Why I Support the Factory Model of Education

The title is kindof clickbait, but also kindof not.

I'm sick of hearing people tee off on the "factory model of education." You can read, if you're interested, how schools weren’t actually modeled after factories (with the exception of things like the monitorial system, which no longer exists). But regardless of historical accuracy, decrying the factory model has become a lazy cliche for people who are mad at schools. It's often shorthand for age-graded systems, tossed around with the phrase "one size fits all." Which leads me to my argument. I think an age-graded education system makes a lot of sense, and I'd like to argue the case.

I have conversations from time to time with families who are concerned that their kids aren't being challenged enough. I don't mean for this post to be an attack on families, I love the families I work with and I always want them to advocate for their children. But over and over again, when we think a kid isn't challenged enough, the instinct is always to ask whether they can move faster. I see the same thing from schools. Debates are always about how fast students should move through the curriculum and what acceleration options are appropriate.

But here's the thing. I bet that, if we accelerated students so that they learned as much as they possible could, at least 15% of students could meet high school graduation requirements by the end of 8th grade. We don't want that! (To be clear, I work at a school that does a lot of concurrent enrollment with the local community college and I am very much in favor of getting students college credits in high school. There's plenty of time for that without constant acceleration.) Part of the purpose of school is for socialization while kids mature into adults, not just to accelerate students through the curriculum as fast as possible.

So there's all this focus on whether students can or should go faster in school. Then there's the logistical challenge of designing curricula for those different levels, trying to make sure kids can move between them, not giving teachers too many preps, and so on. What we end up with is different options for students to go 5% faster through the material, or classes that segregate more successful from less successful students while they do the same math. And there's lots of dithering and bickering that goes on, even just about that 5%! I understand it makes a lot of families feel better that they got their kid into the "honors" class or whatever. But it's not solving the basic problem that lots of kids are bored in school, and it's focusing all our energy into inadequate solutions.

Here's what I would like: Students and teachers and families accept that all kids will learn generally the same things in each grade. It's not a race. We can make sure there's a clear and accessible path to calculus in high school. we can track students if that's something the school wants to do. We can keep some acceleration options for very exceptional cases. But by and large everyone will learn the same stuff in a given grade or course. Once we accept that we can stop dithering so much about whether students can go a little faster or which level students should be in as if that will solve boredom forever.

In my experience, the true solution to boredom in school isn't to try and move students a little faster, it's to offer more options for topics to explore. I wrote a while ago about the challenge assignments I provide for students each week; that's one good example of what I mean. But there's so much more out there! Supplemental curricula focused on problem solving, puzzles, places to explore interesting topics, and more. If we could take all the time schools spend every year trying to figure out exactly how fast that "honors" class should go or meeting with concerned families or giving placement tests, and redirect that energy into assembling and sequencing supplemental materials for students to explore, we could do a way better job of keeping all students challenged.

None of this is easy. It's hard for teachers to manage a classroom where students who are successful with the content can move on to their own explorations. It's hard to help students feel freedom in what they want to learn. It's hard to build a supplemental curriculum that works day after day, year after year. But it's definitely possible.

So let's stop railing against the "factory model of education." Education isn't a factory and never has been. Go read the history if you want to. Regardless, age-graded schools are the best way that we've found to organize education for everyone. If we can accept that fact we can do way more to challenge students within those constraints, rather than offering unsuccessful solutions year after year.