ES2307: Progressive Education
Week 2
Dewey and the American Tradition
Tutor: Joan Walton
Widespread agreement that aim of education was
to provide for spiritual salvation of the individual
 No agreement about the methods or concepts
 Strong influence of Calvinists and Evangelical
protestants
 Horace Bushnell (congregationalist minsiter)
advocated play in relation to spiritual growth
 Influence of Kindergarten grew.
 Lydia Marie Child’s The Mother’s Book (1831)
mothers should not interfere “with the influence
of the angels” as their children “come to them
from heaven, with their little souls full of
innocence and peace(p.1)

Stood against prevailing orthodoxy
 Challenged Calvinists’ view of innate depravity of
the child: “Of all the impious doctrines which the
dark imagination of man ever conceived, this is the
worst.”
 Influenced by Pestalozzi, became central figure in
liberation of influential New England intelligentsia
 Infant education began in America designed for
“educational experimentation as much as social
reform”
 Could be seen as forerunners of kindergartens.
 Alcott aimed to nurture the organic growth of the
child, rather that channel them in pre-designated
directions

 Alcott’s
assistant
 Championed the kindergarten
 The school was designed to ‘address and
cultivate the imagination and the heart of
the child’.
 Alcott saw child develop in two distinct
phases – the animal and the spiritual.
 The spiritual only emerged when the adult
had taken it through a process of cultivation
through a number of ‘conversations’.
 Aim to conquest lower animal nature by
higher morality
 Alcott’s
school can be seen as an early
example of a progressive philosophy at work
 Conversations focused more on the
development of the hart and the
imagination, rather than just filling head
with moral prescriptions.
 The child was directly participation in own
education by ensuring that impulses for
reform and self-recognition came form
within, and were not imposed externally.
 This work can be seen as developing a more
humane understanding of children.
Stimulated range of questions:
 What is the nature of childhood?
 What is the desired method and content of
education?
 When should schooling begin?
 What is the role of the mother in relation to
education?
 What should be the balance between mental
and moral educaiton?
 Industrialisation
led to demand for more
vocational work-force
 William Torrey Harris: education should see
“interest …as subordinate to the higher
question of the choice of the course of study
that will correlate the child with the
civilization into which he is born” (1896:3)
 John Dewey saw the value of education as
being for the social as well as the individual
good.
 Dewey believed that many of the world
problems stemmed from a lack of democracy
 Important
pioneering figure in American
democratic tradition.
 Dewey saw Parker as the ‘father of
progressive education’.
 Developed a specific educational scheme in
schools in Massachusetts.
 Tasked with applying learning to real life
situations – e.g. writing letters.
 Set curriculum abandoned; creative
techniques introduced – e.g. reading
magazines, geography trips.
 School
was organised as a ‘model home, a
complete community and embryonic
democracy’ (1984:450)
 His ideas borrowed extensively from
Pestalozzi and Froebel.
 He saw the child as innately good; and the
role of the teacher was to release the latent
impulses towards learning, inherent in every
child.
 Was
greatly influenced by his distaste at what
he saw were the evils of industrialisation,
which created disharmonious communities
 The School and Society (1899) – lament of old
rural way of life, which celebrated close
familial ties, and sense of community.
“ We cannot overlook the importance for
educational purposes of the close and intimate
acquaintance got with nature at first hand,
with real things and materials, with the actual
process of their manipulation, and the
knowledge of their social necessities and uses”
(1899: 23-4)
 Dewey’s
philosophy: school was not just a
preparation for life, but it was a representation
of life itself.
 School should be a manifestation of democratic
ideals, and should have a purpose of improving
the external world.
 Educational change was influential in the
development of social change.
 ‘Democracy’ was seen to involve aspects of the
political, social and the individual.
 Not specifically child-centred- the role of the
teacher was to prepare children for roles in
future society.
 So
is it Dewey’s view that education is to
promote new values in society, or encourage
students to improve on the old?
 Dewey was not a radical
 “There is always the danger in a new
movement that in rejecting the aims and
methods of that which it would supplant, it
may develop its principles negatively rather
than positively and constructively (1938:6)
 His understanding of the term democracy
serves to underpin theories of human
development and experience.
 Embodiment
of American liberal educational
tradition
 Emphasises education as a form of democracy
 Includes a reconceptualisation of vocational
learning
 He has been seen to provide “the most mature
consideration of the many roles of education in
America’s progressive society” (Martin 2002:
255)
 Draws
on broad understanding of psychology
and philosphy
 Explores how:


