A Roof without Walls: Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy and the Misdirection of American Education

Plato wrote that higher order thinking could not start until the student had mastered conventional wisdom. The American educational establishment has turned Plato on his head with the help of a dubious approach to teaching developed by one Benjamin Bloom. Bloom's taxonomy was intended for higher education, but its misappropriation has resulted in a serious distortion of the purpose of the K-12 years. Michael Booker attributes the inability of American children to compete internationally to a great extent to our reliance on Bloom in expecting critical and advanced thinking from kids who have been trained to regard facts and substantive knowledge as unimportant. (Contains 40 footnotes.)