Educating liberty
***
Rousseauvian influences on the progressive education systems of
Maria Montessori and Helen Parkhurst
Oscar Peeters
3113337
21-06-2012
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Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 3
Rousseau ........................................................................................................................................ 9
Montessori .................................................................................................................................... 25
Parkhurst .................................................................................................................................... 41
Concluding ................................................................................................................................... 57
Epilogue ....................................................................................................................................... 67
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 71
Appendices ..............................................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
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Introduction
When Rousseau published his work Émile in 1762, the world was ready for
a new treatise on education. A serious attempt had not been made since Plato’s
‘The Republic’, where he touched upon morality and justice. Thus, in an era
dictated by a new belief in rationality and liberty, Rousseau’s book was both a
product of its time and a welcome addition to it. Rousseau, both taking part in
the Enlightenment and being a forerunner of the Romantics, presented to the
world a new form of education, moving from a teacher-oriented curriculum to
a pupil-oriented version. Shifting the focus from the tutor to the apprentice
created a completely new outset for education. The significance of these first
pioneering steps into the world of educational reform cannot be
underestimated. For centuries, the foundation of education had been the
radiating of experience and knowledge by wise, older mentors. This required a
belief in the value of accumulated knowledge, carefully selected over time and
passed on by someone fulfilling a teaching role (that being a parent, an
educator or someone else in a responsible position). In contrast, Rousseau
asserted that the potentiality of natural development was being overlooked.
This ‘proto-Romantic’ concept served as one of the preludes for the return to
nature the Romantics propagated in reaction to the Enlightenment thinkers, as
they saw both the power of the human being in its purest form (natural,
unabated by human constructs), whilst at the same time addressing the
arrogance of a relentless belief in human rationality. Rousseau, in Émile,
addresses this dichotomy through his new ideas on education. The fictitious
child Émile is to be both let free (albeit in a designated area) in order to not
hamper his or her potential for natural development. The child, instead of
being constrained to a strict curriculum, a time table and a fixed learning path,
chooses his or her own path, and perhaps just as important: s/he is allowed to
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make mistakes.1 Through the possibility of making mistakes, the child is
responsible for his or her own ‘lessons’. Simultaneously, Rousseau stages
several experiments, both to monitor of progress and to instruct the child in
various fields (mostly covering ethics).2 These are modelled in a way that the
child still feels responsible for his or her own actions and accomplishments,
maintaining the change in relationship between tutor and pupil. These two
concepts, responsibility and liberty, combined with exercises that stimulate the
child to think are three elements that other thinkers have picked up.
Rousseau’s book has provided renewed views on education, but as a workable
guide, it proved to be hardly useful. The extreme (though fictional) experiment
Rousseau describes, clashes with conventional ethics—to what extent one can
experiment with a person’s life— and practicality, as it is impossible to separate
a child from others for the first twelve years of his or her life. Evidentially, the
treatise contains some highly volatile ideas about pedagogy, but they were set
forth in a too unrefined and unpractical manner to be useful.
However, various later thinkers recognised Émile as a promising new
application of the Enlightenment concept of freedom and the Romantic
notion of nature. Thus, they picked up where Rousseau stopped, and set out to
develop these new insights even further. Thinkers like Johann Heinrich
Pestalozzi and his student Friedrich Fröbel picked up Rousseau’s new
direction, concentrating ever more on the liberty of the pupil, having faith in
the natural development of the child. Battling illiteracy and working to provide
younger children with proper preparation for society—including politics,
interaction, ethics and skills to be used in prospective jobs—and through
education, the ideas of these highly influential thinkers still prevail in many
modern school systems, specifically the kindergarten and the focus on
individual differences between children.
I have tried to keep the child as gender-neutral as possible, using ‘his or her’ when possible,
and ‘s/he’ to denominate the first case pronouns. Sometimes I might use solely ‘his’ or ‘he’, for
language has no grammatical construction that denominates a gender-neutral, yet personal
subject.
2 Rousseau, J.J., Émile, or On Education (A. Bloom, transl.) (Harmondsworth 1991, original work
published in 1762) op. cit.
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The ‘long’ nineteenth century is characterised by deep social changes and
their correspondent political changes. The time-span saw the rise of modern
society, comprising the dawn of the middle class, the modern political system
and a technological spur history had not witnessed before. As true heirs to
both the Romantics and the Enlightenment it comes as no surprise that these
concepts and concrete developments merged in thoughts of many people from
the nineteenth century. The age saw the dawn of the ‘real’ social sciences;
amongst them anthropology, history3, psycho- and sociology, linguistics and
pedagogy. In this thesis, I will focus on this last development, the heightened
interest in and structuring of pedagogy. Sprouting from the social turmoil in
the nineteenth century, were many educational reformers, combining ideas on
the development of children, ranging from psychology to philosophy to
biology. The rise of the state provided the necessary means, the rise of the
population the necessary ‘test subjects’, and the rise of the media the necessary
publicity.
In a matter of decades, entering the twentieth century, the world saw the
rise of numerous new educational systems. Politically and socially entangled,
these new educational systems had great promises in store for the future of
society, the position of the lower and middle classes and the role of the
individual. Two of these systems were extremely promising, as they vouched
for two core values to be instilled in the child: responsibility and freedom.
These systems were the Montessori Method by Maria Montessori and the
Dalton Laboratory Plan by Helen Parkhurst.
These two reformers brought forth their ideas in the first quarter of the
twentieth century, and were direct heirs to the aforementioned developments
in the previous age. In this treatise, I will scrutinise both reform tracts for
Rousseauvian elements, to see how they moulded Rousseau’s concepts of
freedom and natural development into holistic educational models of their
own. Through first defining Rousseau’s view on education and upbringing, I
History, naturally, had existed before, but it was in the nineteenth century that intellectuals
like Leopold von Ranke founded a professional form of writing history known as historicism.
