Beyond the Factory Model

Looking Ahead at Independent Schools and Education’s Next Era

On the 26th of November, 1883, my Great-Grandfather signed an Indenture of Apprenticeship in order to learn a trade. He was 15 years old, leaving his home in Sheffield, England for the first time. His family paid 4 shillings per year (approximately $850 USD in 2026) for six years of his room, board, and training by the side of a skilled tradesman. The trade James Amory Turnbull observed and eventually mastered? The fabrication of surgical instruments.

Had he been born a century earlier, young James may not have had such an opportunity. His family, part of a highly stratified agrarian economy, would have been entirely reliant on a large landowner for everything. Four shillings might have been an impossible outlay. And in the 18th century, medical tools would most likely have been made for the local physician by the same blacksmith who shod horses and beat out both swords and ploughshares in one of many far flung cities and cities, towns, and villages.

James, however, was born after the First Industrial Revolution, into an era when the power of steam had been harnessed to machines. As engines began to replace manual labor, more human capital was freed–or forced–to explore alternative ways to make a living. By the time James left home, growing networks of industrialized cities across the colonized world splintered agrarian traditions, and in North America especially, vocational education became the ticket for those who wanted to break into the future’s new middle class.

My Great-Grandfather actually entered adulthood during an even more tumultuous time, when the latter decades of the 19th century saw yet another social and economic upheaval. The “discovery” of natural energy sources such as electricity, oil, and gas had triggered a Second Industrial Revolution. Mass production using assembly lines and the new energy sources led to further innovation in manufacturing, energy, and transportation.

As the late 19th century erupted into the 20th, education in the United States evolved from idiosyncratic regional experiences into a more formalized, universal system devised to serve the new industrialized world. After all, businesses were growing at breakneck speed; the need for specialized workers grew apace.

Assembly-line factories were the engine of late 19th century economic growth, and it’s no coincidence that, as the eruption of the 1800s into a new century birthed a new, “factory-like” model of public education in the U.S.. Students previously taught in far-flung, one-room schoolhouses and through singular practices such as apprenticeship were suddenly congregated in greater numbers and segmented into grades. As they got older, they further segmented into classes for academic instruction in discrete disciplines, placed in desks in neat rows within those classrooms, and then shuffled between classes on a timed schedule.

“Punch in; punch out.”

The U.S. public school system became one of the most successful models of education and training in the 20th century because it offered a free, comprehensive, and mostly standardized K-12 education that funneled a growing population into both a hungry workforce and a network of institutions of higher education that would eventually become unparalleled anywhere in the world … for a while. In its heyday, American factories produced more things – and American universities incubated more innovation – than the world had ever seen. The Third Industrial Revolution (the digital “Space Age”) came and went during this time. The existing American educational system continued to serve the country well enough for computer science to fuel yet another technological explosion to follow far more quickly than anyone might have anticipated.

Today, we find ourselves fully immersed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: an era of Big Data, The Internet of Things (IOT) and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI). Where my great-grandfather labored to manufacture fine surgical tools by hand, today’s scalpels and retractors are mostly made by computerized machines. As I write, those tools are beginning to be wielded not only by surgeons, but by AI-informed robots that might or might not be partnered with human beings.

At this pace of innovation, no one can predict what might happen tomorrow, far less three years or a decade from now. The pace of change boggles the (human) mind, and has led to generalized uncertainty and anxiety, destructive tribalism rooted in flat-out fear, deep institutional disruption, and polarized geopolitics.

That means that today, now, we have a problem – not necessarily with technology, but with our schools. Educational systems built for the transition between 19th and 20th century industrial revolutions are not serving and cannot serve this one. The factory model of education met the challenges of its time, and, for a while, served the generations that followed. However, initial success eventually became stagnant. By mid-century, American education settled into a post-World War II routine that was highly resistant to change.

As we’ve seen, things changed anyway.

The American model of education has been largely adopted by a globalized World, and our newly global human society shares a glaring issue laid bare by this revolution: we are all relying on an increasingly ossified educational system. At present, we are slowly failing our young people, and, by extension, our future.

However, it’s not all bad news. In order to introduce the good news – the hope and potential for an incredibly positive shift – I’m going to remind you that I began this essay with an anecdote from almost 150 years ago. If history demonstrates the inevitability of change and its accompanying conflicts, it also shows us the resiliency of the human enterprise and the absolutely essential role education plays in all of this.

To do this, I introduce two researchers whose work I have long followed and respected, William Strauss and Neil Howe. Together, for several decades before Strauss’ death in 2007, they developed a cyclical lens on history that not only allows us to assess the past but also to anticipate and even guide a more positive future.

In their 1997 book The Fourth Turning, Strauss and Howe posit predictable 80-to-100-year societal cycles, aligned with human reproductive spans (about 25 years) and named for the four seasons of non-equatorial Earth: Just as the seasons change, so too does the mood and general behavior of society as each generation, and its “season” progresses within the cultural cycle. First comes the Spring “High”, a period of renewal and confident growth. Next comes a Summer “Awakening,” a time when all that security spawns spiritual exploration, questioning, and even rebellion. Then comes the “Unraveling,” of Fall, in rebellious distrust in institutions leads to a period of intense tribalism and resource-gathering – a survival mentality that begins to anticipate trouble ahead and puts “me-and-mine first” ahead of all else. This leads into Winter, a “Crisis” period when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history into the next seasonal cycle.

