When it comes to education technology, school leaders have often leaped before they looked. 

 

Ask any parent, teacher, or school administrator: This is the most difficult school year they have ever faced. No one wanted schools to shut down for months on end. No one wanted to resort to a patchwork of online education, anxious in-person meetings, and cram sessions about “learning management systems.” Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced educators to pin their hopes on digital tools and platforms. 

The suddenness of the shift to remote instruction may be unprecedented, but this is hardly the first time our schools have placed massive bets on new technology. Historian Larry Cuban (1986) has described how efficiency-minded administrators foisted media technologies ranging from radios to computers on teachers in efforts to reform education. Many such pedagogical “innovations” have been introduced over the past two centuries, often with sobering results. As our own research shows, in times of crisis, educational leaders often turn, with unfounded confidence, to technological solutions for the problems they face, leaping before they look.  

At the beginning of the 1800s, for instance, reformers in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, alarmed by the limited educational opportunities available to low-income children, turned to the work of Joseph Lancaster, a young teacher in London who had developed a system of education that took place in vast open rooms. A century and a half later, another generation of reformers, also horrified by the state of American schools, looked to the new technology of television as a means of providing high-quality education at scale. 

In both cases — the Lancasterian mania of the 1800s and the rush toward instructional television in the 1950s and 1960s — reformers’ enthusiasm outpaced their due diligence. They were buoyed by the extravagant promises of new technology. And in both cases, they made significant investments in technology without conducting even basic research into its effectiveness. In the end, as each modern marvel failed, schools and teachers were left to pick up the pieces and start again. 

 

The Lancastrian schoolroom 

In the first decade of the 1800s, officials in many of the nation’s big cities became concerned that if local children were unable to attend school, they would instead receive an education in crime, becoming a danger to the public. At the time, a majority of children in New York City, Philadelphia, and other cities had some access to education, but there was nothing like a coherent, well-planned school system in place. Rather, what had taken shape was a jumbled mix of many kinds of schools, varying widely in their quality. Further, most of them charged tuition, leaving few options for students from low-income families. And while some churches offered free schools, often called “charity” schools, not every student belonged to a church.  

Desperate to get more children into school, urban leaders looked to a model created by famed London reformer Joseph Lancaster. Swayed by his reputation and rumors of his success, they committed themselves to Lancaster’s reforms, especially his biggest single technological innovation, which was architectural. Instead of educating children in traditional school buildings — divided into small rooms, each serving one teacher and a dozen or so students — Lancaster envisioned vast, open schoolrooms capable of seating a thousand students or more. At one end of the open room, the teacher would reign from a raised platform. The students would sit on benches, rising auditorium-style toward the back, with the least advanced students in front and the most advanced sitting at the rear. Around the edges of the room were “reading circles,” where student monitors would lead other students in reading from placards.  

No detail was too small to escape Lancaster’s attention. For instance, according to his “scientific” reasoning, walls would have to be painted white. Windows would have to be large, able to open, and placed at least seven feet above the floor, to limit distractions. The floor should not be stone, as that created loud echoes. Ideally, air would circulate through a “sufficient number of tubes so contrived that they may be opened or shut at pleasure” (Manual, 1817, p. 2). The room would be stuffed with “pendulums” and “telegraph” machines to send information to students efficiently (Dale, 1820, p. 12). Lancaster even toyed with electrifying the student benches to shock recalcitrant students into submission (Lancaster, n.d.). For Lancaster’s devoted followers, these complicated systems and specialized technological tools accounted for much of the allure. The system was assumed to work precisely because it required so many modern implements.  

Throughout the first three decades of the 1800s, American reformers were positively giddy about the promise of Lancasterian education. In New York, for example, Mayor DeWitt Clinton gushed, “I recognize in Lancaster the benefactor of the human race — I consider his system as creating a new [era] in education, as a blessing sent down from Heaven to redeem the poor and distress this world from the power and dominion of ignorance” (Clinton, 1810, p. 7). 

However, even Lancaster’s strongest supporters knew these revolutionary technological solutions would not come cheap. They poured thousands upon thousands of dollars into the effort, drawing from a range of funding sources. At the time, schools for low-income students were usually run by philanthropic organizations that mixed government funding with private donations, in a structure one leading historian called “paternalistic voluntarism” (Katz, 1981, p. 25). The decisions of these voluntary clubs remained in the hands of private enthusiasts, and there was nothing to stop them from plowing their money into building the schoolrooms Lancaster imagined. In Philadelphia, for example, a Lancasterian “model school” was built in 1818. It cost $8,000 for the lot, $6,239.05 for the building, and $861.96 to fit it out with the Lancasterian bells and whistles — equivalent to nearly $2 million at today’s prices (Edmunds, 1913, p. 53).  

