while those considered advanced went to According to American gilded-age reformers professional and academic classes (Wrigley, like Chicago Public Schools (CPS) 1982). With everyone in their “place” social Superintendent Edwin G. Cooley (1857-1923), order would be restored. Bierce was known for American civilization was headed for collapse his ability to manipulate the epistemological in 1909. 1 Cooley’s solution was to administrate elements of time and space (Grenander, 1997) the CPS according to principles of science and and in this article; Bierce’s short story becomes efficiency. Cooley eventually resigned, an epistemological lens through which I treat however, because of struggles over his historian Julia Wrigley’s (1982) account of administrative approach (“Expect Cooley,” Cooley’s educational bureaucracy, with tropes 1909). In that same year the noted author found in Bierce’s science fiction. Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) 2 compiled a Conversely, both Cooley and Moxon collection of his short stories to mark the close did not maintain control over intelligence. of his literary career. In this collection appeared Cooley, in fact, encountered resistance to his a short story, “Moxon’s Master,” which first reforms from mid-level superintendents, appeared in 1893. It was a tale about a reclusive building principals, teachers, and organized student of science named Moxon. A narrator in labor (Rousmaniere 2007; Wrigley, 1982). This conversation with Moxon, who speculated on narrative also attempts to reveal parallels in the nature of life and the presence of it in all Cooley’s bureaucracy in relation art education matter, tells most of the short story. Later, the in Chicago, in what I term the science fiction of narrator found Moxon playing chess with a intelligence. This narrative speaks to the theme robot in his machine shop. When Moxon of this volume of the Journal of Social Theory achieved checkmate, the robot lost control and in Art Education: students’ growth, learning, murdered his opponent, and the building burnt and assessment, which become acts of down. The narrator awakened in the hospital assessination – as barriers and limitations pondering if it all was real, or not (Bierce, placed on human lives. 1893/2014). These two men – Cooley and Moxon – both worked with systems of artificial intelligence and imposed them upon their subjects – Cooley’s public school students and

Moxon’s robot – making them creatures of science. Cooley and other educators like him were out to ward off social collapse with a system wherein students were tested and sorted according to their mental capacity. Based on these mental tests, students considered less Figure 1. “Education in the year 2000”, by French postcard artist intelligent were placed in technical classes, Villemard c1910. National Library of France

The Machine and Science Fiction of 1 Edwin Gilbert Cooley (1857-1923) was Chicago Public Intelligence Schools Superintendent from 1900 to 1909 (Cooley, Edwin Gilbert, 2009). The World English Dictionary defines 2 Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) was an American the term “machine” in two ways — First, as an editorialist, satirist and author of short stories. He was known “an organized body of people that controls for horror stories and science fiction writing. His “writing shows the dependence of external reality of the shifting activities, policies, etc.” (Machine, 2014, para. awareness of a perceiver,” often manipulating “the 8), as found in the CPS and its bureaucracy. epistemological categories of space and time.” Critics “have The second definition is “an assembly of [cited] Bierce as an early postmodernist” (Grenander, 1997, p. 29). interconnected components arranged to

transmit or modify force in order to perform that created a pleasant and calming atmosphere useful work” (Machine, 2014, para. 1). Moxon to support students’ adjustments to the world gave a similar definition of a machine: “Any (i.e., learning) (Gyure, 2011).3 Ironically, these instrument or organization by which power is clinical spaces also truncated student’s applied and made effective, or a desired effect identities as they limited students to the kinds produced” (Bierce, 1893/2014, para. 4). In fact of classes they would be allowed to take. he declares, “I do believe a machine thinks Students were faced with long-term limitations about the work it is doing” (para. 6). Cooley’s in the jobs they could get upon leaving high test-driven efficiency was precisely such a school that paid lower earnings, lesser housing bureaucratic machine that “thought” – it choices, and lower social status. differentiated and sorted students according to their intelligence levels and then tracked them Cooley, Child Study, and Social Efficiency into art and industrial classes. Moxon’s Chicago Public School art educators discussion of machines that “think,” in robots were among the teachers ensnared within programmed and automated for specific tasks, Cooley’s assessment bureaucracy and there is parallels the narrow focus of Cooley’s technical much in this narrative that today’s art educators high schools, where students learned to think in can learn to better understand their own rhythm with factory machines (Bierce, metrically laden school systems. Then and now, 1893/2014; Callahan, 1962). Testing students’ public school administrators were, and still are abilities to do tasks and programming a robot to preoccupied with profiling the conditions of also do tasks are arguably two ways to create education through high-stakes testing. Our forms of intelligence and they are both current discourse about everything from school overlapping fictional representations of mental report cards to school systems have constrained activity and constitute a science fiction of teachers and hampered students (Fitzgerald, intelligence. 2013; Heilig, 2011). Likewise, early 20th- If the CPS testing machine can be century art teachers also felt constraint in the defined as a technology, then educators treated CPS technocracy driven by test data and students as technologically classified humans, tracking. as if they were cyborgs from myths of science The CPS culture of testing was only a fiction, which were part human and part small part of the larger bureaucracy that machine (Pope, 2005). Child-study stretched across metropolitan Chicago. psychologists ranked students’ mental capacity Progressive4 city planners and social scientists by imposing a particular medical language of descriptors such as “backward … subnormal 3 School decoration in the gilded-age American high …[or] feebleminded” (Ryan, 2011, p. 343). schools constituted the placement of graphic and three- dimensional art forms to facilitate the development of good This part-technology and part-human culture of character in students; but Gyure’s (2011) history reveals that art schooling comprised Cohen’s (1999) educators were also enamored of the therapeutic value of medicalization of education and included, “the school decoration used to create a calming school atmosphere, especially in Chicago’s new and innovative high school infiltration of psychiatric, psychoanalytic and buildings of the early 20th century. therapeutic norms, concepts, and language of 4 Kidel (1999b) defines progressive education as discourse … into virtually all aspects of specific educational traditions that derive from John Comenius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, and American schooling … in the twentieth Friedrich Froebel. Broader uses of the term progressive connote century” (p. 249). Indeed, Cooley intended the advancement of science, technology, and industrial growth th th Chicago’s public high schools to be designed as in the 19 and 20 centuries. Cremin (1961) traces the decline of the progressive education era to the closing of the clinics that functioned as therapeutic machines Progressive Education Association in 1955, but Kidel (1999b)

Funk, C. (2014). The creatures we “Assessinate”: A tale of “Mental Testing” as science fiction in Chicago 5 public high schools in 1909. Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (34) (S. Bey, Ed.). 3-15.

were bent on moral and fiscal reform. They 1900, he put forth his agenda of differentiated reorganized and centralized the city, suffusing schooling. Cooley planned a dual system in Chicago’s press, commerce, and public affairs which schooling after the grammar grades was with tropes of efficiency. They strove to housed in two kinds of high schools. Some eliminate waste and control in a city that had students would be sent to technical high expanded by two thirds, from 503,185 in 1880 schools, where boys learned mechanical to 1,698,575 in 1900 (McClendon, 2014). By drawing, woodworking machining, and the turn of the 20th century, the majority of electrical work and girls learned domestic Chicagoans were mostly European working- applications of handicrafts, sewing, and class immigrants who outnumbered native-born cooking. Other students would go to elite high Anglo-American Chicagoans. Because of this schools for professional classes to prepare for shift, the elite officials and executives in charge managerial jobs, architectural drafting, of Chicago’s civic and commercial affairs commercial art, photography, and college believed something had to be done, lest society preparation at some high schools (Gyure, 2011) as they knew it would collapse (Rury, 2005). Cooley had the support of the recently formed Just as the city planners set out to reform an Chicago Commercial Club (CCC) of elite entire city, the Chicago Board of Education corporate executives, including retail magnate (CBE) and Superintendent Cooley deployed Marshall Field, who was also a school board reorganization of the CPS into a social and member. Field and other corporate elites economic hierarchy, in concert with the newly wanted schooling to focus on vocational stratified metropolis. training and not excessively intellectual academic subjects, which, they felt, were Public High Schools in Chicago wasted on working-class students (Wrigley, The CPS stood in a sea of contention, 1982). with every problem from language barriers to Cooley’s dual school plan met with the ethnic animosity among new immigrants resistance, however, led by the Midlevel struggling to establish themselves. These Superintendent Ella Flagg Young, (1845-1918)5 newcomers segregated themselves in their own who advocated for child-centered education, neighborhoods, each with their own political teachers, and the arts. She opposed Cooley’s bosses who negotiated with bosses in other dual plan and pushed for comprehensive high wards. Personalistic alliances and corruption schools with a combination of vocational, created a cacophony of politics in Chicago’s professional and academic subjects. Flagg public agencies and, not the least of them was supported teachers and felt they should have a the CPS system (Wrigley, 1982). voice in the administration of schools. In fact, The solution to these problems was to Cooley endured many battles with teachers and expand Chicago’s high schools from exclusive organized labor. Eventually the Chicago Daily college prep academies into much larger high Tribune reported that the embattled schools with vocational classes for working- class students. Reform efforts progressed 5 Ella Flagg Young was a progressive educator and unevenly through the 1890s, but when Cooley student of the philosopher John Dewey. She first became moved into the CPS Superintendents office in superintendent of schools in Chicago in 1887, then professor of education in the University of Chicago in 1899, and principal of the Chicago Normal School in 1905. From 1910 to 1911 she was elected the first woman president of the National Education notes other progressive movements in the late 20th century association, and finally, Young served another term as CPS derived from the work Paolo Freire, Elliot Wiggington, and Superintendent from 1909 until her resignation in 1915 Myles Horton among others. (Wrigley, 1982).

