Journal #3 Assignment

'l'lris str':rtcgy l()r'('llilngc is, trl corrrsc, ll()t l)ew. lt stcrrrs lll l)lllt l[()nr Dcwcy's lrragnratic c()llccption rlf constantly reassessing goals and results in the light of expcriencc. Movements to improve learning have often been based on shared general principles and flexible implementation. But it would be unwise to underestimate the force of the "pedagogical past" and the difficulty of changing basic institutional forms, the grammar that organizes the central work of the school: instruction.

84

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4

Why the Gramm ar of

Schooling Persists

The basic grammar of schooling, like the shape of classrooms, has remained remarkably stable over the decades. Litde has changed in the ways that schools divide time and space, classify students and allocate them to classrooms, splinter knowledge into "subjects," and award grades and "credits" as evidence of learning. In 1902 John Dewey warned against dismissing the way schools are organized "as something compara-

tively extemal and indifferent to educational purposes and ideals." In fact, he declared, "the manner in which the machinery of insuuction bears upon the child , . . really controls the whole system."l

Continuity in the grammar of instruction has puzzled and frusrated generations of reformers who have sought to change these standardized organizational forms. In this chapter we ask how this grammaf came about, why it was so tenacious, and why even vigorous and imaginative challenges to it tended to fade, leaving behind a few new practices here and there but not fundamentally altering the way schools are organized for insffuction.

Practices such as age-graded classrooms structure schools in a manner analogous to the way grammar organizes meaning in verbal communica- tion. Neither the grammar of schooling nor the grammar of speech needs

to be consciously understood to operate smoothly. Indeed, much of the grammar of schooling has become taken for granted as just the way schools are. It is the departure from customary school practice that attracts attention (as when schools decide not to issue student report cards).2

People are accustomed to elementary schools that are divided into self-contained classrooms called "grades." In these rooms individual

IIt':tt'ltrrs ittstltrtt lrrrpils ol lrIrprrt llrt.sirtrrr. lrgt.irr it yilt(.ty.l srrlrjr-cts. Iligh st'lrtxrls :lt'(.()t.lliutizctl qrritc tlillcrcntly. l,.r,cl.y lrt,rl., strrik.rrts shilt f.rorn onc subicct to anotlrcr, onc tcachcr to anr>thcr..lcac]rcls bclong to specialized deparrmenrs and instruct about one hundred and fifty prpil, a day-in five classes of perhaps thirty each-in their particular fields, \X/hen students complete these courses, they are re-arded with Carnegie units. In secondary schools, but generally not in elementary .lusr!r, students have some degree of choice of what to study.

Under these institutional arrangements, teachers have been expected to monitor and control students, assign tasks to them, and ensure that they have accomplished the work. Over the past century there has been a good deal of conrinuiry in how reachers taught. \i7e attend here, however, not so much to what happens in classro*, *, to the organiza_ tional framework that shapes how teachers do their work.l

The grammar of schooling is a product of history nor some primordial creation. It results from the efforts of groups that mobiliz. to *in supporr for their definitions of problems and theiiproposed solutions. The more pow.erfrrl and prestigious the groups, the moie likely it is rhat they will be able to buffress their reforms nith laws, regulations, and accreditation requiremenrs. The timing of innovations also has much to do with their implementation. Reforms rhar enrer on rhe ground floor of major insti_ tutional changes, such as the rapid expansion of elementary education in the ninereehth century or the differenliation of secondary schools in the twentieth, have a good chance of becoming part of the siandard insritu- tional template.a

Once established, the grammar of schooling persisted in part because it enabled reachers to discharge their duties in a predictable fashion and to cope with the everyday tasks that school boards, principals, and parents expected them to perform: controliing student behavior, instruct- ing heterogeneous pupils, and sorting people for future roles in school and later life. Habitual institutional patterns can be labor-saving devices, ways to organize complex duties. Teachers and students socialized to such rourines often find it difficult to adapt ro different srructures and nrles. Established institutional forms come to be understood by educa- tors, students, and the public as necessary features of a ,,real school.,, They become fixed in place by everyday cusrom in schools and by outside forces, both legal mandares and cultural beliefs, until they are barely noticed. They become just the way schools are.5

Periodically, innovators have challenged the structures and rules that constiture the grammar of schooling, perceiving them not as the reforms they once were but as sraitjackets preventing the schools from providing

86

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to create ungraclccl, r-rot graded, schools;

to use time, space, and numbers of students as flexible resources and to diversify uniform class periods, same-sized rooms, and standard class sizes;

to merge specialized subjects into core courses in junior and senior high schools oq alternatively, to introduce departmental speciali- z^tiorr into the elementary school;

and to encourage teachers to work in teams rather than to function as isolated individuals in separate classrooms.6

In the 1960s, for example, reforms in the grammar of schooling sprang up nationwide. Inspired by a vision of high schools of the future, reform- ers experimented with flexible scheduling and class sizes, variable-space classrooms, team teaching, independent study, and core courses. In ear- lier times, as well, innovators assaulted standard organizational arrange- ments, as in the Dalton Plan of individualized instruction or the progressive experiments of the Eight-Year Study. These reforms swept through educators'journals and conferences, seizing the attention of superintendents, teachers, school boards, parents, and professors.

Reformers who opposed the familiar gtrmmar of schooling insisted that it was irrational, narrow in aim, antiquated in design, and harsh in effect. They found allies in foundations, associations of progressive edu- cators, and cadres of enthusiastic teachers and principals. Various inno- vators blamed different groups for the persistence of the raditional grammar: adminisrators with perverse notions of efficiency, college officials who tried to dictate practice to high schools, or mossbacked teachers unwilling to try the new. \Vhatever the character of the "estab- lishment" that supposedly inhibited changes in the grammar, confident reformers asserted that the logic and persuasiveness of their attack would undermine the foundations of the old order and provide the blueprint for a new order in the schools.T

But this did not happen. The standard grammar of schooling has proven remarkably durable. When new departures survived more or less intact, they typically took hold on the periphery of the system in special- ized niches: industrial education, continuation schools, or special educa- tion for gifted or handicapped students-groups of pupils who did not

u7

lit tlrt' rt.tlrrirr.rrrr'rrts lor. slirrrtlir.tl irrstrtrction. l lcrc ancl tlrcrc, tcirchers scleclivcly inct'rr.lrorirrctl sonre refbrnr practices in regular classrooms, hybridizing rlre new with the old.

. lVe start our explorarion of the stability of the grammar of schooling

by examining how rwo pracices, the graded schiol and the Carnegie unit, became insdtution ahzed. We then ask how the grammar s.rruiued three vigorous challenges: the Dalton plan, the Eight_yiar iruay, una ,fr. new-model flexible high school of the late 1960s and 1970s. Ar,.l i., or. reflecdons on these case studies, we suggest that the "establishment,, thar has held the grammar in place is not so much a conscious .orrr.*rtir* as it is unexamined institutional habits and widespread cultural beliefs about what consdtutes a "real school."