The basis on which they made that investment was remarkably shaky. Mainly, they built their hopes on anecdotes from acquaintances. For instance, Philadelphia’s Lancasterian enthusiasts relied on the report of one unnamed “lady” who had visited a Lancasterian school in Washington, D.C., and who told them that it ran wonderfully (Manual, 1817, p. x). In New York City, Mayor Clinton relied on reports from Lancaster himself (Clinton, 1810, p. 10).  

If these reformers had looked more carefully, they would have seen ominous signs about the impracticability of the model. One Lancasterian school in Maidstone, England, for example, reported in 1811 that the school was subject to a “growing Disorder” (Mackellen, 1811). In a few cases, Lancasterian schools seemed to work very well, but it was common knowledge in the United Kingdom that Lancasterian technology was largely a flop. Any success that did occur appeared to be due to the charisma and dedication of the teachers, not the architectural design or the use of mechanical devices. That is, to the extent that they benefited students, it wasn’t because of the technology but regardless of it (Dickson, 1986, pp. 85-88). 

As each modern marvel failed, schools and teachers were left to pick up the pieces and start again.

Soon, America’s Lancasterians came to the same conclusion: The technology did not work. In 1816, for example, a supporter in New York observed that in spite of earnest teachers and generous investors, the approach had “generally failed of success” (Baker, 1816, front matter). Similarly, visitors to the segregated Lancasterian school for Black children in New York City reported in the 1820s that students simply would not behave, despite the use of the proper Lancasterian schoolroom (New York African Free School Records, 1822-1823).  

Throughout the 1820s, similar reports reached city leaders in Baltimore, Boston, and elsewhere, making it clear that, despite the huge investment, Lancasterian technology was worse than nothing at all. Instead of using scarce dollars to train teachers or equip students, the Lancasterian fad wasted money on showy buildings and unnecessary machines. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but elites in government and philanthropy eventually began the expensive process of extricating their schools from the approach. In Philadelphia in 1837, heeding the complaints of students, parents, and teachers, school leaders converted the Lancasterian model school building into smaller, more traditional classrooms. The cost? Another whopping $10,074.03, almost as much as it cost to build in the first place (Edmunds, 1913, p. 53). 

Remote control 

In the early 1950s, denouncing schools became a national pastime in the U.S., much as it had been in the 1810s. Across the country, influential public figures maintained that teachers were second-rate — “of such limited endowment that no amount of education can make them anything but trained mediocrities,” sniffed university president (and soon to become director of the Ford Foundation’s education division) Alvin C. Eurich (1957, p. 430). Overcrowded, underfunded schools were failing to prepare American students for the future, resulting in grave threats to national security, declared prominent scientists and policy makers. And once again, when facing what appeared to be an urgent crisis, would-be reformers looked to technology for a solution. This time, however, instead of relying on architectural and mechanical innovations, they pinned their hopes on television screens.  

Schools could put the very best teachers on television, explained foundation officers and government officials. And if they rotated large groups of students (75, 150, even 300 at a time) into cafeterias and auditoriums to watch televised courses for half the day, they could provide every student with an excellent education, without having to hire new teachers or build new classrooms (Stoddard, 1957, pp. 38-39).  

Reformers saw television as a way to extend educational opportunities to students who had long been denied them. Even financially strapped districts could show lessons in physics, foreign languages, and other subjects they couldn’t otherwise afford to teach. And while most programs were produced and aired locally, some starring renowned scholars and Nobel Prize-winning scientists such as Carl Anderson, were broadcast by national networks (LaFollette, 2012, pp. 31-34). Thus, even as Southern states angrily defied Brown v. Board, the New York Times reporter Jack Gould (1963) observed that television offered “the quietly exciting prospect of the remote Negro rural school sharing the teaching resources of a state capitol without regard to segregation barriers” (p. X17). Instructional television was “the greatest opportunity for the advancement of education since the introduction of printing,” asserted New York University dean Thomas Clark Pollack (Stoddard, 1957, p. 27).  

