CRITICISMs of BLOOM's Taxonomy
- For some subjects (e.g. history), the pyramid is upside down (Wineburg & Schneider, 2009-2010).
- "The pyramid treats knowledge with all the glamour of a dank basement -- necessary for a house's foundation but hardly the place to host honored guests" (Wineburg & Schneider, 2009-2010, p. 60).
- "Bloom's Taxonomy fuels the belief that higher order thinking can exist in isolation from specific content" (Booker, 2009-2010, p. 352).
- The taxonomy was developed for use in post-secondary education, however it has been used much more widely in K-12 education. Booker (2007) writes, "[I]ts misappropriation has resulted in a serious distortion of the purpose of the K-12 years" (p. 347). He claims that its use in an unintended domain "has done great harm to American education" (p. 348).
- Bloom's Taxomony "has been used to devalue basic skills education and has promoted 'higher order thinking' at its expense" (Booker, 2007, p. 348). Due to the de-emphasis on basic skills, according to Booker, students are not prepared for higher order thinking.
- Minimal data supports the value of the taxomony (Booker, 2007).
- Brain function is much more complex than Bloom's Taxonomy 'allows' it to be (Kagan, 2005). Findings of neuroscience contradict the relative simplicity of the six-tiered system.