The Creation of Enduring Institutional Forms The graded elementary school-in which the curricuium is divided into yearJong batches, students are sorted according to academic profi.i..r"y and age, and individual teachers instruct them in ,.lf_.o.rtrin.d class- rooms-is now so {amilar that it is hard to imagine a dme when it did not exist or to conceive of alternatives. But once it was a deliberate invention that spread rapidly across the urban landscape and that prom- ised to make schools efficient, equitable, and easily replicable.

---

Efficiency and standardizationwere also goals olan academic accounr- ing sysrem called the Carnegie unit. The reform had unlikely and now largely forg-otten origins, but it rapidly became an established pu.t of the grammar of schooling, influencing three fundamental resour.., i, ,..orr- dary education: instructional time, specialized subjecs, and academic credits.

The Graded School

The one-room country school was nongraded, a place where students of different ages learned together and often taught each other. k, ,lh.d,rl. was flexible and adapred to individual differences among pupils, parents and school rrustees often came to the classroom to see what the children had learned, and they frequently rook an acive parr in making decisions about education.

-Td"y many people regard such practices as desirable, but during most of the rwenrierh cenrury reformers in universities and ,irr. J.fr*-"r,, of education have done their best to eliminate the one-room school. They wanted to replace it by a larger, multigrade school because they regarded

88

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tltr.: ottt' r(x)ln s( lr,u,l ,r'. rrrr llrr rr'rrt, urrlrr.lt':,stott:ll, rtlcag('t'itt tttt'tit'rtlttttt, atrcl strIrr.r',lirr;rtt'.1 t,, 1.,\' ,,'ntr(]1, tlrr' tr':rtlr.'r' lrt'itrg t<lo Itttrt'lt rrtrrlt't' llrr' eye and tltrrtrrlr ol llrt'tt,rrrrrrrrrrrly. Mosl ltuirl rcsidents, lrr>wcvcr, warttctl to keep their l<rcal sclrtxrls arrcl rcsisted their consolidation into gladcrl schools. Well intcl the twentieth century, one-room schools numbered over a hundred thousand and sometimes existed in towns as well as in rural areas. Now, as we noted in Chapter L, they have been consolidated and legislated practically out of existence, all in the name of progress.s

Before the Civil \X/ar, another type of classroom was common in cities. It mixed together masses of pupils of differing ages and academic attain- ment-often rwo hundred or more-under the direction of a "master" who was responsible, sometimes along with one or fwo assistant teachers, for hearing all children recite their lessons. Reformers like Henry Barnard thought this a pedagogical monstrosity, for the masters had to move quickly from child to child, each at different levels of achievement, while maintaining draconian discipline.e

Many advocates of the graded school, prominent among them city and state superintendents and school board leaders, were impressed with the division of labor and hierarchical supervision common in factories. Why could this tidy system not be adapted to public education? they asked. They did not question the age-old assumption that a classroom is a self-contained place where one teacher sets tasks for a group of students and evaluates their performance. But they did seek greater efficiency by concenrating the work of a teacher on one grade in which students could be grouped by academic proficiency and could leam a uniform curricu- lum. One teacher could then teach all children in the classroom the same subjects, in the same way, and at the same pace. A school thus "graded" seemed egalitarian to the reformers, for schooling was thus supposedly the same for everyone, boys and gids, rich and poor, immigrant and native-born. Administrators, most of them male, divided the traditional curriculum-reading, spelling, arithmetic, writing, and the rest-into required yearly sequences and supervised the teachers, mosdy female, to make sure that they were following the courses of study. At the end of the year, the pupils took tests to determine whether they were ready to move to the next level: success meant moving up to the next grade; failure meant staying in place.lo

By 1860 the graded school, with its prescribed cumiculum, was com- mon in large cities, and by 1870 it had spread almost everywhere there were enough pupils to classify into grades. In addition to its claims of pedagogical efficiency, the graded school had the virtue of bcing casily reproduced as the population of childrcn tnrrshrrxrt.ncrl irr citics, no sru,rll

lJe

1 ('()nsi(lerrlti()n in tll('clrrotricrrlly ovcrcrowtlc,d rrrl)iltr sysl(.rrrs. ll rrrilrorcd rrs wcll tlrc hiclrrrchicd, clillcrclrtiatcd organizations irr which urban dwellers increasingly conducted their business, both public and private.ll

Beginning in the 1870s, the urban graded school had its critics borh inside and outside the educational profession. The strict curriculum and system of promotional examinations meant that the "normal" student was one who progressed at the regular pace demanded by the imperatives of the graded school. Batch-processing of pupils oeated a category of organizational deviant: the "retarded," or slow, student who was not promoted, In the nongraded informal one-room school, by conrrast, students could progress more at their own pace, making "failure" less visible and less absolute, especially since t}ere were many ways to learn and achieve in rural communities. Even the pedagogical conservative William T. Harris woried that too rigid a plan of age-grading and testing would lead to "premature withdrawal from school," or what a later generation would call drop-outs. A state superintendent wamed that teachers might "groove' their instruction to the annual tests for promo- tion to the next grade. Lay reformers believed that the system had grovm too rigid and that overwork and pressure in schools led to stress and illness.l2

Early in the twentieth century careful studies showed that a very large minority of students in city schools-perhaps one-rhird-were denied promotion (the "retarded" pupils). The result was thar many urban students were lumped in the lower grades of the system, and the held- back pupils were considered to be "overaged," People began to recog- nize that the graded school might have been efficient for the majority of students whose culture matched its requirements, but for the poor and immigrants the system seemed geared to produce failure. And failure, to the efficiency-minded educators of the Progressive era, was waste.ll

Rather than abandoning the graded school, however, most reformers fine-tuned it. Some proposed that tests be given semiannually so rhat lagging students would not have to repeat a whole year's work. Some urged the development of different curricular tracks or niches with different standards for promotion (the development of IQ testing fueled this altemative, for disparities in scores were interpreted as indicating genetic differences, both between individuals and between ethnic groups). \Where schools had sufficient pupils, educators somerimes sorted them into separate classes by IQ scores. More common was instructional grouping of students by "ability" within individual classes, By the 1910s and 1940s, districts had increasingly begun to pracrice "social promotion," or automatic advancement by age cohorts.14

90

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itt it "ltotlgrittlt'tl" 1rt'ilttitty

systcll) tlrrtt ltt':rtt,l tlrt K I yt':tls lr()l ils scl)itfilte grades but rts it pctltr-

gogical contil)tttll)1. liol' tllc lll()st part, however, school districts rnaclc

in."r.-.ntul rather than fuudamental changes in the graded school' Thc

graded school became firmly ensconced as part of the grammar of

ichooling, for it seemed to solve key organizational problems' Over the

years, th; public came to regard distinct grades as emblematic of a "real

school. " l5

Tbe Carnegie Unit

Like the graded school, the Carnegie unit rapidly became part of the

grammar If schooling. In 1906 the president of the Carnegie Foundation Io, th. Advancement of Teaching, Henry S' Pritchett, defined a "unit"

as "a course of five periods weekly throughout an academic year" in

secondary school subjects (by common custom, these "periods" came to

be aboui fifty to fifty-f,ve minutes long)' So firmly has this academic

accounting device-quickly labeled the Carnegie unit-been established

in the operating routines of high schools that successive attempts to lirlodg.'it hruJ b..., unsuccessful, except in peripheral parts of the ,yrr.-] such as vocational training programs or continuation schools for potential droP-outs.16

