Progressive education is a pedagogical movement that began in the late nineteenth century; it has persisted in various forms to the present. The term progressive was engaged to distinguish this education from the traditional Euro-American curricula of the 19th century, which was rooted in classical preparation for the university and strongly differentiated by social class. By contrast, progressive education finds its roots in present experience. Most progressive education programs have these qualities in common:
- Emphasis on learning by doing – hands-on projects, expeditionary learning, experiential learning
- Integrated curriculum focused on thematic units
- Integration of entrepreneurship into education
- Strong emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking
- Group work and development of social skills
- Understanding and action as the goals of learning as opposed to rote knowledge
- Collaborative and cooperative learning projects
- Education for social responsibility and democracy
- Highly personalized learning accounting for each individual's personal goals
- Integration of community service and service learning projects into the daily curriculum
- Selection of subject content by looking forward to ask what skills will be needed in future society
- De-emphasis on textbooks in favor of varied learning resources
- Emphasis on lifelong learning and social skills
- Assessment by evaluation of child's projects and productions
Educational theory
Progressive education can be traced back to the works of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, both of whom are known as forerunners of ideas that would be developed by theorists such as John Dewey. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists,
Locke believed that "truth and knowledge… arise out of observation and
experience rather than manipulation of accepted or given ideas".
He further discussed the need for children to have concrete experiences
in order to learn. Rousseau deepened this line of thinking in Emile, or On Education, where he argued that subordination of students to teachers and memorization of facts would not lead to an education.
Johann Bernhard Basedow
In Germany, Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724–1790) established the Philanthropinum at Dessau
in 1774. He developed new teaching methods based on conversation and
play with the child, and a program of physical development. Such was his
success that he wrote a treatise on his methods, "On the best and
hitherto unknown method of teaching children of noblemen".
Christian Gotthilf Salzmann
Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (1744–1811) was the founder of the Schnepfenthal institution, a school dedicated to new modes of education (derived heavily from the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau). He wrote Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children, one of the first books translated into English by Mary Wollstonecraft.
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) was a Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer who exemplified Romanticism
in his approach. He founded several educational institutions both in
German- and French-speaking regions of Switzerland and wrote many works
explaining his revolutionary modern principles of education. His motto
was "Learning by head, hand and heart". His research and theories
closely resemble those outlined by Rousseau in Emile. He is further
considered by many to be the "father of modern educational science"
His psychological theories pertain to education as they focus on the
development of object teaching, that is, he felt that individuals best
learned through experiences and through a direct manipulation and
experience of objects. He further speculated that children learn through
their own internal motivation rather than through compulsion. (See
Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic motivation). A teacher's task will be to help
guide their students as individuals through their learning and allow it
to unfold naturally.
Friedrich Fröbel
Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel (1782–1852) was a student of Pestalozzi who laid the foundation for modern education
based on the recognition that children have unique needs and
capabilities. He believed in "self-activity" and play as essential
factors in child education. The teacher's role was not to indoctrinate
but to encourage self-expression through play, both individually and in
group activities. He created the concept of kindergarten.
Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart
(1776–1841) emphasized the connection between individual development
and the resulting societal contribution. The five key ideas which
composed his concept of individual maturation were Inner Freedom,
Perfection, Benevolence, Justice, and Equity or Recompense.
According to Herbart, abilities were not innate but could be instilled,
so a thorough education could provide the framework for moral and
intellectual development. In order to develop a child to lead to a
consciousness of social responsibility, Herbart advocated that teachers
utilize a methodology with five formal steps: "Using this structure a
teacher prepared a topic of interest to the children, presented that
topic, and questioned them inductively, so that they reached new
knowledge based on what they had already known, looked back, and
deductively summed up the lesson's achievements, then related them to
moral precepts for daily living".
