Composition: History & Theory: 1900 - 1919
The Vocational Guidance Association
Description
In The American School From the Puritans to No Child Left Behind (2008), Joel Spring explains that the Vocational Guidance Association was founded in 1913. According to Spring, the founders of this association believed that “the major function of education is to guide students into their proper place in the corporate structure and socialize them for that structure through the social life of the school” (270, emphasis added). Public schools were then directly linked to the needs of the economic system. In this section of his work, Spring discusses the ongoing debate over what caused these changes in the educational system. Apparently, historians disagree about whether these changes reflect public demand or corporate greed. Spring asks, “Were schools simply institutions for maintaining social order and ensuring a climate that protected new corporate wealth? Or were schools primarily serving public interests?” (272). The immigrant “threat to the way of American life” was also a focus in this debate (273). Educational changes could be used to produce “cooperative and docile workers” (274). Schools became synonymous with factories while children were being viewed as future factory workers.
Date of Upload
3/13/09