To organize and teach children to become workers who could perform industrial tasks in “a perfect way,” the Taylorists set out to remake the architecture of the entire educational system to conform to the central tenet of scientific management: standardize everything around the average. Schools around the country adopted the “Gary Plan,” named after the industrialized Indiana city where it originated: students were divided into groups by age (not by performance, interest, or aptitude) and these groups of students rotated through different classes, each lasting a standardized period of time.
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