Allan Laal

“The industrialized mass nature of school goes back to the very beginning, to the common
school and the normal school and the idea of universal schooling. All of which were invented at
precisely the same time we were perfecting mass production and interchangeable parts and then
mass marketing.

The common school (now called a public school) was a brand new concept, created shortly after
the Civil War. “Common” because it was for everyone, for the kids of the farmer, the kids of
the potter, and the kids of the local shopkeeper. Horace Mann is generally regarded as the
father of the institution, but he didn’t have to fight nearly as hard as you would imagine—
because industrialists were on his side. The two biggest challenges of a newly industrial
economy were finding enough compliant workers and finding enough eager customers. The
common school solved both problems.

The normal school (now called a teacher’s college) was developed to indoctrinate teachers into
the system of the common school, ensuring that there would be a coherent approach to the
processing of students. If this sounds parallel to the notion of factories producing items in bulk,
of interchangeable parts, of the notion of measurement and quality, it’s not an accident.


The world has changed, of course. It has changed into a culture fueled by a market that knows
how to mass-customize, to find the edges and the weird, and to cater to what the individual
demands instead of insisting on conformity.

Mass customization of school isn’t easy. Do we have any choice, though? If mass production
and mass markets are falling apart, we really don’t have the right to insist that the schools we
designed for a different era will function well now.”
― Seth Godin, Leap First: Creating Work That Matters