In 1905 Andrew Carnegie established the foundation with an endow-

ment of ten million dollais for the purpose of providing pensions for

redred college professors.'What connection could this possibly have had

with the tirne allotted to subjects in high schools? From the first' the

leaders of the foundation, and especially Pritchett, were not content srmply to disribute money to retired professors' The rustees who gath-

"r.i ,t Carnegie's mansion in New York on November L5,1905' were a

stellar cast of university presidents, including such luminaries as Charles

\X/iliiam Eliot of H^ru^rJ, \[oodrow Wilson of Princeton, Arthur Hadley

of Yale, and David Starr Jordan of Stanford' These elite educators' confident that they had the answers to improving American education'

were determined to reform from the top down, beginning with the

.oli.g.., a system of schooling that they regarded as chaotic and ineffec-

tive. ihey saw Carnegie's grant as an opportunity to raise standards in American secondary *a nigfr". education through unifying and-central- izing academic practice. They had no doubt that what was good for the

elite"colleges *u, ulro good for the country' The prestige of the presidents

ensured tf,at their proposals would carry weight'17

9t

liirst tlrc tlustc('s lratl to clccirlc what a college was, ne casy task in a country in which ovcr six hundred institutions of "higher education" ranged in character and quality from struggling small academies (some- times bearing the title of "university") to major research institutions like Columbia, Cornell, and Chicago. How could they distinguish work that was genuineb of college grade from teaching that was barely on a secondary level? 'To be ranked as a college," the trustees agreed, an institution must have at least six full-time professors, offer "a course of four full years in the liberal afts and sciences," and require for admis- sion "not less than the usual four years of academic or high school preparation." The foundation also decided not to include sectarian or state institutions. They judged that only ffiy-rwo colleges met their criteria. l8

It was not enough simply to prescribe four years of secondary instruc- tion, Pritchett warned, They should also develop a standard measure- ment of time and credit for each subject-the Carnegie unit-and demand that a college require at least fourteen of these units. The foundation officials did not stop there: they also wrote eight pages specifying in great detail the conrent of units in subjects such as English, mathematics, Latin, Greek, foreign languages, history, and science. Thus they not only standardized time and credits but also gave pride of place to traditional academic disciplines. In addition, they put the weight of their influence behind the depanmentalization of high school subjecrs, based partly on practice in higher education. The creation of deparr- ments became another key element in the grammar of secondary school- itg'"

Pritchett and his colleagues in the foundation did not invent from whole cloth either the Carnegie unit system of academic credits or rhe specifics of academic courses. The latter they largely copied from the curuiculum advocated by the College Education Examination Board. The unit system had slowly evolved from the work of rwo college-dominated committees of the National Education Association in the 1890s, the Committee of Ten and the Committee on College Enffance Require- ments. \What the foundation did do, however, rffas to give a more precise definition to the unit as an accounring device and to put its prestige behind the notion that a "standard" high school was one that organized time and subjects in Carnegie units.2o

Pritchett regarded the educational system as a pyramid in which those on the top-the experts in the universities-should set the standards for those below. He agreed with Eliot of Harvard that secondary education was a mishmash. The best way to reform it*and to solve the problem

92

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rll llrr:1ltt'itt11 slrrrlt'rrt', l,, ur r llr r,rl)r(llV t'xlltttrlittg r'<,llcgt's-.-wirs l() us(' tlrc tttost l)l('strlir()u:, ,( lr(,,,1,.r', tlrr'tctrrlrlltlc lor thc rcst. "'l'lrt'lrcttcr high schools," lrr',,vlott'rrr l')0r, "rtrlrritc 1;ullils to recitc. .. stuclics daily five times a week." ll tlrrrt prircticc was good for the "better" schools, it must be good lbr all.2l

Pritchett and the Carnegie trustees were seeking to impose a reform that was feasible at that time in only a minority of high schools. The colleges wanted what the run-of-the-mill secondary school could not provide. In cities with populations under eight thousand, the average high school had fifty-rwo pupils and two teachers n 1902. In such a school there was no way that students could study all the college pre- paratory subjects by reciting in standard-sized classes for an hour a day to gain the required fourteen Carnegie units. There were neither enough students to form classes in the necessary subjects nor enough teachers to teach them, yet the basic calculus of the Carnegie unit was hours spent in class recitation.22

Increasingly, regional associations of colleges and secondary schools required the use of Carnegie units for accreditation of high schools. High schools sought this seal of approval because their graduates could thereby be admitted to college by certificate and usually without exami- nation. The North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, for example, demanded in the 1920s that schools require fifteen Carnegie units for graduation, class periods of at least forty minutes, and a school year of at least thirty-six weeks. State laws also built the Carnegie unit system of credits into the template of the "standard" high school. Although originally intended to improve preparation for college, the Carnegie unit system of accounting and the division of teachers into separate departments also provided a tidy framework for the differentia- tion of curriculum as the high school expanded.23

A system of academic bookkeeping that originally was patterned on "the better high schools" and designed to upgrade preparation for col- lege admissions and to standardize the credit system eventually became part of the grammar of schooling in nearly all high schools, thus affecting students in non-college-bound tracks as well as those headed for higher education. Critics of the Carnegie unit argued that it had frozen sched- ules, separated knowledge into discrete boxes, and created an accounting mentality better suited to a bank than to a school. Learning was becom- ing institutionally defined as serving seat time, progressives claimed, while the reward at the end of the rigid progression was merely a "credit." It was time, thought some reformers, to end what they saw as the domination of the high schooi by thc collegcs.

9i

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T(.h:rllrrrgcs ro llrc Starrdard (irammar of Sclrtxrlirrg Although thc gradccl school and the Carnegie unit rapidly became sran_ dard practice in moderate- to large-sized school districts, were incorpo- rated into state school standards and accreditation requirem.nts, urrd increasingly became part of the cultural definition of a ,,real school,,' they did not go unchallenged. The major critics of the standard grammar of schooling, Iike the originators of that system, were influentia--l educators wf-ro worked through their associations and reform networks to bring about change. It proved far harder to alter thar entrenched system, however, than to create it.

In the Dalton PIan, advocates of individualized instruction assaulted what they regarded as lockstep instruction in high schools. In the Eight- Year Study, sponsored by the Progressive Education Association and foundadons, innovarors challenged the sort of top-down domination of secondary education represented by Pritchett and his colleagues in coi_ leges and universities. And in the 1960s, individual reformels, activists in the National Association of Secondary School principals, and founda_ tion officials questioned the conventions governing space, time, group- irg, and the self-contained classroom with its one teacher of departmentalized subjects.

