Another area of American life in which the MBA mindset has gained excessive influence, in my opinion, is the area of education.
"No Child Left Behind" (a legacy of our first MBA-president) and state-level high-stakes testing programs seem to be inspired by an MBA-like faith in the value of organization, control, and – above all – metrics.
The idea underlying these programs seems to be that fixed units of knowledge can be delivered to schools for just-in-time installation in students' brains. Students can then undergo standardized testing in order to measure, with mathematical precision, how well schools have performed their tasks.
It seems to me that there are at least two serious flaws in this notion:
First, I'm no statistician, but ... the use of standardized tests to measure a school's contribution to, and responsibility for, student performance – without taking into account the host of societal and economic variables that can also affect student performance – strikes me as statistically unsound.
Second, the reduction of teachers to assembly-line workers whose primary task is to meet "productivity" goals discourages the exercise and development of the qualities that make for truly great teachers: qualities such as scholarship, imagination, and a passion for excellence. Teachers who change lives and change the world and make the greatest contribution to our nation, I believe, are not those who who can simply cram a prepackaged set of facts into students; they're teachers who can teach students how to learn – and inspire them to keep learning and thinking for the rest of their lives. And you just can't measure that kind of pedagogical performance by counting checkmarks on answer grids.
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