ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an analysis of Taylorism and Fordism and examines their convergence into a model of economic development, noting the politics of the incorporation of Taylorist practises in education in the United States in response to the movement toward economic efficiency. It then examines how the sectoral politics intersected with the rise of Keynesian ideas and their consolidation in the Keynesian welfare state settlement. The chapter shows how the nature and organisation of teachers' work in the United States had already been influenced by Taylorist forms of scientific management, which embedded themselves into the very institutional arrangements and practises that shaped much of American education in the post-World War II period. It also shows how teachers in England had, by the early 1920s, managed to consolidate their links with the wider labour movement and indeed had become far more political in their outlook and activities than their American counterparts.
