taylorism >>> and education

The whole behaviourist approach to learning is very much with us today, despite behaviourism being discredited by psychology:
Jay Doubleyou: behaviourism >>> and learning objectives >>> and the common european framework

The learning by objectives movement has other roots:

Learning by Objectives, Clarity and the Cult of Measurement

Preoccupation with “action verbs” is indicative of a commitment to what can usefully be called “behavioural education.” It is rooted in an insidious combination of Frederick Taylor's theory of scientific management in industry and B. F. Skinner's psychological theory of operant conditioning. As my colleague Ralph Barrett and I wrote some time ago (1977, August, 7):

… underpaid workers, starving rats and students are expected to become … conspicuous consumers of observable rewards. Such mindless competition is reproduced throughout our society; its educational variant simply involves students pressing appropriate behaviour levers (learning modules) in order to achieve the academic food pellet (the diploma). It is no accident that a society obsessed with “efficiency, “ with “getting results, “ with “learning and earning“ would emphasize externally observable and specifically measurable behaviours; in our system, behavioural education seems to work, but so [did] electric shock!

The kind of homogenized curriculum that is the stuff and substance of pre-packaged learning modules and that can be measured by quantitative assessments of student performance on evaluations of what students do destroys authentic educational opportunity by undermining curiosity, imagination, reflection and criticism. This is so obvious that it is barely worth breath or a line of type.

College Quarterly - Articles - Blooming Idiots: Educational Objectives, Learning Taxonomies and the Pedagogy of Benjamin Bloom

A Radical Critique of the Learning Outcomes Assessment Movement

Michael Bennett, Jacqueline Brady

From: Radical Teacher
Number 94, Fall 2012
pp. 34-47

LEIGH CUNINGHAM

The Learning Outcomes Assessment (LOA) movement seems rather innocuous. Teachers and administrators at colleges and universities are asked to articulate the goals, objectives, measures, and outcomes of the educational process at every level: from the classroom to the department to the institution as a whole. 

In the United States, the roots of the LOA movement, as opposed to engaged learning practices, can be traced back to Taylorism and theories of scientific management. LOA is really another manifestation of the standards movement, which emerged alongside the efficiency movement at the turn of the 20^thcentury. By the first decade of the last century, business models, rhetoric, and ideology had so saturated the field of K-12 education that educators themselves began proposing that schools should run as efficiently as factories. 

A social efficiency movement in education took firm hold, with influential proponents such as William C. Bagley; Bagley wrote the textbook Classroom Management in 1907 so that teachers, educators, and professionals in the field might better apply the principles of scientific management to their workspaces. His book was followed by Franklin Bobbit’s The Curriculum, in 1918. Drawing his influence from business and economic sectors, Bobbit—the inventor of Curriculum Theory—argued that schools, like businesses, should be efficient, eliminate waste, and focus on outcomes to the degree that the curriculum must be useful in shaping students into adult workers. 

Along with Frederick Winslow Taylor, Bobbit believed that efficient outcomes depended on centralized authority and precise, top down instruction for all tasks performed. Teachers were expected to acquiesce in the outside knowledge of efficiency experts—administrators and professors of education. Thus, curriculum was conceived of as a normalizing device and instrument of social regulation, one that would help control the working class so that the United States could better compete with German production.

Project MUSE - A Radical Critique of the Learning Outcomes Assessment Movement
A Radical Critique of the Learning Outcomes Assessment Movement | Bennett | Radical Teacher

FW Taylor is in fact everywhere and very influential when it comes to education:
Jay Doubleyou: dumbing us down
Jay Doubleyou: john taylor gatto: on video
Jay Doubleyou: education issues
Jay Doubleyou: social engineering

It seems to be about the 'engineering of people':
Jay Doubleyou: social engineering
HUMAN RESOURCES: Social Engineering In The 20th Century -- by Scott Noble - YouTube
The Scientific Management of America (Part 1), by John Taylor Gatto - YouTube
The Scientific Management of America (Part 2), by John Taylor Gatto - YouTube

John Taylor Gatto is a relative of the inventor of Taylorism or 'Scientific Managment':
Taylorism on ABC World Report - YouTube
Frederick Taylor- the biggest bastard ever 1 of 2 - YouTube

This is scientific engineering:



Human Resources: Gatto explains the seedy origin of public education-indoctrination - YouTube
Jay Doubleyou: education: dumbing us down

See also:
Jay Doubleyou: education
Jay Doubleyou: the purpose of education: from china to prussia to the united states
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