3
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will provide a ‘test model’ that I can use to hold these two educational systems
against the light.
Secondly, I will say something about the prevalence of these two systems.
Montessori’s system is still prevalent in many parts of the world, and therefore
seems to be a lot more successful (at least in numbers) than the Dalton system,
which apart from still being present in Northwestern Europe, has almost
completely disappeared. It seems that there is more to say about these systems
than merely their curriculum and its approach. They can tell us something
about the position of the individual in society, its behaviour and its place
within a political model. In addition to that, it must be noted that out of the
educational reformers around the turn of the century many were women,
stepping inside the arena with such power that they have been prominent in
this field ever since. This is definitely an aspect I would like to shed a light on
in my comparative research of these two models.
Before I continue into the main body of my argument, there is some
definitional clearing up to do. I personally struggle with the terminology. I am
researching ‘education’; however, this word entails two concepts, which in the
English language is sadly denoted to one word. In the continental German
languages there is a dichotomy of terms: the words opvoeding and onderwijs
(erziehung and unterricht) mean completely different things. The former
means the education of the child by the parents, comprising mostly lessons
concerning moral, common sense and general knowledge, and the latter being
school or ‘factual’ education. These words have different meanings, and
although they can overlap, they are in no way interchangeable. This difference
is important to me, because especially in modern society where schools are
accessible to all people, it is the opvoeding that is often (partially) decisive for the
pupil’s educational path. Also, we see differences in the meaning of the word
‘education’ in Rousseau, Montessori and Parkhurst, hence I will continue to
make the distinction between the two, and will use their Dutch equivalents to
elucidate my argument.
Lastly, I will expound on my historiographical and methodological views.
Foremost, I believe in the power of the writer. In the ‘structure versus agency’-
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debate raging through the field of critical theory in the latter part of the
twentieth century, the agency of the writer has almost completely been
eradicated by the belief in underlying power structures as set forth by like poststructuralists like Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida.
Through their systematic analysis of texts, they have ‘depersonalised’ their
meanings, focusing too much on structures. Especially with ‘great intellectuals’,
I find this a thoroughly over-simplifying approach. It is a given that they were a
product of their time, used the same language and literary conventions, but
these intellectuals often sought to take a meta-stance in overviewing problems.
They were aware of pros and cons, knew the history, and merely sought to
describe or from solutions for the given problems. Therefore, I will take a
middle stance in treating my primary sources, in a way reminiscent of Michel
de Certeau. De Certeau, mainly remembered in the historian’s field for his
theory on ‘strategies’ and ‘tactics’, he argued that human beings act both from
inner, uncontrollable forces (somewhat Freudian) and from the use of
proactively formed ‘tactics’. Secondly, we live in a world interlaced with
institutions and structures. These exert power on the individual’s live through
‘strategies.’4 Thus, people are both lived through strategies, but chose to adapt
to them through tactics. In a similar fashion, I will cover the writings on
education as being products of their time, but willingly proposed to address
problems and solutions.
***
Education is vital for the functioning of society. It is an integral part of the
socialisation of every human being and is essential for interaction and
cooperation with others. In addition, in the increasingly secular Western world,
education has taken up many of the tasks previously reserved for religion. It is
thus that I attribute great value to these two school systems, as they help form
Certeau, M. de, The Practice of Everyday Life (T. Tomasik, transl.) (Minneapolis 1998, original
work published in 1980) op. cit.
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the responsible and autonomous human being that is essential for preserving
(or creating) a wise society. I believe that by looking at the history of these two
systems, we can shed a new light on them, and provide new insights on our
own societies.
In this thesis, I will look for the Rousseauvian view on educational reform in
the works on education by Helen Parkhurst and Maria Montessori. I will
pinpoint vital concepts of educational reform, and trace their development
through a case study of three varied progressive educators. I will see how the
ides transcended from mere theoretical ruminations to practical applications,
tested in society. Furthermore, I will see how zeitgeist played an important role
in the formation of these theories, as the educational reform tracts were
thoroughly shaped by the hopes and ideals of their respective contemporary
world views. Furthermore, I will bring forth how there was a constant
reciprocity between intellectual and culture. Now, let us turn to our first
prolific writer who paved the way for onderwijs.
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Rousseau
Educational reform over-arches this dissertation, a topic interesting to all
times, as it concerns every human being. Important as it may seem, educational
reform is a very recent phenomenon in history. The traditional curriculum
centred on the ‘teacher-instructs-pupil’-model has prevailed (and still is in most
places) for the majority of history. In a new approach to both define change
within this system and look for its locus, I start with Rousseau; one of the first
educational reformers of the modern era. It is important to pinpoint what
exactly Rousseau set forth in his writings on education before we can see how
these findings made their way into the twentieth century. Therefore, I will
expound in this chapter on Rousseau’s thoughts and reflections on education,
which comprised much more than simple ‘schooling’.
In order to evaluate Rousseau’s body of thought fairly, I will expound on
the context from which his ideas arose. Secondly, I will give a brief overview of
Émile, ou de l’Education, followed by larger political and moral lessons apparent
elsewhere in his books (amongst them du Contrat Social ou Principes du droit
Politique, Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne and Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse)5
which, as I shall argue are important to grasping Rousseau’s thoughts in their
totality. As Rousseau wrote books treating a wide variety of political and moral
subjects, it is not easy to distil a coherent worldview. However, concerning his
all-embracing view on education, it is important to see how political and moral
ideas went hand-in-hand with theories about education.
5
Henceforth, du Contrat Social, Pologne, Héloïse and Émile respectively.
