gat

usiness-industrial groups, but of the strength of the business ideology...and
the extreme weakness and vulnerability of school administrators. I had
expected more professional autonomy and I was completely unprepared for the
extent and degree of capitulation by administrators to whatever demands were
made upon them. I was surprised and then dismayed to learn how many
decisions they made or were forced to make, not on educational grounds, but
as a means of appeasing their critics in order to maintain their positions in the
school. [emphasis added]
1 The actual term "scientific management" was created by famous lawyer Louis Brandeis in 1910 for the Interstate
Commerce Commission rate hearings. Brandeis understood thoroughly how a clever phrase could control public
imagination.
2 Gilbreth, the man who made the term "industrial engineering" familiar to the public, was a devotee ofTaylorism.
His daughter wrote a best seller about the Gilbreth home, Cheaper By The Dozen, in which her father’s penchant for
refining work processes is recalled. Behind his back, Taylor ran Gilbreth down as a "fakir."
3 List adapted from Melvin Kranzberg and Joseph Gies, By the Sweat of Thy Brow.
4 Taylor was no garden-variety fanatic. He won the national doubles tennis title in 1881with a racket of his own
design, and pioneered slip-on shoes (to save time, of course). Being happy in your work was the demand of
Bellamy and other leading socialist thinkers, otherwise you would have to be "adjusted" (hence the expression "welladjusted").
Taylor concurred.
5 Callahan’s analysis why schoolmen are always vulnerable is somewhat innocent and ivory tower, and his
recommendation for reform—to effectively protect their revenue stream from criticism on the part of the public—is
simply tragic; but his gathering of data is matchless and his judgment throughout in small matters and large is
consistently illuminating.
The Adoption Of Business Organization By Schools
In 1903, The Atlantic Monthly called for adoption of business organization by schools and
William C. Bagley identified the ideal teacher as one who would rigidly "hew to the line."
Bagley’s 6 ideal school was a place strictly reduced to rigid routine; he repeatedly stressed in his
writing a need for "unquestioned obedience."
Before 1900, school boards were large, clumsy organizations, with a seat available to represent
every interest (they often had thirty to fifty members). A great transformation was engineered in
the first decade of the twentieth century, however, and after 1910 they were dominated by
businessmen, lawyers, real estate men, and politicians. Business pressure extended from the
kindergarten rung of the new school ladder all the way into the German-inspired teacher training
schools. The Atlantic Monthly approved what it had earlier asked for, saying in 1910, "Our
universities are beginning to run as business colleges."
Successful industrial leaders were featured regularly in the press, holding forth on their success
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