The Dalton Plan

Helen Parkhurst developed the Dalton plan in the early 1920s (it was named after the Massachusetts town where the innovation was first introduced in the high school). A teacheq rainer of teachers, and foun_ der of a private school, Parkhurst challenged essenrial components of the graded school in which teachers sought ro instrucr pupils en masse in a prescribed curriculum,24

Heavily influenced by child-centered progressives and Maria Montes- sori, Parkhurst was aware of earlier attempts to break the standardized movement of students in graded classrooms. Superintendent preston Search in Pueblo, Colorado, and Frederick Burk in the San Francisco Normal School had pioneered methods of tailoring instrucrion ro indi- vidual students and small groups rather than the whole class (parkhurst visited Burk's model school and adapted some of his ideas, as did Carleton Washburne, who designed a system similar to parkhurst,s in the Winnetka, Illinois, public schools). The Dalton plan was only one epi_ sode in_a long series of efforts ro correct the defects of tire gradld school.25

l)ltt'l<lrrrt'sl w;urt('(l t,, ,,rli.rrrr.'r .,( (,rrrl:u! sr. ltot,ls ilr rv;rys llrlrl rvotrltl revoltrti<rrrizt'tt;rt lrrrr;, .rrrrl lr'.rrrrrrrli l,y r'lirrrinating sell-t'orrtlrirrctl classt.s, wholc-class l't't rl:rrlorr:,, lrlty t,, lilly-livc-minutc lteriocls, and annrrirl promotions antl rctcrrtiorrs. Shc deplored the graded class and the batch- processing of intrinsically dillerent individuals as irrational relics of thc past and violations of the best educational thought. She emphasized thc individual student's freedom and responsibility, cooperation with orhcr students and adults, and time-budgeting to complete assigned tasks. Thc revolution was only partial, however: Parkhurst basically retained thc: raditional curriculum and textbook-based instruction.25

Cenual to Parkhurst's reforms were monthly contracts that teachers negotiated with students. These laid out both the minimum tasks the students had to complete and additional choices if students wanted to go beyond the basic content and skills. The more tasks students chose to do and the beter they did the work-as measured by written re- ports-the higher were their grades. Students were expected to revise unsatisfactory work until they mastered the content and completed the terms of the contract. Large charts recorded the progress of individual students. All students had to study certain required subjects, but it was their responsibility to decide the pace of the work, to select other students to work with, and to elect whether to do supplemenrary study.27

Students moved at their own pace through academic courses in the mornings and then spent afternoons on other subjects such as art, music, or physical education, For each field of study they went to a room, renamed a laborutory, where the teacher and materials were located. V/hen pupils completed the activities they had agreed to undertake for a given period of time, they moved to another laboratory. The plan encouraged students to work individually but also promoted group projects. No fifty-minute periods. No bells. No teachers lecturing or listening to students reciting lessons in large classes.28

Teachers were expected to negotiate the contracts, stock the laboratory with learning materials needed to fulfil the conrracrs, coach students when they ran into problems, counsel when necessary, and monitor the progress of each student. Parkhurst believed that any student could learn if given enough time, and her plan abolished, in theory at least, the draconian judgment of nonpromotion.

\Word spread quickly about the Dalton Plan both in the United States and abroad. Popular magazines such as Colliers and the Saturday Euening Posr profiled Dalton Plan schools. Educators leamed about the reform through books, journals, conferences, and word of mouth. Recognizing that the plan required dramatic changes in school organization, only a

.),94

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I,( w xno()rs lr(t()l)l('(l l'rrt'klrrrt'sl 's t't'lot'ltts wltt,lcsltlc. Mlrltv trrot-r' lr.lttptccl It'rrtrrlt's 1,it't't'rrrt'irl. lly l())0, l(r2 (2 pclcerrt) ol:tJ,600 scconclary schools strrveyccl in a natirxral str-rcly repofted that they had completely reorgan- ized their schools to conform with the Dalton Plan. Another 486 (6 per- cent) of the secondary schools reported that they had introduced a modified version of the plan in their buildings.2e

If. the t62 secondary schools really did institute the whole Dalton Plan, they would have made drastic alterations in business as usual. In the 486 secondary schools that adopted some features of the plan, it is difficult to verify to what degree classrooms were converted into laboratories, fifty-minute periods had been eliminated, promotion practices altered, and contracts and progfess charts used. Not counted in the survey of secondary schools were the many elementary schools that also incorpo- rated portions of the Dalton Plan into their upper grades.

However appealing the Dalton Plan may have been in theory and successful in practice when carried out by skilled and energetic educa- rors, it influenced policy tilkf.ar more than practice. By 1949 a researcher could find only one school that continued to follow the Dalton Plan-the private school Parkhurst herself had founded in New York City. At Dalton High School rtseli the plan lasted only one year in unmodified form and then was dropped entirely after a decade, It did leave at least a modest legacy, said the Dalton superintendent t\Mo decades later: "even in this conservative New England town we are privileged to try little experiments in educational procedure."l0

From attempted revolution in education to a few "little experiments in educational procedure" might be regarded as a considerable come- down. Habituated to the traditional organizational practices and either taking them for granted or seeing them as institutionally and socially functional, educators, school boards, and parents resisted fundamental change. The hold of the standard grammar of schooling was tenacious.

Resistance came from several quarters. Many teachers objected to the massive amount of paperwork and time for individualization that the plan required, Parents and educators protested that motivation and discipline of pupils deteriorated under the Dalton Plan; it was too easy to cheat or goof off, they said. Pupils sometimes complained that fulfiiling solitary contracts v/as more boring than regular classwork. Some educators criticized the plan for not giving students enough social stimu- lus and training. A New York teacher saw it as yet another example of the method mania in public schools: "Last year it was the socialized recitation, or the Gary Plan, or dtamatization or correlation; this year it is motivation, silent reading, or the Dalton Plan. Each is taken up in turn,

96'

itrrlist'titrritr:rlt'lv .r,l,r1,lr,l. 1,r( .( nllt , ll,,,rr'.',1 ()llt l() lllilk(' r(x)lll lor tlrt' l)cxt lr('w(\)lltct, :ttt,l \'( l \\'( ,rl( ll()( ,,,r,',',1. 1'lrt'oltl 1lrt,l,It,trrs r.'ltt,titt."'l

lndiviclrrrrl tt':rr lrt'r:,, lr,,rr'.'r'.. r,.lr..l "try littlc cxperimeuts itr eclucational procedurc" [>y usirrg c(]rlilar) leatures o1'the reform in their self-contained classrooms. 'fhe I)alton Plan gave teachers optional strategies that they could adapt to classrooms organized in raditional ways. Components of the Dalton Plan also continued to appear in programs catering to poten- tial drop-outs, low achievers in need of remedial work, disabled students, or creative pupils unmotivated by traditional instruction, Self-paced ma- terials, contracts, flexibility in the amount of time students take to complete their work, periodic checks to determine whether content and skills have been mastered, and the use of teachers as coaches-these practices are common in such programs. Some vocational classes incor- porated parts of the Dalton Plan and divided time in segments different from the traditional Carnegie unit. The notion of "laboratories" has reappeared from time to time as leaming centers in progressive elemen- tary classrooms.S2

Convinced that the traditional grammar of schooling made no sense, Parkhurst wanted high schools to embrace her plan all at once in ail of its details. This rarely happened, for it would have fundamentally changed the standard grammar of secondary schools and required school

boards, parents, educators, and pupils to alter their cultural beliefs about the character of a "real school." But many of her ideas reappeared as hybrids in an evolving system of public education.

