Texts:1969 The End of an Order: Difference between revisions

<p>Our recent history shows how the principle that has been guiding pedagogical effort is no longer accepted by many on every instructional level. The familiar institution, the established <i>idée directrice, </i>no longer harmonizes our different endeavors, and despite excellence of the parts, these do not cohere spontaneously into a humming whole. As our institution ceases to form the whole, the parts increasingly work at cross purposes. The crisis will remain, not until we perfect each part through institutional change, but until we change our institution to regain our sense of the whole and to re-<i>form</i> our common concerns. To understand the scale of this task, let us trace how the old order became obsolete.</p>

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<p>Americans never really relaxed the long discipline of the Depression and World War II. After a brief demobilization, Congress passed several National Security Acts, a Selective Service Act, the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty, and a large Military Assistance Program. The Cold War was on, if not declared. Educational leaders responded to the Communist challenge with the Cold War institution of American education, which formed our diverse instructional programs well into the 1960's.</p>

<p>With Sputnik, the enemy seemed to outdistance us through relatively more rapid technical, economic, and educational advances. The Cold War institution became a national mania. Every magazine called for higher academic standards, and Admiral Rickover became a pedagogical authority with his admonition "Education Is Our First Line of Defense—Make It Strong." Long sought federal aid to education passed easily as a National Defense Education Act. The highest, widest possible achievement in productive skills became the end of the system, for most believed that such achievement was essential both to regaining technological leadership and to personal success in a society that would need indefinitely to mobilize all energies in the production of power. This individual incentive, the carrot of federal funds, and the stick of nation-wide testing programs made the system respond: enrollment in higher education has climbed steadily and the number of highly qualified workers has markedly increased. Suddenly critics find the American way of life is a mandarin system dominated by a scientific-educational estate.</p>

<p>To be sure, much room for further intellectual improvement remains; but it will not occur under the aegis of the Cold War institution, for this guiding principle has ceased to work. Large groups do not believe that the <i>raison d'être</i> of their pedagogical efforts should be <i>raison d'état</i>. People doubt that it is either desirable or prudent to continue to link educational effort, however indirectly, to Cold War priorities; and they assert that it is time to remedy the social injustices perpetuated as long as intellectual achievement for the sake of national power was the guiding pedagogical principle. Two developments have exposed the educational crisis by showing the Cold War institution to be obsolete.</p>