Rod Paige's Misguided Comparison of Schools and the Ford Assembly Line

In the September 15th issue of the New Yorker magazine, Malcolm Gladwell criticizes President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act for its "Fordist vision of the classroom as a brightly lit assembly line." In a letter to the magazine published in the October 6th issue, Bush's Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, responds.
Rather than contest Gladwell's assertion, Paige embraces Ford's "production principles." "Henry Ford created a world-class company," he writes, "a leader in its industry. More important, Ford would not have survived the competition had it not been for an emphasis on results. We must view education the same way." If Secretary Paige understood the entire history of Henry Ford's production techniques, he would think twice before making this analogy.

Henry Ford's great innovation was the perfection of the assembly line in 1913. The assembly line, although extremely efficient, had a devastating effect on labor. As the wife of one assembly line worker wrote to Henry Ford:"The chain system you have is a slave driver! My God!, Mr. Ford. My husband has come home & thrown himself down & won't eat his supper-so done out! Can't it be remedied?" Because of the assembly line, labor turnover at Ford rose to 380 percent. School districts across the country have a problem recruiting teachers already. An assembly line regimen of endless standardized testing combined with the constant fear of layoffs will make the problem worse, not better. To get more, better-qualified candidates, we should try to make teaching jobs more appealing, not less. Analogies like this one won't help the situation.

School districts across the country have a problem recruiting teachers already. An assembly line regimen of endless standardized testing combined with the constant fear of layoffs will make the problem worse, not better. To get more, better-qualified candidates, we should try to make teaching jobs more appealing, not less. Analogies like this one won't help the situation.

Despite Gladwell's use of the term "Fordist," his main comparison is to "the industrial efficiency-movement of the early twentieth century"--people like Frederick W. Taylor and other disciples of scientific management. The full name of Henry Ford does not appear once in Gladwell's piece.

Gladwell's argument is that unlike a Taylorized factory, "learning cannot be measured as neatly and easily as devotees of educational productivity would like." Similarly, I have invoked Taylor elsewhere to suggest a deliberate effort on the part of conservative educational reformers to de-skill teachers so that they can be replaced by less-qualified personnel who will accept less money to do the job.

Ironically, Henry Ford took exactly the opposite strategy. Ford's solution to the turnover problem at his factory was the $5 day, first introduced in 1914. This sum was almost twice what the average industrial worker could expect to earn. While other businessmen denounced Ford as a traitor to his class, he knew that such a high wage was a necessity to recruit and keep labor.

Is Secretary Paige prepared to endorse doubling teachers' wages in a new Fordist educational environment? I doubt it, although I bet teachers' unions would stop criticizing his education policies if he did.

Another thing Secretary Paige should understand about Ford's principles is that they depended upon producing one simple product. During its early years as a business innovator Ford manufactured only one car, the Model T. A popular joke of that era credited to Henry Ford was, "You can have a Model T in any color you want, as long as it's black." In fact, Model Ts varied only slightly throughout their long production run.

If Secretary Paige is supporting a "one-size-fits-all" education system, he is violating the fundamental idea behind Republican educational policy--local control. If he isn't, then he's not really invoking Ford's production principles. Either way, his letter shows he has little understanding of the ramifications of his position. Education by assembly line may sound good to a conservative ideologue, but market solutions will inevitably hurt our education system more than they help.

At first, American consumers were willing to accept identical cars because they wanted cheap wheels. However, Paige should also understand that Ford's system did not beat the competition for very long. In 1927, Ford had to shut down production of the Model T to refit his facilities to catch up with General Motors, which offered a wide range of automobiles.

The No Child Left Behind Act essentially does the same thing to schools by setting standards that assure that many of them will get failing grades. However, the Bush administration doesn't want to invest the money needed to make failing schools able to compete.

"Is it possible," asked a retired elementary school principal from Iowa in the pages of the Washington Post recently, that the No Child Left Behind Act "is an elaborate setup, designed by those hoping to usher in an era of vouchers, charter schools and other alternatives to public education?" Indeed, the Bush administration wants to convince parents that public schools are beyond hope and give as many of them as possible vouchers to send their kids to private or religious schools. That way there won't be any students left for the public schools to teach.

Paige suggests that "Just as Ford has shareholders to report to . . . taxpayers are our stakeholders." However, the people paying for education, the taxpayers, are not the same people who benefit from an education, the students. Run education like a business and taxpayers without school-age children will minimize their costs regardless of how it affects kids. After all, why should they pay for a car they don't get to drive?

Henry Ford's principles are not the solution to our children's problems. Instead, they should be part of their education. It's a shame Rod Paige didn't learn more about the entire history of what he's espousing. If he had, perhaps the Bush administration would be helping schools leave fewer children behind rather than making the problem worse.