Factory Model Education “Reforms” Were Designed for Product Testing, Not Children
“The factory model was developed to ensure quality control and produce identical “consumer” products cheaply. It is NOT an approach that should be used with children. Modern researchers and professional educators have come to understand that the human brain is wired for learning, and that the most effective methods of education are aligned with how children naturally learn.”
Education reforms that attempt to enforce fixed standards, continuous data collection and high-stakes testing are applying an industrial model of factory production developed in the early part of the last century. It’s a manufacturing approach that should not be applied to children.
The factory model was developed over a hundred years ago, to ensure quality control and produce identical “consumer” products cheaply. It is NOT appropriate to use these methods with children, because their bodies and brains are designed to learn in self-directed ways that can be sabotaged by adult attempts to manipulate, measure and control them.
Learning is a creative self-directed process. Modern researchers and professional educators have come to understand that the human brain is wired for learning, and that the most effective methods of education must are aligned with how children naturally learn.In the business world the early 20th century industrial organization models of Scientific Management (aka, Taylorism) & Max Weber’s Bureaucratic Model have been updated and re-branded, but can still be recognized by authoritarian social hierarchies that emphasize top-down controls, strict standards, chains of command, rules enforcement, and data collection.
This system provides a highly effective way of making products cheaply and generating profits (turning everything the organization touches into a commodity to be bought, sold and traded), but is completely inappropriate in educational settings, and with children, Factory Model Education “Reforms” Were Designed for Product Testing, Not Children | Creative by Nature: