DOCUMENT RESUME ED 075 955 95 EA 005 195 AUTHOR Tyack, David B. a TITLE From Village School to Urban System: A Political and Social History. Final Report. INSTITUTION Stanford Univ., Calif. School of Education. SPONS AGENCY Carnegie Corp. of New York, N.Y.; Office of Education (DHEW), Washington, D.C. BUREAU NO BR-0-0809 PUB DATE 1 Sep 72 GRANT OEG-0-71-0587 NOTE 260p. EDRS. PRICE MF -$0.65 HC-$9.87 DESCRIPTORS Administrative Organization; Bibliographies; I Bureaucracy; Case Studies; Centralization; *Community Control; Discriminatory Attitudes (Social); *Education; Educational Change; Educational History; Governance; Groups; Organization; *Organizational Change; *Politics; Rural Schools; Social Influences; *Urban Education . IDENTIFIERS *Common Schools; Pluralism r: ABSTRACT This book is an interpretive history of the organizational revolution that took place in American schooling during the 19th century, its politics and ideology. It attempts to assess how the schools shaped, and were shaped by, the transformation of the United States into an urban-industrial nation. It looks at the shift from village school to urban system using a variety of social ir perspectives and modes of analysis. "Community control" in the rural and village school (a pattern of governance followed by many of the early city schools) is analyzed first. Then, the development of ir ideological and organizational consensus in the search for an urban educational order is traced--a process frequently complicated by heterogeneous values among the urban populations and diffusion of power in school governance.. Next, the author deals with the centralization of education (1890-1920); and reformist emphasis on expertise, efficiency, and the disinterested public service of ir elites. Case studies of four cities offer variations on the central theme and analyze the opposition to centralization. Finally, some of the major changes (1890-1940), the appearance of more complex lt educational structures and new specializations, and the development of a "technology of discrimination" are described. The author stresses that it is the persistence of historical myths and problems that today stands in the way of realistic reform of urban education. An extensive bibliography is included..(AUthor/WM) 0 0 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH. EOUCATION & WELFARE OFFICE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPnO DUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIG. MATING IT POINTS OF VIEW OR OPIN IONS STATED 00 NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EMI. CATION POSITION OR POLICY FINAL REPORT Project No. 0-0809 Grant No. OEG-O-71 -0587 FROM VILLAGE SCHOOL TO URBAN SYSTEM: A POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY By David B. Tyack 5c..11001 D4 Educes4-ics4 Stanford University Stanford, California 9{305 'September 1, 1972 The research reported herein was performed pursuantto a grant with the Office of Education, U.S. Department ofHealth, Educa- tion, and Welfare. Contractors undertaking such projects under Government sponsorship are encouraged to expressfreely their professional judgment in the conduct of the project. Points of view or opinions stated do not, therefore,necessarily'represent official Office of Education position or policy. FILMED FROM BEST AVAILABLE COPY DEDICATION To My Students -- Past, Present, and Future ii TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE PROLOGUE vi PART I: THE TRIBE AND THE COMMON SCHOOL: COMMUNITY CONTROL IN RURAL EDUCATION 1. Introduction 1 2. The School as a Community and the Community as a School 3 3. Teachers and Patrons 4 4. The Curriculum as Bridge to the World Outside. 6 5. "The Rural School Problem" 9 6. Power to the Professional 11 PART II: THE ONE BEST SYSTEM AND THE POLITICS OF PLURALISM: NINETEENTH CENTURY 16 1. Introduction 16 2. The Swollen Village 18 3. The One Best System 26 4. Dissenters 49 5. Political Configurations 57 6. Lives Routinized Yet Insecure 63 7. Machines: Political and Pedagogical 69 8. Symbolic Issues 71 9. A Struggle Lonely and Unequal 76 10. The Functions of Schooling 89 PART III: CENTRALIZATION AND THE CORPORATE MODEL: REFORM FROM THE TOP DOWN, 1890-1920 100 1. Introduction 100 2. An Interlocking Directorate and Its Blueprint for Reform 102 3. Conflicts of Power and Value: Case Studies of Centralization 119 3.1 New York 120 3.2 Philadelphia 125 3.3 St. Louis 129 3.4 San Francisco 132 4. Political Structure and Political Behavior . 