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Enlightenment’s edge
I have a fascination with intellectuals that seem to belong to two
contradicting traditions. Rousseau is one of those figures of interest. His works
contain both parts of the Enlightenment and the Romantics, rendering them a
unique testimony to the transition of eighteenth-century thought. His works
contain both a belief in the universality of nature and a longing for order and
progress. However, unlike his fellow ‘pure-blood’ enlightenment colleagues, he
saw the uncontrollable power of nature (to a large extent interchangeable with
his notion of a benevolent creating God) as a source for many of these
universalisms. It brought forth more a nostalgic yearning for the state of
nature, the primitive man and society, than a positivist belief in deduction and
the formation of laws. This view is apparent in all his reflections on society, the
nature of man, politics, ethics and most importantly for this dissertation:
education.
The eighteenth century witnessed some sweeping transformations of
society. To name a few, it witnessed the consolidation of the modern ‘state’,
the upcoming bourgeois society, saw the beginnings of mass urbanisation
centred around the upcoming industrious centres, and furthermore the
thorough spread of salaried employment. These three examples—which were
not exclusive to the eighteenth century, but had their most impact in that era—
all had their impact on what Jürgen Habermas calls ‘the public sphere’
(Öffentlichkeit).6 This public sphere, as opposed to the private sphere, was
developed between modern society and feudal society, as property relations
began to change under influence of transformations in society. Under the
feudal system, there was no proper distinction between the private and the
public. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, however, the dawn of the
modern state system under absolutism resulted in parliaments and bureaucracy,
which led to an abandonment of the minimalist ‘night watch’-state. The state’s
Habermas, J., Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen
Gesellschaft. (Frankfurt a. M. 1990) op. cit.
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increasing involvement in the citizen’s life resulted more and more in a
thorough distinction between what was public and what was private. Industrial
centres shifted the traditional source of income from agriculture more and
more to factories that employed workers based on commission or salaries.
‘Going to work’ replaced working on the land to supply food, creating yet
another distinction between the public and the private. Lastly, the growth of
the middle class, which provided an alternative to ‘rule or being ruled’, led to
the formation of a diverse array of societies, debating the events of the day.
This division between the public and the private is important for this
thesis, as it provides background to the writings discussed. We shall see that
Rousseau’s piece, written in a time when modern time was still in its infancy,
the state lacks the power and skills to employ certain ideas about the education
of man. It lacks practicality and result, and serves more as a book filled with
ruminations and reflections than as an actual guide for the betterment of
society. Wholly different are the approaches of the two women writers that
present the world their own book of instruction, ready to be implemented in
an already existing educational system.
Furthermore, the division between public and private sphere was of great
influence for the role of women in society. Whereas in agricultural society there
was no little to no schooling, it was required of all the members of the
household to help with the work on the land. However, with modern times
approaching—and this, of course, was less so in Rousseau’s time, but most
definitely in that of Montessori and Parkhurst—the ‘traditional’ family roles
were with increasing frequency affirmed: the man works, the woman takes care
and the child learns. This transformation of the role of different members of
the household rendered it possible for women educational reformers to take
the reins in this field. I will thread into more detail on the role of feminism and
the private sphere in the chapter on Montessori.
I have argued that Rousseau arose from an era of Enlightenment thinkers,
in an era thoroughly transformed by the upcoming state and its bureaucracy,
the onset of industrialisation and the change in societal relations under
influence of the middle class. Rousseau cast doubts on the universal truth of
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the Enlightenment thinkers, and reaffirmed God as a driving force in the
nature of things. In this context, we must place Émile, a book on the education
of man(kind).
Educating Émile
After Jean-Jacques Rousseau spent the first thirty years of his life traveling,
taking up jobs of different nature, he started to put his ideas to paper,
rendering them more comprehensible. In several ‘discourses’ and novels, he
treated a wide variety of topics. The works that concern me the most were
published within a year of each other, differing in form, but containing the
same theoretical framework. Between 1761 and 1762, Héloïse, du Contrat Social
and Émile (in chronological order) were published. Héloïse, treating
‘sentimentalism’ and domestic education was followed by du Contrat Social,
which covered moral and political aspects of society. Both of these were
combined in Rousseau’s vision on education in his ‘novel’ Émile.7 Émile serves
as the sandbox for his ideas about the natural aspects of mankind, the way we
live together, morality and how humans develop. Rousseau creates a fictional
character that is raised alone by a tutor.
Through creating a relationship between two fictional characters, Rousseau
is able to develop a concise theory about the capabilities of the ‘natural man’.
This, thus, should not be read as a concrete educational theory, but more in the
line of his other works: philosophical reflections on mankind. The book,
however, contains several elements picked up by educational reformers for
their innovativeness. I am looking for these elements, to catch their
momentum and impact, and to see how they are still useful for today’s
educational systems.
So, the fictional character Émile sprang to life: an average boy of modest
intelligence and physique. The boy, entrusted by his parents (who remain
I put novel in brackets; given that this was the denomination Rousseau himself gave to the
book, however, the modern definition of a novel does not remotely correspond to this piece of
work.
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unknown) to a tutor, is set out to receive the perfect education: that of nature.
The education through nature, unaccompanied by education through things or
humans, is the most reliable form of education. This tripartite division of the
educational source is made to categorise the different levels of acquiring
education, as all of them should be treated with varying dispositions. Thus,
nature is the knowledge intrinsically contained in the human mind and body. It
is the most ‘safe’ source of knowledge, since man is unable to tamper with it. It
is therefore unmediated, pure knowledge, where the greatest trust should be
assigned to. The second source, coming from things, is a slightly alterable
source of knowledge. Man can manipulate it, select it or suppress it. However,
things retain their qualities, bringing them only partially within our control. The
last source of education is that of men. It is the only kind we have full control
over, making it both very valuable, but dangerous when conducted wrongly.
