Toward a Re-thinking of Mass Public Schooling: A Personal Exploration

Mass public schooling as we know it was one result of the industrial revolution. Its organizational form was heavily influenced by the ‘code’ of industrialism, the scientific management movement and industrial bureaucracy. While the promise of the philosophy underlying the use of the bureaucratic form in social institutions is tempting, the literature of bureaucracy indicates that bureaucratic organizations are most successful when certain preconditions are met, less successful when they are not. These preconditions are increasingly absent from our schools, school systems and the environment in which they operate. Hence, the bureaucratic form is increasingly counter-indicated, and its continued use may be a contributing factor in what appears to be a growing level of dissatisfaction with the system and dysfunction in the system. By recognizing a distinction between the terms ‘education’ and ‘schooling’ we may be able to move beyond mass public schooling to a situation in which the public is well-educated. Key words: bureaucracy and schooling, education and schooling, school organization

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Between Education and Catastrophe: The Battle over Public Schooling in Postwar Manitoba by George Buri

University of Toronto Quarterly ◽

10.3138/utq.87.3.118 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 87 (3) ◽

pp. 470-472

Author(s):

Jason Ellis

Keyword(s):

Public Schooling

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Party and Democracy

10.1093/oso/9780198735854.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Piero Ignazi

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Organizational Development ◽

Interwar Period ◽

Historical Perspective ◽

The State ◽

Societal Change ◽

Contemporary Society ◽

Mass Public ◽

Post War ◽

Totalitarian Regimes

The book integrates philosophical, historical, and empirical analyses in order to highlight the profound roots of the limited legitimation of parties in contemporary society. Political parties’ long attempts to gain legitimacy are analysed from a philosophical–historical perspective pinpointing crucial passages in their theoretical and empirical acceptance. The book illustrates the process through which parties first emerged and then achieved full legitimacy in the early twentieth century. It shows how, paradoxically, their role became absolute in the totalitarian regimes of the interwar period when the party became hyper-powerful. In the post-war period, parties shifted from a golden age of positive reception and organizational development towards a more difficult relationship with society as it moved into post-industrialism. Parties were unable to master societal change and favoured the state to recover resources they were no longer able to extract from their constituencies. Parties have become richer and more powerful, but they have ‘paid’ for their pervasive presence in society and the state with a declining legitimacy. The party today is caught in a dramatic contradiction. It has become a sort of Leviathan with clay feet: very powerful thanks to the resources it gets from the state and to its control of societal and state spheres due to an extension of clientelistic and patronage practices; but very weak in terms of legitimacy and confidence in the eyes of the mass public. However, it is argued that there is still no alternative to the party, and some hypotheses to enhance party democracy are advanced.

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Indigenous higher education sector: the evolution of recognised Indigenous Leaders within Australian Universities

The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education ◽

10.1017/jie.2019.30 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-7 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Stacey Kim Coates ◽

Michelle Trudgett ◽

Susan Page

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Indigenous Education ◽

Indigenous Australians ◽

Access To Higher Education ◽

Public Schooling ◽

Indigenous Students ◽

Early Experiences ◽

Commonwealth Government ◽

The 1960S ◽

Over Time

Abstract There is clear evidence that Indigenous education has changed considerably over time. Indigenous Australians' early experiences of ‘colonialised education’ included missionary schools, segregated and mixed public schooling, total exclusion and ‘modified curriculum’ specifically for Indigenous students which focused on teaching manual labour skills (as opposed to literacy and numeracy skills). The historical inequalities left a legacy of educational disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Following activist movements in the 1960s, the Commonwealth Government initiated a number of reviews and forged new policy directions with the aim of achieving parity of participation and outcomes in higher education between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Further reviews in the 1980s through to the new millennium produced recommendations specifically calling for Indigenous Australians to be given equality of access to higher education; for Indigenous Australians to be employed in higher education settings; and to be included in decisions regarding higher education. This paper aims to examine the evolution of Indigenous leaders in higher education from the period when we entered the space through to now. In doing so, it will examine the key documents to explore how the landscape has changed over time, eventually leading to a number of formal reviews, culminating in the Universities Australia 2017–2020 Indigenous Strategy (Universities Australia, 2017).

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