Funk, C. (2014). The creatures we “Assessinate”: A tale of “Mental Testing” as science fiction in Chicago 6 public high schools in 1909. Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (34) (S. Bey, Ed.). 3-15.

Superintendent would resign from his post, child study in art education drew from late 19th- citing stress and exhaustion (“Expect Cooley,” century psychological studies of children and 1909). their art, according to such European and The CBE appointed Young as the American psychologists as James Sully (1842- succeeding CPS Superintendent, to appease the 1943), Earl Barnes (1861-1935), Georg wrath of teachers and their affiliates. Cooley Kerschensteiner (1854-1932), and Ebenezer left Chicago for a job as president of the D. C. Cook (1837-1913).6 Although a full discussion Heath Publishing Company of Boston, but of this research could be an article unto itself, returned to Chicago in 1911, when the CCC what is important to know here is that this hired him as business adviser from where he strain of psychologists generally believed that continued to promote vocational education. In children grew and developed on their own, later years, business leaders presented Cooley’s moving through stages. vocational education plan before the State Child study and art education evolved Legislature, in 1913, 1915 and 1917, only to be from similar traditions. Let us backtrack to the defeated each time (Wrigley, 1982). 1880s and the unfolding of child study in women’s activism. Clubwomen reformers from Child Study across the United States adopted the practice of As school administrators and what Lawrence A. Cremin (1988) terms commercial magnates battled in public view, “familial pedagogy” that emerged in the 1870s there emerged a quieter force, known as the within the social gospel movement among “child study movement.” Child study “of the Protestant groups and social settlements. Both first half of the twentieth century sought to familial pedagogy and art education were based describe child development as a maturational on the some of the same educational process that is independent of experience and philosophies, including the work of Friedrich learning” (Maturation, 2008, para. 2). In other Wilhelm August Froebel (1782-1852) whose words, psychologists studied children to idea of the “kindergarten” nurtured the determine how they developed naturally capabilities of children (Efland, 1990). These without formal tutoring. It was “the first reformers believed that a child’s nature had organized movement to target public school potential assets to shape into adult productivity reform in the United States and to deploy the and this perspective flew in the face of terminology of centering in or on the child” Cooley’s reasons for assessing the needs of his (Baker, 2001, p. 428). Child study was also part students. of the larger mental hygiene movement that Gould (1996) has shown that in the late was unfolding within the “medicalization of 19th century, there began a shift away from the public schooling” (Cohen, 1999, p. 249). These practice of physical assessments, toward so-called clinics shielded students from what ranking intelligence based on behavior and raged outside – the cacophony alarmist testing to estimate mental activity. Physical educators saw as “[s]ociety … flying apart.” assessments were widely practiced in such They believed that schooling with “scientifically constructed curriculum at its core 6 Efland (1990) provides a more developed discussion could forestall and even prevent that calamity” of art educators in child study and developmental psychology. He observed that James Sully, Earl Barnes, Georg (Kliebard, 1986, p. 29). Kerschensteiner, and Ebenezer Cook tended to associate the art Child study for art educators differed of young children with artifacts of indigenous people, calling from the strict control of efficiency educators. them “primitive” (p. 160). This movement anticipated a later shift toward children as expressive agents through art making According to historian Arthur Efland (1990), practices.

Funk, C. (2014). The creatures we “Assessinate”: A tale of “Mental Testing” as science fiction in Chicago 7 public high schools in 1909. Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (34) (S. Bey, Ed.). 3-15.