The three sources of education have to be in harmony because conflicted
interests make up for an ill-educated individual.
The state of nature is one of Rousseau’s most prevalent concepts,
appearing in many of his books. Whether it is the state we strayed from and
thus inherited feelings of inequality or the state of the savage, content with
primal needs unspoiled by human constructs, it plays a thoroughly fecund role
in Rousseau’s writings. Also starting from this principle in his work on
education, Rousseau introduces the reader to the concept of negative
education. This concept entails the view that the child harnesses a potential to
develop on its own, but is capable of injuring himself (mentally and physically).
Therefore, the tutor should shield him from making the most severe of
mistakes, the ones that will do permanent damage. Through the refraining of
interference the child is able to develop skills on its own, attributing more
value to them, as he will know he acquired them without help or intrusion. The
premises underlying this concept are both the belief in the intrinsic goodness
of human nature (a concept widely debated by the Protestants, and although
Rousseau, born in Geneva was raised a Catholic, he converted to the Calvinist
Church to regain Swiss citizenship) and the belief in the capability of the child
to figure things out on his own with positive result. These two assumptions are
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contested even today, rendering Rousseau’s book important yet fallible. The
child Émile, tutored through a refraining of education is allowed to roam the
surrounding lands, as the development of his physique and senses are
contributive to the development of his mental strength as well. He may
encounter all sorts of things, learning from them every day. A child allowed to
play around the house, that is all? For the time being, yes. As Émile is shielded
from any ‘uncontrolled’ (human) influences, he is not allowed to interact with
other human beings beside the tutor, not allowed to read any books or theories
by others and is thus raised solitarily. The tutor, responsible for shielding the
child from harmful influences, is only able to retain full control of this state
through the expulsion of human influences. Coincidently, Rousseau retains his
belief in the potential of human nature, and thereby insists on the abdication of
corrupting human constructs like scientific theories and human conventions.8
The child is not to read books before s/he is ready for it (preposterously, this
cannot occur before he is twelve), as many of the abhorrences of mankind
have been formed and written in through books. The child is simply not ready
for those theories, as he does not have the skill yet to determine which are
right and which are wrong. So, the child’s education should foremost be about
exploring the senses and the physique; the intellectual training comes much
later. Having done away with these vile influences, the child is able to acquire
skills by him- or herself through trial and error.
Apart from the liberation of the child in order to let him obtain skills by
himself, Rousseau acknowledges (apparently) that the child is not fully able to
acquire all the skills by himself, through nature, for he sets out to stage several
events that introduce the child to basic concepts of morality and property. In
one of these events, the tutor takes Émile to a piece of land, lets him work on it
and sow some beans. After a few days, Émile discovers that the earth has been
ploughed over and the bean sprouts removed. The child is angered, because
his property (lesson one) was destroyed. However, as the gardener comes by
and tells Émile that it was he who roughed the patch up, Émile is being told that
8
Rousseau, Émile, op. cit.
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some weeks before, the gardener had planted very expensive Maltese melon
seeds in the ground, and it was he who was the victim of the destroyed crops.
Émile’s second lesson then entails how differences of opinion are complex, and
how property is a multi-dimensional concept. These many lessons are meant to
slowly teach the child to cope with the difficulties of interaction and society.
It is in society that Rousseau sees the biggest complication. On its own, the
child is free, independent and unmediated. The interaction with other human
beings makes him dependent, emotionally frail and susceptible to bad
influences. It is thus that Rousseau wants to raise the child away from society,
as the child is not reasonable enough to withstand mankind’s constructed
world; man and its highly esteemed ‘wisdom’ do not realise that it is in fact
slavish prejudice, and keeps us with its customs in constraint, compulsion and
control. By shielding the child from external human influences, the teacher is
more able to shield the child from malicious external factors. However,
eventually the child has to abide in society, and it is the tutor’s task to
introduce him to moral and ethical concepts to allow him to make the right
decisions in life.
***
Rousseau’s other works form an excellent example for how Émile should
behave in life. It seems that du Contrat Social is the state version of the
educational methods professed in Émile, and that Émile is the educational
version of the political and moral lessons professed in du Contrat Social. As
explained above, the tutor’s task is to coerce the child into developing the right
skills on its own, staging events and allowing the child to roam the lands free
and uninhibited by other human beings. This is remarkably similar to
Rousseau’s vision of the ideal state in du Contrat Social. The citizen being free
in its actions is (unknowingly) coerced into adopting the ‘general will’.
Democracy is instilled, but the Legislator (reminiscent of the Tutor) is inclined
to organise society in a way that the greater good will be served. In order to
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prevent these visions from colliding, the people are educated through festivals
and other civic events what moral ideas are beneficial to society.9
The second concept the subject (both Émile and the citizen) is introduced
to, is the difference between amour propre and amour de soi. These terms are
fundamental to understanding Rousseau’s thoughts, so I will take the time to
elucidate them a little further. Amour de soi is the primitive love of the self,
inclined to self-preservation. It implies the basic natural impulses by which a
human is driven, which allows a human being to make decisions based on
nothing more than survival. This is an innocent force, attuned to doing well.
In contrast, amour propre is self-interest and it is the first deviation of
mankind from its true, good nature. Rousseau claims that amour propre does not
imply negative consequences necessarily, but should always be in harmony with
nature. However, ever so often, amour propre takes up too large a part of the
human’s actions; it disrupts this harmony.10 Self-interest is one of the main
sources of corruption in society:
Thus the seeds of amour-propre, of living in the approval of
others, were planted in the human soul which came to be
corrupted with the artificial and negative sentiments of vanity,
envy, shame, contempt, and outraged pride; and with them the
thirst for revenge and retribution.11
In Émile, this self-interest is featured as the basis for sexual desire and the
competitiveness felt towards others. The rivalry stands in the way of solidarity
in altruism, and should therefore be treated with the greatest caution, as it is
capable of disrupting society and its social ties.
