Taylorism+and+Public+Education



Taylorism, also known as scientific management, was created by Frederick Taylor in the 1880's. It sought to analyze and synthesize workflow with the objective of improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. Taylor believed that scientific analysis would lead to the "one best way" to do things, which would help to save cost and time.

Main Principles
 * Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
 * Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
 * Provide ‘Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task’
 * Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.

In the 1920's Taylorism became apparent in the classroom. Public schools came up with standardization methods for their students such as standardized tests and grades in order to best educate the students efficiently. It emphasized specific domains of knowledge in a linear structure, such as how we have different teachers depending on the subject rather than one teacher that is expected to teach us everything.

The result is schools take on the model of a factory where the educators make up the assembly line and the students are the products.