Dehumanization Found in Standardized Testing and Scripted Curriculum

The idea of a standardized curriculum across each classroom in a country sounds like a good idea when looked at from a superficial viewpoint. Though a standardized curriculum does have benefits, many deficiencies appear when it is examined more thoroughly. In Wayne Au’s (2011) article entitled Teaching under the new Taylorism: high-stakes testing and the standardization of the 21st century curriculum, he states,

this paper offers a critical analysis of the changes made to teaching in modern times and argues that public school teachers in the US are teaching under what might be considered the ‘New Taylorism’, where their labour is controlled vis-à-vis high-stakes testing and pre-packaged, corporate curricula aimed specifically at teaching to the tests (p. 25).

Au (2011) argues that the combination of standardized testing and scripted curriculum in the classroom ultimately creates a factory production quality by asserting, “standardized tests themselves, through the inter-related processes of decontextualization, objectification, and commoditization, fundamentally provide the foundational basis for education to be framed as a form of factory production” (p. 26). Although Au (2011) does provide readers with a few positive aspects of a standardized approach to curriculum such as “to exasperate racial and class inequality in education” (p. 39), his main focus is on how “students and teachers are literally ‘objectified’ and turned into abstract numbers” (p. 37). 

Au divided his paper into five topics, excluding the introduction and conclusion. These topics include scientifically-managed education, scientific management or ‘social efficiency’, high-stakes testing and the standardization of teaching in the US, high-stakes testing and the logics of the new Taylorism, and standardized testing and the educational assembly line. An interesting quote from Au (2011) that occurs within the scientifically-managed education section of his paper is, “it dehumanized their relationship to teaching and students by alienating them from their own creativity and intellectual curiosity” (p. 28). This statement explains the effect that a standardized (or factory production) approach has on both the relationships that are established in a classroom and the amount of variance and creativity necessary for each students’ proper understanding. No two human beings are the same in every way, so utilizing one standardized or scripted curriculum removes all of the qualities that are viewed as ‘human’ in a classroom, and replaces them with mechanical qualities. As Au (2011) states, “standardized testing creates the capacity to view students as things, as quantities apart from their human qualities” (p. 37). If the human qualities of teachers and students are no longer being recognized or appreciated, then what purpose does the standardized knowledge, or education in general, have?

This is a summary of the basic arguments that Wayne Au made in his article on standardized testing and scripted curriculum. I have already identified two other articles to compare to this one. The two articles I have chosen are “I’m not teaching English, I’m teaching something else!: How new teachers create curriculum under mandates of educational reform and A democratic critique of scripted curriculum. My next step in this assignment is to read each of these articles in their entirety and take notes on ideas they provide that are similar or different to the ideas provided in Au’s article. Then, I will begin to construct my paper. I will use the paragraphs I have already written and add a little more information to that. After this, I will finish by writing the comparative section.

Au, W. (2011). Teaching under the new Taylorism: High-stakes testing and the standardization of the 21st century curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43(1), 25-45.