ABSTRACT
It is not surprising that the founders of our public education system used the factory as their model of organization. What we now recognize as an ineffective form of organization was the newest and most effective approach to mass production our forebears had ever seen. In setting up the public schools, the starting and closing whistles were replaced by bells. The foreman was called a teacher, but was expected to follow a strictly defined routine in her task, every bit of which was prescribed. Indeed, the administrative analogy was so close it was finally necessary for teachers to unionize in order to get decent salaries and working conditions.
