Today's school system
A production and education story.
Production
In about 1890, Frederick Winslow Taylor invented a production method, Scientific Management.
By 1900 it was proven to succeed spectacularly well: high efficiency and high quality.
By 1910 it was being used worldwide.
Why use Taylor'sproduction method ineducation?
Two reasons. Hope, but mainly pressure.
The hope was that Taylor's method might work for education because it worked so astonishingly well in production.
But the real impetus was enormous pressure from leaders in business.
And pressure from a crisis the method had itself created: as Taylor's efficiency emptied the fields and mines, families poured into the cities, swelling the schools past capacity.
In 1913 education leaders succumbed.
And began adopting Taylor's method for public schooling.
This is all documented in Raymond E. Callahan's book: Education and the Cult of Efficiency.
What is Taylor's method?
Let's start with production.