As we move through the different life phases, the teacher takes up a
different relationship with the child. Whereas first the teacher is an
‘accomplice’, he gradually transforms into a more traditional teacher, laying
Rousseau, J.J., Social Contract, the (G.D.H. Cole, transl.) (Buffalo 1988, original work published
in 1762) op. cit.
10 Bertram, C., “Jean Jacques Rousseau”, in: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 ),
visited on June, 21st, 2012, accessible at:
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/rousseau>.
11 Rousseau, Social Contract, 74.
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boundaries whenever possible. This is necessary, because the aforementioned
amour propre tends to increase as the child ages. To keep this force at bay,
restrictions are increasingly made for the pupil. These restrictions become
especially apparent when Émile enters the phase of adolescence. It is this phase
of adolescence, which is crucial to Rousseau as the powers of the teacher are
then the weakest, and the potential for corruption is the highest through amour
propre and interaction with other human beings, whilst at the same time the
adolescent has a not yet mature rationale.
The fourth part of the book, containing Le Profession de Foi du Vicaire
Savoyard, Rousseau found one of his most important pieces. This ‘sub-plot’ in
Émile tells the tale of a Vicar who was forced to question his faith after he
broke the vow of celibacy. Unable to render any theories about the world and
the creation, he continues to follow his lumière interieure, his free will, explaining
how the freedom works. This freedom, a force that is not bound by
mechanical or physical limitations, is the strongest thing humanity possesses.12
Finally, he ends up with a belief in what is natural religion, deducted from
everything around him; the vicar cannot believe differently than that, a single
benevolent creator created this world. That this was not a Christian god per sé
aroused discussion amongst the public, invoking a ban on the book.13 This
section is important, because it teaches the child Émile what religion is, how to
profess it, and that there is something like an individual, almost rational,
conceivable religion. At the same time, it teaches us what Rousseau’s views on
religion were. Paradoxically, religion was individual, but everyone, as long as
they were properly educated was ought to believe the same ‘truth’.
In the last part of the book, part V; the child Émile is introduced to his
future wife, Sophie. She was designed as a direct counterpart to Émile; the
ideal wife that completes the man. Therefore, she had to receive a wholly
different education:
Rousseau, Émile, 567.
Delaney, J., “Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712—1778)” in: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(October 21, 2005) visited on June, 21st, 2012, accessible at:
< http://www.iep.utm.edu/rousseau/#H6>.
12
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the whole education of women ought to relate to men. To
please men, to be useful to them, to make herself loved and
honoured by them, to raise them when young, to care for them
when grown, to counsel them, to console them, to make their
lives agreeable and sweet – these are the duties of women at all
times, and they ought to be taught from childhood. (p. 365)
This
statement
underwent
much
critique,
starting
with
Mary
Wollstonecraft:
What opinion are we to form of a system of education, when
the author (Rousseau in Émile) says...’Educate women like men,
and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they
have over us.’ This is the very point I am at. I do not wish them
to have power over men, but over themselves. The most perfect
education, in my opinion, is (...) to enable the individual to
attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent. (...)
This was Rousseau’s opinion respecting men: I extend it to
women (...) If children are to be educated to understand the true
principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot…make
women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will
quickly become good wives, and mothers; that is-if men do not
neglect the duties of husbands and fathers. 14
Feminists ever since have scorned Rousseau for such exhortations, and it
seems especially strange regarding the many educational reformers that were
(and are) women. However, one must not forget that this was written in the
1750s and 1760s, and the first major feminist movements with success were
still 140 years away. In addition, even more ironic might be to observe that in
current western society, women are outnumbering men amongst higher
education graduates.
Rousseau argued that the education and role must be different, because
women have different qualities and strengths from men.
To return to the amour propre, women’s vanity is important to them, as
appearance plays a large role in their lives. Hence, everything to do with amour
Groag Bell, S. and Offen, K., Women, the Family, and Freedom: The Debate in Documents, Volume
One, 1750-1880. (Stanford 1983) 60.
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19 |
propre should not be discouraged as part of their education. They are by default
a social being, interacting with others more than their male counterparts do,
and should be educated accordingly. Moreover, “the principles of utility and
readiness apply to her education as much as they do to Émile’s. She must learn
to read, to write, to do arithmetic, but only to the degree that will be useful for
her.”15
In the end, it may seem that the master’s work is over, as Émile will be a
tutor himself one day. However, in the final pages, Émile asks his tutor to
teach him to teach, creating an everlasting chain of patronage. With this in
mind, Rousseau wrote his book as a treatise of moral regeneration, after moral
society has decayed for many years, burdened under social constructs and
ethical depravity. Rousseau, then, has hope for the future, because of a
relentless faith in human nature. He ushers us to do away with the heavy load
of intellectual tradition and the Lumières that build upon this. How can man be
so arrogant to try to fathom nature, God’s wonder? In addition, how can the
Enlightenment thinkers try to reduce everything to laws and constants, while it
is clear that nature is perfect and mankind is its flaw? Rousseau appeals for a
return to nature having faith that the force to regenerate mankind lies within
ourselves. Jean-Jacques Rousseau is thus positive yet not positivist.
Natural development
Rousseau thus led a tumultuous life, allying himself with different religions,
political factions and countries. His publications spanning roughly forty years
comprise many different fields, ranging from musicology to ethics. However,
his views on moral and political issues proved to be the most illuminating,
earning their place in many philosophical canons.