The Eight-Year Study

Other challenges to the standard grafirmar of schooling cropped up across the country. Innovative educators sought to blend subjects and to experiment with curricula, time, space, and numbers of students. They regarded departmental specialization, the Carnegie unit, and the graded school as smaitjackets.

Time after time, teachers have experimented with merging high school subjects into core programs-fusing, say, American history and American literature-to permit greater intellectual integration and flexible use of time and class sizes. In the 1930s in the Canton, Mississippi, High School three teachers created what they called "the integrated work program" in which they and a group of first-year pupils spent five periods a day studying such topics as "Ethiopia, Her Friends and Enemies." They used social science, English, and mathematics to answer the questions gener- ated by the students.ll

97

lI

( )rrc ol tlrr rrrost Iirrrrorrs irrrtl krrrg lrrsrirrg at(ct.tU)ts to revisc curriculum iurrl irrstrtrcriorr alolrg lrr.ogrcssive lincs occurred in Denver. It persisted through rhe renure of lbur superintendents during the 1920slnd 1910s. Jesse Newlon, who

-began his superintendency i fgZO, *u, .o_*irr.a

to Deweyan principles of relating the school to euerydai Uf. *a involv_ ing teachers actively and continuously in devising ;#"1";;d peda- gogy. When a group of teachers work togeth., oir., u p.rioAoi dme on a plan for instruction, he said, when thai group ,,has carried on a series of investigations, has debated the issues pro and con in d"pr.tm.rrtd meetings, in committee, and in faculty meetings . . . that group of teach_ ers will teach befter and with more understinding ,r.d"rffirthy than they could ever orherwise reach.,, Compared witi the .;rff ; similar cities, the reachers in_Denver were highly educated. B.t*..n lgZO *a 19J0, over seven hundred teachers anJprincipals worked on rhirry_seven commiftees to revise thiny-five courses of siudy. Teachers chaired the commimees, were given time during the day to work together, and had the assistance of university curricJum specialists. Committees revised syllabuses and test items based on the .ornrn.nr, of the classroom reach_ ers who field-tested the courses. In the process, Denver gained a reputa- tion as a national leader in implementing progressive insruction.la

In Denver and elsewher., frogr.rriu. .dr.utors resent;d ;iat they called dominarion by colleges oirhe secondary ,.h.ol;;;;rr_. .Th. reason for-the nearly .o-pl"," failure of the ,..orra.ryr r.fi."f, ,. ,._ spond to the progressive stimulus,,, wrote a critic, ,,seems to lie in the college--entrance requirements, which effectively determine th" _ryo, part of the secondary curriculum,, and frceze the ,,curriculum in 16 admittedly artificial Carnegie unirs.,, To subordinu," yourlrlo ur, ,rrti- quated system of academic accounting in ordeno ,rrirfy ,f,. a.rnuna, gf the colleges was afiificial and antieducarional, reformers declared. The battle lines were drawn: progressives versus naditionalists.r,

Out of this concern to adapr -schooling

to students_to what they needed ro learn, in the way they learned 6est_inrt"rd of perpetuating institurional partems dictated

!y ,L. colleges, arose a major artempt toreform secondary education, the Eight_ylar Study (tgil_tgqt). fhe Progressive Educarion Associarion (pEA) sponsored the study, and the General Education Board and other foundations g*. ,f,. pj"iiprrrr, over a million dollars (an immense sum ar the timej a *r.y ir.rt. The PEA's Commission on rhe Relation of School and Coileg. f.rr.rrd.dover fwo hundred colleges to admit highly quaiified ,rri** on rhe recommendation of the principals of rhe ,.hool, selected ,o prrti.iprt.

I

itr tlrt'cx1tt'titttt'ttt lt \\',r', rr()t ,lrllr, rrlt t. r'trltsl tlr.'c.rllcg.,s, lot tlrt'y rvt'r't' having trorrlrl.' .rlll,r( tilrll .,til(l('ilt'i rrr llr,' ( i|r'lrt [)cpl'cssiotr irtrr.l llrt' twenty-t'rirrt's. lr,r,ls \v('r('(lr,,s<'rr ,rs "irrstrtrrliorrs o{tthe highest clraractcr and excellencc and cstablishcd rcputation" liom over two hunclre.l nominated for the project. Among these model schools were ten innova- tive public high schools, including all the high schools in Denvcr, six model high schools in universities, and thineen prestigious independent schools.'6

Freed from such college requirements as Carnegie units in specific subjects, the schools came up with highly individual responses, Philo- sophically, the commission was determined not to tell local schools what to do with their newfound freedom, but it did provide cumiculum consultants and a sophisticated group of evaluators to help them plan and appraise their programs. Often local reformers chose to experiment in mini-schools within a larger secondary school, which was the case in Denver.lT

As time went by, reforms in the schools setded into cenain common pattems. Teachers developed core programs that crossed departmental boundaries and varied the time periods and sizes of their classes. Stu- dents spent less time on mainline academic subjects and more on art, music, and drama, The distinction berween the formal and informal curriculum began to dissolve as students participated in community service, artistic producdons, publications, and decision making in school affairs. Teachers spent much time with each other and students in plan- ning these activities, In short, the grammar of instruction became more individualized and sudent-centered, deemphasizing batch-processing.ls

\)[hen evaluators compared the college grades of graduates of the rwenty-nine schools in the Eight-Year Study with a matched set of graduates of more traditional secondary schools, they discovered that the former performed about as well as the latter in their courses and were more active in collegiate social, artistic, and political li[e. They also found that the graduates of the most progressive schools did the best in college. Given the high social-class background of most of the students and the quality of the selected schools, the success in college of the graduates of the wenty-nine schools does not seem surprising. The chief message of the experiment, said Frederick L. Redefeg the director of the PEA at the time of the study, "was that there is no single course of preparation for success iir college," In theory then, the high schools should have been free to alter the traditional departmentalization of subjects and other features of the grammar of schooling.re

9998

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ll :rrry sclrrxrls slrotrltl lrirvr. l>ccrr ablc to l>rcak thc rnolcl, tr> install a lasting new scr ol institutjonal practices, these should have been. They had originally been selected because they appeared to be outstanding schools, well financed and with staffs hospitrti. to reform. For the most !Tt, ttley served prosperous student bodies. The sponsorship of the PEA, the enormous foundation grants, the curricul,rrr, .on*i*rrts and evaluators, the summer. workshops for planning, the favorali. prof.r- sional. and popular publicity given to the project_these were assers not available to the average reformers of the time.

