Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: This Poster Session will provide visual and documentary evidence about school and factory buildings from the mid 19th century to the present to explore the hypothesis that education and business goals intersect and that the similarities in school and factory design consciously represent this relationship. Using research in both the history of technology and history of education, two questions are examined. First, why and in what ways are the physical structure of the school buildings and their underlying goals related to factory buildings and the philosophies that directed their designs? Secondly, by placing their ideas in “brick and mortar”, industrialists made [more] permanent the American system of manufacturing; did educators, often in concert with industry, then “build” a definition of the American “school” that dominates into the 21st century?

For further discussion, this examination of the school-factory relationship also addresses the shifting nature of work (addressed extensively in the labor/technology literature) and its affect on both types of buildings over time. Changes in manufacturing were more difficult to achieve in the 20th century, partly because of the physical structure of the factory (e.g. in automobile and steel industries). This raises the same question about schools. Shouldn’t those who advocate for “restructuring” in education also be aware of the role of the building in advancing change in schools? Should educational change, thus, be approached with a different lens, recognizing that barriers to change may be real walls as well as perceived notions of schools and schooling?