John D. Rockefeller funded an organization known as the General Education Board, which published a 1912 essay describing its Taylorist vision of schools: “We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians . . . nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. . . . The task that we set before ourselves is very simple as well as very beautiful
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