Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Edward L. Thorndike 227
of knowledge with little or no connection to another discipline. In other words, in a math class
students only focus on math knowledge and skills, and they are not expected to study other disciplines
such as language arts or social studies in the math class. An interdisciplinary curriculum
is one in which the different disciplines are combined to foster an authentic real-life encounter
with the knowledge from all of the disciplines included in the interdisciplinary curriculum. An
example would be a project that would require students to use math, social studies, science, and
language arts knowledge and skills in a setting that would allow the interconnected knowledge to
unfold in a natural manner similar to how it would unfold in real life. Curriculum that is organized
in a disciplinary manner reduces knowledge from its naturally occurring interconnected whole
to discrete parts that are disconnected from how the knowledge actually exists in real-world
contexts.
In the early 1900s, the idea of disciplinary curriculum became entrenched in education through
the efforts of individuals such as Frederick Winslow Taylor, who promoted the scientific management
of education, John Franklin Bobbitt, who was a major contributor to the social efficiency
movement, and Edward L. Thorndike, who was an advocate of differentiated curriculum.
Thorndike argued for the differentiation of curriculum, especially in the secondary schools. A
differentiated curriculum was organized in such a way that it would meet the anticipated future
vocational needs of the students. The educational historian Herbert Kliebard (1995) provides a
detailed discussion on this period in curriculum development, especially Thorndike’s promotion
of a differentiated curriculum. Concerning Thorndike’s position, Kliebard writes,
He [Thorndike] went on to estimate that not more than a third of the secondary student population should
study algebra and geometry since, in the first place, they were not suited for those subjects and, in the
second, they could occupy their time much more efficiently by studying those subjects that would fit them
more directly for what their lives had in store. (p. 94)
Those individuals who agreed with this position on curriculum maintained that an integral way
to determine who studies what would be through the results gained from extensive intelligence
testing. In this way, once it was determined which students would study a different level of
knowledge in a discipline (e.g., basic math versus algebra and other higher-order forms of math),
psychological principles such as Thorndike’s connectionism (i.e., the use of stimulus–response
sequences) could be applied to the step-by-step organization of the curriculum and instructional
strategies.
Kliebard (1995) and Cremin (1964), another scholar who studied this time period, both situate
Thorndike within the Progressive Movement in education. However, both indicate that
Thorndike’s social philosophy, like those who promoted scientific management and social efficiency,
was conservative. Unlike liberal progressives such as John Dewey, Thorndike’s conservative
views aligned with the conservative position that education should be tailored for each
student in that some would pursue intellectual knowledge and skill, while others would pursue
the knowledge and skill necessary for their intended occupation. Thomas S. Popkewitz (1991)
explains that differentiated curriculum and vocationalism actually promoted class differences
between the wealthy and the poor. Popkewitz proposes that the field of educational psychology
as envisioned by individuals like Thorndike became a central dynamic in the production of power
relations through education in the twentieth century (p. 102). Through this organization of education,
the power arrangements within American society were reproduced, thus continuing the
dominance of certain social classes over others.
In relation to the reproduction of one class’s power over another, differentiated curriculum,
as envisioned by Thorndike, decontextualized the knowledge that students were to acquire. For
instance, this means that the learning of math, science, or any other discipline was done within a