Taylor’s standardization of factory time also inspired the inflexible pathways of our educational system developed and implemented by Thorndike and the educational Taylorists.3 Our schools still follow the same rigid march through time as they did a century ago, with fixed class durations, fixed school days, and fixed semesters, proceeding through the same unyielding sequence of “core” courses, all of which ensure that every (normal) student graduates from high school at the same age with, presumably, the same set of knowledge.
