EDUC 1F95 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Canada, Individualism, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
12 Oct 2018
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EDUC 1F95
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
EDUC 1F95 Lecture 1 January 12th, 2017
Efficiency, Scientific Management and Industry: The Mechanization of Schooling
Central issue in the chapter:
• Influence of industrialism, business, engineering, etc on society. The school system we
have today came into effect when factories were becoming more essential and numerous.
Schools and factories were prevalent at the same time
Central questions:
• Can efficiency models used in factories and industry be brought into education?
• What happens if they are? To students, teachers, learning and society?
• How and why did it happen in the 20th century?
Taylorism
• Scientific management, Based on time and motion studies by engineers
• Taylor was concerned that humans were not good as the machines they were creating. He
tried to make human beings behave more and more like a machine. His focus shifted
from making the machine efficient to making humans more efficient. He was concerned
with the impact of the advent of mass production on education.
• Its concerned with mechanization and automation. One of the things he did when
observing people in factories he would break a process into distinct tasks.
• Taylor contributed greatly to economic growth
Fordism
• Henry Ford invented the assembly line. One person performs one task. It’s a real intense
division of labour where people are doing very small and isolated components of a bigger
process.
• The rise of industrialism: the application of mechanical power to the production of goods.
Implications
• The workers did not always like it. It was not a form of empowerment to move from a
work place from start to finish to doing the same tasks all the time. If the focus of
efficiency is about dehumanization, then it makes work boring repetitive and thus
unrewarding.
• The advantage of what workers liked about efficiency is that they became
interchangeable. The idea is that you can easily be replaced, you lack expertise and have
no sense of the larger project. One of the reasons that this shift is described as so
dehumanizing is because of this overspecialization. Work became less rewarding because
they know knew their specific function within a system, not the whole process.
• Disempowering process, you are less human as a consequence
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Mechanization of Human Beings
• Human beings become lost in the gears. Human beings become machine-like or an
extension of machines. The idea that today we have to live in the age of machines and be
like the machine to fit.
Engineering Schools
• If an engineer can make a factory more efficient, then we should hire engineers to make
schools more efficient
• Rise of business and industry to a position of prestige and influence, and resulting belief
that business values should spread to all parts of life, including school context.
Two Effects on Schooling
The “School-as-Factory” Model
1) Make schools like factories in their structure, organization, culture, etc.
The “School for-Factories”
2) Make schools serve a factory. Make the content of the curriculum more closely aligned
with what industry wants.
To prepare students to be docile, working according to daily schedules, follow orders and respect
authority. To train people to fit into a factory context so that they won’t argue with their boss and
do their job properly.
The content of what’s learned (curriculum) is no more important than daily procedures (hidden
curriculum). Industry leaders realize this. As long as they learn to be like a machine in a school
context, then they’re going to fit in a factory context.
Made schools emphasize vocational, anti-intellectual. If schools are going to serve factories, then
they should remove history, English, geography courses, etc and replace them with business
oriented courses.
The irony was that the people who were most successful as business leaders, were actually very
hostile towards education in the first place. They believed that success and ability could not be
learned in a school context.
Dale Carnegie believed that nothing good happens in a school context. He believed education
would undermine people’s motivation and independence.
Potential Influence of Efficiency Experts
• If you want to get a job in the school board you had to get a business degree instead of an
education degree.
In Summary:
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Efficiency, scientific management and industry: the mechanization of schooling. Influence of industrialism, business, engineering, etc on society. The school system we have today came into effect when factories were becoming more essential and numerous. Schools and factories were prevalent at the same time. Taylorism: scientific management, based on time and motion studies by engineers, taylor was concerned that humans were not good as the machines they were creating. He tried to make human beings behave more and more like a machine. His focus shifted from making the machine efficient to making humans more efficient. He was concerned with the impact of the advent of mass production on education. One of the things he did when observing people in factories he would break a process into distinct tasks: taylor contributed greatly to economic growth. Fordism: henry ford invented the assembly line.