John Melchior Bosco
John Melchior Bosco
(1815–1888) was concerned about the education of street children who
had left their villages to find work in the rapidly industrialized city
of Turin,
Italy. Exploited as cheap labor or imprisoned for unruly behavior,
Bosco saw the need of creating a space where they would feel at home. He
called it an 'Oratory' where they could play, learn, share friendships,
express themselves, develop their creative talents and pick up skills
for gainful self-employment. With those who had found work, he set up a
mutual-fund society (an early version of the Grameen Bank)
to teach them the benefits of saving and self-reliance. The principles
underlying his educational method that won over the hearts and minds of
thousands of youth who flocked to his oratory were: 'be reasonable', 'be
kind', 'believe' and 'be generous in service'. Today his method of
education is practiced in nearly 3000 institutions set up around the
world by the members of the Salesian Society he founded in 1873.
Cecil Reddie
While studying for his doctorate in Göttingen in 1882–1883, Cecil Reddie was greatly impressed by the progressive educational theories being applied there. Reddie founded Abbotsholme School in Derbyshire,
England in 1889. Its curriculum enacted the ideas of progressive
education. Reddie rejected rote learning, classical languages and
corporal punishment. He combined studies in modern languages and the
sciences and arts with a program of physical exercise, manual labour,
recreation, crafts and arts. Abbotsholme was imitated throughout Europe
and was particularly influential in Germany. He often engaged foreign teachers, who learned its practices, before returning home to start their own schools. Hermann Lietz an Abbotsholme teacher founded five schools (Landerziehungsheime für Jungen) on Abbotsholme's principles. Other people he influenced included Kurt Hahn, Adolphe Ferrière and Edmond Demolins. His ideas also reached Japan, where it turned into "Taisho-era Free Education Movement" (Taisho Jiyu Kyoiku Undo)
John Dewey
In
the United States the "Progressive Education Movement", starting in the
1880s and lasting for sixty years, helped boost American public schools
from a budding idea to the regular norm. John Dewey,
a principal figure in this movement from the 1880s to 1904, set the
tone for educational philosophy as well as concrete school reforms. His
thinking had been influenced by the ideas of Fröbel and Herbart.
His reactions to the prevailing theories and practices in education,
corrections made to these philosophies, and recommendations to teachers
and administrators to embrace "the new education", provide a vital
account of the history of the development of educational thinking in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dewey placed pragmatism above moral absolutes and helped give rise to situational ethics. Beginning in 1897 John Dewey
published a summary of his theory on progressive education in School
Journal. His theoretical standpoints are divided into five sections
outlined below.
What education is
Education
according to Dewey is the "participation of the individual in the
social consciousness of the race" (Dewey, 1897, para. 1). As such,
education should take into account that the student is a social being.
The process begins at birth with the child unconsciously gaining
knowledge and gradually developing their knowledge to share and partake
in society.
The educational process has two sides, the psychological and the
sociological, with the psychological forming the basis. (Dewey, 1897). A
child's own instincts will help develop the material that is presented
to them. These instincts also form the basis of their knowledge with
everything building upon it. This forms the basis of Dewey's assumption
that one cannot learn without motivation.
Instruction must focus on the child as a whole for you can never
be sure as to where society may end or where that student will be needed
or will take them.
What the school is
"Education
fails because it neglects this fundamental principle of the school as a
form of community life. It conceives the school as a place where
certain information is to be given, where certain lessons are to be
learned, or where certain habits are to be formed" (Dewey, 1897, para.
17) Dewey felt that as education is a social construct, it is,
therefore, a part of society and should reflect the community.
"Education is the process of living and is not meant to be the
preparation of future living", (Dewey, 1897), so the school must
represent the present life. As such, parts of the student's home life
(such as moral and ethical education) should take part in the schooling
process. The teacher is a part of this, not as an authoritative figure,
but as a member of the community who is there to assist the student.
The subject matter of education
According
to Dewey, the curriculum in the schools should reflect that of society.
The center of the school curriculum should reflect the development of
humans in society. The study of the core subjects (language, science,
history) should be coupled with the study of cooking, sewing, and manual
training. Furthermore, he feels that "progress is not in the succession
of studies but in the development of new attitudes towards, and new
interests in, experience" (Dewey, 1897, para. 38)
The nature of method
The
method is focused on the child's powers and interests. If the child is
thrown into a passive role as a student, absorbing information, the
result is a waste of the child's education. (Dewey, 1897). Information
presented to the student will be transformed into new forms, images, and
symbols by the student so that they fit with their development and
interests. The development of this is natural. To repress this process
and attempt to "substitute the adult for the child" (Dewey, 1897, para.
