When picturing a modern public school classroom, most people imagine what is now traditional: students sitting silently in rows or groups while a teacher lectures about a topic at the front.   This highly regulated model of schooling, however, wasn’t always the norm.  It became common in the United States in the early nineteenth century, around the same time the Industrial Revolution began.  Its historical timing and impersonal style have led many to refer to it as  “the factory model of education.”