139 iii I PART IV: INSIDE THE SYSTEM: PERSPECTIVES ON URBAN SCHOOLS, 1890-1940 148 1. Introduction 148 2. Success Story: The Administrative 1 Progressives 152 3. Science 161 4. Victims Without "Crimes" 175 FOOTNOTES 187 BIBLIOGRAPHY 214 L:P I i il iv PREFACE For many years, and intensively for the last five, I have been trying to understand how urban schooling developed and with what consequences. A long search of this kind has neither an arbitrary beginning nor end: this report represents what I could put on paper by September 1, 1972 and constitutes what I have concluded thus far, together with some indications of the remainder of the analysis. Often historians find that immersion in primary sources alters their conception of the problems they investigate, changing not only the details of the story but often the basicquestions they ask. Such has been my experience. I sought originally to examine northern urban education of black Americans and collected a mass of evidence (which I intend to edit for the use of others). But the deeper I went, the more the important puzzle seemed to be how the system, of education itself developed, since both individualsand groups -- like blacks -- were subordinated to theorganization. One could not understand the effects of schools on.childrenwithout first understanding how schools operated, who controlled them, for what ends. This report, then deals primarily with the political and administrative history of urban schools, although I have also tried to incorporate the perspectives of many diverse social groups on urban systems. I am planning to supplement this kind of history . with more "views from below." In a final section I will examine changes since 1940 and comment on alternatives available today. I am much indebted to the United States Office ofEducation and to the Carnegie Corporation for their generous grants supporting this research.My debts to individuals are but partially indicated in my footnotes. I intend to give more full acknowledgement of them in the future. PROLOGUE This is an interpretive history ofthe organizational revolution that took place in Americanschooling during the last century. It deals with the politics of education:who got what, where, when, and how. It explores some of the changes ininstitu- tional structure and ideology in educationand what these meant in practice to the generations of Americanswho passed through class- rooms. And it attempts to assess how theschools shaped, and were shaped by, the transformation of theUnited States into an urban- industrial nation. I intend this study to be exploratoryand tentative. In a. sense this synthesis is prematuresince a new generation of talented scholars is directing its attention tomonographic studies of urban schooling and will enrich,our knowledge ofhow schools actually operated. I am deeply indebted to this contemporaryscholarship, much of it still in unpublished form. But there is also a mass of earlier empirical investigation into thecharacter of urban education -- gathered for purposesother than historical interpretation --that yields useful insights when subjected to newanalytic questions and value perspectives. What I am attempting here is adovetailing of old and new scholarship, together with my ownresearch, into a general interpretive framework. If the book prompts others to con- test or...refine its explanations, tomake its perioeization more pre- cise, to describe missing dimensions, somuch the better. I am addressing this study notonly to specialists but also to citizens curious and concernedabout how we arrived at the present crisis in urban education. We stand at a point in time when we need better to understand those educational institutionsand values we have taken for granted. Unless one denies the possibility of human choice, ideas, people and institutions mighthave developed differently in history. We need to turn facts into puzzles inorder to perceive alternatives both in the past and the present. The way we understand that past profoundly shapes how we makechoices today. Any historical writing perforce does violence tothe kaleido- scopic surface and hidden dynamics of everydaylife. The same "reality" may appear quite different todiverse groups and individuals. That fact alone destroys the possibility of asingle objective account of the meaning of events to variouspeople. Much of the written history of schools has revealed the perspectiveof those at the top of the educational and social system. We need as well to try to examine urban education from the bottom up asstudents, parents and teachers saw it and from the pointof view of clients who were victimizedby vi their poverty, their color, theircultural differences. Accordingly I have tried to look aturban schooling from the varyingperspectives of several social groups, realizingthat their views of the world were real to each of themalthough perhaps not to others.1 At the same time, I am attempting toanalyze a system of schooling that by and large did not operatein haphazard ways. When I began this study I wanted totell the story of urban education from the point of view of those who werein some sense its victims, the what was poor and the dispossessed. I soon realized, however, that needed was not another tale of classroomhoror, for we have a plethora of those, but rather an attemptto interpret the broader political process and the social systemof schooling that made such victimization predictable and regular --in short, systematic. Behind slogans that mask power -- like"keep the schools out of politics" -- and myths that rationalizeinequality -- like the doc- trines of ethnic inferiority -- lieinstitutional systems called schools that often reinforced injusticefor some at the same time that they offered opportunity to others.