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Total Quality Management: A Plan for Optimizing Human Potential?

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Reason and Education

Abstract

Israel Scheffler’s ground-breaking essay, On Human Potential, deserves to be more widely known among educational policy analysts, especially in light of the popularity in educationist circles of W.E. Deming’s organizational philosophy known as “Total Quality Management”. In what follows, I argue that the heuristical value of Deming’s perscriptions are entailed in Scheffler’s On Human Potential. More importantly, I argue, where Deming’s work falls short, especially in being naive about the human condition, Scheffler’s analysis provides a foundation for management theory in education that insures the flourishing of an optimal number of contributing participants. In fashioning these ideas, Scheffler brings pioneering thinking to the emerging fields of management studies generally and educational policy specifically.

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Notes

  1. See for example, W. Edwards Deming, Out of Crisis, Cambridge, Mass.; MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1986.

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  2. Israel Scheffler, Of Human Potential, Boston: Routledge, 1985.

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  3. Ibid., p. 9.

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  4. See for example, Lawrence A. Sherr and Deborah J. Teeter, (eds.) Total Quality Management in Higher Education (special issue of New Directions for Institutional Research): Jossey-Bass, Number 71, Fall, 1991.

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  5. Andrea Gabor, The Man Who Discovered Quality, New York: Penguin, 1990.

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  8. Demming, Out of Crisis; see also W. Edwards Deming, Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1982.

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  27. Scheffler, pp. 103-107.

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  32. Deming interview quoted in Mary Walton, The Denting Management Method, p. 91.

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  33. Scheffler, Of Human Potential, p. 15.

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  34. Ibid., p. 24.

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  35. Ibid., p. 17.

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  36. Ibid., p. 17.

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  38. Scheffler, Of Human Potential, p. 45.

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  39. Ibid., p. 11. See also, Israel Scheffler, In Praise of the Cognitive Emotions, Boston: Routledge, 1991. Ch. 2.

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  41. Scheffler, Of Human Potential, p. 13.

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  42. For a sense of the persistency of assumptions across disciplines with regard to the concept of fixed potentials see for example, Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985; See also P. Dasgusta, Amatyra Sen and D. Starrett, “Notes on the Measurement of Inequality, Journal of Economic Theory 6 (1973): 180-187.

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  43. Scheffler attributes this location to discussions with friend and colleague Howard Gardner, Of Human Potential, p. 56.

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  45. Scheffler, Of Human Potential, p. 15.

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  46. Robert Kanigel, The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan, New York: Scribner and Sons, 1991. pp. 45–68.

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  47. Paul A. Wagner, “Making Assessment Work for Quality in Program Review and in Setting Institutional direction” in Trudi Banta, ed., Good Practice in Assessing Higher Education Outcomes, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, forthcoming.

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  48. Scheffler, Of Human Potential, p. 21.

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  49. Ibid., p. 28; see also Israel Scheffler, “Moral Education and the Democratic Ideal” in his Inquiries: Philosophical Studies of Language, Science and Learning, Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1986, pp. 330-337. Israel Scheffler, “Moral Education beyond Moral Reasoning” in Scheffler, In Praise of Cognitive Emotions, Boston: Routledge, 1991, pp. 97-101.

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  50. Israel Scheffler, Conditions of Knowledge: An Introduction to Epistemology and Education, Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1965. See also, Israel Scheffler, Reason and Teaching, Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs and Merrill, 1973, chs. 3, 5, 8, 9 and 10.

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  51. As Scheffler explains, “…the educator’s aim is to destroy as well as to strengthen potentials …(p. 15)” and in so doing the educator must make the student more able to avail him or herself of suitable opportunities afforded by the locale. In so doing, the educator acknowledges that selecting some potentials for development educators are preparing students for “socialized action”. “Action socialized is action performed not only to satisfy individual desire but action fitting the general expectations of the community (p. 27)” Of Human Potential.

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  52. See for example, James Kouzas and Barry Posner, Credibility, San Francisco, Jossey Bass, 1993. See also John Whitney, The Trust Factor, New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities and Human Science and School of Education, University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, Texas, USA

    Paul A. Wagner

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, P.O. Box 248054, Coral Gables, FL, 33124, USA

    Harvey Siegel

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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Wagner, P.A. (1997). Total Quality Management: A Plan for Optimizing Human Potential?. In: Siegel, H. (eds) Reason and Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5714-8_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5714-8_18

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-4362-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-5714-8

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