52) would weaken the intellectual curiosity of the child.
The school and social progress
For
Dewey, education, which regulates "the process of coming to share in
the social consciousness," is the "only sure" method of ensuring social
progress and reform (Dewey, 1897, para. 60). In this respect, Dewey
foreshadows Social Reconstructionism,
whereby schools are a means to reconstruct society. As schools become a
means for social reconstruction, they must be given the proper
equipment to perform this task and guide their students.
Helen Parkhurst
The American teacher Helen Parkhurst (1886–1973) developed the Dalton Plan
at the beginning of the twentieth century with the goal of reforming
the then current pedagogy and classroom management. She wanted to break
the teacher-centered lockstep teaching. During her first experiment,
which she implemented in a small elementary school as a young teacher in
1904, she noticed that when students are given freedom for
self-direction and self-pacing and to help one another, their motivation
increases considerably and they learn more. In a later experiment in
1911 and 1912, Parkhurst re-organized the education in a large school
for nine- to fourteen-year-olds. Instead of each grade, each subject was
appointed its own teacher and its own classroom. The subject teachers
made assignments: they converted the subject matter for each grade into
learning assignments. In this way, learning became the students’ own
work; they could carry out their work independently, work at their own
pace and plan their work themselves. The classroom turned into a
laboratory, a place where students are working, furnished and equipped
as work spaces, tailored to meet the requirements of specific subjects.
Useful and attractive learning materials, instruments and reference
books were put within the students’ reach. The benches were replaced by
large tables to facilitate co-operation and group instruction. This
second experiment formed the basis for the next experiments, those in
Dalton and New York, from 1919 onwards. The only addition was the use of
graphs, charts enabling students to keep track of their own progress in
each subject.
In the nineteen-twenties and nineteen-thirties, Dalton education
spread throughout the world. There is no certainty regarding the exact
numbers of Dalton schools, but there was Dalton education in America,
Australia, England, Germany, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, India,
China and Japan.
Particularly in the Netherlands, China and Japan, Dalton education has
remained in existence. In recent years there has been a revival of
international interest, particularly in England, Germany, the Czech
Republic and Slovakia.
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner (1869–1925) first described the principles of what was to become Waldorf education
in 1907. He established a series of schools based on these principles
beginning in 1919. The focus of the education is on creating a
developmentally appropriate curriculum that holistically integrates
practical, artistic, social, and academic experiences. There are more than a thousand schools and many more early childhood centers worldwide; it has also become a popular form of homeschooling.
Maria Montessori
Maria Montessori
(1870–1952) began to develop her philosophy and methods in 1897. She
based her work on her observations of children and experimentation with
the environment, materials, and lessons available to them. She
frequently referred to her work as "scientific pedagogy", arguing for
the need to go beyond observation and measurement of students, to
developing new methods to transform them. Although Montessori education
spread to the United States in 1911 there were conflicts with the
American educational establishment and was opposed by William Heard
Kilpatrick. However Montessori education returned to the United States
in 1960 and has since spread to thousands of schools there.
In 1914 the Montessori Society in England organised its first conference. Hosted by Rev Bertram Hawker,
who had set-up, in partnership with his local elementary school in the
Norfolk coastal village of East Runton, the first Montessori School in
England. Pictures of this school, and its children, illustrated the
'Montessori's Own Handbook' (1914).
Hawker had been impressed by his visit to Montessori's Casa dei Bambini
in Rome, he gave numerous talks on Montessori's work after 1912,
assisting in generating a national interest in her work. He organised
the Montessori Conference 1914 in partnership with Edmond Holmes,
ex-Chief Inspector of Schools, who had written a government report on
Montessori. The conference decided that its remit was to promote the
'liberation of the child in the school', and though inspired by
Montessori, would encourage, support and network teachers and
educationalists who sought, through their schools and methods, that aim.
They changed their name the following year to New Ideals in Education.
