Lesson 3: The Progressive Influence on Modern Education
-The manner in which the institution or practice of education is best comprehended vs. a good education
-educational policy or practice <-> social or political ideal
“My Pedagogic Creed”
What education ought to do?
John Dewey:
-intimate connections between thoughtful educational policy in practice and the underlying social and political ideal
-progressive education program social and political ideal is both cause and effect of what takes place in the classroom
-Dewey is the consummate progressive - at the center of the progressive mentality is a sense of mission and responsibility that feeds a self-image of heroic action
-he is strongly influenced by both historicism and dominant interpretations of Darwinism
-Dewey saw himself as a vanguard of a movement to establish intelligent action in the place of an allegedly narrow-minded, fragmented, and disorderly response to momentous social, economic, technological, and political change
-to be effective it must be centralized and invested with the power of government
Historicism- the view that human beings always and necessarily find themselves confined morally and intellectually to a time and place marked by its own distinctive way of thinking, so it is how we think, including our understanding of the true and the good, is a function of prevailing circumstances, so then that what was understood to be true or good at one time is likely to be different from what is understood to be true or good at a later time
-for the historist, there is no meaningful reference to a good or true that exists outside and independent of an historical context
-the school of Dewey is the specialized mechanism that our society, especially during these problematic times, that has designed to establish the characteristics required for it to flourish
-in the classroom, children and young people should be engaged in suitable activities
-if we would have adult citizens who take responsibility, especially in sizing up problems and formulating and effective response to them, then it is necessary for the school to provide an environment that stimulates precisely those abilities
-a progressive school where children are busily doing all sorts of things, each individual pursuing activity that he finds significant
“There is nothing which strikes more oddly upon the average intelligent visitor than to see boys as well as girls of 10, 12, 13 years of age engaged in sewing and weaving. If you look at this from the standpoint of preparation of the boys for sewing on buttons and making patches, we’re getting narrow and utilitarian conception, a basis that hardly justifies giving prominence to this sort of work in the school. But if we look at it from another side, we find that this work gives the point of departure from which the child can trace and follow the progress of mankind in history, getting an insight also into the materials used and the mechanical principles involved. In connection with these occupations, the historic development of man is recapitulated.”
-Dewey is saying is that trivial activity, sewing on buttons and so forth, is, in fact, under the design of a skilled teacher, a mechanism through which the entire history of mankind can be leaned by the young, a truly extraordinary expectation
-the teacher understanding more than the children themselves what they need to learn, will contrive circumstances that give rise to envision preferred outcomes
Ex. because we know that skillful cooperation in the solution of larger problems is necessary in a viable democracy, the teacher will arrange the classroom in the principle of the school, such that children will, through their own volition, organize themselves and address circumstances they find problematic
-the progressive school ais to teach the young to learn how to learn and it wishes to establish a character, a sort of person that possesses the ability and inclination to adapt thoughtfully to changing circumstances
-the progressive school will adopt practices in which the young will learn independent judgment as well as a sense of responsibility to the group
**instead of being told what to do, Dewey’s portrayal of the traditional school
**the progressive classroom, children will learn to see for themselves and will never bend to traditional authority, per se
-naturally, children require discipline, but for Dewey, it will arise out out of the children’s activity itself, activity is that the child finds important
-a child-centered classroom seems chaotic and wasteful
-Dewey was disgusted with educators that employed his ideas irresponsibly to establish unorganized and permissive schools
-Dewey, the progressive, the organizer so the genuine progressive school, nothing is left to chance. It is known to the teacher and administrator, not to the child
-set Dewey’s classroom side-by-side with what for him are the two alternatives
Matrix:
You can divide education into four areas of study
Curriculum
Teacher’s role & methods
Authority/Control/Discipline
Educational Success
-compare all four categories to:
Traditional School
Progressive
Dewey’s Approach
-look at teacher’s role and method
Ex. 3 different understandings of the teacher’s role and method corresponding to the 3 different environments
Ex. the traditional school is a caricature created by Dewey: total control by the teacher, always an agent of the past, and an imposition to learning
Ex. the progressive school misrepresents Dewey by eliminating teacher barriers, teacher doesn’t provide direction, learning is by change
Ex. Dewey’s approach is to exercise responsibility, to mimic nature, select/arrange/regulate, learning by intuition
-Last row on the matrix: Educational Success
Ex. the traditional school: possess the facts, conformity to the past, develop past values, learn proper habits and attitudes
Ex. the progressive school: the natural condition is creativity/curiosity/spontaneity, freedom from inhibition, autonomy (not easy to define) child uncontaminated
Ex. Dewey: ability to learn on own, problem-solve, has courage/confidence/imagination, commitment to intelligence, democratic-scientific personality
Reciprocal relation between educational practice and social and political ideal:
