The Age of Average in Education

Todd Rose has written a compelling book called 'The End of Average.' It is a text worthy of reading by anyone who cares about and is interested in the education of our children. Mind you, it is a book that details the onset of the concept of 'average' in many fields outside the field of education. In this regard, it is far reaching.

As I am finishing the book, I reflected on one of the first passages that deals with the concept of 'average' as it pertains to our educational system. The General Education Board in 1912, yes 1912, published an essay that described Fred Taylor's vision of schools. Taylor was a leading proponent of the idea that people should conform to the ideal of average.

Here's what the essay proposed for American education at the time..."We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians...nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply...The task that we set before ourselves is very simple as well as very beautiful...we will organize our children into a little community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way."

I'll have plenty to say regarding this portion of the essay in the coming days but, suffice it to say, as a former teacher, I find this a dehumanizing manner of assessing the value of education. Just as sadly, if this is what still persists in the American classroom today; well, that is most troubling.

Dick