The Curriculum - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER Vin SPECIALIZED TECHNICAL TRAINING Specialized technical training aims at a productiveness far beyond that of a pre-scientific generation. The efficient farmer, for example, in terms of proved standards, is one that raises, not one hundred bushels of potatoes to the acre, which is about the average, but rather two hundred to five hundred bushels. The efficient cotton-planter raises, not the average three eighths of a bale to the acre, but one full bale. The efficient bricklayer lays three hundred and fifty bricks per hour, instead of the usual one hundred and fifty. The efficient machinist in cutting steel turns out, not, as in the recent past, his ten units of product per day, but rather his forty, sixty, or one hundred units. This setting forward the standards of accomplishment is not chimerical. Scientific industry has proved its entire feasibility. It is to be done through the application of science to labor. It is the next step in the increase of productiveness. Labor-saving machinery has been able to double, quadruple, or even at times to multiply the product a hundred-fold without increasing human labor. We are now being told that through the application of science to industry an equal further gain may be made. Each occupation is to be analyzed into the tasks that make it up; each task into the factors that require control. The science needed for the regulation of each factor is then to be assembled, and placed in secure control of every worksituation. The science is in control when it dominates the consciousness of the worker. He must think each factor in terms of the science of that factor. His planning consists of putting his science-ideas to work. Thus he predetermines and foresees maximum results before a stroke of...