approaches as Phrenology and Craniometry— popularity of eugenics theories8 in the United wherein intelligence was supposedly States and Europe with a firm racial bias, determined by measuring the structure of the Christopher masked his approach as based cranium (methods now thoroughly discredited solely on the collection of objective data. Thus as pseudoscience).7 These scientists presented was constructed a human-conceived hierarchy no qualms about assessing individuals and of mental functions, named with testing sorting them into social groupings. descriptors to signify intelligence (Ryan, 2011). The Chicago Board of Education (CBE) Christopher followed current thinking at formalized child study, as a way to profile the that time and embraced the notion that physical and mental needs of the CPS’s intelligence was an inherited, genetic trait. overwhelming numbers. In 1899, the CBE Preparing the way for the DCS, Christopher commissioned Board member Dr. W. S. called for further study to determine the impact Christopher (d. 1905) as a principal advocate of nationality on children’s intellectual abilities. for a four-month study of CPS students. Many Christopher argued that if it “is the state’s duty CPS students were recently arrived immigrants to educate normal children, it is doubly its duty from Eastern and Southern Europe, and this to educate these less favored ones,” using study was meant to determine if they were teachers with special psychological training. “vital and vigorous children who could become His final recommendation was to make child energetic modern workers and citizens” study a permanent practice in schooling these (Churchill, 2008, p. 341). Data included: children. This practice was eventually measurements of physical features—size, organized within the DSC, established in 1899 weight, strength, lung capacity, hearing, and (Chicago Board of Education, 1899, p. 27). The general fitness, following the then-current Child-Study Monthly praised Chicago’s new belief that physical traits were indicators of department as the most advanced child study good genes and thus determined mental agency in the country (Smedley, 1900). capacity. Published results stated that the Through this formalized agency, the CPS now students ‘‘who have made greater intellectual had policy and procedures for differentiating advancement are on the whole taller, heavier, and tracking students according to race, stronger, [and] possessed a greater endurance’’ ethnicity, and economic class (Ryan, 2011). (Chicago Board of Education, 1899, p. 52). Sorting students by mental capacity Christopher sorted the students in would also have affected CPS art teachers, with poorer condition into classifications of “backward” or subnormal (functioning below 8 Eugenics was an umbrella term for a variety of grade level) or the classification of social philosophies based on genetic theories of the time. A “feebleminded” (more than backward). number of Educators disparaged students considered inferior, but are not always clear about which side of the eugenics Although his work reflected the growing movement they followed. Stephen Jay Gould (1996) is the most accessible history, while Edwin Black’s (2003) contains a copious account of American and European eugenics movements leading to World War II. Black (2003) describes 7 Stephen Jay Gould’s (1996) The Mismeasure of two camps of eugenics practice: 1) Positive eugenicists Man provides a concise account of the development of early followed theories of Francis Galton with constructive measures physical assessments in relation to the emergence of genetics of genetic regulation, “suggesting, facilitating, predicting, and and intelligence testing. Stephen Murdoch’s IQ: A Smart even legally mandating biologically conductive marriages” (p. History of a Failed Idea (2007) focuses on the development of 18). 2) Negative eugenics took prominence after Galton’s death intelligence testing in the 20th century. John White’s (2006) in 1911 and sought to rid society of “genetically unfit – from Intelligence, Destiny and Education: The Ideological Roots of medically infirm to the racially unwanted to economically Intelligence Testing explores the cultural roots of education in impoverished” through methods ranging from selective American and European religious traditions of predestination. breeding to forced sterilization (p. 19).

Funk, C. (2014). The creatures we “Assessinate”: A tale of “Mental Testing” as science fiction in Chicago 8 public high schools in 1909. Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (34) (S. Bey, Ed.). 3-15.

some of their students considered able to students and advocated for the presence of arts merely copy patterns, as carpenters, machinists, in public schools, drawing upon a long held or domestic workers; and others considered tradition in Chicago set by the American social able to design as artists and architects. In reformer activist, and educator Francis Cooley’s (1901) description of the Wayland Parker (1837-1902). differentiation of students, he did not refer to In the previous decade, child-centered art, but he did refer specifically to manual educators like Parker advocated for teaching ability. Cooley argued that many children had that centered upon students’ overall “motor classes of mind” because “intelligence understanding, with visual art forms like was a variation in the life history of animals drawing and clay modeling, at the heart of most selected on account of its special fitness to aid learning activities (Efland, 1990; Wrigley, in the struggle for existence” (Cooley, 1901, p. 1982). Amburgy (2002) observed that 54). He continued to state that people engaged approaches like Parker’s were criticized by in manual activity out of necessity did not need efficiency-minded administrators like Cooley in an abstract form of intelligence, which he the “fads and frills” controversy, which carried believed would not develop in the majority of into the 20th century. In 1902 the issue gained students. Looking through the lens of genetics momentum, when the legislative committee of alone, Cooley argued that because of what he the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL) was considered natural limitations in so many charged with investigating the supposedly students, the schools would have to shift from wasteful child-centered schooling (Wrigley, academic to practical subjects (Wrigley, 1982). 1982). Their Report on Public School Fads This was Cooley’s clinical solution to (Chicago Federation of Labor and Industrial maintaining social control, as a form of the Union Council, 1902) revealed that instead of medicalization of education (Cohen, 1999), the alleged wastefulness from the fads, they complete with the race and class bias of Social found students acting in what they described as Darwinism, enshrouded in its cloud of natural and intelligent ways, thriving and bureaucracy. enjoying their schooling (Wrigley, 1982). Wrigley (1982) notes that the CFL Effects of Chicago Bureaucracy on Art legislative committee ultimately rejected claims Education that child-centered teaching with art (i.e., fads Cooley’s (1901) statement about and frills) weakened the schools. The report students with a “motor class of mind” could not noted advantages in art instruction, such as have sounded more technocratic if it came from plain paper for drawing from observation cost Moxon’s description of robots. To think that less than drawing books for merely copying students were simply unable to develop the pictures. Child-centered educators and the CFL ability to think abstractly, let alone make generally did not object to vocational artworks, would have undermined the education, so long as it was balanced with foundation of child-centered teaching and academic subjects; but Cooley’s dual system shaken art educators (Cooley, 1901, p. 54). would have centered vocational training in high Reformers and activists like Ellen Gates Starr schools and co-opted labor's tradition of (1859-1940)9 assailed such pigeonholing of apprentice training. They also objected to placing academic subjects into separate high 9 Ellen Gates Starr was a co-founder of Hull House with the well-known reformer, Jane Addams (1860-1935). She also spearheaded the Chicago Public School Art Society, which school buildings. See Brown (2007) for her history with Hull installed graphic and sculptural art forms in Chicago’s public House and Addams.

