Curriculum, The

John Franklin Bobbitt's The Curriculum, appearing in 1918, was the first book published in the United States on the subject of curriculum. It is the most frequently cited book on curriculum in the field of U.S. educational history.

When he published the book, Bobbitt was a professor of educational administration at the University of Chicago. He completed his PhD degree in education at Clark University in 1909 and then accepted a position at the University of Chicago, where he remained until his retirement in 1941. The Curriculum was heavily influenced by the industrial context in which it was written. Bobbitt based his views on the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor, specifically his book Principles of Scientific Management. Taylor's text, published in 1911, was written to make ...