In this guest post on EduShyster’s blog, Susan Altman asks whether education reform is based on antiquated, obsolete ideas about business.
Altman is pursuing a master’s degree in International and Comparative Education and Business Management at Oxford University.
Yes, indeed, she says, the reformers look on schooling as a product, not a service. As a product, they seek to standardize it.
She writes:
“Think manufacturing, think Henry Ford and Model Ts on a conveyor belt. Think Taylorism. Now substitute fourth graders and math class for steering wheels and fenders and you have a disturbingly accurate picture of the business principles that inform much of contemporary education reform. According to this factory vision, students are all identical widgets while teachers are nothing more than mindless factory workers.”
This is not a 21st century paradigm, she says. The Ed reformers are stuck in an early 20th century way of thinking.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What is happening is greater then the education system dismantling as it is a dismantling almost every system we have. If you go to the doctor or a clinic now you will be nudged to accept the nurse practioner as your care provider. That person may well be qualitfied to be a medical professional but they are not a doctor. Healthcare for the disabled is shifted to at home care with family as the main medically responsible person and they are not medical professionals.
And so it goes.
Equivalent to that also is happening in the financial sector and in industry. For heavens sake we are even questioning the credentials of the people at the NSA!! We have prisoners doing data input for industry, manufacturing an untold number of products and services for corporations and government. We have sold our souls to company store and most of it on the cheap.
No! The education dismantling is wrapped around everything from new world order of measurement and value added. No others need apply. It is part of the Urban Shrinkage design to retool and reshape
our cities and our country. It is about real estate markets. It is part of the sorting of minds and talent for the purpose of others then that of the individual and for profit and power. It is not about government, justice, business, family, or anything else as we have known it. It is the unraveling of damn near everything we have known or held dear. It a well constructed over a very long time of meticulous design and a global grab. It is about what we don’t know and mega years ahead in plan with a push now to move it into place.
The silence of most of media is deafening and all news is simply catching up by the seconds, minutes, hours, days and years. We are running back in time trying to maintain in the now with no idea of our future. The future knowing is reserved for an elite number of people who have claim on society as they own it and live it. Social engineers, technology gurus, government and courts at the highest level, Defense and Military Complex personnel, who lay claim on much of this in think tanks.
This is no dream but stark reality and it is basically being shoved down the publics throats with no honest input or concern for their well being. It is not about the public except to plug it into the boxes designated for their purpose. Harsh?!!! I think not. Conspiratorial?!!! No longer! It is real and it is now! I wish to hell it was a dream or even a nightmare because that you wake up from.This is your sci-fi of yesterday come to life in our time and straight at our children. The children will never know a difference except for the stories the old folks tell…….
(This comment was taken from another blog article I responded to but it applies here as well)
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A big DITTO! Accountability based on testing based on age cohorts reinforces the factory school paradigm that is ingrained in everyone’s mind. It limits the thinking on how technology COULD be used to personalize education. It reinforces the notion that public education is in one silo and public services are in other silos and never-the-twain-shall meet. It reinforces the notion that one teacher is wholly responsible for the mental and emotional growth of every child in their classroom. If we ever hope to go beyond factory schools we need to go beyond accountability based on testing age cohorts!
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It’s twentieth-century Taylorism and (pseudo) scientific management, overlaid with twenty-first century digital surveillance and data mining/monetization of students.
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Perfect comment…TRUE
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Reformers are falling victim to their own “Widget Effect,” eh?
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Only the kids of the majority are “widgets,” which suggests that their experiences in school and society develop them as subordinate folks dishabituated from imagining political power(civic ideals) or any kind of power(citizen initiative) except the power to shop. Consuming rather than governing is the mass curriculum. For the kids of Rahm Emanuel, Bill Gates, Mayor Bloomberg, Eli Broad, Wendy Kopp, etc., the lessons of living at their rare levels proposes power to govern along with lavish consumption.
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Ronee, I have never read you more focused. It is perfect. We are not widgets. The combinations have a lot of zeros. They are trying to make us widgets. That has never worked before, why do they think it will now? We need the variations. This is the ultimate strength of the U.S. and that is its multicultural and multiracial basis in fact along with all the different ways of thinking that creates in the stew that is America. Japan, Korea and China have a different problem. They are mono. That is an ultimate weakness. We are not utilizing our capability because of this stew to really move ahead. However, this requires a proper education system with art and programs to excite the mind and teachers which accelerate this process of wanting to learn instead of boredom while waiting for the next ultimate test. Teachers are being too constrained with programmed programs just like a computer on autorun. This does not work with the variations of pupils in each class having different ways and needs of learning. Lots of variables a day for a teacher. The problem always starts at administration especially at the top.
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