In 1950 Redefer and rwenty-nine other parricipants in the Eight-year Study-including represenrarives of fifteen of ihe private ,ni p.rbli. schools-gathered to assess the results of the *"ay

"igii y.rr, ,fr., th.

official sponsorship ended. It is likely rhat these pr"iJiprni, *... .or. committed to the reforms than the average staff member. Redefer asked the group what was happening ro the eJucational experiments as they aged: "Do they effect any permanent change in education? Do they leave any appreciable residue the year after?. . . Fir. years later? . . . Ten? How does educational change take place? Is education a carousel with widely heralded experiments slowly fading from the educational.."n.-u, ,o*" nevr attraction takes the spotlight and the music goes round and round?"40

The panicipants mosdy agreed that the reforms had faded, and this judgment was confirmed when Redefer later visited sixreen schools. One of--the parricipanrs at the conference captured the consensus of his colleagues when he said "the srrong br..r. of the Eight_ye"r iirdy hr. passed and now vre are geming back to fundamentalr. b.r, srudenrs wrire fewer articles in English and social science but they ,r. b;;;;ellers.,, Core courses had dropped away, the Carnegie unit with its Lniform periods had reappeared, and departments had reasserted their conrrol of the curriculum. Students spent less time on the arts and extracurricular activiries and more on conventional college preparatory subjects. Most schools had returned. to the old grammJr of schooling, il,ougi ,o*. evidence of the experiments remained.al

Redefer- asked why this was rhe case. The participants pinpointed a number of externai reasons: Vorld War II *j th. iaa Wu. iroar".aa "concem for security [that] tended to strength.n .orrra*urism and authoritarianism" in the school as well us in th-e society; in ,,r.h ,irn.. 'everyrhing connected with ,progressive education, was under firel, (some at the meeting suggested dropping the name ,,progressive,,). Hav- ing more applicants, the colleges could be ,.ror. ,"l".tive than in the

l9l0s or cirrly I')40s irrrrl crtlro tlrrl rrot lirrow itlrottt or tlisirglt'r'tl witlr the linding tltitt lrrolilt'ssr\,( l,r()l'r'.rrrs l,,,,,ltt.c.l gtrotl rcsttlts.'l'ht: cx- periment had bccn "too itrtratrrrrt',r1," suirl onc, and lailcd [o attl.icipirl"c resistance from parents and trustees.42

Internally, the experiment faded in part because the committed teach- ers became "exhausted by the demands made on them, [since] challenges' came too thick and fast for the faculty to digest them." Collaborative progressive teaching was highly labor-intensive and potendally unstable because of turnover of teachers. ln many schools, traditionalists had opposed the reforms from the start and were happy to reasseff the authority of the departments, standard schedules, and the academic disciplines when a more conservative climate reappeared. In some cases, as Redefer found when he visited individual sites, the "model schools" had not been progressive to begin with and had been more interested in the prestige of belonging to the elect than in experimenting. High turn- over of teachers and administrators frustrated continuity, t*4rere reforms stuck, typically the schools had been progressive even before the study and had continued to experiment afterward.al

The story of the Eight-Year Study and its aftermath reveals that substantial changes in the grammar of secondary schools were possible under highly favorable conditions. Colleges were eager to attract students and thus witling to suspend some requirements (as for Carnegie units in raditional subjects). Liberal ideologies attracted both teachers and fami- lies. Powerful support came from foundations and professional associa- tions.

But when conditions changed-when elite colleges changed their tune in admissions, when the political and pedagogical climate turned conser- vative, and when the initial energy and enthusiasm for change dissi- pated-most of the schools reverted to the traditional grammar of instruction, understood by most parents and teachers as standard fea- tures of a "real school." Progressives were often only a fraction of the total faculties of the participating schools, and the changes they intro- duced probably penetrated their institutions only to a limited extent. In some schools, the traditional grammar of schooling was challenged only in experimental classes within the larger institution, and a decade later traditional forms of organization reasserted themselves even in these interstices of innovation. The familiar division of subjects into depart- ments typically reemerged where core courses had thrived for a time, Herbert M. Kliebard observes that "if the success of the 65-year effort to reform the American curriculum is to be judged by the extent to which

100 l0I

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free scl.roolcr.s ()r tlr( ,1,:.. lr,,r,lt'rs, l,t,,poscrl lnaior ofganizatiotral changes within thc walls,l tlrt'lrrrlrlic scl-rools. "I'hey called for ungraded and "open" elementary schools. They developed blueprints of high schools in which

time was a flexible resource (a system often called "modular sched- uling");

year-long courses in established fields were often chopped into "mini-courses" to match the current interests of students and teachers;

teachers worked in teams rather than alone and taught students in large, medium-sized, and small classes;

classrooms were transformed into resource centers for independent study, split into rooms of different size for different teaching styles, and made into social centers where students could meet during time "modules" when they did not have a class.

Architectural and pedagogical forms should follow new functions, they argued, and new conceptions of education demanded a new grammar of instruction as well as open buildings.a8

In the 1960s a coalition of influential organizations and individuals agreed that it was time to overthrow the Carnegie unit, the eggcrate classroom, the teacher-dominated traditional curriculum, passive styles of learning, and the isolation of teachers from each other. Beginning in 1961, the Ford Foundation poured millions of dollars into "lighthouse" high schools to demonstrate the value of comprehensive attacks on the pedagogical status quo. In 1968 the Danforth Foundation gave a grant of more than a million dollars to the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) for a Model Schools Project designed to create the "Schools of Tomorrow" incorporating these new ideas. Uni- versities entered the reform partnership, developing computerized sched- uling programs and training teachers and administrators for the new system.49

The experiment took place under favorable auspices, t}en, just like the Eight-Year Study. The decade of the 1960s was a time of optimism and urgency when innovation was the watchword among the enterprising principals in the NASSP. Foundations and the federal government (un- der Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965)

l0]

Ilnglish, ruath(:rnarics, scicncc, history, geography antl rlrt. likc simply survived the assault against them, then the ef-fort must be counted a failute."44

- In retrospecr, the parricipanrs in the Eight-year Study did not regard

the experiment as a waste of time. They agreed that the effort ,,had been eminendy womhwhile." It had energized both teachers and srudents. As 1 reform, the Eight-Year Study had a shorr, and largely happy, li[e. Teachers learned to plan togerher. "Much of the camaraderie alu.loped benveen administrators and classroom teachers has continued . . . the part of the Study that has persisted is that which grows our of the thinking and philosophy of individuals.,, The majoiinfluence of the Eight-Year Study came nor from crearing a durable new grammar of schooling but from its impact-then and later---on panic-ipants who engaged in building a new pedagogical order.4,

High Schools of Tornorrow

In the 1960s, years of innovation when rebels were questioning the convendonal wisdom in education, reformers proposed another rerhink- ing of time, subjecrs, space, and class size. They believed that they could ,pd 5lerrld change institutional forms when they no longer served hu- mane goals. Typically they regarded the old grammar oi schooling as rigid, hierarchical, and based on a constricted view of human narure. Students, the old system implicitly announced, were young workers who needed to be compelled to leam a desiccated curricjum [y their super- visors-teachers-in standardized classes. Insread, the young shodJ be seem as active, intellectually curious, and capable of taking charge of their own learning. Starting from that pr.*ir., reformers

