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Scientific Management. Fredrick Winslow Taylor. Progressive Schooling A science of education promised to replace the haphazard and idiosyncratic methods of the one room schoolhouse with scientifically proven practices.
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Scientific Management Fredrick Winslow Taylor
Progressive Schooling A science of education promised to replace the haphazard and idiosyncratic methods of the one room schoolhouse with scientifically proven practices.
The Progressive Era was not a monolithic time, any more than our own day is. The distinction between Administrative Progressives (who supported top down scientific management) and Pedagogic Progressives (who looked to empowering teachers with psychologically informed practices) brings out two competing approaches to this problem.
In the broadest terms the administrative progressives placed faith in techniques of statistical measurement to bring the educational processes under scientific control. From the physical plant to the curriculum, proscribed methods of instruction to standardized assessment, they attempted to quantify and order every aspect of instruction. The school was to became a factory.
Separating students by IQ, specialized courses of study were devised to prepare workers with the specific skills and social values necessary for their future trade. Each step, like the industrial process itself, was to be broken down into atomistic tasks to be learned through the rote and drill methods of behavioral conditioning.
Overseen by school administrators within a hierarchical system of management, the entire enterprise was monitored through quantitative measures designed to assess every phase of each student's progress. Education, for the masses at least, thus became the means-end activity of working through a lock-step curriculum keyed to future vocational needs and monitored by batteries of tests and scales.
There were many critics of such instrumental reasoning who objected to the preparation of children for a set role in a fixed, preplanned life. Most vocal of these was John Dewey. America’s leading philosophical voice between 1880 and 1950, Dewey presented a broad and compelling vision of education, democratic society, and modern science that resisted the dehumanizing effects of industrialization.
Dewey is considered a pedagogic progressive because he wanted a science of education that would empower teachers; administrators were to facilitate rather then direct their efforts. Dewey’s arguments however, had little practical influence compared to the schemes of the administrative progressives.
As Raymond Callahan argues in Education and the Cult of Efficiency, Administrative Progressives sought the elimination of waste through the harnessing of scientific methods, the development of rational non-political leadership, and the establishment of cooperative workforce where each person did their assigned task for the good of all. These problems were to be solved through the principals of scientific management.
Scientific Management Best codified in the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor, the application of scientific management revolutionized the way America works. Just walk into any chain store or restaurant and see how corporate models of behavior and organization dictate every aspect of service.
Taylor suggested four rules that can be applied to any task: First. Develop a science for each element of a man's work, which replaces the old rule-of-thumb method. Second. Scientifically select and then train, teach, and develop the workman, whereas in the past he chose his own work and trained himself as best he could.
Third. Heartily cooperate with the men so as to insure all of the work being done is in accordance with the principles of the science which has been developed. Fourth. There should be an almost equal division of the work and the responsibility between the management and the workmen. The management should take over all work for which they are better fitted than the workmen. In the past almost all of the work and the greater part of the responsibility were thrown upon the men.
For the modern reader Taylor was a rather contradictory figure. Claiming to be a friend of the worker, and indeed, a worker himself, he always believed his efforts would improve the conditions, the pay, and the rights of the operative. None the less, the whole thrust of his system was to turn every task into a mechanistic activity and transform work (with its creative and socially significant meaning) into mindless labor.
Eliminating all decision making from the work of the laborer (the greatest source of error), Taylor divided each job into its intellectual and physical components. Scientifically minded efficiency experts would analyze the work to be done, determine the "one best way," and train the laborer in its execution. Of course the worker would naturally resist, mischievously thinking that they knew best, but with close supervision and an appropriate system of rewards they could be drilled in the habitual behaviors desired.
For example, what is the best way to shovel coal? Who would think such an activity could be improved and made efficient? Why not leave the laborer to their own devices? According to Taylor, a worker ought to use a certain size shovel, with a particular shaped blade, utilizing a certain stance, and working at so many strokes per minute.
What is the best way? Experiment! For example, for every sub-task see which worker performs most efficiently then make that the model for all others to follow.
To prove the power of his methods Taylor staged a practical example: clearing a mountain of unwanted pig iron from the yard at the Bethlehem Steel plant. The pigs had to be loaded into wheelbarrows and walked over to rail cars on the other side of the yard.
Left to their own devices and common sense problem solving strategies on average the workers moved 304 pigs in a ten hour work day for $1.15 per hour. Under Taylor's system this became 1,1156 pigs in ten hours at $1.85 per hour. This was a fantastically more productive arrangement for the Steel Company and, as Taylor pointed out, the worker certainly profited from the extra 60¢ per day. His scheme, Taylor asserted, was not meant to crush the normal healthy man, only to eliminate waste in effort and production. Everybody was to be a winner!
Here is Taylor’s reasoning about the treatment of the laborer, the work done, and the appropriate payment. First. As we have before stated, the pig-iron handler is not an extraordinary man difficult to find, he is merely a man more or less of the type of the ox, heavy both mentally and physically. Second. The work which this man does tires him no more than any healthy normal laborer is tired by a proper day's work.
Third. It was not due to this man's initiative or originality that he did his big day's work, but to the knowledge of the science of pig-iron handling developed and taught him by some one else. Fourth. It is just and fair that men of the same general grade (when their all-round capacities are considered) should be paid about the same wages when they are all working to the best of their abilities.
Fifth. The 60 per cent increase in pay which he received was not the result of an arbitrary judgment of a foreman or superintendent, it was the result of a long series of careful experiments impartially made to determine what compensation is really for the man's true and best interest when all things are considered.
