Against Standardization: Moving Beyond Taylor
I have a deep, viscerally negative response to standardization. Itâs hard for me to articulate. Itâs sometimes hard to understand. And honestly, I wish this wasnât the case. It certainly would make things easier.
A couple of weeks ago I stumbled into a discussion about the Common Core with an educator I have much respect for. She was appalled that anyone who cared about learning couldnât support the Common Core. I felt bad. I wanted to support it. I wished I did. But that wouldnât have been honest. And I couldnât get to the bottom of my argument, there wasnât enough time.
I wasnât sure how to articulate it.
So I want to try to do that here- as simply and directly as I can.
Any form of standardization rests on hidden assumptions about what it means to be human. And the assumptions that standardization rests upon are reductionist, behaviorist, and economically motivated.
In their thought provoking book, Dancing at the Edge, Maureen OâHara and Graham Leciester write:
âFundamentally what matters is the view we hold of the person: who we are and what we are capable of becoming.
Over a hundred years ago Frederick W. Taylorâs scientific management inspired both Henry Ford and Vladimir Lenin with the idea that breaking every job action into small simple steps that can be measured and analyzed would Against Standardization: Moving Beyond Taylor | educarenow:
