30. Joseph Mayer Rice Rice undertook a survey of the public schools in1892. He published a series of muckraking articles in the magazine The Forum in 1892 and collected into the book “ The Public School System of the United States ”. His criticism mobilized parents against the corrupt politicians who, in practicing graft and patronage, had allowed many public schools to fall into lamentable disrepair. ,"It is indeed incomprehensible ," he wrote, "that so many loving mothers … are willing, without hesitation, to resign the fate of their little ones to the tender mercies of ward politicians, who in many instances have no scruples in placing the children in class-rooms the atmosphere of which is not fit for human beings to breathe, and in charge of teachers who treat them with a degree of severity that borders on barbarism.”
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38. Education and Efficiency School efficiency experts advocated programs of study that prepared individuals specifically and directly for the role that they would play as adult members of the social order. To go beyond what someone had to know in order to perform that role successfully was simply wasteful. Social utility became the supreme criterion against which the value of school studies was measured...
42. Franklin Bobbitt Proponent of platoon system developed by Superintendent Willard Wirt in Gary, Indiana. Bobbitt saw students as "raw materials" that need to be trained for future roles that they will perform in society they "should not be taught what they will never use. That was waste. In order to reduce waste, educators had to institute a process of scientific measurement leading to a prediction as to one's future role in life. That prediction would then become the basis of a differentiated curriculum“"The elimination of waste in education" (1912);
43. David Snedden Worked "to enlarge the scope of vocational education & to create socially efficient curriculum". Curricula built around specific needs of future jobs with objectives of teaching what was need to function in the future role. Viewed Junior High School as a time when differences in student abilities become apparent, therefore requiring differentiated curricula.
44. Leonard Ayres Laggards in our schools (1909) Studied effects of retardation in schools (retardation = atypical progression through grades) Findings: "retardation represented a great loss in efficiency" this was because the 'college-repertory' curriculum that had held sway from so long needed to be replaced by a curriculum attuned to the needs of a new population and a new industrial order". He develops the Index of Efficiency for determining the productivity/efficiency of schools.