As Carnegie Pushes Against the Carnegie Unit.
What might Ella Flagg Young tell Carnegie Foundation President Tim Knowles?
I watched Mr. Knowles stand before a huge, crowded ballroom in San Diego and say it was time for the Carnegie Unit to go, for education to change. He even referenced John Dewey and Paolo Freire. And he said if he had a time machine, he’d like to go back to 1906, when his organization explicitly tied learning to the amount of time kids spent sitting on their collective asses. “I’d tell them to give that an expiration date,” he said.
All good stuff… except that makes it sound as if the Carnegie Unit, or any of the awful educational strategies adopted between 1860 and 1910, were once good ideas.
Newsflash: They weren’t. Not the notion of seat time, nor the division of subjects, nor dividing kids up be age and tying specific learning to a born-on date. Not the lecture as a primary means of instruction. Not the textbook. Not the mandatory school day and school year.
None of it was based in evidence or research at all. None of it was based in diverse experience. None of it was grounded in humanity or any belief in open opportunities.
And people knew it. Educators knew it. Not a decade or a century later, but when these bad ideas were adopted.