thinking affects learning
Education can escape and transcend the
traditional academic / vocational educational
divide
 Treads
a ‘middle path’; avoids the
individualism of Rousseau; and excessive
reliance of the state.
 Influenced by William James and Pragmatism
(importance of experience; integration of
theory and practice)
 “Whereas
Dewey defined educational
purpose in terms of the individual’s
integration into a modern society, the
Europeans laid greater stress on ‘selfrealisation’ and the inner growth of the
individual”(Jones 1983:28)
 Was equipping young people for an
increasingly industrialised society
 Education became important in promoting
pragmatism, and creating a synergy between
theory and practice.
 For
Dewey, it became essential that both
society and democratic communities were
continually evolving, both intellectually and
morally.
 Dewey’s thinking is a rejection of metanarrative approaches (such as Marxist
ideology), and represents change in a more
gradual and evolutionary sense through the
dissemination of progress and social justice.
 Dewey initial supported kindergartens; but
then partially rejected them, because of the
emphasis on pupils pursuing their own ends.
In keeping with his understanding that humans
develop innately, Dewey contended that “the
moral is not to leave them (the children)
alone to follow their own ‘spontaneous
development’, but to provide an environment
which shall organise them’ (1916: 134)
 Notion
of praxis – reconciliation of theory and
practice.
 Set up the University Elementary School (know
as the Laboratory School) in Chicago in 1896.
 Created this in order to demonstrate, observe
and experiment.
 “Only the scientific aim, the conduct of a
laboratory, comparable to other scientific
laboratories, can furnish the reason for the
maintenance by a university of an elementary
school (1989:88)
 Dewey’s
Laboratory School provided a
relatively traditional curriculum (maths,
history, etc), but use innovative ways of
communicating the knowledge.
 Pupils learned by experiment, enquiry and
investigation.
 Teachers thought about how they could carry
these out.
 Provided pupils with a broad curriculum.
 R.S. Peters and Paul Hirst – debate what kind o
subjects a student should study as part of a
broad curriculum.
 Dewey
believed that learning was a lifelong
process; he saw learning taking place within
the processes of constant evolution, both
within and individual and their society, which
originated from the practical social questions
which arose out of everyday life.
 To do this, each person had to be equipped
with a scientific, critically aware habit of
mind: “It is a sound educational principle
that students should be introduced to
scientific subject matter and be initiated
into its facts and laws through acquaintance
with everyday social applications (1938: 98)
 William
Bagley – an ‘essentialist’, who
challenged Dewey’s ideas. His belief was that
there was core ‘essential’ knowledge which
school has a duty to transmit.
 Social reconstructionists see Dewey’s ideas as
not sufficiently radical. The question was
raised: How can inequalities beyond the
classroom be addressed?
 Boyd Bode: “Progressive education must either
become a challenge to all the basic beleifs and
attitudes which have been dominant for so long
in every important domain of human interest, or
else retreat to the nursery (1938: 5)
 George
Counts (1889-1974)- had a vision of
teaching in and for a democracy which
epitomises the challenges that continue to
face educators struggling to reconcile the
demands of social justice and individual
freedom.
 Counts wrote: “Dare the School Build New
Social Order?”
 His concern was how to prepare students to
live in a world transformed by
industrialisation; and how to address
concerns about the relationships between
class, education and power.
 What
should the purpose of school education
for children be?
 What subjects should be taught as part of the
school curriculum?
 What methods should be used to teach
children in schools?
 If you were designing a ‘progressive school’,
what would be included in your plan?