Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, or, Why We Can't Teach

Have you ever wondered why we can't seem to get through to so many students in our American classrooms? Or even why so many of the students who can actually comprehend basic skills and data become rather cynical about what they are "taught"? Well, the answer really is rather simple, and is found in the gospel of education. The book is known as the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, and is edited by one Benjamin Bloom.

Bloom and his kind blithely state their foundation of education right in that very book. That should not be surprising, of course. But what their education is founded upon ought to strike fear in your heart, and stoke anger in every breast.

On page thirty-two of that awful and, truth be told, stupid book, the collaborators blindly state:

It is assumed that as the number of things known by an individual increases, his acquaintance with the world in which he lives increases. But, as has been pointed out before, we recognize the point of view that truth and knowledge are only relative and that there are no hard and fast truths which exist for all times and all places.

You see, we cannot actually know anything. As to whether the Bloomists and their educationist brethren can know stuff themselves, and thus teach us what is good and true, well, the question is answered. We, they assert so readily, cannot know what is true. Yet they ignore the fact that it follows, and very obviously to those who can actually think even on a bare and rote level, that they must mean they cannot know anything either. Yet they pretend to know something about education and its importance.

Now you know why Johnny can't read, and doesn't care that he can't read. Nothing is actually true, so what's so great about readin' and writin' and 'rithmatic?

The Bloomists will tell you they don't mean it that way. It is a trifle readily dismissed. Ask them, simply, whether they know in their hearts if their creed is true. Then walk away. They cannot have a rational answer.