Guild Production of Individuals?

[IDMclean]

I have been thinking about education lately, researching production theories, economics, and labour theorems.

 

I realized something. Our schools (mainstream American) are analogous to 16th-18th century guilds. We can liken the Principle to the guild master, the teachers to the guild members and the student to the product. Quality of the product is, in the majority, internally supervised.

 

If my conjecture of the equivalence of mainstream schools to renaissance to early industrial era guilds is correct, then that puts our school systems firmly behind other areas of production in our social system.

 

I wonder what would a industrial or information era school look like? I have been playing with mixing behavioral and developmental psychology with Theory of Constraints and Quality Control. Hopefully to arrive at a more advanced model.

 

Any thoughts?

[Eclogite]

I understood that the guilds were extremely secretive about the tricks and tools of their trades. This would seem to be the most restrictive aspect of them, the one which most stood in the way of progress and improvement in products and techniques. This aspect does not seem to apply, except in a most superficial fashion, to the educational system.

Am I mistaken in this? Are you arguing that the educational system is as inward looking and secretive as the old guilds? If you are, I would take some convincing that this is so. If you are not, it seems to me that your analogy, and your thesis, break down.

[IDMclean]

Well. I mean guild in structure, not so much in detail. The difference being the paradigm of production. As compared to an assembly line, or a publicly owned company(hybrid factory-guilds).

 

In school when a teacher consistently fails to produce acceptable product (quality children) the person who deals with it is the principle, first and foremost. This is akin to a guild master disciplining a guild member for lax quality of product.

 

The key difference being that with factories came independent quality analysis.

With Factory production Quality Assurance and Control went from introverted, as with the guild structure, to extroverted. From first party to third party. Outside agencies became integral to the factory stucture to facilitate more consistent quality production.

 

What I am intending to discuss here is that schools lack (in total or in part) this independent quality control, and as a result our (the students, the product of the system) educations suffer.

 

I can't tell you how many subpar teachers I have had over my time in the education system. How many subpar schools I attended in my time from K to 10th grade. It got so bad in the 10th grade that I finally decided to put a stop to it and escaped to College. I got my high school diploma when I was 16, and began attending community college full time the following fall semster.

 

I was pleased to find college a more mature, and reasonable atmosphere, however the system is still deeply lacking. I still consistently learn more in my own way than by the school systems. I would describe them as inheritly inconsistent, and contradictory. I believe this is because the modern school system is dragged down by it's beuracratic nature.

 

Once again, I have come to the tentative conclusion that this is because the school systems internally attempt quality control. I think that if external agencies were formed to perform quality control of the school system and it's products, that we could vastly improve output quantity and quality.

 

Though from observation and experience I believe the school systems would be resistent to this change of model. It would probably mean that allot of things would change rapiditly. Upset the status quo.

 

Also as an offish thought. How much do you know about the tricks and tools of the trade? I feel that I have a decent idea of what happens from first hand (recent) experience, and from family whom were part of the system. My grandmother was a teacher at universities, community colleges and late in her life a substitute teacher in the pre-college school system. There still however is allot that I don't know. I still remember when I asked the principle of my high school to read the unified school district's code. I said I have a right, and he said "No, you don't".