I'm Jerry Thor, and on behalf of my colleagues Celeste Morgan and Sonora Mosby, we are excited to introduce you to the founder of Modern Curriculum Theory, Dr. Franklin Bobbitt. Franklin Bobbitt was born in rural Indiana. His father was a minister, teacher, and later superintendent of schools in their county.
He was one of 11 children. Bobbitt worked as a teacher and traveled to the Philippines to help develop the curriculum for the Philippines Normal School from 1902 to 1907. It was this experience that made him realize that a curriculum should be socially efficient because the traditional American curriculum he initially proposed did not work well with the Filipino way of life. He wrote conducted research, wrote books, and retired as an education professor from the University of Chicago.
During Bobbitt's lifetime, he witnessed the country undergo significant change. As America moved to the city, populations increased and different groups of people lived together. Industrialization provided more ways for more people to participate in the economy. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement that celebrated black arts, and intelligence and instilled pride within the community, scientists invented many of the conveniences we enjoy today, such as the airplane, telephone, and the mass production of cars.
The 19th amendment was passed, giving women the right to vote. Theorists started asking how and why questions, breaking away from answers held in place by tradition and religion. With all these changes, Bobbitt believed that education should be advancing too.
Bobbitt believed that the Committee of Ten was too rigid in its attempt to address issues in education. The initiatives were ineffective because they were rooted in outdated research. Students were treated as passive learners, absorbing facts from heavy content areas. On the other hand, Franklin Bobbitt was a proponent of the social efficiency movement. Members of this school of thought believe that the purpose of education should not consist of students passively absorbing facts, but align with skills needed for students to learn how to lead a prosperous life as adults.
Bobbitt's main contributions include supporting maximizing the efficiency of schools by creating a structured curriculum, and a scientific analysis of school operations. This includes considering school budget, staff size, utilizing space, and the length of class periods. Bobbitt published The Curriculum in 1918, followed by How to Make a Curriculum in 1924. Collectively, these books provide a theoretical explanation for viewing the curriculum through a scientific lens.
How to make a curriculum actually contains a section with exemplar objectives for different content areas. Here are some examples of objectives and learning activities for music and math. For theory, Bobbitt was concerned with the process of curriculum. He wanted curriculum to be written, clear, measured, practiced, and sequential.
The curriculum that Bobbitt advocated included elements of general education for all youth, but was for the most part differentiated in a number of very specialized vocational tracks. Development should be based on a purpose of education, regardless of purpose should be developed systematically with five steps of curriculum making and then implementation involves selecting activities experiences and opportunities that led to objective attainment followed by evaluation where citizens who learned skills based on the needs of society One contemporary named John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, the third son of four boys. and his mother was a daughter of a wealthy farmer, and his father was a merchant and a soldier. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont, and later his doctorate from Johns Hopkins.
Dewey held many teaching positions at various universities throughout his career, and he was a philosopher and proponent of progressive educational reform. Comparing the two, Franklin Bobbitt primarily influenced public education, while John Dewey influenced private schooling. They both advocated for the whole child, while Bobbitt focused more on the model adult, and Dewey focused more on developing them from childhood. Comparing quotes by them include, Bobbitt, education is now to develop a type of wisdom that can grow only out of participation in the living experiences of men, and never out of mere memorization of verbal statements of facts. While John Dewey's famous quote is, I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.
So while Bobbitt focused primarily on objectives for future living, Bobbitt, or Dewey on the other hand, focused more on living. So let's get into conversation between these two in modern times. Dewey texts Bobbitt, hey, how's it going, Bobbitt?
Bobbitt replies, great, Dewey, just planning some social activities for after our learning session. Dewey replies, bro, those are the same things. And Bobbitt, of course, says, no, they're not. You can learn some things indirectly from regular life, but direct instruction is serious business.
And Dewey responds, nope, wrong again, Bobbitt. Everyone is learning all the time. And Bobbitt retorts, this is why nobody invites you to hang out, Dewey. The idea behind this conversation is that Bobbitt sees a separation between there's time to learn and then there's time for other activities, which still involve learning, but that's not the primary purpose.
