The Bureaucracy of Education

The post-war decade has brought an increase in the criticisms of contemporary public education, particularly at the high-school level, a more searching examination of the bases of current educational philosophies, an augmented interest in education on the part of parents, of university professors and administrators, and of businessmen, industrialists, government officials, and other employers of the products of our schools. Many of these criticisms and inquiries reflect honest and sincere misgivings about the practices of some of our schools, others have been promoted by jingoistic, neo-fascistic, and other crackpot groups with selfish interests to promote. or obvious axes to sharpen. That some of these criticisms and doubts have validity is supported by the increased attention being given by educators and laymen alike to the work of our public schools and by increasing complaints about the illiteracy of many public school graduates. Related to these criticisms is another serious problem, that of the educational bureaucracy which in a large measure controls our public educational svstem. This bureaucracy consists in part of the faculties of our schools and colleges of education, in part of superintendents, principals, and other officials of some of our school systems, in part of powerful educational organizations of national scope and pervasive 9ower. This bureaucracy, through the interlocking relationships of its parts, in a large measure dictates the laws which govern the certification of teachers, controls the training of large numbers of our teachers, determines educational philosophies and practices, designs curricula, and wields great influence upon the writing and selection of textbooks. Like other bureaucracies, it has its generic characteristics: it is highly sensitive to criticism and, when criticized, commonly seeks to neutralize criticisms by personal attacks upon its critics, by impugning their motives, or by attempts at suppression of their criticisms; it is selfexpansive and self-reproductive in supra-Malthusian degree; it makes a fetish of methodologies; it loses the power of discrimination, so that it becomes increasingly unable to distinguish between the basic and trivial in education; and it confuses change with progress. Evidences of the power of this bureaucracv are numerous, so numerous that I can describe onlv a few of them. Laws governing the certification of teachers, for example, are created ostensibly by state legislatures, but the design of these laws is in large measure of the behest of the educational bureaucracy-of the state superintendents of schools, of state boards of education, the members of which are often professors of education or persons influenced bv them, and of schools of education. A study of the recent history of these certification laws indicatcs a common trend in many states: an increase in the number of credit hours in courses of education which must be completed by those who would gain teaching certificates. In some states, recent proposals have been made which would require as many as 40 to 50 credit hours of courses in education as a minimal prerequisite to teacher certification. Fifty credit hours of college work occupy nearly two full years of the standard undergraduate college course; a certification requirement of this magnitude would compel teacher-training students to devote most of their junior and senior years to the studv of courses in education. This would mean that students preparing to become teachers of chemistry, English, commercial subjects, vocational agriculture, modern languages, bi'An article of this nature always results in a number of replies. You are invited to submit manuscripts dealing with Dr. Fuller's criticisms. The co-editors will give equal space in a future issue of The Amierican Biology Teacher to the paper or papers which, in their estimation, seem to present best, the other side of the problems raised in this paper.