ABSTRACT
The public will to provide an education to all the citizens in a democracy car-
ries with it issues of cost (Who will pay for such an education?) and gover-
nance (How will so many schools be organized and overseen?). It is one of the
great ironies of American education that in order to provide a free public edu-
cation to all its children, schools were created along the model of factory
assembly lines in order to reduce the cost of schooling per child and assure
millions of children of a diploma, a credential of school completion (Callahan
1962; Kliebard 1986; McNeil 1986). A school that is designed like a factory has
a built-in contradiction: running a factory is tightly organized, highly rou-
tinized, and geared for the production of uniform products; educating chil-
dren is complex, inefficient, idiosyncratic, uncertain, and open-ended.
