Bureaucratized Childhood and the Persistence of Schooling Systems: Irrationality in Rationality

Abstract

Like all other school systems, the United States’ is rooted in values emerging out of a history and the dominant ideology. Among them were the habits of individualism, utilitarianism, and egalitarianism described in chapter 2. These values make for a coherent ideology in the abstract, but in bureaucratizing them, the logical conflicts between being individualistic and egalitarian, or idealistic and pragmatic at the same time inevitably present themselves. This happens as the very pragmatic bureaucratic structures needed to create a school system are developed. This chapter asks how the nature of bureaucratic organizations shapes the practical limitations for how such goals and all their inherent contradictions can be expressed.