Designing people, designing freedom. Science, Technology and Society studies in North American educational reforms after World War II
Abstract This article uses Science, Technology, and Society (STS) studies, a historical lens, and Foucault’s concept of governmentality to explore the importance of «systems thinking» in post-WWII United States schooling reforms when educators articulated the «reason» of systems in hopes of ameliorating fears of perceived social dysfunction. First, we can understand Foucault’s notion of governmentality as «shaping, guiding and directing the conduct of others». Second, the use of systems technology across the social and educational sciences pairs well with governmentality. «Governing systems» preserve internal stability (homeostasis) absent outside intervention by regulating how their interlocking parts respond through communications, embedded relations-based processes, goal states, or feedback mechanisms. Third, curriculum reformers, at the famed 1947 University of Chicago Theory of Curriculum Conference, articulated a systems view of education as an agent of change to resolve social problems. Such reformers dismissed new academic content to focus their solutions instead on systems processes to reconfigure «improved» human relationships between the self and others to restore the social whole, a reorientation that required making up new «kinds of people» (Hacking). Finally, postwar systems-based education reform models like the Tyler Rationale, Bloom’s Taxonomy, Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, or MACOS use systems technology to regulate social activity. Scholars can reconsider postwar systems-based educational reforms as social technology meant to design people to design their freedom. Social systems regulate social life without the role of the state by constructing and allocating livable spaces for human bodies, composing not a system of repression, but instead organizing through disciplinary control an «emancipatory» predetermined system for human bodies. Utilizing systems seeks not to improve the technology, but to improve people by operating under a narrative that simultaneously «liberates» people into an enclosed emancipatory developmental order, as a progressive social force, while creating an exclusionary control system.
- Referencias
- Cómo citar
- Del mismo autor
- Métricas
Bloom, B. et al.: Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals, vol. 1: Cognitive Domain, Londres, Longman Group, 1956.
Boretska, Viktoria: «Johnny and Ivan Learning in a Programmed Way: The Soviet Reinvention of One American Technology», Bildungsgeschichte (IJHE), 9(1) (2019), pp. 29-46.
Education Development Center: Man: A Course of Study, Washington, DC, Curriculum Development Associates, 1968.
Education Development Center: Man: A course of study: Seminars for teachers, Washington, DC, Curriculum Development Associates, 1970a.
Education Development Center: One–Man: A course of study: Talks to teachers, Washington, DC, Curriculum Development Associates, 1970b.Education Development Center: Seven –the Netsilik Eskimos At the Inland Camps, Washington, DC, Curriculum Development Associates, 1970c.
Education Development Center: Man: A course of study: Evaluation strategies, Cambridge, MA, Curriculum Development Associates, 1970d.
Education Development Center y Hanley, J.: Curiosity, competence, community, Cambridge, MA, Curriculum Development Associates, 1970.
Eisner, E.: «Curriculum Theory and the Concept of Educational Milieu», The High School Journal, 51(3) (1967), pp. 132-146.
Freire, P.: «Creating Alternative Research Methods: Learning to Do It by Doing It», en Hall, B.; Gillette, A. y Tandon R. (eds.): Creating Knowledge: A Monopoly? Participatory Research in Development. Participatory Research Network Series No. 1, New Delhi, Society for Participatory Research in Asia, 1982, pp. 29-37.
Freire, P.: Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition [Pedagogía del oprimido: Edición del 30 aniversario], New York, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013.
Gordon, C.: «Governmental Rationality», en Burchell, G.; Gordon, C. y Miller, P. (eds.): The Foucault Effect, University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Hacking, I. «Making Up People», en Biagioli, M. (ed.): The Science Studies Reader, New York, Routledge, 1999, pp. 161-171.
Herrick, V. y Tyler, R.: «Preface», en Herrick, V. y Tyler, R. (eds.): Toward Improved Curriculum Theory. Papers Presented at the Conference on Curriculum Theory … 1947, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1950a, pp. iii-iv.
