Education is being eroded. Otherwise put, education is more and more being brought under the yoke of a mode of thought that reduces it to something mechanical, narrowly characterized by codes, predefined outcomes, protocols and rules. The cause, it is argued is the growing dominance of a new fashion in education called ‘scientific management’. Scientific management has become the new and unquestionable orthodoxy in education. As a consequence, it has become increasingly difficult to imagine, let along articulate, an alternative.
This book explores the origins and fundamental assumptions of scientific management, and suggests how the spirit of education might be rediscovered by turning instead to a more ‘ethical’, ‘socially interpersonal’, and ‘full bodied’ orientation. The approach taken avoids the difficulties usually associated with such ethically oriented treatments of education by drawing on recent findings in neurophysiology, psychology, primate and language studies.
The book is a Reader, and is designed to both supplement and invigorate undergraduate and postgraduate courses in education, and to appeal to general readers who have an interest in education.