Each subsequent conference was opened with reference to its history and
origin as a Montessori Conference recognising her inspiration, reports
italicized the members of the Montessori Society in the delegate lists,
and numerous further events included Montessori methods and case
studies. Montessori, through New Ideals in Education, its committee and
members, events and publications, greatly influenced progressive state
education in England. (references to be added).
Robert Baden-Powell
In July 1906, Ernest Thompson Seton sent Robert Baden-Powell a copy of his book The Birchbark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians. Seton was a British-born Canadian-American living in the United States. They shared ideas about youth training programs. In 1907 Baden-Powell wrote a draft called Boy Patrols. In the same year, to test his ideas, he gathered 21 boys of mixed social backgrounds and held a week-long camp in August on Brownsea Island in England.
His organizational method, now known as the Patrol System and a key
part of Scouting training, allowed the boys to organize themselves into
small groups with an elected patrol leader. Baden Powell then wrote Scouting for Boys (London, 1908). The Brownsea camp and the publication of Scouting for Boys are generally regarded as the start of the Scout movement which spread throughout the world. Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes Baden-Powell introduced the Girl Guides in 1910.
Comparison with traditional education
Traditional education uses extrinsic motivation, such as grades and
prizes. Progressive education is more likely to use intrinsic
motivation, basing activities on the interests of the child. Praise may
be discouraged as a motivator.
Progressive education is a response to traditional methods of teaching.
It is defined as an educational movement which gives more value to
experience than formal learning. It is based more on experiential
learning that concentrate on the development of a child’s talents.
21st century skills
21st century skills are a series of higher-order skills,
abilities, and learning dispositions that have been identified as being
required for success in the rapidly changing, digital society and
workplaces. Many of these skills are also defining qualities of progressive education as well as being associated with deeper learning,
which is based on mastering skills such as analytic reasoning, complex
problem solving, and teamwork. These skills differ from traditional
academic skills in that they are not primarily content knowledge-based.
In the West
France
Edmond Demolins was inspired by Abbotsholme and Bedales to found the École des Roches in Verneuil-sur-Avre in 1899. Paul Robin implemented progressive principles at the Prévost orphanage between 1880 and 1894. This was the first French mixed school, and a scandal at that time. Sebastien Faure in 1904 created a libertarian school 'La Ruche' (the Hive).
Germany
Hermann
Lietz founded three Landerziehungsheime (country boarding schools) in
1904 based on Reddie's model for boys of different ages. Lietz
eventually succeeded in establishing five more Landerziehungsheime. Edith and Paul Geheeb founded Odenwaldschule in Heppenheim in the Odenwald in 1910 using their concept of progressive education, which integrated the work of the head and hand.
Poland
Janusz Korczak was one notable follower and developer of Pestalozzi's ideas. He wrote
The names of Pestalozzi, Froebel and Spencer shine with no less
brilliance than the names of the greatest inventors of the twentieth
century. For they discovered more than the unknown forces of nature;
they discovered the unknown half of humanity: children.
His Orphan's Home in Warsaw became a model institution and exerted
influence on the educational process in other orphanages of the same
type.
Ireland
The Quaker school run in Ballitore, Co Kildare
in the 18th century had students from as far away as Bordeaux (where
there was a substantial Irish emigré population), the Caribbean and
Norway. Notable pupils included Edmund Burke and Napper Tandy.
Sgoil Éanna, or in English St Enda's was founded in 1908 by Pádraig Pearse on Montessori principles. Its former assistant headmaster Thomas MacDonagh and other teachers including Pearse; games master Con Colbert; Pearse's brother, Willie, the art teacher, and Joseph Plunkett,
and occasional lecturer in English, were executed by the British after
the 1916 Rising. Pearse and MacDonagh were two of the seven leaders who
signed the Irish Declaration of Independence. Pearse's book The Murder Machine was a denunciation of the English school system of the time and a declaration of his own educational principles.
Spain
In Spain, the Escuela Moderna was founded in 1901 by Francisco Ferrer, a Catalan educator and anarchist. He had been influenced by Cecil Reddie. The Modern Schools,
also called 'Ferrer Schools', that were founded in the United States,
were based on Escuela Moderna. As in Spain the schools were intended to
educate the working-classes from a secular, class-conscious
perspective. The Modern Schools imparted day-time academic classes for
children, and night-time continuing-education lectures for adults.