In the U.S. and amongst many of our global cultural counterparts, oft-repeated historical patterns seem to support Strauss and Howe’s generational theory. Most recently, we can look back at post-WWII security (“Spring”), the fomentation and rebellions of the 60s and 70s (“Summer”), and the Bonfire of the Vanities that was the Autumnal turn of the last century and see a familiar alignment.

In 1997, Strauss and Howe looked at these historical markers and predicted a “Winter” lasting from approximately 2008 through the late 2020s and possibly even the early 2030s. According to the surviving author Howe (who continues to update the team’s research), we indeed are at present deeply embedded in the dark, uncomfortable “Winter” of our present cycle. Institutions have crumbled. Frightened individuals have retreated into tribal echo chambers. We had a pandemic that was not, as so many claimed, “unprecedented;” rampant diseases from the plague to the ‘flu have periodically, almost predictably, ravaged the world. Regional conflicts fester even as new ones break out, and today’s headlines hint at fears of yet another Great War.

According to the surviving Neil Howe, we are indeed living in the Crisis. The Fourth Turning is Here.

But history teaches us we won’t stay here. Spring is right around the corner. History teaches us that there are people who not only survive crises but actually thrive in its aftermath and emerge as the leaders of our next generational “High.” So who are these people today? Where are they taking refuge in this chaotic and frightening era?

They are children and young adults, many of whom are currently our students. And schools – especially independent schools, which are at present more shielded from destructive political currents of all sorts than their public counterparts – have the potential to keep these precious young people safe(r) and prepare them to help usher in the next Golden Age. In a Winter defined by polarization and GAI-induced anxiety, independent schools have the ability to be what Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine calls “Islands of Coherence,” spaces that hold their shape, steadfastly maintaining integrity and clear purpose even while others are overwhelmed by the chaotic cultural seas that surround them.

Independent schools are able to strengthen their coherent positions during this period of profound change because independence renders them agile. Independent schools have the ability:

• To design their community-specific visions and missions without direct federal mandates, helping them to reinforce their institutional values, curricula and community expectations.
• To develop stable environments that help students (the next generation of leaders) learn how to develop the emotional and cultural intelligence, and the resilience that will be needed in order to thrive in adulthood.
• To position themselves as hubs in broader collective action networks, offering students experiential programs that can lead to real-world impact socially, economically, and environmentally.
• To responsibly integrate the technical skills of working with GAI on campus while emphasizing the crucial “unAI-able” human skills that will ultimately help students thrive in college and beyond.

This may not be fair, but it’s true: on the whole, in the U.S., independent schools have the autonomy and often have more resources available than do public schools. All schools are human communities, and we need the “humanness” of each and every one of those schools desperately right now … but independent schools often have the luxury of being more intentional about building community. Independent schools may frame curricula around research-based, data-proven practices such as critical examination of source materials; experiential learning; and student-led, teacher-facilitiated discussions and collaborations. These latter, especially, give individual students a degree of self-awareness and agency that allows them to confidently undertake and eventually guide their own path to mastery of not just one skill, but many. This is important, because, as Jon Williams of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) states:

“People need to think of themselves not as the job that they do, but as the bundle of skills that they have.”

In the 19th century, my Great-Grandfather had one option: Find a trade and stick with it. Today, that model is obsolete. The “bundle of skills” our children need involves mental and technical agility, intellectual curiosity, humility, and adaptability. They must not only be fluent with GAI, they must be confident enough in their own humanity to partner effectively with it.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, James Amory Turnbull had one skill. He learned how to make surgical instruments that would, in turn, make a living. I don’t know if he enjoyed his work or not; if he found fulfillment or a sense of purpose and meaning in that work or any of the other community opportunities available to him as a member of a nascent middle class. I hope so.

Today’s fifteen-year-olds, however, are facing adulthood in a world that looks almost nothing like James’; it is shrinking, not growing. The middle class has been squeezed into near non-existence by a barbell economy. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has blurred the lines between humans and machines, and the resulting global crises of our current Winter cycle make the search for purpose and meaning highly challenging.

My Great-Grandfather’s story ended pretty well. As his descendant, I’m enjoying the arc of my own story. After a little more than a decade in public education, followed by another twelve years leading independent schools and preparing future generations of educators for both systems, I believe that independent schools in the U.S. have a unique opportunity during this chaotic era to reframe education – to do it not “better” than it was done in the past, but differently. Purposefully. Powerfully. Coherently.

When the waters of this Winter recede, the success of this new educational model might well serve to inform future public policies. Let’s hope that, decades from now, others will tell the tale of how Independent schools became the “Islands of Coherence” that prepared the way for a new Spring.