Cult of Efficiency

The term cult of efficiency comes from the title of a book published by educational historian Raymond E. Callahan in 1962, Education and the Cult of Efficiency: A Study of the Forces That Have Shaped the Administration of the Public Schools. As the book title implies, its major focus was on the topic of school administration. The curriculum in the early 20th century, and after, was substantively shaped by school administrators, who in many ways impeded improvement of academic study in the schools. Thus, Callahan's study of school administration and school administrators has dramatic and troubling impact on the school curriculum.

Callahan dealt with the business efficiency movement that swept the field of school administration in the early 20th century. He traced its roots to an efficiency movement that pervaded U.S. business, at least rhetorically, beginning in the 1890s. The form of efficiency called scientific management, a movement that was fundamentally nonscientific, was especially popular. As efficiency loomed more and more prominently in business and industry, it easily made its way into U.S. public schools. Callahan argues that local control of U.S. education made school administrators exceptionally susceptible to direct movement from the larger society into educational affairs. Although the nuts and bolts of the school curriculum were a secondary concern for the business efficiency advocates, implementation of their criterion of [Page 162]efficiency and cost accounting to achieve that efficiency certainly did not bode well for academic subjects such as foreign languages, particularly the classical languages. Thus, the efficiency movement in school administration facilitated the dilution of the academic curriculum, especially after efficiency evolved from an economic concept to a concept of social efficiency in which school subjects were evaluated on their ability to contribute to the goals of a smoothly functioning industry. Both economic or business efficiency and social efficiency were closely tied to vocational education, an approach that basically shifted many of the costs of job training from employers to the public schools.

The curricular training of school administrators was greatly influenced by the efficiency movement that pervaded school administration as a field. In fact, it was through the influence of efficiency that the professional training of school administrators received a major boost in the early 20th century. Prior to the efficiency movement, school administrators advanced to their jobs through seniority in the school system and through attainments of leadership positions inside and outside of education. Often times, school administrators were distinguished intellectually, more so than managerially. Administrator training programs gravitated to the postgraduate level of study in leading institutions of higher education such as Teachers College of Columbia University. Utilizing an efficiency rationale and a series of courses that emphasized topics such as cost accounting, other aspects of educational finance, and scientific management, school administrators were trained to become educational executives and managers. The notions of subject matter expert, curriculum developer, or pedagogical leader took second place in the field of school administration to the image of a captain of education who would operate on the model of a captain of industry.

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