While Dewey, he believes that all of life's activities are an opportunity for learning. Let's continue the conversation later that evening. Dewey texts Bobbitt, sup Bob?
Which Bobbit replies, it's Bobbit. Whatev. How are your students coming along, says Dewey.
Bobbit replies, good, thanks for asking. They're on track to meet our set objectives. And Dewey, puzzled, says, wait, what? Where Bobbit replies, yeah, you know, to be productive members of society. And Dewey replies, uh, they ain't machines, dude.
We're here to bring out the best in them. And Bobbitt concludes, you bring out the worst in me, Dewey. So the purpose of this conversation is to juxtapose the views of Bobbitt, where the purpose of education is to meet the set objectives, which led to being good citizens and productive careers, where Dewey tries to meet students where they are and help maximize their talent. creativity and see how they can impact society.
So according to Bobbitt, what purpose should the curriculum serve? Well, Bobbitt defines the curriculum as the interaction between those undirected and directed experiences. Through those undirected experiences, students learn unconsciously through their life, through their work, through their play. Conversely, Directed experiences, which are those employed by schools, explicitly train students'thinking. So although Bobbitt acknowledged the importance of curriculum incorporating both types of experiences, it is through direct experiences that students can prepare for life.
The key words which reappear throughout Bobbitt's writings are ability, activity, and development. The new focus is to be on what man in general and students in particular should be able to do, rather than on what they should know. How should knowledge be selected into the curriculum?
According to Bobbitt, that begins with a survey of, quote, cultivated and well-trained adults. Bobbitt's work provides an early example of arguments. for behavioral objectives, and he is credited with developing a notion of objective analysis, whereby designated skills are broken down into their constituent elements. And so these skills are derived from the activities of experts in a variety of fields essential to the well-being of society.
In other words, start with the concept of man's activities and abilities, Then, particularize your objectives, keeping them as precise and as close to what you observe those experts doing. And then finally, individualize the curriculum by adjusting it to the unique requirements of each pupil. What is the relationship between the teacher and knowledge selection process? Bobbitt's position is that a curriculum discoverer should decide what goes into the curriculum by looking at the quote, total range of habits, skills, abilities, forms of thought, valuations, and ambitions that its members need for the effective performance of their vocational labors.
Likewise, the total range needed for their civic activities, their health activities, their recreations, their language, their parents, their religious, and their general social activities. What is the nature of students and the learning process? According to Bobbitt and his famous quote, the student is not a receptacle to be filled, but an active organism that needs unfoldment.
So students are to be active learners, not passive learners just sitting in a classroom. While an instructor drones on and on and tries to fill them with knowledge, they're supposed to train them. So he crafted objectives that signaled attention to these kinds of critical thinking skills that many reformers assumed were neglected in the past, such as, quote, the ability to collect, organize, and interpret facts involved, and to arrive at sound conclusions. How does it suggest teachers should organize learning experiences and relationships?
Well, based on Bobbitt's view of curriculum, he thought that education was synonymous with life. Bobbitt developed several guidelines for developing these objectives. They should be practical, which is they should prepare students for adulthood.
They should be sequenced, that is, they should be arranged by grade level. And that... experts and the community should be involved in developing the objectives because ultimately the product of those in the educational environment are going to move into the workforce and into the community and they should be ready to participate. This also means that teachers today could imagine that Bobbitt would be a fan of experiential learning. where students learn by doing.
Finally, what is the purpose of curriculum evaluation? Well, according to Bobbitt, his work as a behaviorist is that he understood learning as the acquiring of these skills, and therefore evaluation would be determining whether the students actually acquired those skills. He viewed education as the shaping process as much as the manufacture of steel rails, and the product should rise to a set standard. That is, you set concrete objectives for what students should know, and then you evaluate whether they learned it based on whether they can perform those activities. We hope you enjoyed our presentation.
Please refer to the attached handout and this reference list for further reading. Have a great day.