Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Open Letter to Benjamin Bloom

Dear Sir,

In my early days as an instructional designer, when I was a total greenhorn, I was taught to swear by you. You were the Lord, and Bloom’s Taxonomy the prayer with which every instructional designer would start creating a design document. Each time that I thought I had nailed the “Bloom Level” for a module objective, my reviewer would think otherwise. This happened so often that I became conditioned to question myself even before the reviewer would.

And did that help? No, it didn’t – rather it made matters worse. For now, just when I would think I had nailed the level, I would find myself doubting it. This would go on for a while until I reached the deadline for submitting the deliverable. Finally, the decision would be made by tossing a coin and going with the outcome (pun intended). Of course, the coin was replaced by the dice, since the probability in Bloom’s Taxonomy is more (six levels for the six sides of the dice). Like all life experiences, this one too was not in vain. In the process, I discovered an amateur poet in me, and came up with these lines.

O’ Bloom, dear Bloom
The fearful journey has begun
A maze of levels we will wade through
Until we identify the one
But only to be told, that this level doesn’t hold
The level is a different one!

But Sir, on a serious note, I learned a rather valuable lesson. Frameworks are not meant to be superficially understood and blindly applied for completing a task. We must be able to gauge why it is necessary, and where it fits and where it doesn’t. I am sure that when you came up with this novel framework, you did not expect people to marry objective-writing with the taxonomy, earmark specific verbs (née partners) to each level, and last but not the least, produce offspring in the form of multiple choice questions that mapped to each level of the taxonomy!

Today, many years later, I am more enlightened and in complete awe of this framework, which I understand is an attempt to structure the thinking process and connect it with learning and cognition. And, for those of us who only superficially understand it, this letter is a fervent appeal – let’s understand Bloom’s Taxonomy in spirit, please.

To sum up on how we err in using theories, here is a quote:
“Our argument is that to the degree that abstractions are not grounded in multiple contexts, they will not transfer well. After all, it is not learning the abstraction, but learning the appropriate circumstances in which to ground the abstraction that is difficult.” (Brown et al., 1989b: 12)

For those of you who would like to read more:

Rethinking Thinking – Does Bloom’s Taxonomy Align with Brain Science? By Dr. Spencer Kagan