Sweden
In Sweden, an early proponent of progressive education was Alva Myrdal, who with her husband Gunnar co-wrote Kris i befolkningsfrågan (1934), a most influential program for the social-democratic hegemony (1932–1976) popularly known as "Folkhemmet".
School reforms went through government reports in the 1940s and trials
in the 1950s, resulting in the introduction in 1962 of public
comprehensive schools ("grundskola") instead of the previously separated
parallel schools for theoretical and non-theoretical education.
United Kingdom
The ideas from Reddie's Abbotsholme spread to schools such as Bedales School (1893), King Alfred School, London (1898) and St Christopher School, Letchworth (1915), as well as all the Friends' schools, Steiner Waldorf schools and those belonging to the Round Square Conference.
The King Alfred School was radical for its time in that it provided a
secular education and that boys and girls were educated together. Alexander Sutherland Neill
believed children should achieve self-determination and should be
encouraged to think critically rather than blindly obeying. He
implemented his ideas with the founding of Summerhill School
in 1921. Neill believed that children learn better when they are not
compelled to attend lessons. The school was also managed democratically,
with regular meetings to determine school rules. Pupils had equal
voting rights with school staff.
United States
Early practitioners
Fröbel's student Margarethe Schurz founded the first kindergarten in the United States at Watertown, Wisconsin in 1856, and she also inspired Elizabeth Peabody,
who went on to found the first English-speaking kindergarten in the
United States – the language at Schurz's kindergarten had been German,
to serve an immigrant community – in Boston
in 1860. This paved the way for the concept's spread in the USA. The
German émigré Adolph Douai had also founded a kindergarten in Boston in
1859, but was obliged to close it after only a year. By 1866, however,
he was founding others in New York City.
William Heard Kilpatrick
(1871–1965) was a pupil of Dewey and one of the most effective
practitioners of the concept as well as the more adept at proliferating
the progressive education movement and spreading word of the works of
Dewey. He is especially well known for his "project method of teaching".
This developed the progressive education notion that students were to
be engaged and taught so that their knowledge may be directed to society
for a socially useful need. Like Dewey he also felt that students
should be actively engaged in their learning rather than actively
disengaged with the simple reading and regurgitation of material.
The most famous early practitioner of progressive education was Francis Parker; its best-known spokesperson was the philosopher John Dewey. In 1875 Francis Parker became superintendent of schools in Quincy, Massachusetts
after spending two years in Germany studying emerging educational
trends on the continent. Parker was opposed to rote learning, believing
that there was no value in knowledge without understanding. He argued
instead schools should encourage and respect the child's creativity.
Parker's Quincy System
called for child-centered and experience-based learning. He replaced
the traditional curriculum with integrated learning units based on core
themes related to the knowledge of different disciplines. He replaced
traditional readers, spellers and grammar books with children's own writing, literature, and teacher prepared materials. In 1883 Parker left Massachusetts to become Principal of the Cook County Normal School in Chicago,
a school that also served to train teachers in Parker's methods. In
1894 Parker's Talks on Pedagogics, which drew heavily on the thinking of
Fröbel, Pestalozzi and Herbart, became one of the first American writings on education to gain international fame.
That same year, philosopher John Dewey moved from the University of Michigan to the newly established University of Chicago where he became chair of the department of philosophy, psychology and education. He and his wife enrolled their children in Parker's school before founding their own school two years later.
Whereas Parker started with practice and then moved to theory,
Dewey began with hypotheses and then devised methods and curricula to
test them. By the time Dewey moved to Chicago at the age of thirty-five,
he had already published two books on psychology and applied
psychology. He had become dissatisfied with philosophy as pure
speculation and was seeking ways to make philosophy directly relevant to
practical issues. Moving away from an early interest in Hegel, Dewey proceeded to reject all forms of dualism
and dichotomy in favor of a philosophy of experience as a series of
unified wholes in which everything can be ultimately related.