"argued, the

existing gtrmmar of schooling made no sense.46 Reinventing tle Rousseauean notion that people are bom free but are

everywhere in chains, some radical reformers rejected the institutional form of the public school outright, advocating ,,free schools,' and "schools without walls" to take the place of conventional classrooms, preset cumicula, and raditional teacher roles. A few followed the lead of Ivan Illich in calling for the "deschooling,, of society. Although ,,free schools" brlefly became a hot topic in the popular media aid won influential advocares, they flourished for only, ,hon time. Adventurous "schools without walls," where students became actively engaged in their communities, were tamed in practice into more traditional off-campus activities such as vocarional programs offering academic credit to stu_ dents working as salespeople in stores.aT

102

Wlty lltt' ( inturttr of .\t ltrxtlrrty, l't'rtnlt

provided largc amounts of seed money for schools deemed most Iikely to succeed. And changes did come rapidly. In Oregon, to which the Ford Foundation gave a statewide grant of $1.5 million n 1962, many educa- tors decided to transform their high schools.s0

At Marshall High School in Portland, Oregon, the principal and staff shifted to a flexible schedule, altered the building ro house resource centers and classes of different sizes, and created teams of teachers assisted by aides who worked in the resource centers and performed other tasks. When the new plan started in September 1963, studenrs no longer faced the familiar routine of six periods a day with the same teacher in the same subject at the same hour. The two thousand students met in eleven hundred separate class sessions, some in large groups, some medium-sized, and some small discussion groups of fifteen people. One- third of a student's time was unscheduled and free for conferences with teachers, working in the library or resource room, or lounging in the cafeteia. By holding the content of the cumiculum more or less con- stant-preserving the departmental system and more or less traditional subject matter-Marshail High School avoided reinventing the entire program from scratch, For the motivated pupil the sysrem worked well; it helped to individualize instruction and gave breathing space. But the unmotivated or alienated student tended to fall through the macks or ro cause disruption. "1We still have discipline problems at Marshall," said the vice principal, "but we are trying to find ways to interest students who are convinced they hate school."5l

Such students were a major concern of the team of educators who established John Adams High School in Portland n 1970. Because of their "frustrations . . . in their previous teaching in public schools," said the head of the instructional division at Adams, the team was "generally sympathetic to the view of human nature and human learning espoused by such contemporary educators as John Holt, Paul Goodman, and Herben Kohl. We took it as a marrer of faith rhat all students learn best in a free, unstructured setting where comparative evaluation and other extrinsic pressures are kept to a minimum." The school had most of the flexible organizational forms of Marshall, but the staff were also deter- mined to altet the curriculum and the mode of governance. They re- placed departmentalized academic courses with a team-taught interdisciplinary "general education program" that focused on social problems, basing it on the conviction that the course "should be a means to learn about a sociery in flux, one in which the only constant is change." They struggled to create a participarory mode of decision making in

ll'ltlt ll,r ( it,tltttt,tr ,,f .\',f,r,,,ftrt.t. ltt'r'trtlt

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Agairr, lol s.,rrr,':,rrr,lt'rrrs .rslrccially tlrose who wcrc "highly inrlividu- alistic ancl clcrrtivt"'--llrc rrcw form of schooling worked wcll. Many who had learned to succeed in a more directive environment, however, be- came frustrated when teachers did not tell "the student what he is to do, what he is to learn, nor how." A third group-alienated students "who had been damaged by previous failure" and lacked basic skills-cut classes, roamed the halls, and ended up without the help they needed "to survive in the world of work." And as for the teachers, getting used to new schedules and groupings of students, inventing the multidiscipli- nary curriculum, being responsive to students, and sharing in decision making left the staff "in a state of near exhaustion."5l

The self-critical and adventurous educators who had planned the high school recognized that they faced a clash between their goals as reformers and the values embedded in the community rhey served. Although writ- ers in the popular media and in the educational profession praised the school as a model for reforming secondary schooling, many local people in the lower-middle-class neighborhood surrounding the school were outraged at Adams's departure from what they knew to be a proper school. Two months into the'first year of the Adams experiment, some parents formed a critical group called Citizens for a Better Adams. One parent complained: "Adams High does not teach respect for authority, discipline, basic scholarship, or orderly use of time. The school teaches gross egotism, extreme self-centeredness, myopic self-delusion, and gen- etal anarchy."54

By coupling fundamental changes in cumiculum and governance with flexibility in the use of time and space and other challenges to the familiar grammar of instruction, Adams High School went well beyond reforms in most other innovative high schools of the era. \X/as it in fact easier to try to change everlthing at once? Probably not.

Few high school reformers went so far as to base learning on the libertarian philosophies of Holt and Goodman. But in a period when the bulge of youth from the baby boom began entering secondary schools, rvhen the civil rights and feminist movements were attacking the educa- tional status quo, when activists were protesting the war in Vietnam, and students were questioning traditional norms in unprecedented ways, educators in many high schools were seeking to individualize education, to stress inquiry and social betterment, and to give pupils more choice and initiative in their own learning.55

I

I0.1 I05

In the innovative schools, many studenrc appreciated the ncrv forms of flexibility, such as modular scheduling, electives, classes of differenr sizes, and free time during the school day. Reactions of teachers tended to be mixed. Some applauded the opportunity to work rogethet to hold large or small classes for different periods of time, and to revise the curriculum and create electives. But other teachers felt that they lived in a goldfish bowl as visitors poured in to see the schools of tomorrow (or, altematively, that they worked in a KzooD*a favorite epithet used by conservatives). High turnover among principals in the Model Schools Project hurt continuity in reform, especially since administrators had been catalysts for change in most schools.s6

Many communities grew tired of the reforms and instead wanted the comfort of the familiar grammar of schooling. Most of the high schools of tomorrow gradually reverted to the familiar grammar of schooling. A substantial proportion of the parents and other community members criticized the way srudents used their free time. rVhen principals in flexible high schools were asked to identify problems encountered, 94 percent said that low-achieving students had trouble budgeting time, 84 percent claimed that more students cut classes, 78 percent found that teachers had fewer individual conferences with students than expected, 84 percent observed that teachers continued to dominate discussion even itr small classes, and72 percent said that parents of children who were not performing well in school tended to blame rhe modular schedule.sT

An evaluator of the projects supported by the Ford Foundation ob- served that "without exception, questions of student autonomy and discipline were raised by granting free time. This, along with the per- ceived erosion of academic standards, resulted in pressure from the communities as well as within schools to revert ro more rraditional patterns of. organization." He found that over half the schools had dropped modular scheduling by 1970, and others had substantially modified it (recall that these were specially selected schools that had received grants and technical assistance as well). Policy talk about the virtues of flexible scheduling rose sharply in the 1960s and then dropped just as abrupdy in the 1970s when the troubles in the high schools of tomorow became more evident.'8