-progressive school, properly understood, and grew out of Dewey’s social and political vision
-the education provided by that school, intentionally entails an envisioned social and political
-for Dewey, what takes place in the classroom of the progressive school is the very model for the larger world, ideally inhabited by the child when it leaves school and assumes its responsibilities as an adult
***if progressive education is successful then the social and political world must be transformed
-it is because the actors in that world will be the product of a deliberate process of formation
-formation is at the core of the progressive impulse, especially Dewey
-progressives borrowed from Dewey’s lexicon impacted education, so the nation will be ruled democratically by independent and well-informed persons suspicious of appeals to tradition and authority, who are prone to adjustment and marked by what he would call the democratic scientific personality
***the success of the progressive school consists explicitly in the extinction of the conservative mind and that progressive agenda places the highest priority on control of the public schools and obstruction of any alternative to them
-distressing condition of education in our time is attributable to the victory of two very bad ideas:
Naturalism and Formalism
Naturalism 1 vs. Naturalism 2:
Naturalism 1-(John Lennox)-the doctrine that there is nothing but nature. It is a closed system of cause and effect, there is no realm of the transcendent or supernatural, there is no outside
Naturalism 2-is the view that children in their learning are similar to the blossoming of the flower, that if left alone and to their own devices, young people will learn what they need to learn and that this will take place with little effort and without conflict, overt authority, or recourse to threat, bribe, or punishment
Formalism: is the view that schools should arrange for children to practice and become proficient at certain processes such as problem solving and critical thinking, in short, that we need not be concerned with substance or subject matter, since once they have mastered these processes, the young will be able and willing to learn whatever is useful or necessary as the relevant occasion arises
-Dewey has a mixed record in regards to naturalism
-he doesn’t recommend leaving children alone or that in the classroom we take our cues from whatever interests them
-Dewey does believe that learning that grows out of problems that are of genuine interest to the child will be free of the artificiality and drudgery of the traditional school
-Dewey describes the first flaw of progressivism, the belief that human beings have a mode of learning whose paradigm form is evident in the way young children effortlessly learn language and other knowledge of the world in informal settings
-Dewey still had discipline in cooperative problem-solving then no need for threats, bribes, or punishments
-Formalism-exercise of intelligence in response to a problematic environment, figures prominently in Dewey’s vision of education
-Dewey deeply opposes the requirement that children learn subject matter simply because someone tells them to or because people learned that material in the past
-Dewey endorsed critical thinking and in the teaching of skills that are essential to effective living
-Dewey did want the young to learn subject matter
-such learning must occur in the context of the child’s attempt to solve a genuine problem
-knowledge, books, and cultural heritage are always merely instrumental for Dewey
-he was loath to teach children to respect authority or the past in and of itself
-if children are busy, attending to appropriate tasks,
-this impression of a distance between Dewey and the excesses of progressivism needs to be tempered by two facts:
-1st: Dewey’s proposals have a strong tendency to be taken to dangerous extremes
-2nd: there is something in his position that is friendly to such extremism
Comments from three very different writers:
Diane Ravitch:
“The progressive education movement was inspired by Dewey’s writings but was not always strictly loyal to Dewey’s intentions.”
“Dewey sometimes chided progressive educators for going too far in following children’s whims. But at other times, he encouraged and lauded that very same behavior.”
-Dewey possessed strong ideological commitments. He criticized those on the left but didn’t want his criticisms to be used to support those on the right
Dewey’s biographers, Jay Martin, regarding teachers college in New York Columbia University
-the institution most responsible for the massive influence of progressive education in this country
-Dewey became the teacher’s mentor and inspiration, it was more for his symbolic presence and past work than for his actual involvement
-they made him a version of progressive education that he neither practiced nor advocated
Robert Hutchins
-vicious battle with Dewey in the 1930’s regarding Dewey a san arch conservative and because he believed in absolute ideas, an enemy of freedom, refers to Dewey
“That most misunderstood of all philosophers of education. It is one of the ironies of fate that his followers, who have misunderstood him, have carried all before them in American education, whereas the plans he proposed have never been tried.”
-Hutchins responds to Dewey’s book “Democracy and Education” which in the mind of most progressives is his greatest work
“His book is a noble, generous effort to solve a variety of social problems through the educational system. Unfortunately, the methods he proposed would not solve these problems. They would merely destroy the educational system.”
-Dewey unleashed something that either he could not or would not control. He bears considerable responsibility for the condition of America’s schools and the bad ideas that account for that condition
-if the practices outlined so far today are the meaning of progressivism in education, what is the alternative?
-this will be addressed in relation to a variety of disciplines
Good books to read:
The Seven Laws of Teaching by John Milton Gregory
The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers
The Art of Teaching by Gilbert Highet