A recurring theme in Rousseau’s works is the course of nature, capable of
doing nothing but good. Although Rousseau recognises that the natural state
might be a state more theoretical than actual, he nonetheless describes the
15
Rousseau, Émile, 369.
| 20
natural state as a mode in human thought. This mode, unhindered by
‘artificial’, human constructions allows him to deduce what qualities of society
and mankind are formed, and which are intrinsically inherent in human nature.
Duly, by using very descriptive terms, as if Rousseau is describing a common
ancestor, he conjures images of this noblesse sauvage to illustrate moral and
ethical themes.
We can see the natural man work through in his Discours sur l’origine et les
fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, where he argues that man in his natural
state had no concept of inequality. It was only due to the introduction of
human constructions like property that man strayed from his original path.16
Secondly, we see the course of natural development in perhaps his most
famous work: Du Contrat social, ou Principes du droit Politique. In this work,
Rousseau introduces the reader to general human connections and how they
have developed from the aforementioned ‘theoretical’ natural state. Man, born
free, must come to a social contract with his fellow men to ensue certain
guarantees. Protection, rules of property, laws, etc. (in the modern era, aspects
like the welfare state were duly added) are aspects of this contract. Accordingly,
man submits himself to the ‘general will’. Every man is still free, and has to
approve of laws, lest they become void from lack of consent. The general will,
represented by a sovereign (consisting of the populace) is mediated by a
Legislator, as mentioned above, reminiscent of the Tutor in Émile, coercing the
people to have the ‘right’ general will. Rousseau ventures back in time, to the
theoretical natural man, in order to rebuild society. By going back, he traces the
human constructs that have proven faulty, having caused many of the
problems in society present in his day. From this primitive state, he advises
mankind what moral and political decisions they should make in order to
regenerate mankind.
I stress once more that this relentless belief in the theoretical, benevolent
state of mankind is the basis of Rousseau’s body of thought.
16
Rousseau, Social Contract, op. cit.
21 |
Education in other works
Rousseau’s first reflections on education start in 1750, when he writes his
Discours sur les sciences et les arts, and he briefly addresses the state of education in
the country at the present time. He touches upon the function of public
schools, and how they not fulfil their role in society, asking himself whether
they should exist at all. Then, later, in 1758, he touches upon the subject again,
addressing education in Discours sur l’Economie Politique. Although posthumously
published, Rousseau again, more coherently addresses education when he
writes the Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne. This constitution for the
newly formed country Poland forms an exercise for Rousseau, and helps him
to get his thoughts more coherent. Here he addresses the equality of man, and
briefly touches upon state education.
But perhaps most importantly, and regrettably often overlooked, is his
‘sentimental novel’ Julie, ou de la Nouvelle Héloïse, which extensively treats
domestic education. As I said in my introduction, there is a difference between
onderwijs and opvoeding. Whereas in Héloïse, the topic is clearly opvoeding, in Émile,
the terms get tangled up ever more. As the pupil is home-tutored, receiving
lessons in morality, politics, the other sex, the physique and many other fields,
the distinction is blurred thoroughly. However, in Héloïse we are introduced to
terms relating to the natural development of the children. The book, centred
on a family, deals with relationships between people; amongst them spouses,
long-lost lovers and children. Julie, the main protagonist of the book, takes
care of two boys, raising them according to methods reminiscent of what one
is later to find in Émile:
The boys, she says, must be treated as children and allowed
their natural freedom; being boisterous and uninhibited is how
they express and enjoy it.
Instruction will follow later when they are ready for it. (...)
Their readiness to learn must be respected always and, at this
age, their physical development must be a priority. They must
| 22
not be subjected to any regime of books or study that makes for
a sedentary life.17
Here, the state of natural education is recalled, as well as a curriculum of
delayed introduction to books, a fact that was derived from Rousseau’s
aversion to ‘human constructs’. Having discussed the analogy between
Legislator and Tutor, we see the same role in the head of the household, the
paterfamilias; a leader that inspires the other members of the family. The
family could duly be seen as a miniature model of the ideal political
arrangement. The fact that Rousseau seems to draw an analogy between the
two, is remarkable, as the Western world now tend to see both as two
completely different spheres. The European (or American) family in the Early
Modern age is increasingly retreating to the private sphere, and rapidly
increasing in the eighteenth and nineteenth century—, whereas politics and
press increasingly start to dominate the public sphere. If the premise that
humans are intrinsically the same by nature is accepted, it allows for the
abstaining of distinguishing different roles and kinds of behaviour.
Accordingly, Rousseau does not see a difference between performing in the
public and the private sphere, and levels them, eradicating their contrasts. The
distinction I made earlier between two kinds of education are a further
extension of this dichotomy between the public and the private sphere.
Whereas onderwijs is a largely publicly affiliated area, comprising facts and skills,
opvoeding often happens behind closed doors in the private sphere.18 The latter
part of education, more affiliated with moral and ethical lessons, comprises a
different way and place of teaching. We are going to see that this divide will
take a different turn when we approach the contemporary era, and the public
and private sphere are more separated than ever.
Rousseau, Émile, 23.
I am aware that nowadays teachers are increasingly concerned with matters opvoeding-related
as well. However, this is a new trend started by educational reformers like Maria Montessori,
John Dewey and Helen Parkhurst, and is thus an argument for their innovativeness.
