ABSTRACT
While both the United States and Europe are striving for greater standardization of education policy, between states in the first instance and between members of the EU in the second, both need to proceed with caution. Standardization can be overdone, as it was during the early Industrial Revolution. During that period, standardization of curriculum spilled over to standardization of student learning habits, standardization of student behavior, standardization of students’ lives owing to the efforts of factory owners to turn schools into generators of “well-oiled machine parts” devoid of individuality, students being trained not so much to think as to do what they were programmed to do.
