Taylorism and education

As I slowly work my way throught Carr's book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, I ran across this passage from the chapter on Google: (reformatted slightly.)

In his 1993 book Technopoly, Neil Postman distilled the main tenets of Taylor’s scientific management.* Taylorsim, he wrote, is founded on six assumptions:

“that the primary, if not the only goal of human labor and thought is efficiency;

that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment;

that, in fact, human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity;

that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking;

that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value;

and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts.”

Fredrick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management, 1911.

Carr uses the passage to ask if Google is trying to "Taylorize" information acquisition. But what struck me is that our 2011 national and state school improvement efforts seemed to be based on this 1911 model of productivity.

Too bad our kids aren't just little Model Ts rolling off the assembly line.

Oh, Carr's book is one of the best I've read for awhile. Gets bogged down slugs and brain research a little, but overall a thoughtful and fascinating read.

Comments

[Nathan Mielke]

My wife's principal spoke about that book in her welcome back letter. I'll have to put that on Amazon wish list.

Its too bad that pundits don't get it. Jeb Bush, Michelle Rhee and the like think they're starting a revolution. The rhetoric sounds good on The Morning Joe, but it rings hollow in reality. I'm reading The Powers To Lead and the author talks about using hard and soft power together to get the end results you're looking for. All any of them are doing is using hard power. Rhee flexed her muscles, talked tough, got on the cover of Time and was basically fired in three years. What was really achieved? Lots of angry people. If you want to head in a certain direction, you need to get at least some people on board that are doing the work in the schools.

Any sane person in our business knows that we need change, but what's being served up is a road to nowhere. It makes us want to send our son to the independent school my wife works at, rather than the public school four blocks away, because politicians can't mess up her school.

[Mark Crotty]

Two comments on your great post:

I just wrote on blog, within a larger piece:

The worst? It’s that so many of those conversations lead to most people suggesting the same misguided solutions to various issues. All the solutions somehow seem to involve “raising standards”—be it for schools or teachers or students. Please understand that I’m not against standards. Certainly they should be high. I’m just not sure how they really work as a solution. A couple of years ago several politicians proposed firing all the poor performing teachers. Obviously we don’t want bad teachers. But how will they be identified? More importantly, who would replace them? Any guarantee they would be any better given the challenges?
I’m not sure at whom I should rant about this. Maybe Frederick Taylor and his whole notion of scientific management. But we seem to have this notion that education can somehow be mechanized to ensure quality. Six-step lesson plans, teacher-proof curricula, computer-assisted instruction—each was/is supposed to be the silver bullet. (http://tokeepthingswhole.blogspot.com/2011/01/with-apologies-to-dickens.html)

I recently bought my first Kindle. First read: The Shallows. I like irony. Anway, I agree it's a fascinating read, thought a bit repetitive and laborious at times.

[Carl Anderson]

I am currently about half-way through reading Callahan's (1962) Education and the Cult of Efficiency which is an historical account of the rise of scientific management and it's impact on schools in the first half of the twentieth century. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in this topic. It is uncanny how Callahan's account of the "reform" movement of the 1910s mirrors the rhetoric we hear today. The whole notion of content standards, standards of practice, best practices, performance pay, value-added, and the elevation of the role of administrator really began with Taylor, Spaulding, Bobbitt, and Thordike. (I am rather surprised Diane Ravitch never brought up their names in her new book Death and Life of the Great American School System). The question I am left with is, are we now in a revival of the era of scientific management or did we never leave? Are we currently living through a cycle that we just have to wait out or is there no cycle, just movement forward? Is what we are seeing in education the consequence of the work begun in the 1910s or are we revisiting a social mindset we once abandoned? I truly hope in this case we can keep repeating the teacher's lounge mantra, "This too shall pass."

[Ann Mansfield]

Nathan. interesting that you should mention Rhee. I was just about to post that she opined-again- via NPR last night (on Marketplace Money, logically enough, I suppose) that the US needs to consider education an economic instittution not a social one. The hard and soft power concept would be seem to be more effective and palatable in this culture.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Nathan,

If it is any assurance, I think politicians can "mess up" administrators, but good teachers keep doing what good teachers have always done - and let the chips fall where they may.

I remember the old college debates about whether teaching was an art or a science. The older I get, the more I see that is indeed an art.

Doug

Hi Mark,

I enjoyed your blog entry. Very thoughtful.

Like I say, I am "skimming" The Shallows. But yes, reading it on the Kindle is a little ironic. I find on the Kindle that I now reading about four books at a time! My Shallow Mind.

Doug

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Carl,

I expect one cause of this move toward data-use is that technology is actually allowing educators to collect, analyze and use data in ways that were impossible before. I just hope we learn to use these new tools well before education is irreparably damaged.

Enjoying your series of terms that have lost their meaning,

Doug

Hi Ann,

Given one's personal philosophy, I suppose anything can be regarded in terms of dollars and cents - marriage, religion, recreation. Seems a sad and shallow way of looking at life, however.

Doug

[J.]

Late to the party on this post, but I just finished The Shallows. While I don't deny the premise that we can't put the email/iphone/blackberry down, I think Carr is concerned about the wrong thing. Its not that our collective attention spans are dwindling that's frightening, its the move from active production of creative pursuits to the passive consumption of them.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi J,

Some would argue that the opportunities to create and share has been never been greater with Web 2.0 tools. Fill in the blank and hit submit.

Although I will admit my iPad is a much better consumption than production device!

Doug