In 1896, John Dewey opened what he called the laboratory school
to test his theories and their sociological implications. With Dewey as
the director and his wife as principal, the University of Chicago
Laboratory school, was dedicated "to discover in administration,
selection of subject-matter, methods of learning, teaching, and discipline,
how a school could become a cooperative community while developing in
individuals their own capacities and satisfy their own needs." (Cremin,
136) For Dewey the two key goals of developing a cooperative community and developing individuals'
own capacities were not at odds; they were necessary to each other.
This unity of purpose lies at the heart of the progressive education
philosophy. In 1912, Dewey sent out students of his philosophy to found The Park School of Buffalo and The Park School of Baltimore to put it into practice. These schools operate to this day within a similar progressive approach.
At Columbia, Dewey worked with other educators such as Charles
Eliot and Abraham Flexner to help bring progressivism into the
mainstream of American education. In 1917 Columbia established the
Lincoln School of Teachers College "as a laboratory for the working out
of an elementary and secondary curriculum which shall eliminate obsolete
material and endeavor to work up in usable form material adapted to the
needs of modern living." (Cremin, 282) Based on Flexner's demand that
the modern curriculum "include nothing for which an affirmative case can
not be made out" (Cremin, 281) the new school organized its activities
around four fundamental fields: science, industry, aesthetics and civics.
The Lincoln School built its curriculum around "units of work" that
reorganized traditional subject matter into forms embracing the
development of children and the changing needs of adult life. The first
and second grades carried on a study of community life in which they
actually built a city. A third grade project growing out of the
day-to-day life of the nearby Hudson River
became one of the most celebrated units of the school, a unit on boats,
which under the guidance of its legendary teacher Miss Curtis, became
an entrée into history, geography, reading, writing, arithmetic, science, art
and literature. Each of the units was broadly enough conceived so that
different children could concentrate on different aspects depending on
their own interests and needs. Each of the units called for widely
diverse student activities, and each sought to deal in depth with some
critical aspect of contemporary civilization. Finally each unit engaged
children working together cooperatively and also provided opportunities
for individual research and exploration.
In 1924, Agnes de Lima, the lead writer on education for The New Republic and The Nation, published a collection of her articles on progressive education as a book, titled Our Enemy the Child.
In 1918 The National Education Association,
representing superintendents and administrators in smaller districts
across the country, issued its report "Cardinal Principles of Secondary
Education." It emphasized the education of students in terms of health,
a command of fundamental processes, worthy home membership, vocation,
citizenship, worthy use of leisure, and ethical character. They
Emphasized life adjustment and reflected the social efficiency model of
progressive education.
From 1919 to 1955 the Progressive Education Association founded by Stanwood Cobb and others worked to promote a more student-centered approach to education. During the Great Depression the organization conducted the Eight-Year Study,
evaluating the effects of progressive programs. More than 1500 students
over four years were compared to an equal number of carefully matched
students at conventional schools. When they reached college, the
experimental students were found to equal or surpass traditionally
educated students on all outcomes: grades, extracurricular
participation, dropout rates, intellectual curiosity, and
resourcefulness. Moreover, the study found that the more the school
departed from the traditional college preparatory program, the better
was the record of the graduates. (Kohn, Schools, 232)
By mid-century many public school programs had also adopted
elements of progressive curriculum. At mid-century Dewey believed that
progressive education had "not really penetrated and permeated the
foundations of the educational institution."(Kohn, Schools, 6,7) As the
influence of progressive pedagogy grew broader and more diffuse,
practitioners began to vary their application of progressive principles.
As varying interpretations and practices made evaluation of
progressive reforms more difficult to assess, critics began to propose
alternative approaches.
The seeds of the debate over progressive education can be seen in
the differences of Parker and Dewey. These have to do with how much and
by whom curriculum should be worked out from grade to grade, how much
the child's emerging interests should determine classroom activities,
the importance of child-centered vs. societal–centered learning, the
relationship of community building to individual growth, and especially
the relationship between emotion, thought and experience.
In 1955 the publication of Rudolf Flesch's Why Johnny Can't Read leveled criticism of reading programs at the progressive emphasis on reading in context. The conservative McCarthy era raised questions about the liberal ideas at the roots of the progressive reforms. The launching of Sputnik in 1957 at the height of the cold war gave rise to a number of intellectually competitive approaches to disciplinary knowledge, such as BSCS biology PSSC physics, led by university professors such as Jerome Bruner and Jerrold Zacharias.
