{"id":1921,"date":"2021-03-06T04:54:29","date_gmt":"2021-03-06T10:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/?p=1921"},"modified":"2024-06-22T06:44:39","modified_gmt":"2024-06-22T11:44:39","slug":"when-blooms-gets-ugly-cutting-the-heart-out-of-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/2021\/03\/06\/when-blooms-gets-ugly-cutting-the-heart-out-of-education\/","title":{"rendered":"When Bloom’s Gets Ugly: Cutting the Heart out of Education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In my previous article I endeavored to break down the bad of Bloom\u2019s taxonomy<\/a> by showing its extreme focus on objectivity and measurability. In essence, Bloom\u2019s taxonomy was an effort to model testing in education on the taxonomies of the hard sciences. This led Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues to overreach in their attempt to create clarity and precision for educators in their course goals or objectives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, instead of looking at the purpose of education holistically and accepting a tradition of values, they aimed at neutrality in their framework to make it widely acceptable to educators with different philosophies. This tactic worked successfully, ushering in the wide adoption of Bloom\u2019s taxonomy in the world of education. However, they had to use teachers\u2019 own terminology for their goals, simply sharpened up a bit to be more precise. In so doing they capitulated to a lowest-common denominator view of the human mind and of education itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I already laid out the philosophical problems with this approach in the last article<\/a>, I have not yet shown exactly how this gets ugly in real life. I alluded to the grade-focused anxiety or disengagement of many students. But there is more to it than that. What goes wrong in schools, when Bloom\u2019s Taxonomy is built into the architecture of education? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer to that question is simple, if controversial. When Bloom\u2019s Taxonomy is fully embraced and practiced in an educational setting, the beating heart of education gets cut out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By this (rather dramatic) statement, I mean at least two things. The first is a reaffirmation of C.S. Lewis\u2019s core argument in The Abolition of Man<\/em>: that training \u201cmen without chests\u201d devolves ultimately into propaganda. The second is a more subtle claim about human beings as agents and producers, and not just knowers, for which I will rely on Mortimer Adler\u2019s Aristotle for Everyone<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier Articles in This Series:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Purpose of Education<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Importance of Objectives: 3 Blessings of Bloom’s<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Science<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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