Thus we see that the pig-iron handler with his 60 per cent increase in wages is not an object for pity but rather a subject for congratulation. Unions, which looked at the work of Henry Noll, the first class man Taylor publicized in his experiment, were not so sanguine about the effects of the system on the worker. But for business, the implications were irresistible.
It even found its way into the home.Household Engineering: Scientific Management in the Home by Christine Frederick, 1920. Time Studies of Dishwashing When we say “dishwashing,” we commonly think of a single household task. But when closely analyzed and made the subject of a time or motion study, we see that it is composed of several parts or steps, each with different motions, and generally performed with different tools, as follows: 1. Scraping waste from surface of china, agate or other kind of dish or utensil. 2. Stacking or arranging dishes on surface adjacent to [next to] sink, preparatory to washing. 3. Actual washing with water, soap or other cleanser, with aid of cloth, mop or other mechanical means. 4. Rinsing dishes with clear water. 5. Wiping dishes with towel or equivalent drying. 6. Laying away dishes on or in respective shelves and cupboards. The efficiency of the whole process of “dishwashing” can be improved only by increasing the efficiency of each step. From careful experiments made with dishwashing over a period of two months and analysis of each of the six steps in the dishwashing process, the following results were obtained:
Taylor summarized the advantages of scientific management as follows: Science, not rule of thumb. Harmony, not discord. Cooperation, not individualism. Maximum output, in place of restricted output. The development of each man to his greatest efficiency and prosperity. With these far reaching promises the efficiency expert was born; time and motion studies became a staple of industrial and business life.
Here was the logic school administrators needed to design the one best system of schooling. The central problem in education became the elimination of waste. From supervision to curriculum to class scheduling to instructional methodology to evaluation. The one best method would turn schools into scientific sites, following objectively tested and rationally ordered methods rather than the ad hoc plans and common sense strategies of the average teacher. Do we not have the same arguments today for the use of “what works” and “best practices?”
The One Roomed School House Perhaps because of its intimate relationship to the life of the community, the close ties and common spirit it helped to cement, many Americans have looked back upon the one roomed school house with nostalgia. Certainly participation in small agrarian communities provided a wonderful opportunity to see the whole range and detail of life—from the sowing of crops, the collection of raw materials, through the manufacture of tools, cloth, and foods, culminating in the finished product and a sense of pride, achievement, and creative fulfillment.
Nor should we loose sight of the social solidarity and religious spirit that bound people together in cooperative groups that understood and respected the unique contribution of all to the common good. Honest industry, cooperative work, and mutual dependence were all ingredients of a powerful social ethic that sustained the American national identity. But, of course, life was not quite so rosy and idyllic. Often harsh and demanding, the rural life was often tedious and economically marginal. The homestead simply could not compete with large commercial farms, and, as cities grew many left the country for the opportunities of urban life.
Facing an ungraded class, often comprising rebellious (even violent youths), few materials and poor textbooks, cramped uncomfortable conditions, inadequate heating and ventilation, and a host of other constraints, the young teacher faced a near impossible task. Those who succeeded in under these conditions became important and respected members of the community. Many more got married or found an easier or better paying job.
Educators of the 1890s were determined to bring these haphazard practices into line with the modern industrial world. The curriculum had to be organized more efficiently and directed away from the traditional literary focus toward vocational goals. Teachers had to be trained to use current pedagogy, maintain disciple and monitor attendance under the guidance of a trained corps of superintendents.
On one hand this meant approved methods of teaching, expertly written textbooks and standardized curricula, on the other hand professionally led and supervised schools. In order to achieve such expert-driven centralized planning, the localism of village schools had to be overcome, and power transferred to men of standing—like the businessman and the industrialist—who understood the advantages of scientific planning.
Framing this takeover as an effort to de-politicize education, the cronyism of ill-informed local school boards had to be replaced by the public-spirited and objective leadership of trained professionals. Only then would the school run with machine-like efficiency and disciple.
Given local politics, this message was not well received in all areas, most especially in those Eastern and Midwestern cities that had evolved around the ward system. Having been characterized as petty, narrow-minded, self-seeking, foreign, and non-English speaking, members of the school boards refused to relinquish their traditional autonomy and privileges. But this grass roots opposition only heated the rhetoric as educational leaders redoubled their campaign for more effective and powerful bureaucratic and systemic controls.
Laying out the various ideologies of these struggles, David Tyack presents several case studies demonstrating the gradual change of power in a number of metropolitan areas. The details varied according to the history and politics of each site, but by the 1920s the model of an efficiently organized non-partisan school system run according to the dictates of a professional administrator steeped in the latest scientific methods and business practices had become the norm in urban America.
By 1923 American school boards had a median of 7 members, drawn typically from the professional classes. Thirty years earlier the average was 21.5, with a far broader composition.
Conclusion In this lecture I have examined how educators of the Progressive Era were informed by the social sciences. The theory of evolution brought new ideas about human nature yielding psychological accounts of intelligence, child development, and learning with profound implications for the aims, methods and content of schooling. But how would these ideas be implemented? How could education be informed by science? Two alternatives emerged: pedagogic and administrative progressivism.
The rise of scientific management proved pivotal. Revolutionizing industry and commerce, standardized control offered a compelling model for efficient schooling. This demanded the replacement of school boards and the principle of democratic localism with expert administrators and an ethic of objective, expert-driven public service.
