http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KlSD0nanco&feature=related

Louise,
I only got to watch the first ten minutes of the recommended video, "Death by Pedagogy." I will most certainly watch the rest.
That first ten minutes contains two grievous errors:
1. The practice of time study descending from Fredrick Taylor, Mr. Gatto's kinsman, is grievously misrepresented. Unfortunately the lessons Mr. Gatto was taught are all too common. However most of the time bursting those balloons is easy as this one is.
2. Someone has taught Mr. Gatto that his kinsman Frederick Taylor is less than laudatory. In fact Mr. Gatto has a kinsman to be proud of. With the greatest admiration I have to call both of them iconoclasts who made a huge contribution to society.
You know what Mr. Gatto's contribution to our society is. Let me concentrate on Fred Taylor. The gist of Mr. Taylor's method was to find work being done (required)of workers that was pure waste. He would then train the worker to eliminate that wasted effort. The result was that the worker exerted less effort than before Taylor.
So why the hue and cry? He reduced exertion on the worker. He increased the workers pay. Look at Mr. Gatto. Have the teacher's unions and school administrators been holding "Appreciation Days" for him? Of course not. Given that they worked in different types of organization both impinged on the same kinds of people in the same kinds of ways. Neither of those groups take kindly to having some (explicative deleted) come along and (in their eyes) show them up.
Let me give two examples, one from each arena:
1. In any given manufacturing plant 20% of the labor will be found to be wasted by a study. Not only that but the workers are working excessively hard.
2. The average student will learn more, faster and with less hoop de do if the children are removed from the public school and taught at home by their parents.
Worse yet, both statements are easily supported. Those are not messages that the local nabobs want to hear in either public schools or factories.
Ron
2.

I'm sure John Taylor Gatto would be eager to hear your analysis. I hope you write to him to tell him your findings!

Louise,
Please understand, I got two degrees in that area. I spent 47 years on factory floors with time out for the Navy and some time for college. I've worked in every department and been a manager in most of them except QC. When W. Edward Deming asks, "Do you want quality or production" I consider him full of beans. No one at either end of the supply chain considers faulty product to be legitimate production. When Mr. Gatto talks about manufacturing he shows evidence of having a good mind as he does in outher subjects also. But, he also shows clearly that he was grieviously misinformed by his cousin the manufacturing CEO. I don't find that unusual as after spending my last 20 years as a manufacturing consultant most CEOs don't seem to have more than a talking acquaintenance with manufacturing -- that isn't their job.
As a consequence listening to you try to explain manufacturing and Taylorism to me I am just not eager to get into further conversation. These days I am retired and spend most of my time amusing myself and studying Warren Buffet.
On the other hand Mr. Gatto seems to have a first class mind and that is interesting.
Ron

I never tried to "explain" Taylor to you. What I did was quote Gatto, from the Underground History of American Education, on Taylor.

Louise,
It is water under the bridge. You totally mis-read Mr. Gatto. On the other hand Mr. Gatto had been fed the purest baloney by one kinsman while talking about another kinsman. Then you posted something that is going to result in my having to almost apologise to Mr. Gatto on another aspect of the oligarchy's taking over of the public schools. In other words that has now become a tempest in a teapot even if you are still totally off the mark about Fred Taylor, manufacturing and the prevailing conditions during La Belle Epoch. Who cares? I don't. You are the only one getting hurt.
Ron