SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM IN EDUCATION, 1900-1920: 'ONE SPECIALIZES IN SCIENCE, THE OTHER IN PRACTICE' (BOBBIT, FOLLETT, TAYLOR, HALEY, HOXIE)

In the early part of this century there was a movement in education to centralize the administration of the schools and to seat absolute authority in the office of the superintendent. The administrative reformers who led this movement held a set of ideas which paralleled those advanced by Frederick W Taylor in a movement in industry known as scientific management.;This thesis is an analysis of the ideology of scientific management, first as manifested in industry, and then as expressed in education through the ideas of Franklin Bobbitt, a leading proponent of administrative reform in education. The thesis also examines organized labor's criticism of Taylorism and presents an alternative model of management proposed by Mary Parker Follett. Follett's ideas on industrial democracy are contrasted with those underlying scientific management.;Parallel to Follett's vision of democratic management was a perspective in education predicated on teacher participation in school governance. This ideal of democracy in education, championed by John Dewey, Ella Flagg Young, and Margaret Haley, challenged the assumptions of the administrative reformers about how schools should be organized and managed. This historical inquiry examines the ideas behind the two perspectives on school reform and shows how they led to very different conceptualizations of administration and teaching.;Taylor advocated a system of management based on "scientific" principles. The system included the notion of the expert manager who would oversee the workers and all aspects of production. In education, the administrative reformers advocated a science of school management which implicitly separated administration from the practice of teaching. They proposed that the superintendent, as educational expert, would oversee teachers and the workings of the classroom.