Herrick, V. y Tyler, R.: Toward Improved Curriculum Theory. Papers Presented at the Conference on Curriculum Theory held at the University of Chicago, October 16-17, 1947, University of Chicago Press, 1950b.
Jenkins, D.: «Feedback and Group Self-Evaluation», Journal of Social Issues, 4(2) (1948), pp. 50-60.
Lewin, K.: «Action Research and Minority Problems», Journal of Social Issues, 2 (1946a), pp. 34-46.
Lewin, K.: «Behavior and Development as a Function of the Total Situation», en Cartwright, D. (ed.): Field Theory in Social Science, New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1946b, pp. 238-303.
Lewin, K.: «Frontiers in Group Dynamics Concept, Method and Reality in Social Science; Social Equilibria and Social Change», Human Relations, 1(1) (1947a), pp. 5-41.
Lewin, K.: «Frontiers in Group Dynamics II. Channels of Group Life; Social Planning and Action Research», Human Relations, 1(2) (1947b), pp. 143-153.
Lewin, K.: «Psychological Ecology», en Cartwright, D. (ed.): Field Theory in Social Science, New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1951, pp. 170-187.
López López, Ligia (Licho): «A Manifestación to Disinvent Mundus’ Authoritarian Regimes and the Categorical Imperative of Hospitality», en Hultqvist, E.; Lindblad, S. y Popkewitz, T. S. (eds.): Critical Analyses of Educational Reforms in an Era of Transnational Governance, Cham, Springer International Publishing, 2018, pp. 245-262.
Medina, E.: «Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende’s Chile», Journal of Latin American Studies, 38(03) (2006), pp. 571-606.
Rashevsky, N.: «Review of Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, by Norbert Weiner», American Journal of Sociology, 56(2) (1950), pp. 199-200.
Smith, B. O.: «Social Perspective as the Basic Orientation of the Curriculum», en Herrick, V. y Tyler, R. (eds.): Toward Improved Curriculum Theory. Papers Presented at the Conference on Curriculum Theory … 1947, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1950, pp. 3-16.
Thelen, H.: «Engineering Research in Curriculum Building» The Journal of Educational Research, 41(8) (1948), pp. 577-596.
Thelen, H. y Tyler, R.: «Implications for Improving Instruction in the High School», en The Forty-Ninth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part 1, Chicago, The National Society for the Study of Education, 1950, pp. 304-335.
Tyler, R.: «Major Issues in Education Today», Ohio Schools, XXV (1947), pp. 58-59, 86-87.
Tyler, R.: Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1949. [Principios básicos del currículum, México, Troquel, 1973].
Wiener, N.: «Cybernetics», Scientific American, 179 (Nov) (1948), pp. 14-19.
(Traducción de Domingo Barroso, Universidad de Granada)
Boretska, Viktoria: «Johnny and Ivan Learning in a Programmed Way: The Soviet Reinvention of One American Technology», Bildungsgeschichte (IJHE), 9(1) (2019), pp. 29-46.
Education Development Center: Man: A Course of Study, Washington, DC, Curriculum Development Associates, 1968.
Education Development Center: Man: A course of study: Seminars for teachers, Washington, DC, Curriculum Development Associates, 1970a.
Education Development Center: One–Man: A course of study: Talks to teachers, Washington, DC, Curriculum Development Associates, 1970b.Education Development Center: Seven –the Netsilik Eskimos At the Inland Camps, Washington, DC, Curriculum Development Associates, 1970c.
Education Development Center: Man: A course of study: Evaluation strategies, Cambridge, MA, Curriculum Development Associates, 1970d.
Education Development Center y Hanley, J.: Curiosity, competence, community, Cambridge, MA, Curriculum Development Associates, 1970.
Eisner, E.: «Curriculum Theory and the Concept of Educational Milieu», The High School Journal, 51(3) (1967), pp. 132-146.
