Innovators and Makers of American Education

Innovators and Makers
There have been many who have been innovators in the educational realm over time. As I read the PBS website on Educational Innovators, I read about a few people with whom I was not familiar. It opened my eyes and made me realize that education has come a long way over time. The issues we have today have changed tremendously from the fight that some of our ancestors had. After I read about the Innovators, I began reading Gratto’s Makers website. I can say I was rather shocked and the contrast between the two.
The innovators introduced new ideas, new thoughts and change for the educational system. They seemed to have a common goal, educate all the children. There were some who fought for women’s rights, some for desegregation, some for higher education; but all in all, they still were introducing ideas to all citizens that in order to have a more productive society, education was the path to take. Did they have all the answers, absolutely not; however, they were acknowledged as innovators because they didn’t just go with the flow, they offered up new ideas and fought for them.
When I viewed the Gatto website, they focused more on schooling as a business. It stated that traditional schooling had three purposes: 1. To make good people, 2. To make good citizens, and 3. To make each student find some particular talents to develop to the maximum. To me, it appears that would be the reasons the innovators introduced any and all ideas in order for those purposes to become fact for all of our citizens.
The contrast, Gratto mentioned a fourth purpose. He stated the fourth purpose was to make them a servant of corporate and political management. For the ‘business of schooling,’ children were viewed as a human resource. “Human resource children are to be shaped and molded for something called “The WorkPlace,” even though for most of American history American children were reared to expect to create their own workplaces.”
Deborah Meier is deemed an innovator in American education. Her name was not one with which I was familiar. I found her quote interesting: “What I wanted was to create thoughtful citizens — people who believed they could live interesting lives and be productive and socially useful. So I tried to create a community of children and adults where the adults shared and respected the children’s lives.” As educators, shouldn’t this be a common goal that we are after?
Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and J.P. Morgan were all referred to on Gratto’s site as the makers of modern education. Since Gratto took the business realm in looking at education, it makes sense that he would refer to businessmen. However, were these men just born with the inclination and know-how of becoming industrialist greats? Were there companies, fortunes, lives, not built on a new idea…so essentially they were innovative in “social efficiency”?
I think that all in all, education is important in any realm. We learn by doing, by examples, and by interacting with others. Being in a public school setting, one learns many things… you learn tolerance, people skills, how to think for yourself. Every job that exists, at the heart of it all is education… if they cannot read and write and do arithmetic, can their ideas be fruitful? I think we must be able to communicate with others and have some common ground in order to continue on with a quest for working and succeeding in life.