Efficiency Movement

To understand why our schools are structured the way they are today, you have to go back to their roots, back to the early part of the 20th century when the Efficiency Movement was defining how industry and education leaders were thinking about system design.

The Efficiency Movement was embraced by leaders in the United States, Britain and other industrial countries. This movement focused on increasing production efficiencies.

This movement, which formed the foundation of scientific management, commonly known as Taylorism was based on the fundamental premises held by the Cartesian Mindset.

A key premise was the belief that those with superior intellect could reduce complex processes to its components and reconfigure them to create more efficient systems.

Logical, _mechanistic structures_ that created consistent output.

Schools were designed to produce a predictable output based on a sequential transfer of units of knowledge in discrete components.

Many have referred to our traditional school structure disparagingly as a production line - which is exactly what it is. A mechanistic structure designed to produce consistently qualified workers for an industrial economy.

The Agile Mindset is based on a different understanding of systems, one that reflect the dynamic, adaptive system described in biology.

These complex _organistic structures_, called autopoietic systems, are much better suited to unleash creative genius need for the new creative economy.

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