17
18
23 |
In his work the Projet pour l'éducation de M. De Sainte-Marie, we find more
background on what Rousseau’s thoughts are on what he thinks children
should learn, when he claims that:
“Children must learn: (i) their duties and be socialised into their
native, home-spun, culture; (ii) to value honest and forth-right
debate and the mind-set that goes with it; (iii) the virtues of
magnanimity, fair-mindedness, temperance, humanity, and
courage; (iv) patriotic zeal, and; (v) awe towards their
Creator.”19
Here he presents a great deal of moral and ethical guidelines, but also
patriotic and religious ones. We have learned that patriotism was useful in
creating a shared general will, rendering different kinds of people to agree on
decisions made by the sovereign (consisting of the populace). As we have seen
in the Savoyard vicar’s part, and considering that, Rousseau was a thoroughly
religious person, it is no surprise that a religious aspect is also part of the
children’s lessons.
Rousseau as an educational reformer
Ever since the hermeneutic teachings of Heidegger and Gadamer, there
has been an increased interest in (whether or not unintentional) personal
involvement in the contents of his book. As I have explained in my
introduction, I tend to analyse texts regarding both the writer’s agency and the
text as a product of its time. To read a book just as a piece of text, independent
and unmediated, is to neglect the circumstances from which the book arose.
Taking the writer’s background and intentions in account can contribute much
to the understanding of the text. Often, works arise from personal accounts
and reflections of an author’s life. Especially in the case of Rousseau, writing
opinionated and engaged pieces, it is striking how much he identifies with the
characters. This realisation is important to keep in mind, as we have seen that
his body of work contains certain constants, deducible from the many genres
19
Rousseau, Émile, 2.
| 24
and personages he wrote with. In the last example, that of the Savoyard vicar,
it has been argued that Rousseau identified fully with the religious remarks
uttered by the vicar. Thus, his various treatises are doused with his personal
convictions; the belief in the natural capacity of man to do well, be moral and
religious and the ability to educate himself. The second aspect that must be
kept in mind whilst reading Rousseau concerns the non-existence of a
separation of public and private sphere. As the contrast between public and
private sphere was still in its infancy, it is no surprise that this strikes us as odd,
looking at it with modern eyes. Moreover, for future educational reformers,
bearing in mind that there might be a difference between private and public
spheres, this could lead to wholly different outcomes.
Bearing these two reservations in mind, we come to conclude that
Rousseau wrote a treatise worthy of looking at for future generations of
educational reformers. To copy it in any literal sense would be foolish, as it is
highly theoretical, thought-experiment like. The idea of taking a child away
from his family for 15-something years, the solitary upbringing, the radical
freedom, these are all speculative methods, derived from a philosopher who
thoroughly believed in the power of human nature. Despite these reservations,
many concepts can (and have been) deduced from this book. Reformers like
Pestalozzi, Fröbel, Basedow and Herbart quite quickly took up his writings,
and put them to action that is more practical. Dewey and Freinet in the
modern era have been inspired by the freedom-oriented and child-centred
approach to teaching, laying the foundation for many years of educational
reform to come. Two of the most famous reformers of the twentieth century,
took it up to devise practical school systems that readied the child for the
modern world. In the next two chapters, we will look at what they have done
to Rousseau’s heritage, and how they have turned it into something of their
own.
25 |
Montessori
In the 150 years following the publication of Émile, the nineteenth century
wreaked havoc on traditional society in Europe. It cannot be overestimated
how deeply was society transformed in the course of these years:
industrialisation, formation of the middle class, revolutions and restoration,
dawn of consumerism, mass culture, the rise of the media, to name a few of
these transformations which had thorough impact on society. The modern age,
just starting to dawn when Jean-Jacques Rousseau published his book, shook
society at its foundations. His book, part of both the Enlightenment tradition
and a harbinger of the Romantic era, was part of this upcoming shift.
Rousseau’s novel on education, interspersed with the concept of ‘freedom’,
was exemplary of the eighteenth century intellectual tradition. As a prelude to
the ‘long’ nineteenth century, these intellectuals set out a new mode of thought
with their treatises, relying heavily on concepts previously relatively
unimportant in society. How then were these concepts used when they became
current, a hundred to a hundred and fifty years later? As the nineteenth century
proved to be a sandbox for new political concepts, waging wars between the
revolutionary and the traditional, by the 1880s most ostentatious conflicts were
turned into more civil solutions. Socialist parties got a foothold in the national
governments, resulting in plans to reform society. Largely, a shift occurred
from the demand for democratic participation for an increasing number of the
population to the demand for approaching newly arisen social problems. In
this sketch of ‘zeitgeist’ (on which I will thread into more detail below), we must
situate the application of educational concepts by Maria Montessori and Helen
Parkhurst. How did they (re)introduce, in a practical way, concepts that had
been laid out by Rousseau in a theoretical fashion? Furthermore, how were
they able to offer them to a time so different from the one in which the
| 26
educational concepts were originally devised? The following chapter will focus
on Montessori’s attempt at doing that.
Zeitgeist
As I mentioned before, I am strongly biased towards a framework that
foregrounds ‘agency’ in historiography. This means in this context that
Montessori was less a ‘product of her time’ than a capably thinking intellectual
who looked for problems and their corresponding solutions in society.
However, I feel it is necessary to start with a brief description of the world
which helped create the Montessori Method. This work was a product of the
person Montessori, but it sprouted in a time that had its particular needs and
problems. The specific issues of social demographics created the need for
educational reform. I will expound upon these issues.
Humanities researchers know what happened in the nineteenth century:
industrialisation, revolution and restoration, restructuring of the societal layers.
However, what really happened to the populace, what changed for the
commoner? Since the 1960s20, social history has taken a flight, addressing
issues previously unattended. Focusing on structures and superstructures,
economical currents and cultural trends, social demographics and labour shifts,
these historians have uncovered new insights into history. For the era
preluding my topic, the nineteenth century, these scholars have researched the
consequences of the aforementioned social shift. The rise of the middle class,
as a result of democratisation and industrialisation, did not just have
consequences for itself and its members. On the contrary, it resulted in a new
position for the lower class. In feudal or pre-modern society, the gap between
ruling (landowners and clergy) and ruled (peasants) classes was unbridgeable.
