Makers and Innovators of the American Educational Arena

The list of educational "makers" and innovators is long and frequented by many famous individuals such as Horace Mann, Cotton Mather, Booker T. Washington, E.D. Hirsch Jr., John Dewey, Catherine Beecher, and Deborah Meier, just to name a few.

While all of the educators listed on the PBS site are worthy of an homage, I have chosen to pay tribute to Linda Brown Thompson whom I feel indebted to for making my own education possible.





Linda Brown Thompson is the daughter of Rev. Oliver Brown who was among several African American families in Topeka, Kansas contacted by the NAACP to bring down the "separate but equal" educational system of the 1950's.


At that time Linda was in third grade and had to walk twenty blocks in order to get to the nearest all-Black school, while an all-White school was within one block's distance.

Without wanting to take anything away from any of the other makers and innovators of the educational realm, I admire Mrs. Brown Thompson the most, because she and her family were actual victims of racial segregation and discrimination, yet found the strength and courage to contest racial segregation in what is now known as Brown v. Board of Education.

As significant as E.D. Hirsh Jr. or Horace Mann's contributions were to our educational system, they were also rather idealistic, designed to promote Anglo-American culture, and were not birthed out of the pain, frustration, and humiliation the Brown family had to endure.




With his website American Education History Tour and his book "Underground History of American Education," John Gatto challenges our preconceived notions about said innovators and the purpose of our modern education system.

He deems that the true makers of American Education were industrialists and capitalists such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan whose singular goal it was to produce easy-to-manipulate consumers and efficient human capital.

I did find his comparisons to the Nazi schools in Germany overblown and his statement that American schools are "antechambers to Hell" simply abominable.

However, I felt as if many of the author's assertions provided me with valuable information on our education system and my role as an educator.

It is undeniable that we, as educators, encounter students (of all ages) who seem to have a hard time to think for themselves, on a daily basis.

John Gatto provides the following explanation: "Since bored people are the best consumers, school had to be a boring place, and since childish people are the easiest customers to convince, the manufacture of childishness, extended into adulthood, had to be the first priority of factory schools."

Could the inability of today's student body to think critically and independently be a century-old invention to fill the pockets of this nation's 2 percent?



On the other hand, aren't we putting too much responsibility on our schools (and educators)?

Without the shift of responsibility away from the individual family to the school system, this mass-indoctrination would have never been possible.

Aren't mom and dad the most influential "education makers" and innovators, after all?