However, while instructional television was touted as a money saver in the long term, it required a hefty up-front investment. Stations needed to be built, equipped, and operated. Telecasts had to be produced. And sets, antennae, and UHF converter boxes had to be purchased and maintained. Since many districts found it difficult to afford such expenses, philanthropists stepped in, paying for pilot programs under the assumption that government agencies would eventually shoulder the costs (Ferguson, 2013, p. 6). Officers at the Ford Foundation and its associated funds led this effort, spending $23 million on infrastructure for instructional television between 1952 and 1958 alone (Tanner, 1958). In Pittsburgh, they offered schools and educational station WQED $150,000 to develop broadcasts in 5th-grade arithmetic, reading, and French (Levin & Hines, 2003, p. 269). Alabama’s Educational Television Commission received $100,000 for studio equipment and personnel to develop 22 school courses for statewide broadcast (Joint Council on Educational Television, 1956, pp. 34-36). With this kind of money on the line, administrators believed they couldn’t afford to pass up the technology.  

After the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite, in 1957, reformers’ attempts to modernize American education through machines became ever grander. The sky was literally the limit when, in 1960, the Ford Foundation launched the Midwest Program on Airborne Television Instruction (MPATI) to reach students across six states. MPATI’s two DC6 airplanes flew in lazy figure eights some 23,000 feet above Montpelier, Indiana, as they broadcast instructional telecasts on multiple channels. The cost: $8 million over its first three years (Saettler, 2004, p. 369). In 1963, H. Rex Lee, governor of the unincorporated territory of American Samoa, took televised education even further, by persuading Congress to pay for new schools, new curricula, and new infrastructure on the island — all organized around long days filled with instructional television (Schramm, Nelson, & Betham, 1981). 

By 1965, the Ford Foundation had spent some $70 million on experiments in instructional television, and Congress had provided tens of millions more via the National Defense Education Act (Saettler, 2004, p. 372). Yet, for all the money spent, instructional television didn’t seem to work much better than in-person teaching. Telecasts were dull, and educators complained of conflicts between station and school schedules, weak signals, and too few working sets (Benton et al., 1969, p. 57). Evaluators reported that students watching telecasts from cafeteria benches or creaking auditorium seats were disengaged, passive, even bored (Rumble, 1957). There was no substitute, maintained one Milwaukee teacher, for the “human warmth and friendliness which is generated in a regular class relationship” (Fund for the Advancement of Education,1959, p. 61). 

Reformers had once again rushed to commit themselves to a new technology long before they knew whether it would work. As one critic pointed out at the time, Ford officials and their allies had proceeded as if television “alone would accomplish great things, that we would have the great lectures and the great teachers on television, and just by sitting in front of the set and listening to them and watching them, we would learn” (Robertson, 1993, p. 193). But the approach had left students frustrated, without any sense of the relevance or meaning of the content conveyed. “It simply does not work out as well as enthusiasts think,” explained D.C. school superintendent Carl Hansen (“Top Educator Raps Teaching by Television,” 1960, p. 121).  

Worn down by high costs and middling results, schools soured on instructional television in the 1960s. Instructional programming limped along throughout the decade, underfunded by local stations and school districts, increasingly ignored by classroom teachers and students. In 1968, MPATI officials sold the program’s planes, unable to afford the costs of keeping them in the air. In short, the revolutionary experiment had fizzled out, becoming a very expensive failure.  

Support, not solutions 

The lessons for today’s enthusiasts are clear. It is wise to be humble about the possibilities of classroom technology. No one would deny that technology can provide invaluable tools to improve learning. (What teacher today would not want to have classroom access to the internet?) Too often, though, instead of being seen as a tool to help schools, new technology has been embraced as a silver-bullet solution to daunting educational crises. In desperate times, desperate leaders have clutched at overblown promises, investing in unproven ideas without demanding reasonable evidence of efficacy. 

In the current pandemic, it might be tempting for education leaders to hope that if only we can find the right balance of learning management systems, home Wi-Fi access, and teacher training, we can continue to provide the same education we always have, virus or no virus. But it is not that easy, and it never has been.  

If we have learned anything from the past two centuries, it is this: New technologies provide assistance, not solutions. Whether it was Lancasterian school buildings in the 19th century, television in the 20th, or Zoom classrooms today, new technology will not solve our problems on its own. In the past, overhasty investment has wasted millions of dollars. Perhaps more pernicious, it has given well-meaning reformers false confidence that they have taken care of the issue. It is far better to take an approach that might not be popular or simple, one that acknowledges the scope of the crisis and the variety of solutions we will need to address it. We need to avoid the temptation to grasp too quickly at a single technological response. 