Some of the cold war reforms incorporated elements of
progressivism. For example, the work of Zacharias and Bruner was based
in the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget
and incorporated many of Dewey's ideas of experiential education.
Bruner's analysis of developmental psychology became the core of a
pedagogical movement known as constructivism,
which argues that the child is an active participant in making meaning
and must be engaged in the progress of education for learning to be
effective. This psychological approach has deep connections to the work
of both Parker and Dewey and led to a resurgence of their ideas in
second half of the century.
In 1965, President Johnson inaugurated the Great Society and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
suffused public school programs with funds for sweeping education
reforms. At the same time the influx of federal funding also gave rise
to demands for accountability and the behavioral objectives approach of
Robert F. Mager and others foreshadowed the No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2002. Against these critics eloquent spokespersons stepped forward in defense of the progressive tradition. The Open Classroom movement, led by Herb Kohl and George Dennison, recalled many of Parker's child centered reforms.
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a rise and decline in the number of progressive schools. There were several reasons for the decline:
- Demographics: As the baby boom passed, traditional classrooms were no longer as over-enrolled, reducing demand for alternatives.
- The economy: The oil crisis and recession made shoestring schools less viable.
- Times changed: With the ending of the Vietnam War, social activism waned.
- Co-optation: Many schools were co-opted by people who didn't believe in the original mission.
- Centralization: The ongoing centralization of school districts
- Non-implementation: Schools failed to implement a model of shared governance
- Interpersonal dynamics: Disagreement over school goals, poor group process skills, lack of critical dialogue, and fear of assertive leadership
Progressive education has been viewed as an alternative to the test-oriented instruction legislated by the No Child Left Behind educational funding act. Alfie Kohn has been an outspoken critic of the No Child Left Behind Act and a passionate defender of the progressive tradition.
Taxpayer revolts, leading to cuts in funding for public education
in many states, have led to the founding of an unprecedented number of
independent schools, many of which have progressive philosophies. The
charter school movement has also spawned an increase in progressive
programs. Most recently, public outcry against No Child Left Behind
testing and teaching to the test
has brought progressive education again into the limelight. Despite the
variations that still exist among the progressive programs throughout
the country, most progressive schools today are vitalized by these
common practices:
- The curriculum is more flexible and is influenced by student interest
- Teachers are facilitators of learning who encourage students to use a wide variety of activities to learn
- Progressive teachers use a wider variety of materials allowing for individual and group research.
- Progressive teachers encourage students to learn by discovery
- Progressive education programs often include the use of community resources and encourage service-learning projects.
In the East
India
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was one of the most effective practitioners of the concept of progressive education. He expanded Santiniketan,
which is a small town near Bolpur in the Birbhum district of West
Bengal, India, approximately 160 km north of Kolkata. He de-emphasized
textbook learning in favor of varied learning resources from nature.
The emphasis here was on self-motivation rather than on discipline, and
on fostering intellectual curiosity rather than competitive excellence.
There were courses on a great variety of cultures, and study programs
devoted to China, Japan, and the Middle East.
He was of the view that education should be a "joyous exercise of our
inventive and constructive energies that help us to build up character."
Japan
Seikatsu
tsuzurikata is a grassroots movement in Japan that has many parallels to
the progressive education movement, but it developed completely
independently, beginning in
the late 1920s. The Japanese progressive educational movement was one of
the stepping stones to the modernization of Japan and it has resonated
down to the present.
Korea
While the first Daean Hakgyo
(lit. "alternative school") was established in the 1970s, the
alternative education became known to the public in the 1990s. However,
until well into the 2000s, many people thought that such a school system
was for "troublemakers" as they were not accredited by the Ministry of
Education and thus provided no diploma. Students who attended these
schools had to take Geomjeong-goshi (High School Equivalency
Diploma test), which was and is highly stigmatized. Nonetheless,
starting from the late 2000s, alternative schools with progressive
motives and education philosophy started to get accredited. In the
2010s, public progressive schools became increasingly popular.