Funk, C. (2014). The creatures we “Assessinate”: A tale of “Mental Testing” as science fiction in Chicago 9 public high schools in 1909. Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (34) (S. Bey, Ed.). 3-15.

schools, which would exclude most working- rhythm, then it might also be imbued with a class students from academic courses they consciousness, or at least in the minds of wanted to take for social refinement and students collectively focused on their tasks advancement. under the bureaucratic cloud of “social Just as Moxon found out too late that he efficiency.” could not control his own robot, Cooley’s The term “social efficiency” was a control of working-class students through broad umbrella term for many complicated exclusion from the arts was effective only in efficiency movements in the early 20th century. school. Young adults of the working classes, For historian of education Edward Krug (1964), including vocational high school students, often social efficiency was defined one way or knew the value of arts and culture, especially another, depending on who was talking. On the academic education, from life in their native other hand, another historian of education, countries (Wrigley, 1982). In Chicago, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann (2000), termed members of the working classes sought out the social efficiency as a vague slogan without a arts where they could gain access, like art clear definition. Still other historians (e.g., exhibitions at department stores, such as Kliebard, 1986; Schipps, 2006; Spring, 2005) Marshall Fields, and the performing arts of define social efficiency in amalgamations of the Vaudeville Theatre (Oberdeck, 1999; machine bureaucracy with ideology. Tyack Richardson, 1911). Amburgy (2002) noted that (1974) terms the educators who followed these the common notion of most people not caring efficiency trends as “administrative about art, placing more value on practical and progressives.” Yet Kate Rousmaniere (2007) useful forms of knowledge, was not the case. It argued that all administrative progressives is likely that students, whom educators couldn’t be lumped together as supporters of excluded from learning about art forms, found this movement, for many mid-level other ways to form their tastes in the arts. administrators did not buy into scientific management. Thus, and the landscape of social Social Efficiency efficiency was complicated. Cooley’s bureaucracy was part of a Historian Herbert Kliebard (1986) larger educational ethos known then as social framed social efficiency as a melding of social efficiency, with parallels in Cooley’s theory and systems of scientific management. administration and Bierce’s short story. The social theory of Edward A. Ross (1901) Through Bierce’s (1893/2014) lens we see that known as “social control” was prominent in the Moxon cites theories also heard from educators work of educators like David Snedden (1868- and social scientists of the turn of the 20th 1961), Ross Finney (1875-1934), Charles A. century. To substantiate that a machine can Elwood (1873-1946), and Charles C. Peters (b. have consciousness, for example, Moxon cites 1881).10 Kliebard (1986) characterized Edward Herbert Spencer’s (1820-1903) theory that life “is a definite combination of heterogeneous 10 Edward A. Ross (1866 – 1951) was a scholar in changes” and if “consciousness is the product economics and a follower of race purification (Edward of rhythm, all things are conscious, for all have Alsworth Ross, 2014). Scholars who followed Ross included: motion, and all motion is rhythmic” (Spencer as David Snedden (1868-1951) who believed that the entire school should follow doctrines of social control and efficiency. He cited in Bierce, 1893/2014, para. 26). If the served as commissioner of education in Boston, where a system CPS bureaucracy can be regarded as a machine of dual schools was established. He returned later to the faculty set in motion to produce consistent outcomes of Teachers College, Columbia University for the rest of his career (Drost, 2000). Ross L. Finney (1875-1934) was an efficiently, as if it were a kind of reliable American Educator known for public education and genetics

Funk, C. (2014). The creatures we “Assessinate”: A tale of “Mental Testing” as science fiction in Chicago 10 public high schools in 1909. Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (34) (S. Bey, Ed.). 3-15.