Freire, P.: «Creating Alternative Research Methods: Learning to Do It by Doing It», en Hall, B.; Gillette, A. y Tandon R. (eds.): Creating Knowledge: A Monopoly? Participatory Research in Development. Participatory Research Network Series No. 1, New Delhi, Society for Participatory Research in Asia, 1982, pp. 29-37.
Freire, P.: Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition [Pedagogía del oprimido: Edición del 30 aniversario], New York, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013.
Gordon, C.: «Governmental Rationality», en Burchell, G.; Gordon, C. y Miller, P. (eds.): The Foucault Effect, University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Hacking, I. «Making Up People», en Biagioli, M. (ed.): The Science Studies Reader, New York, Routledge, 1999, pp. 161-171.
Herrick, V. y Tyler, R.: «Preface», en Herrick, V. y Tyler, R. (eds.): Toward Improved Curriculum Theory. Papers Presented at the Conference on Curriculum Theory … 1947, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1950a, pp. iii-iv.
Herrick, V. y Tyler, R.: Toward Improved Curriculum Theory. Papers Presented at the Conference on Curriculum Theory held at the University of Chicago, October 16-17, 1947, University of Chicago Press, 1950b.
Jenkins, D.: «Feedback and Group Self-Evaluation», Journal of Social Issues, 4(2) (1948), pp. 50-60.
Lewin, K.: «Action Research and Minority Problems», Journal of Social Issues, 2 (1946a), pp. 34-46.
Lewin, K.: «Behavior and Development as a Function of the Total Situation», en Cartwright, D. (ed.): Field Theory in Social Science, New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1946b, pp. 238-303.
Lewin, K.: «Frontiers in Group Dynamics Concept, Method and Reality in Social Science; Social Equilibria and Social Change», Human Relations, 1(1) (1947a), pp. 5-41.
Lewin, K.: «Frontiers in Group Dynamics II. Channels of Group Life; Social Planning and Action Research», Human Relations, 1(2) (1947b), pp. 143-153.
Lewin, K.: «Psychological Ecology», en Cartwright, D. (ed.): Field Theory in Social Science, New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1951, pp. 170-187.
López López, Ligia (Licho): «A Manifestación to Disinvent Mundus’ Authoritarian Regimes and the Categorical Imperative of Hospitality», en Hultqvist, E.; Lindblad, S. y Popkewitz, T. S. (eds.): Critical Analyses of Educational Reforms in an Era of Transnational Governance, Cham, Springer International Publishing, 2018, pp. 245-262.
Medina, E.: «Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende’s Chile», Journal of Latin American Studies, 38(03) (2006), pp. 571-606.
Rashevsky, N.: «Review of Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, by Norbert Weiner», American Journal of Sociology, 56(2) (1950), pp. 199-200.
Smith, B. O.: «Social Perspective as the Basic Orientation of the Curriculum», en Herrick, V. y Tyler, R. (eds.): Toward Improved Curriculum Theory. Papers Presented at the Conference on Curriculum Theory … 1947, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1950, pp. 3-16.
Thelen, H.: «Engineering Research in Curriculum Building» The Journal of Educational Research, 41(8) (1948), pp. 577-596.
Thelen, H. y Tyler, R.: «Implications for Improving Instruction in the High School», en The Forty-Ninth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part 1, Chicago, The National Society for the Study of Education, 1950, pp. 304-335.
Tyler, R.: «Major Issues in Education Today», Ohio Schools, XXV (1947), pp. 58-59, 86-87.
Tyler, R.: Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1949. [Principios básicos del currículum, México, Troquel, 1973].
Wiener, N.: «Cybernetics», Scientific American, 179 (Nov) (1948), pp. 14-19.
(Traducción de Domingo Barroso, Universidad de Granada)
Ivens, J. P. (2022). Designing people, designing freedom. Science, Technology and Society studies in North American educational reforms after World War II. Historia De La Educación, 40(1), 175–198. https://doi.org/10.14201/hedu202140175198
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
+
−