling” because that state control of their education seemed to be hindering their development. (So is that concern more legit than religious folks not wanting their kids to have a secular education?)
Agreed… the whole area of evaluating teachers needs a lot more thought. It should not be about encouraging all teachers to teach to the test but rather creating an enriched environment where students can learn (and as much as possible on their own initiative).
The main structural problem I see is that public education is a massive hierarchical institution modeled not-unlike the defunct Soviet Union, rather than a network of locally-focused venues where students can come and pursue their development in an enriched environment with caring adult mentors and teachers as needed. In our school systems, think how many degrees of separation their are between the students, parents and teachers who are directly involved in the developmental process and the real decision-makers up at the state level who are mandating what, where, when, and how students are mandated to learn.
Doing the same old drill sheet on a computer rather than hard copy is no step forward, but learning how to use the Internet as a self-directed learning tool is valuable to everyone in my opinion. Just like the printing press in the 16th Century revolutionized European society and facilitated the Protestant Reformation, The Enlightenment and the transition from monarchies to republics, I believe the Internet will revolutionize learning and completely transform the role of the teacher and the education system.
Agreed. I think college is best framed as one of many educational options a person might call on to facilitate their development.
I think some forward-thinking colleges are starting to do that.
Well… keep wordsmithing!
June 9th, 2011 at 7:19 am
In 1994, I wrote an article (Picciano, A.G. (1994).Technology and the evolving educational-industrial Complex, Computers in the Schools, 11(2), pp. 85 101), describing the emergence of informal networks and alliances centered on the use of technology in K-12 schools. While I have not pushed it, I believe my article is the first documented use of the term.
June 9th, 2011 at 9:38 pm
Anthony… Would you be willing to send me a link to your article? If I write more about the education-industrial complex I would like to be able to site what you have written. It is such an appropriate and powerful framing!
Cooper Zale
http://www.leftyparent.com
July 20th, 2011 at 1:49 am
This is even more true about phd granting institutions; I wish I had never wasted my life there.
July 20th, 2011 at 7:34 am
Ali… I would be interested to hear more of your experience and your thoughts!
December 30th, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Cooper,
This is my favorite piece by you so far. Thank you for sending me the link today. The issue is that we are now living in a situation others have created for us and it feels like a runaway train.
Suburban schools are now beginning to see the issues that city schools have seen for years and it’s about time they wake up. I taught in a city school for many years and I am now in a suburband school.
Thanks for sharing this Coop.
December 30th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Peter…. your comment made my day! If the things I am calling out are resonating with someone like you (who is in the midst of this big system and still trying to provide a real learning opportunity for kids) it encourages me to keep up my witness and advocacy!
April 23rd, 2012 at 10:50 am
Nice article. I would think the fix would be the same as fixing the problem with the Military Industrical Complex. At the core of the problem is privitization and corporate influence. That has to go in order to have real honest progress. By the way, one can also see this same trend in the Prison-Industrial-complex or the Healthcare-industrial-complex.
April 23rd, 2012 at 12:50 pm
Will… thanks. In many ways the larger corporate community builds its major institutional markets, including with the prison and health care industries as you point out. I actually work in sales operations in the health insurance industry, but for a non-profit health insurance provider.
The issue is to what extent the influence of big business facilitates or retards the normal development of the particular institution.