Ross’s thinking as “a kind of intellectual 1893/2014). schizophrenia” (p. 91). In one sense, Ross was Historian Raymond Callahan (1962) a Social Darwinist who admired the thinking of outlined the organizational concepts behind the “restless, striving, doing Aryan, with his Taylorism, called “functional foremanship.” In personal ambition [and] his lust for power ... this system, Taylor replaced traditional, compared to the docile Slav or the quiescent punitive military-style bosses with specialized Hindoo [sic]” (Ross, 1901, p. 3). In another bosses for specific roles, such as training, sense, however, Ross also believed that social specializing in consistent speed on task, amalgamation had corrupted what he termed equipment repairs, payroll, routing materials, the “Aryan instincts of Teutonic genius” and it and discipline. This system was governed by became necessary to place Anglo-Americans in four principals of scientific management: 1) charge of society. He reasoned that with Anglo- Replace rule-of-thumb methods with the Saxons in charge, public school systems would science of a task; 2) train, teach, and develop supposedly become better institutions than the worker according to scientific standards; 3) families for instilling “obedience to an external cooperate with workers to ensure work is done law” (p. 164). according to standards; and 4) divide equally the responsibilities between worker and Taylorism managers. Arguably, the factory became a While Ross believed that his social collective cyborg, with the most work carried hierarchy facilitated successful industry, there out in the least amount of time, with the most were practical matters. Frederick Winslow efficient movements, all of which coupled Taylor’s (1856-1915)11 “scientific human effort with mechanical power. Just as management, or “Taylorism,” as it is known, Moxon animated a robot with intelligence and was efficiency applied directly to working chess-playing skills, it seems that school tasks. Factories were organized so workers’ administrators like Cooley also “animated” thoughts and movements synchronized with the their “creatures” by bridling the behavior of repetitive rhythm of factory machines, thus faculty and students in schools regimented as producing humans in sync with technology. Tayloristic factories, creating a bureaucratic Taylor’s match of human consciousness with machine that thinks. mechanical movement is also reminiscent of Taylor and Ross had complementary Moxon’s belief that consciousness was present theoretical positions. As Ross (1901) believed in movement and rhythm of anything (Bierce, that Anglo-Americans should maintain control over workers, based on what he considered natural ability; Taylor had moral concerns (Finney, 1921). Charles A. Ellwood (1873-1946) is known for about overseeing workers. Proper supervision his work in scientific psychological sociology in the United States. Ellwood knew Edward A. Ross at Cornell University. would curb what Taylor (1903) termed “natural His doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago is laziness” and turn workers into “first-class considered the first presentation of social psychology based on men” (p. 1365). Yet, the two men differed: principles of academic psychology. (Ellwood, Charles A., 2014). Charles C. Peters (b. 1881) was an American Ross’s social control was based on belief in Educational Sociologist known for his Foundations of Aryan superiority, whereas Taylor’s hierarchy Educational Sociology (1924) and The Curriculum of strived toward a utopian objectivity of science Democratic Education (1942). 11 Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) was an and efficiency, which could instill humanitarian American industrial engineer considered the originator of influences on labor relations. In effect, working scientific management in business, whose ideologies and precisely by the clock bolted down White theories constitute what is often termed as “Taylorism” (Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 2009). Anglo-American privilege within a racially

Funk, C. (2014). The creatures we “Assessinate”: A tale of “Mental Testing” as science fiction in Chicago 11 public high schools in 1909. Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (34) (S. Bey, Ed.). 3-15.