By the 1970s, people had begun to think that high schools were in decline and that the institutional innovations of the previous decade were paftly to blame. Gallup polls revealed that Americans were concerned about lax discipline and lower academic standards. In this new policy outlook, flexibility was a fault, not a virtue. Students shoulcl be in a regular class for a regular period, supervisctl lry tlrt'ir tt,irt'hers.'lhey

r06

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Slrtrtrl.l ltitv,. 1..t,,.r r ultr ll.u ,1r,,r,, ., n,rt nt()t('. Strt<lt'trls ttr'r'tl :t "tt'ltl sclrtxll." (ro l,rr,.li l. llrr'1ir,,,,1,,1,1,l,rv:, u,,ts tlrc tltctttcol ttttr,'lt tt'iti.istrr, summed up by ,r ( ,rrlilot trrrr lt'liislrrtor rvlro saicl tlre purposc ol rtcw scltt,ol laws was to make "thc littlc lrtrggcrs work harder." Although they wotrld have used more decorous language, the urban educators of the ninc teenth century would have approved the sentiment. The aim of school- ing, wrote an advocate of the graded school in 1885, "is the imposition of tasks; if the pupil likes it, well; if not, the obligation is the same.")e

A bold yet fragile challenge to the grammar of schooling, the "High Schools of Tomorrow" of the 1960s and early 1970s ebbed as "back to basics" and "excellence" became mottoes of the next wave of reform. The experiment left behind here and there some new forms of flexibility and the memory that the grammar of schooling was mutable. But in most districts, the Carnegie unit, not the flexible schedule, remained the normal pattern.

Reflections

\We have suggested a vafiety of intedocking reasons why some reforms become so institutionaJized that they became the grammar of schooling. Political support for innovations like the graded school and the Camegie unit came from powerful sponsors adept at persuading local school boards, state legislatures, state departments of education, and accrediting

agencies to freeze their reforms into regulations and laws. The timing of these reforms was also crucial; the graded school arrived at the start of the rapid expansion of elementary education and the Carnegie unit on the threshold of a massive differentiation of the high school. The graded school and the departmentalized high school became building blocks in an interlocking and interdependent system; to change one part-say the accounting device of the Camegie unit-disrupted familiar external con- rols such as standards for college admissions or accreditation.

Inside the schools, the grammar of schooling offered a standardized way to process large numbers of people. The grammar was easily repli- cable. The institutional design of graded schools produced a cookie-cut- ter sameness. The departmentalized high school had a greater variety of offerings but a uniform system of accounting, the Carnegie unit. Admin- istrators, teachers, and students learned how to work in this system; indeed, the grammar of schooling became simply the way schools worked. Over time, the public, schooled in the system, came to assumc that the grammar embodied the necessary features o[ a "real school."

Although laws, institutional custom, antl ctrlttrral bclicl.s workccl to-

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gcther to holcl flrc grarllrrirr ol'schooling in place, lr()nr rrrr('to lirne reformers have argued that this grarnmar-itself a product ol history-ill serves its purpose of educating students. Let us build instead, they have said, a new system based on sounder educational principles. Although the challengers have conducted energetic experiments, for the most part their reforms did not last long. Trying to creare major change in one part of the system-a classroom, a school within a school, or even a whole school or district-proved difficult in a broader interdependent system based on the standard grammar. If the reformers atracted funds and professional attention, jealousies from more traditional peers intruded, Turnover of administrators and teachers undermined complex innova- tions that depended on commitment and special talents.60

Two serious problems recurred in the challenges we have examined. One was that the reforms were "too intramural." Lawrence A. Cremin has observed that progressive education declined in part because leaders lost some of their political sawy and lost touch with the opinions of citizens who were not educators. Concentrating on convincing their professional peers, they did not cultivate the kind of broader social movement that might nourish educational and social change. Failure to enlist the support and ideas of the community was especially harmful to fundamental reforms that violated the public's notions of a "real school," as was apparent, for example, in public reactions against the "high schools of tomorrow" in the late 1960s. In the face of such opposition, particularly when the climate of opinion was conservarive, ir was difficult to retain the resources and enthusiasm that sustained change.61

A second common problem was burnout among educational reform- ers. Changing basic organizational patterns creared overload for reachers, for it did not simply add new tasks to familiar rourines but required teachers to replace old behavior with new and to persuade pupils, colleagues, and parents and school boards to accept the new patterns as normal and desirable. Since evidence on outcomes of major structural reforms has been ambiguous, the practitioner "contemplating a change in classroom organization," Milbrey W. Mclaughlin writes, "might be confronting a complicated innovation that shows no clear advanrage over existing practices-at least in the ways that often matter most to school boards, voters, and anxious parents."62

Despite the problems faced by those who challenged the standard grammar of instruction, reform episodes such as the Eight-Year Study or the revisions of instruction in Denver were hardly a zero-sum game. Even if the reforms gradually faded, participants questioned in basic ways what they were doing and were energized by collaboration with colleagues.

108

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!(hat tlt,t's llrt' lrrsloil( :rl ('xl)('r'l('rr( c sr,lggest about attcutpts today to refashion thc gnrrrrrrrrrr t,l sclr<xrling/ Should one concludc that it is impossible to irnprove schooling in basic ways? \We think not, though the task is much harder than many people suspect. \(e suggest that actual changes in schools will be more gradual and piecemeal than the usual either-or rhetoric of innovation might indicate. Almost any blueprint for basic reform will be altered during implementation, so powerful is th.' hold of the public's cultural consruction of what constitutes a "rcal school" and so common is the teachers' habit of hybridizing reforms t,, fit local circumstances and public expectations.

One reason that changing the grammar is difficult is that reforms irr one classroom or mini-school or school or district take place within ,r larger interdependent system. Teachers in an experimental school nr,ry agree that they should combine subjects and teach for depth of unck'r standing, believing that "less is more," yet college admissions officers nury want applicants to have Carnegie units in specific academic subjccts State and district regulations and standard time schedules often impc.l,' change. Gaining the freedom to experiment demands political and ,r ganizational sawy and collective action.

Both in the past and in the present, reformers who have challcrrg.',1 the grammar of instruction have banded together for support and h:rvc often felt that they were part of a broad educational movement. 'l'lrcy have embraced common goals, formed organizations to mobilize pcolrlt', ideas, and funds, and worked collaboratively to lessen a sense of isolirt iorr and burnout and to encourage risk-taking and staff development. ln tlrr:, way, they have sought a middle course between the top-down tro<k',,1 reform of the administrative progressives and the random approirr:lr .l letting a thousand flowers bloom.6l

Lest they, like their predecessors, become "too intramural" ,rr,,l thereby neglect public understanding and participation, reformers rvlr,, want to change the grammar of schooling today need to enlist tl,,' support of parents, school boards, and the community more gerrcr',rlly Participation of the public in school decision making can, of courst', lt'rr,l to conflict and seem to threaten professional autonomy. But in a clcrrr,,, racy, fundamental reforms that seek to alter the cultural coristructiorrs .l a "ted. school" cannot succeed without lengthy and searchirrg 1,rrl,lr, dialogue about the ends and means of schooling.

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