Bobbitt, John Franklin

Believed by many to have established curriculum as a professional field of study, John Franklin Bobbitt (1876–1952) was born near English, Indiana, on February 16, 1876. He was the son of James and Martha Bobbitt, whose influence served as the foundation of a philosophy framed on hard work, study, self-discipline, religious faith, and devotion to duty. He earned his PhD degree from Clark University in 1909 and was a university professor and author. He also taught school from 1903 to 1907 at the Philippine Normal School in Manila. As a social efficiency advocate, Bobbitt saw the curriculum as a means for preparing students for their adult roles in a new industrial-based world. Bobbitt's work helped to influence the development of curriculum by emphasizing specifications and responses to current social needs as an alternative to primarily schooling children with a focus on traditional academic subjects. His work strongly influenced the reconstruction of American education. While he was a member of the faculty in educational administration at the University of Chicago in the early 1900s, he helped develop the modern concept of objective analysis, a forerunner of job and task analysis.

Bobbitt published The Curriculum in 1918, and this work is believed by many to be the first book to focus on curriculum. In it, he argued that standardization of the teachers' work would facilitate student wisdom, which would grow out of participation and experiences, not memorization of statements or facts. The concept that curriculum development should begin with goals and follow scientific procedures began the [Page 83]movement toward exposing students to many nonacademic socialization experiences and much scientifically engineered physical activity. Bobbitt also wrote How to Make a Curriculum, which served as the forerunner of others in the subject and influenced the practice of teaching and learning for many generations to follow. His final book, Curriculum of Modern Education, reflects three decades of work with the theory of curriculum and illustrates the transformation of his thoughts about the subject.

Bobbitt formulated five steps in curriculum development: (1) analysis of human experience, (2) job analysis, (3) deriving objectives, (4) selecting objectives, and (5) planning in detail. Separating the broad range of human experience into major fields represented Step 1. These fields would then be broken down into their more specific activities. Next, objectives of education would be developed from statements of the abilities required to perform the activities. The fourth step was to select from the list of objectives those which were to serve as the basis for planning pupil activities. Finally, activities, experiences, and opportunities involved in attaining the objectives were laid out for the teacher to follow.

Bobbitt's work created the foundations of job and task analysis, or the idea of analyzing a complex skill into its component sub skills. Once the goals of the task were understood, then teachers would be able to plan for goal implementation. This connection between outcomes and instruction resulted in the current practice of specifying desirable outcomes and then planning instructional experiences that would facilitate their acquisition.

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