Reader Duane Swacker reminds me to tell you that the most important book for our age was written fifty years ago.
It is Raymond Callahan’s Education and the Cult of Efficiency. It was published in 1962.
It may be hard to find. Get it from the library.
It describes the “efficiency movement” of the early twentieth century, when administrators developed check lists for everything that teachers do.
The university efficiency experts swarmed the schools. That was also the time when standardized testing was adopted by many school systems and tracking became a popular feature. Businessmen wanted the schools to be more efficient. Many commissions reported on how schools should use time more efficiently. Many commissions recommended ways to cut the budget of schools.
Read this book.
A tweeter sent this scan of chapter 5: https://webspace.utexas.edu/hcleaver/www/330T/350kPEECallahanCh5ExpertsTable.pdf
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And fortunately, people at that time rejected this nuttiness. It took a while then, it should not take as long this time, because we are here to call bunk on this stuff – plus, we have seen it before. The work of Frederick Taylor has inflicted terrible harm on the world, and it should not be allowed to destroy our school system. I doubt even Taylor would approve of his ideas being imposed upon children in class.
Dr. Ravich is correct – read this book. Now. It is in print and available (it ain’t cheap). I hope it is not a violation of any policy to post this link, if so, I will remove it, but here is a link to the book at amazon.com:
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Taylor’s father built his wealth on mortgages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, 1849
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I had forgotten that bit of information. Thanks for that!
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Something else from the Wikipedia article about Frederick Taylor:
“Management theorist Henry Mintzberg is highly critical of Taylor’s methods. Mintzberg states that an obsession with efficiency allows measureable benefits to overshadow less quantifiable social benefits completely, and social values get left behind.”
Sound familiar?
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Thank you for the amazon link. Does anyone want to chip in and help me buy one for Arne Duncan or I can send him mine when I am done.
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I would prefer an ebook, but can’t seem to find one. If anyone finds such a choice, please help us ebook readers out and post that link.
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I also searched for a digital version, but thus far have found none. I will continue searching and if I find one, will post that info here.
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Susan, before trying to find an ebook copy of the book read Asimov’s “The Fun they Had”. (Thanks to reader/responder Michelle for that one).
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Do yourself a favour and don’t let the fact that it isn’t available as an ebook stand in the way of reading it in available paperback. This is an invaluable book that ought to be read by anyone concerned (or unaware) of what’s happening in school systems today.
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Wow. Thanks for sharing this. And check out this paragraph from Chapter 5, the “Educational Efficiency Experts in Action,” currently available in .pdf at http://ow.ly/cTWlB:
Almost immediately after the country became acquainted with scientific
management procedures, pressure began to apply them to the classroom. In
July of 1911, for example, a month after Taylor’s series of articles was
completed in the American Magazine, a school board member from Allegheny,
Pennsylvania told the N.E.A. that the two words which were “electrifying the
industrial world — scientific management” contained a “message” for every
teacher, and near the end of his speech he indicated that if teachers did not voluntarily take steps to increase their efficiency the business world would force
them to do so. As a result great energy was expended on using the available
tests and on developing new tests or scales or rating sheets or anything else that
would seem to provide tangible evidence of efficiency. As one superintendent
writing in 1912 put it, “the results of a few well-planned tests would carry
more weight with the business man and the parent than all the psychology in
the world.”
As someone once said, it’s “deja vu all over again.”
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P.S. A few used copies from ~$10-$35 are available at http://ow.ly/cTXkB
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Quite interesting in the sense that I’m reading chapter 5 now! Thanks for highlighting what you have!!
It reads like a manifesto a hundred years later (not from when Callahan wrote it but from what was going on then and now)!
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The history Callahan describes reads like a playbook for the management style our schools have suffered since the late 1990s (in my teaching experience in NS, Canada). That the book was written/published in 1962 and is perhaps more relevant in 2012 than ever should establish it as a classic work.
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Diane, you are a national treasure! Jean Anyon
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Thank you! So are you!
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Managed to get a used copy from Amazon!
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Duane, Thanks for the recommendation! It is a reminder that these “new” ideas aren’t new and have a history. People aren’t machines. Once again, best regards and thanks for your keen insights.
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You’re welcome and thanks for the kind comment!!
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Don’t forget Dickens’ criticism of this type of education in _Hard Times_.
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I’ll have to look into that. Thanks!!! Another case of the more it changes the more it stays the same? Or just the fact that we “moderns” maybe aren’t so modern???
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While we are in a reading mode, may I suggest Naomi Klein”s The Shock Doctrine.
Pretty much sums up the “crisis” in education.
Please check it out!
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Have read it and was in Peru in 1973, the original 9/11, when the CIA overthrew Allende. After that it was the first real example of the shock doctrine put into play.
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Sorry, it’s not clear, I was in Peru, the coup was in Chile.
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Years since I read it, but I remember Callahan also arguing that there was a structural “flaw” that made school administration vulnerable to seeking quick fixes that focus on the superficial. With short term contracts, administrators need to go to lay boards every three years to show they’ve identified some problem and have THE program that will solve that problem. Few administrators have contracts that would enable them to see through or sustain the real curricular change or real professional growth required to impact student learning. I taught in a public high school for 26years and worked for 7 superintendents, slightly higher than national average btw. Each scrapped or ignored some program of the previous administrator and brought in some new quick fix none of which lived much beyond their next contract or improved the educative interactions among students, content and teachers.
Callahan postulated the vulnerability of administrators fifty years ago to explain part of the reason they were so susceptible to half-baked but easily implemented ideas from business or political world. While his description of the policies they adopted resonates today, i think it is important to remember that he was writing about the progressive administrators or as Tyack called them in The One Best System, the administrative progressives. Thus the current horrors have deep roots going back 100 years.
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Thanks for weighing in, Bob Bain, and welcome to the discussion!
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