Educational reform in this country is a crock of shit. We would know this if more people read Upton Sinclair's "The Goslings," his study of public and private education in America from 1924. But few know that the book exists thanks to how we teach Sinclair in school. He's taught as a one-book writer. "The Jungle" forced the government to enact the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act and that is all it is good for. It is not even a concession to socialism to teach "The Jungle" like this. It is a blatant smoke screen to prevent people from discovering that Sinclair wrote ninety-two books in his career. Six of which, written in a an incredible burst of productivity between 1919 and 1927 (he wrote thirteen books during this time), make up his "Dead Hand" series. The "Dead Hand" series is six non-fiction books that looked at the influence of greed and big business upon various American institutions. Of these six books, "The Brass Check" is the only one in print. Had "The Goslings" stayed in print, had it been circulated widely, educational reform in this country would have happened a long time ago. Instead, we are now forced to dig up used copies of the book to see that little has changed since 1924. Beyond that, reading "The Goslings" now will show that we've grown accustomed to the "graft, favoritism, propaganda and repression" Sinclair brought to light.

"The Goslings," from 1924, is Sinclair's study of the systemic corruption of our public and private elementary and high schools by Big Business and other interests. In this, Sinclair succeeds admirably, though the book is marked by some flaws. His borderline intolerance of Catholicism is frightening to see from such a broadminded thinker, and it undermines some chapters of the book by derailing the logic of his arguments. The book is organized thematically over eighty-nine chapters. This works well if the reader wants to find certain things, but read cover to cover, "The Goslings" can be repetitious. Yet, this is also Sinclair's intention. By detailing the nation-wide spread of graft, repression of thought and speech, the undermining of unions and gross incompetence of school leadership, he is able to show that his study cannot be cast off as too isolated.

At times Sinclair's now-classic hyperbole seems outrageous, but this is a stylistic tick used for a particular effect. When combined with the frantic nature of his writing ("Chief Spy Dotey admitted that he had given information against Mr. Lapolla to the Lusk committee!") it gives off the feeling that Sinclair is so exasperated by the problems he chronicles, he must yell to be heard. The hyperbole and exasperation help to reduce incredible quantities of information into easily understood terms. What could have been a dense academic study of American education is instead easily readable by anyone. Stylistically, this is Sinclair's chief triumph. By making the book accessible without sacrificing any depth of thought it could, if put into people's hands, make them outraged enough to enact change. "The Goslings" is not one of the watered-down teaching manuals influenced by self-help books given to graduate students today. It is not "The Daily Disciplines of Leadership: How to Improve Student Achievement, Staff Motivation and Personal Organization" (Douglas B. Reeves, 2007). Certainly not, when Sinclair writes that:

It is the thesis of the business men who run our educational system that the schools are factories, and the children raw material, to be turned out thoroughly standardized, of the same size and shape, like biscuits or sausages. To these business men the teachers are servants, or 'hands,' whose duty is the same as in any other factory---to obey orders, and mind their own business, and be respectful to their superiors. Whenever by any chance teachers dare to have ideas of their own, or especially to ask for higher wages, these teachers are treated precisely as we have seen labor unions treated by the Black Hand of Southern California.

To be turned out thoroughly standardized. Like sausages. What appalls about this paragraph, is not only how little has changed, but how accepting of this we've grown. After all, in order for a school to receive state funding they must "be in compliance" under the state's "program quality assurance services." Now, teachers are told that education is driven by "data based assessments." Their schools are judged on "adopted performance outcomes." In department and faculty meetings plans are made for schools to meet "standards of satisfactory and excellent for data based areas [of instruction]." These quotes are from the state of Maryland's school performance reports of 1990. The language of business and the factory is what we use to describe education in this country. How little has changed since "The Goslings" of 1924.

If "The Goslings" failed to ignite social change in 1924 upon its publication, and we have adopted the language of corporate America into our schools ("data," "performance outcomes," "quality assurance services") then the America of "The Goslings" has allowed the sausage makers a firmer grip on education. We have grown so accustomed to the language of business in our schools we no longer challenge it. By forcing teachers to think and act in terms of corporate language, they teach corporate language to students. Students then become a piece of "raw material" and the teachers themselves are merely the obedient "hands" Sinclair warns about. Is it any wonder then, that students leave high school and enter college to study marketing? Of all the things to study, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on. Marketing! How to better advertise for business! No surprise then that we speak of education without intrinsic value: you want to be an English major? What can you do with that? This is the by-product of an educational system that Sinclair details in "The Goslings," one that has never derailed. Or as Sinclair puts it:

I think it one more proof of the deliberate conspiracy which the masters of our plutocratic empire have hatched, to keep the American people at the mental age of eight. The schools are now conducted upon the basis of keeping the pupils at that age; and of course the safest way to do this is to keep the teachers at the same age, and likewise the principals, and the supervisors---and the superintendents.

