Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

G–21

Glossary

(See PPBS ) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. From the book titled Taxonomy of Educational Objec tives: The Classification of Educational Goals by David Krathwohl, Benjamin Bloom, and Bertram Massie (Longman, Inc.: New York, 1956). Bloom explains the purpose of the taxonomy when he defines good teaching as “challenging the students’ fixed beliefs.” He also says that “The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, actions, and feelings of students.” It is important to remember that Bloom is the father of OBE/mastery learning/direct instruction which are based on Pavlov and Skinner’s experi ments with animals (operant conditioning). Remember also that mastery learning and direct instruction have been designed to implement Bloom’s taxonomy in the cognitive, affective (values) and psychomotor domains. The six levels of Bloom’s taxonomy through which a child must travel in order to have his world view reorganized—his values changed—are Knowledge (list, match, name, define, state), Comprehension (explain, paraphrase, summarize, describe), Application (relate, solve, use, show, classify), Analysis (support, differentiate, generalize), Synthesis (design, produce, predict), and Evaluation (conclude, assess, critique). The taxonomy has been used by teachers, curriculum builders, and educational research workers as one device to attack the problem of specifying in detail the expected outcomes of the learning process. When educational objectives are stated in operational and detailed form, it is possible to make appropriate evaluation instruments and to determine with some precision which learning experiences are likely to be of value in promoting the development of the objective and which are likely to be of little or no value. Bloom, in attempting to do research on what might be called “peak learning experiences,” produced evidence which suggested that “a single hour of classroom activity under certain condi tions may bring about a major reorganization in cognitive as well as affective behaviors.” (See Appendix XIX) Teacher Tenure. A policy which traditionally protected incompetent teachers from being fired. Retention of teacher tenure becomes more and more attractive as competent academi cally-oriented teachers have their jobs threatened only to be replaced by non-academically oriented teachers trained in TQM whose expertise lies in the facilitation of learning (using Pavlovian/Skinnerian “Best Practices,” providing the technological resources necessary to bring about change of behavior, predictable results, and training in workforce skills). Total Quality Management (TQM). A socialist strategy for managing continual improvement through statistical tools and decision-making techniques. Administered through site-based management (school-based decision making), it emphasizes the “customer” or “stake holder” including everyone but the concerned parent. TQM is simply a refined version of Planning, Programming, Budget Systems (PPBS) and Management by Objectives (MBO) and has much in common with the principles underlying continuous progress mastery learning. Edwards W. Deming, the physicist who originally introduced TQM to the Japa nese as a manufacturing management process to use during their industrial rebuilding after World War II, said in an interview at the University of Pittsburgh: “What I took to Japan was not the American way.” (See Appendix XXII) UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). A specialized agency of the United Nations, headquartered in Paris, France. UNESCO began in 1946