biased hierarchy, which conflated Ross’s and present sufficiently bewildering.” (p. 387). Taylor’s theories into one structure. Eventually, Bobbitt (1909) framed his eugenics lens the race and class bias of social efficiency warning of a twofold problem: first, “[t]he emerged in U.S. public schools as Ross’s social more highly endowed classes furnish a far control and Taylor’s scientific management smaller proportion of the parentage than is congealed in the a technology of curricula, or a furnished by the stupid, unambitious, poorly- machine that thinks. endowed strata at the bottom” (p. 387). Second, this shift indicated that “[a]bility is dying out at Social Efficiency and Curriculum the top simply because it is not being born. John Franklin Bobbitt (1876-1956),12 There is a growing proletariatization of our was the educational giant of curriculum based high race, simply because the proletariat on social efficiency. Bobbitt came to the furnishes the major portion of the parentage” University of Chicago in 1909, just when (p. 387). These problems, Bobbitt claimed, Cooley left the CPS System. Although Bobbitt would have consequences in two undermining (1909) was an advocate for Taylorism, his effects: 1) The melioration of the races, and 2) views were also imbued with the race and class growth of “lower” races. Bobbitt’s message bias of eugenics. In thoughts similar to Ross’s seemed clear: What starts out as the human race social control, Bobbitt pre-supposed that teetering on the edge of their “Eutopia” has intelligence was inherited and correlated to become the collapse of “civilization … digging racial characteristics. Just as Moxon drew from the pit into which it must fall if these two Spencer’s idea of consciousness in rhythm, powerful, undermining processes are not Bobbitt framed the future of the human checked” (p. 394). Bobbitt’s message became a population with a magnified, pessimistic take major voice in school curriculum, as if to set in on evolution: Humans were blind to their motion the forces behind the CPS’s demise, seeing themselves in a “Eutopia [sic], a bureaucratic machine to not only bring social millennium, a City of the Sun, a Platonic order, but to prepare for the collapse of society. Republic, but always defeated” (p. 385). His It seems that if figures like Taylor and solution was biology that revealed the “secret Bobbitt had their way, the making of all of their decline” and he believed it would be commercial products would become machine “[e]ugenics, the newly-arising science which driven, while craft receded, along with the seeks to improve the inborn qualities of our supposed “waste” of child-centered pedagogy race” that holds the solution to this social in a race-biased hierarchy. The social efficiency dilemma” (Bobbitt, 1909, p. 386). expert David Snedden (1917) made this shift Based on these theories, Bobbitt (1909) even more obvious eight years later, when he pointed to feeblemindedness as the reason that questioned the relevance of practicing the arts public school educators have a poor “raw at all. He believed that in the new century, material” (i.e., “students”) to work with, along evolution had taken industrial society past a with more “educational difficulties which are at primal state into a future driven by science and technology. Any romantic strains of visual arts were to be abandoned. Efland (1990) 12 John Franklin Bobbitt (1876-1956) was a student of summarized Snedden’s outlook stating, “that G. Stanley Hall. He became known as a school efficiency expert in his day and is important in history for his scientific while art still had a place in life, it [was] not as approach to curricula. His work was widely criticized by important for the survival and expansion of Progressives like John Dewey and William H. Kilpatrick, but civilized societies as science” (p. 165). As elite his work laid the foundation for a new technological approach to curriculum. (Kridel, 1999a). educators forecasted the reorganization of the

Funk, C. (2014). The creatures we “Assessinate”: A tale of “Mental Testing” as science fiction in Chicago 12 public high schools in 1909. Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (34) (S. Bey, Ed.). 3-15.

public school systems, they also bespoke the ethos of mental hygiene (Cohen, 1999). This establishment of elite hierarchies on an bureaucracy did not promote what Hall (1901) apocalyptic scale. Undoubtedly, art educators termed “super intelligence;” instead, it curtailed would have faced challenges within turbulent it. changes in American demographics, especially if they bought into Bobbitt’s tragic forecast. Learning The difference between Cooley’s Reflection on Growth, Learning, administrative control and Hall’s (1901) Assessment, and Assessination psychology boils down to how students learned If science fiction foretells new best. Cooley felt that students in vocational developments in lived experience, then Bierce’s classes should learn through discipline and hard story that was first published in 1893 predated work. He and his followers believed that liberal the beginning of Cooley’s superintendency by arts and art activities (i.e., fads and frills) would 13 years and yet, similarities emerge between distract students from learning the value of hard Bierce’s story and Cooley’s Bureaucracy. What work. To 21st-century ears, Cooley’s approach follows is a reflection of these parallels as they may seem extreme, but during the gilded age, fit with the theme in this volume of the Journal his thinking would have been more tolerant of Social Theory in Art Education: growth, than that of other Social Darwinists, like Cesare learning, assessment, and assessination. Lombroso (1835-1909) and Arthur MacDonald (1856-1936),14 who concluded that individuals Growth classified as “feebleminded” were supposedly Human growth and development were an unredeemable threat to society and implicit in science-fiction tropes of super predisposed to crime and vice (MacDonald, intelligence with mechanical brains or 1893). In science fiction, such latent fear would intelligence potions in fiction (Bleiler & have created suspense, just as it did when Bleiler, 1990). However, the fictive character of Bierce played the wonder of a chess-playing Moxon was not the only figure making claims automaton against Moxon’s flirtations with about the presence of life and intelligence. The power beyond his control, only to have his psychologist G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924)13 creature attack and kill him. Similarly, believed that superior intelligence could emerge reformers also conveyed “suspense” and through art activities. He stated that “guardians “danger” when they disparaged “organized of the young should keep out of nature’s way” state care of the ‘dependent classes,’” because (Hall, 1901, para. 3) so that children’s it only to impeded human progress, expression of their own ideas should be contradicted natural law, and ultimately supported through activities, like drawing” prolonged the suffering of individuals destined (Hall, 1901 para 10). These conditions, Hall to be criminals (Platt, 2009, p. 20). (1901) concluded, would “bring the race to the higher maturity of the superman” (para. 23). 14 Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) Conversely, one could argue that the obstacles was a conservative Social Darwinist in the 19th and early 20th Hall wanted to keep out of the way were the centuries. Lombroso believed in the existence of a "Criminal educational bureaucracies and the confining Class," a morally inferior species with physical traits reminiscent of apes, lower primates, and save tribes" and should be restrained (Lombroso as cited in Platt, 2009, p. 21). 13 The American psychologist and educator G. Lombroso's work was not translated into English until 1911, Stanley Hall (1844-1924) was known for his evolutionary after his death, but American criminologists knew of theories and for bringing the idea of adolescence to significance Lombroso's biological determinism from Arthur MacDonald’s (HALL, G(ranville) Stanley, 2009). treatise Abnormal Man (1893).