Paolo Friere, the Brazilian educator and critical theorist, said that "it is impossible to think of language without thinking of ideology and power." Taking that as true, and understanding that all educational disciplines are languages, then our concern over education is not only warranted, but just. Who is teaching our children? Who writes the textbooks the state mandates that we use? What interests are backing the building of our schools, the education of our teachers and thus the education of our children? Why does defense spending outweigh educational spending? Why are our children asked to pledge allegiance to the flag every morning, though it is the rare occasion when they sit down in an English class and dissect that pledge and its meaning?

These questions are pertinent now, but reading through "The Goslings" shows Sinclair asking them eighty-seven years ago. When he exposes how self-serving interests manipulate textbooks into schools he was not only showing America what afflicted its schools then, but he was warning us of future repercussions if we did not enact radical change. We did not listen. Take for example the recent report that Scholastic Books, a leading educational book supplier to schools (their books reach 90% of America's classrooms) released a fourth grade lesson packet called "The United States of Energy." The packet discussed the benefits of coal usage though it carefully failed to highlight greenhouse gas emissions, laborers' conditions, and mountaintop removal. The American Coal Foundation supplied the funding for the book.

Who is making money off of the standardized tests that drive "No Child Left Behind," "data based assessment," and "performance outcomes?" Money is being made all down the line here. And all this is part of what Sinclair deems the four major products of our educational system: "G, F, P and R--- Graft, Favoritism, Propaganda and Repression."

As Sinclair shows, this agenda and the corporate-industrial language used to describe both education and students, comes in many ways from the school boards. Sinclair points out in each city he covers that the school boards are not only corrupt and self serving, but they are stocked with non-educators. In this regard, nothing has changed between then and now. Top-down systems of hierarchical management plague our schools in displays of managerial totalitarianism. Effective for the plutocracy, since totalitarianism in leadership produces docile employees and docile students. Generations of this, and no one questions it at all. While we certainly use the word "democracy" with much more vigor in our media and schools these days, we are far from actually teaching and operating within it inside our school walls. In highlighting this non-educator run totalitarianism Sinclair implies, then argues for in his concluding remarks, that if schools were truly democratic they'd be run by the teachers. And they would be better off:

In a social system based upon justice and freedom we have a right to ask for harmony; but where the system is based upon injustice and servitude, to ask for harmony is merely to be a tool of intrenched wrong. So my advice to teachers and professors is that they should stand up and assert themselves, and let harmony come when educational institutions are controlled by educators, and not by the owners of stocks and bonds and other symbols of parasitism.

The totalitarianism of our schools is central to "The Goslings." Sinclair devotes much time to detailing how the schools were used to push republic-centric, pro-capitalist thought and conformity onto students. At one point he quotes directly from a textbook used in California schools, one prepared by the Better America Foundation. In it they taught students that

promiscuity, or free-love, is to the domestic world what democracy is to government...What gluttony is to the individual, democracy is to government...What drunkenness is to the individual, democracy is to government...What discord is to music, democracy is to government.

While our textbooks might not be so ludicrous now, that is not to say that they're any better. Since reading "The Goslings" shows us that our system has not changed, the Better America Foundation's viewpoint has only been more carefully honed and inserted into school textbooks. In 2004, Nauset Regional Middle School in Orleans, Massachusetts used a brand new history textbook that ended with a brief section on George W. Bush's "liberation" of Iraq. The textbook spoke plainly about America's "winning the war" there. The question we should be asking ourselves, in light of Sinclair's book, is what has been finely tuned since Sinclair exposed it in "The Goslings?" What viewpoints or propaganda is being fed to our students through textbooks, curriculum and administration-forced lesson planning?

"The Goslings" is certainly a shock to read, if only to show that educational reform since 1924 has been a myth. Jonathan Kozol has brilliantly shown that segregation in our schools is worse now than prior to Brown vs. the Board of Education. "No Child Left Behind" has increased the language of business, corporate control and monitoring in our schools instead of reforming them. In that surge and control of our schools we have not only continued the problems that Sinclair brought forth in "The Goslings," we have deepened them. We have allowed the sausage makers better control.

Though at times uneven, at others fairly tedious, "The Goslings" should be bought up and passed from parent to parent, educator to educator, student to student. Perhaps then real educational reform will begin from the bottom up, with all people discussing what we have been ignoring, allowing and encouraging for over eighty-seven years. And maybe, just maybe, we'll stop teaching Upton Sinclair as a one book writer. Instead we'll draw back to life a powerful critical voice. One as important now as it was then.

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