Arthur Wirth's Education and Work for the Year 2000 provides an excellent critique of the centralized, bureaucratic foundation of school and the workplace in American society. Wirth analyzes the current relationship between the employment and educational sectors and concludes that the two are intimately connected. Unfortunately, school reform has lagged behind reform in the workplace. Wirth contends that the reliance of the educational system on standardized test measurement and rote learning has already hampered the future growth of the U.S. economy and will create irreparable damage if left unchecked.
According to Wirth, the recent transformation of the American workplace has been so radical that the correct term to describe the change is revolution. In chapter three, Wirth analyzes the employment demands of the electronic/computer revolution. More than half of the labor force is currently employed in information-related fields; the service sector has experienced explosive growth. Because of the sophistication of computer-dominated tasks, a shortage of workers with a high degree of technical skills exists: "increased international competition, changes in both industrial structure and consumer demand, and the capacity of technology to help meet these challenges act as forces to push skill levels upward" (Wirth, 1992, p. 33).
Until motivated to change by Japanese competition, most manufacturing corporations in the United States were operated by the Taylor model of scientific management. Taylorism emphasized central control and assembly-line production. Wirth describes Taylorism as an "automating" strategy in which technical experts retain power, as opposed to an "informating" strategy which empowers workers with access to information that encourages them to become active in creative work processes (Wirth, 1992, p. 3). The author uses numerous examples to point out the effects of Taylorism in the United States, one of...