The pandemic’s speed forced school leaders to leap without looking and deploy whatever technology tools were readily available, even if, as many knew at the time, these tools would not provide an adequate substitute for in-person education. But if this year of Zoom school and Khan Academy has taught educators anything, it’s that we should always think twice before trusting technology to do the yeoman’s work of educating the nation’s children.    

References  

Baker, E. (1816). A brief sketch of the Lancasterian system. Troy, NY: F. Adancourt.  

Benton, C.W., Howell, W.K., Oppenheimer, H.C., & Urrows, H.H. (1969). Television in urban education: its application to major educational problems in sixteen cities. New York, NY: Praeger Special Studies in US Economic and Social Development. 

Clinton, D. (1810). An address, to the benefactors and friends of the Free School Society of New York. New York, NY: Collins and Perkins. 

Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. 

Dale, W.A.T. (1820). Manual of the Albany Lancaster School. Albany, NY: Websters and Skinners. 

Dickson, M. (1986). Teacher extraordinary: Joseph Lancaster 1778-1838. London, UK: Book Guild Limited. 

Edmunds, F.D. (1913). The public school buildings of the City of Philadelphia from 1745 to 1845. Philadelphia, PA: Author. 

Eurich, A. (1957). Our goal: better education for more pupils. Educational Leadership, 14 (7), 430-434. 

Ferguson, K. (2013) Top down: The Ford Foundation, Black power, and the reinvention of racial liberalism. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Fund for the Advancement of Education. (1959, January). The National Program in the Use of Television in the Public Schools: A Report on the First Year, 1957-58. Ford Foundation records, Education and Public Policy Program, Education and Research Division, Program Files, Series XX: Cox / Chafkin Misc Office Files, Box 43, folder Jan 1959, Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, NY. 

Gould, J. (1963, 21 April). Channel 13 controversy: Administrative dispute at New York station raises fundamental points about educational TV definition choice creativity. New York Times, p. X17.  

Joint Council on Educational Television. (1956). Four years of progress in educational television. Washington, DC: Author. 

Katz, M.B. (1987). Reconstructing American education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Lancaster, J. (n.d.). Notebooks. Lancaster Papers, Box 4, American Antiquarian Society archives. 

LaFollette, M. (2012). Science on American television: A history. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 

Levin, R.A. & Hines, L.M. (2003). Educational television, Fred Rogers, and the history of education. History of Education Quarterly, 43 (2), 262-275. 

Mackellen, J. (1811). Letter to J. Lancaster, February 15. Lancaster papers, Box 10, folder 1. American Antiquarian Society archives.  

Manual of the system of teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and needle-work, in the elementary schools of the British and Foreign School Society, first American edition. (1817). Philadelphia, PA: Benjamin Warner.  

New York African Free School Records (1822-1823). Volume III, Sept. 22, 1822, June 19, 1823, Oct. 27, 1823. New York Historical Society archives.  

Robertson, J. (1993). TeleVisionaries. Charlotte Harbor, FL: Tabby House Books. 

Rumble, D. (1957). November 5, [Testimony, Visitation Reports, The National Program in the Uses of TV in the Public Schools, Fund for the Advancement of Education, Vol 1, Aug 1, 1957-Feb 1, 1958], Ford Foundation Records, Education and Public Policy Program, Education and Research Division, Program Files, FA633, Series XII: Special Projects: Subseries XII 2: Special Projects — Educational Television Box 21, Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, NY. 

Saettler, P. (2004). The evolution of American educational technology. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. 

Schramm, W., Nelson, L.M., & Betham, M.T. (1981). Bold experiment: The story of educational television in American Samoa. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 

Stoddard, A.J. (1957). Schools for tomorrow: An educator’s blueprint. New York, NY: Fund for the Advancement of Education. 

Tanner, D. (1958). Television and education: A critical analysis. Teachers College Record, 59, 344-349.  

“Top Educator Raps Teaching by Television” (1960, February 14). Detroit Free Press, p. 121. 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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Adam Laats

ADAM LAATS is a professor of education and history at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He is the author of Creationism USA: Bridging the Impasse on Teaching Evolution . 

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Victoria E.M. Cain

VICTORIA E.M. CAIN  is an associate professor of history at Northeastern University in Boston, MA, and author of the forthcoming Schools and Screens: A Watchful History .