Scientific Management

Scientific management is a systematic approach to organizing and controlling activities in business and industry that emphasizes efficiency as its primary goal. The brainchild of industrial consultant Frederick W. Taylor in the early part of the 20th century, scientific management became a movement that quickly spread to many fields and institutions in U.S. society. Educator Franklin Bobbitt was most responsible for introducing the approach to, and popularizing it within, the field of curriculum development.

Taylor's most extensive discussion of the use of scientific method is found in his book The Principles of Scientific Management. In the first decade of the 20th century, Taylor became convinced that rampant waste could be eliminated from the industrial process and efficiency maximized through the careful application of four principles:

• 1.
  The development of scientific studies that analyzed the tasks of workers, the methods they employed, and the tools they utilized
• 2.
  The scientific selection of the workers in accordance with their potential to implement the scientifically validated methods
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• 3.
  The education and training of workers in the methods
• 4.
  Careful planning and supervision that emphasized cooperation between managers and workers in the application of the methods in worker performance

In industry, these principles had the effect of separating planning through the analysis of task and tools from the execution of work. In education they had the effect of separating the process of curriculum planning from the activity of instruction.

As adopted and adapted by Bobbitt, these principles served as the foundation of what came to be called “scientific curriculum making.” This approach to curriculum development was introduced primarily through his two books The Curriculum and How to Make a Curriculum. In his work, Bobbitt also emphasized the elimination of waste by attempting to ensure that the greatest number of students would learn the maximum of amount of content and skills in the smallest amount of time.

This could be brought about, according to Bobbitt, by first analyzing the tasks and activities of adult life, and then ascertaining the current knowledge of students in regards to those tasks. The gap between the two would then become the source of objectives within the school curriculum. These objectives would serve as precise performance standards for learning that Bobbitt literally likened to the specific and exact physical standards for steel rails used by the railroad industry. The work of Edward Thorndike and others in the newly emerging field of psychological measurement had suggested that such precision was possible through educational testing.

The scientific management approach was appealing to members of the general public who yearned for more efficient uses of school funding. Proponents claimed that the precise measurements made possible by this approach allowed for clear comparisons in educational achievement between students, teachers, schools, school districts, and administrators. Educational and psychological experts were assigned the task of determining with some precision the most efficient method for teaching each standard. Like their counterparts on the factory assembly lines, teachers, in collaboration with administrators/supervisors, were to be selected and trained in the use of these scientifically validated methods. Bonus plans were designed to reward monetarily highly efficient teachers and administrators. Inefficient educators whose students failed to meet the standards could be more easily removed. Advocates also envisioned that the plan would allow for reduced costs through increasing class size and decreasing the number of teachers needed. One of the most prominent advocates was the Newton, Massachusetts, superintendent of schools, Frank Spaulding.

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