Funk, C. (2014). The creatures we “Assessinate”: A tale of “Mental Testing” as science fiction in Chicago 13 public high schools in 1909. Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (34) (S. Bey, Ed.). 3-15.

feared was flying apart. As Bierce’s Moxon Assessment amazed readers by giving materials mechanical The DCS’s differentiation and tracking power and movement, in which, he claimed, of students by physical assessment and testing existed consciousness; Cooley’s bureaucratic was a way of taking stock of students, or what “machine” classified and sorted students by Bobbitt (1909) termed the “raw material.” measuring their mental capacity and connected Hence, student recordkeeping and processing them with mechanical power and movement. were important, as if the CPS had become one Just as Taylor (1903), organized factories by of Moxon’s machines that think (Bierce, synchronizing the minds of workers with the 1893/2014). In 1909, the association of a movement of machines, Cooley synchronized machine with thinking was unheard of to most the minds of students with a bureaucratic individuals, for there was no formal distinction “machine” that sorted them into differentiated between natural and artificial intelligence, as in levels of instruction with differentiated degrees the 21st century. Artificial intelligence emerged of social power. later in the 1930s, when Alan Turing originated Cooley also followed principles of concepts leading to what John McCarthy would efficiency, thinking they would lead toward a term “artificial intelligence” (McCarthy, et al., science-driven utopia; but within the shadows, 1955, para. 1). In 1909, there were no he was also preoccupied with maintaining an computers, as there are today, but the human elite social hierarchy with privileged Anglo data-processing infrastructure in armies of Americans in charge of individuals they teachers, clerical staff, typists, and calculating considered less intelligent. Just as Bierce machine operators recorded and processed data (1893/2014) told of animated automatons and on the ability and progress of each pupil made them seem unnervingly possible with mathematically and systematically. Every data Darwinian theory, Cooley envisioned American worker knew the business well, from the society out of control with a penchant for superintendents’ with metric business methods apocalyptic drama, if not the end of civilization. learned in graduate school, to teachers whose Bierce’s Moxon claimed that where there is jobs depended on teaching the same lessons on movement there is life while Cooley pushed the same day, and recording grades and boundaries of natural law into the amorphous calculating averages (Callahan, 1962; Wrigley, social realm of intelligence. At the end of this 1982). These acts of assessment and tale, readers are left to ponder which is the recordkeeping, it would seem, fabricated artificial or at least reduced to science fiction in fictional descriptors of mental activity that were acts of assessination. computed and classified, naming students as “sub-normal” and “feebleminded” (Ryan, 2011, References p. 343). Just as Moxon considered his robot the Amburgy, P. M. (2002). Fads, frills, and basic subjects: Special transformation of matter into the thinking studies and social conflict in Chicago in 1893. Studies in Art Education, 43(2), 109-123. automaton that fascinated readers, the CPS Baker, B. M. (2001). In perpetual motion: Theories of power, system became systematic thinking machine for educational history, and the child. New York, NY: Peter Lang. assessing and sorting students, to create an elite Bierce, A. (1893/2014). Moxon’s master. In A. Bierce (Ed.), social hierarchy. Can such things be? Ambrose Bierce Project. Retrieved from http://www.ambrosebierce.org/cansuchthingsbe.htm#moxon Conclusion Black, E. (2003). War against the weak: Eugenics and America’s campaign to create a master race. New York, NY: Cooley was caught up in the craze of Thunder’s Mouth Press. efficiency to keep order in a world that he Bleiler, E., & Bleiler, R. J. (1990). Science-fiction: The early years.

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