The infusion of corporate values into progressive education. Professional vulnerability or complicity?
| Pages | 137-159 |
| Date | 01 April 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230410525577 |
| Published date | 01 April 2004 |
| Author | David A. Gamson |
| Subject Matter | Education |
The infusion of corporate
values into progressive
education
Professional vulnerability or complicity?
David A. Gamson
Penn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
Keywords Educational history, Values, Ethics, Education, United States of America
Abstract Examines the history of educational administration in the USA during the Progressive
era (1890-1940). Using Callahan’s Education and the Cult of Efficiency as a starting point,
examines school district-based administrative practices that offered viable alternatives to the
business-oriented, “scientific management” reforms that tended to dominate much of the
educational dialogue and innovation of the early twentieth century. Offers cases studies of three
superintendents who creatively resisted the ideology of efficiency or who skillfully utilized
administrative structures to buttress instructional reforms. Using archival records and other
historical sources, first examines Superintendent A.C. Barker in Oakland, California between
1913 and 1918 and Superintendent Charles Chadsey in Denver, Colorado during the years
1907-1912. Then analyzes the tenure of Jesse Newlon during his superintendency in Denver from
1920 to 1927. Using the conception of “authentic leadership” and the frameworks of the ethics of
care, critique, and professionalism, argues that these administrators demonstrated how leaders
grounded in notions of scholarly skepticism, democratic engagement, and the compassionate care
of children were sometimes able to avoid the excesses of the ideology of “efficiency”.
Callahan’s (1962) trenchant critique of American educational administration
captured the spirit of discontent brewing in the early 1960s. At a time when the
disparities among local school systems in the USA were becoming increasingly
evident – especially as demonstrated by the poor performance of large,
centralized, inner-city schools – Callahan offered a compelling explanation for
the disappointing quality of the nation’s schools. Unlike the critics of the 1950s,
who had identified the “soft” pedagogy of the progressive educators as the
source of failure, Callahan’s analysis depicted the pedagogically inclined
progressives as heroic figures who held the dike against the fierce currents of
short-sighted, efficiency-obsessed administrators.
If American educators had lost their focus on high-quality instruction,
Callahan argued, it was not because of progressive educators’ instructional
experimentation. Rather it was due to school administrators who had become
overly enchanted by prevalent notions of “scientific management” and had
adopted, inappropriately, many of the techniques and values of the
business-industrial world (Callahan, 1962, p. 54). Because of outside
pressures for demonstrable evidence of educational efficiency, Callahan
(1962, p. 52) argued, local superintendents became “vulnerable” to the whims
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
The infusion of
corporate values
137
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 42 No. 2, 2004
pp. 137-159
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/09578230410525577
and standards of local business leaders and thereby lost sight of their core
instructional mission. Callahan not only offered a bold, new interpretation of
the social forces that had influenced the history of education in the twentieth
century, but he also coined a phrase – “the cult of efficiency” – that continues
to represent the ongoing American struggle of balancing high-quality
educational practices with demands for accountability and efficiency.
Education and the Cult of Efficiency demonstrates how, from 1910 to 1930,
the standards of the business world spread across the country like an
ideological wildfire and how corporate terminology was increasingly adapted
into the vernacular of school administrators. Callahan studied a wide array of
historical sources, and his book offers a marvelous portrait of the influences of
the era and of how reformers talked, functioned, and interacted. However,
despite this impressive compilation of evidence, Callahan, by necessity, left
several areas relatively unexplored. I propose to examine three of these
relatively undeveloped themes in this paper.
First, while Callahan did focus on administrative rhetoric, or as Tyack and
Cuban (1995) might call it “policy talk”, he offered less evidence of the specific
practices, or “policy actions”, that were adopted by local schools and districts
during the 1910s and 1920s (Tyack and Cuban, 1995, p. 5). We are left with
more information about national rhetoric than about local policies. Second,
although Callahan (1962, p. 1) viewed his study as describing “a story of
opportunity lost and of the acceptance by educational administrators of an
inappropriate philosophy”, he offered few illustrations of the kinds of
alternative educational arrangements that might have characterized the flip
side of the corporate coin. And finally, he touched on, but did not develop, the
ethical dimensions and consequences of the adoption of business values by
educators across the country. This third theme is especially important, because
at the heart of The Cult of Efficiency lies a story of deep conflicts between
beliefs and ideologies. Indeed, the Progressive era in American education,
usually considered to cover the period from the 1890s through the 1930s,
marked a time of major social and economic turbulence in the USA; and as a
consequence, educators were called on to make fundamental transformations in
the ways children were treated and educated.
These gaps in Callahan’s analysis of the era between 1910 and 1930 give rise
to three questions: “What was the ‘lost opportunity’ of the Progressive era?” “Is
there any clear evidence of potential policy alternatives to efficiency?”; and, if
so, “what are the implications for our understanding of educational ethics in
both the past and the present?” In developing answers to these questions, I
focus on what Callahan called “the neglect of the instructional side” of
education due to a fascination with business ideology. Specifically, I examine
the kinds of instructional reforms that local educational administrators put into
place in the first three decades of the twentieth century, and I look at practices
that offered potential alternatives to a strict focus on educational efficiency.
JEA
42,2
138
To continue reading
Request your trial