Financially, culturally and geographically these factions differed immensely.
Especially in the countryside, these differences were most explicit. In the cities,
the group consisting of artisans, bankers and public figures like bailiffs and
aldermen might make up an ‘in-between’ group, but these men were only
And before, but the height of this historiographical trend must be situated in the 1960s with
historians the likes of Raymond Williams.
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marginal, demographically speaking. However, the several shifts of
urbanisation restructured society, increasing the size of the middle class.
Urbanisation in centuries prior to the nineteenth need not to be overestimated;
even in Italy, a country with one of the highest grades of urbanisation,
urbanisation did not peak above 12-13% of the population.21 So, the
nineteenth century had a lot in store for traditional demographics. The
insurrection of a ‘serious’ middle class thus led to a different demographical
make up in numbers, but a second implication that cannot be expressed in
numbers is the change in a sense of belonging and social mobility. The former,
incorporating questions like ‘who am I?’ and ‘how do I arrange my life, what
assets do I reckon important? How do I behave, what societies do I attend,
what political preference do I have?’, creates a sense of belonging to a class and
the attitude and preferences that come with it. The latter involved possibilities
of social mobility that had never been seen before. In the society sketched
above, being born in a certain class was a fixed identity, rendering social
opvoeding fixed as well. From the eighteenth century however, the rise of the
middle class formed a stepping-stone to bridge the gap between upper and
lower class. Going one step up the ladder of society was no longer unthinkable
and unattainable. Furthermore, the middle class, unlike their two predecessors,
was not a monolithic social stratus; this group was made up of numerous
different professions, levels of wealth, religious allegiances, and ways of living.
The group itself can be defined in distinctions of lower, middle and upper
middle class; and even such a rudimentary categorisation would not honour the
stratification that existed within the group. In all, society stratified and new
aspirations and dissatisfactions were instilled due to (a feeling of) accessibility;
hence, social issues had to be attended to.
The church, former supplier of relief for the poor saw itself increasingly
challenged by a new competitor: socialism. Relief for the poor can roughly be
categorised in five elements: financial aid, medical care, schooling, ethical
Malanima, P, and Volckart, O., Urbanisation 1700-1870, (May, 31 2012) visited on June, 21,
2012, accessible at: <www.cepr.org/meets/wkcn/1/1679/papers/Malanima-VolckartChapter.pdf> 4.
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teachings and housing. The first four used to be a monopoly of the church.
Financial aid was provided through alms, schooling through monks, medical
care through hospices and nuns and ethical teachings through the religious
writings and sermons. However, the up and coming state, increasing vastly its
interference with the life of people, increasingly sought to take up these tasks.
The traditional ‘night watch’ state increased in size and intervention from the
seventeenth century onwards, but it surged in the nineteenth. With democracy
came the demand for the state to take care of its citizens and the reciprocity
between increasing taxes and the government’s responsibility to spend it on the
taxed required the state to increase its tasks enormously. Financial aid was
provided in the first degree through a relative tax system and secondly through
the subsidising of institutions that helped out with poor relief. Both the
aforementioned restructuring of society and the increase in medical knowledge
led to an enormous growth of governmental expenditures on health care. State
hospitals were erected and in some countries, health care systems were instilled
through labour unions. Housing projects assured the mental and physical
health of living conditions for the poor, restructuring city neighbourhoods to
comply with newly found sources of the spreading of disease. In all these
categories, the church lost vast terrain as a sphere of influence to the state.
The last (combined) category that I have not covered so far, is the one that
concerns me the most: schooling. Both solely ‘factual’ education and moral
education were increasingly taken away from religion. Now in the hands of the
state, there was a possibility to discuss the curriculum and the methods of
teaching. It is precisely this discussion, which incorporated the aforementioned
social issues of medical care, ethics and housing, which is important to my
dissertation.
***
We have seen that the makeup of society changed, and that the both the
separation and intertwining between public and private was characteristic of
29 |
the nineteenth century. To bridge the gap between eighteenth and twentieth
century, it is important to introduce two key figures that continued the
inquiries into educational reform: Friedrich Fröbel and Johann Heinrich
Pestalozzi.
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) was a Swiss-born educational
reformer whose main merit consists of the eradication of illiteracy in his own
Switzerland, and in the second degree largely across Western Europe. His
strong belief in the connection between socio-ethical reform and education led
him to be convinced of the importance of literacy and universal education.
Furthermore, he believed that children should also learn through material
objects, and not just through words, the prevailing teaching method up until
then. Thirdly, continuing Rousseau’s work, he argued that children should
largely be left to their own interests and experiences, as they learn a lot from
using just these without any external interference. Thus by recognising the
potential of the child, he also preserved individual integrity, a quality he
strongly defended. These ideas were set forth in his book ‘How Gertrude
Teaches Her Children’ (1801) which largely covers the Pestalozzi Method as
we know it today.
This first practical application of Rousseauvian ideas about individual
freedom in education was a success to a certain extent; his project combating
illiteracy was hugely successful and the ideas of the Pestalozzi method were
used by many later educational reformers. However, there has been no
widespread application of ‘the Pestalozzi Method’, as with other educational
reformers.22
The second educational reformer that picked up on ideas of liberalism in
the years following Rousseau’s Émile was the German-born pedagogue
Friedrich Fröbel. Inspired by Pestalozzi and Rousseau, he set out to combine
ideas about the intrinsic good nature of man, individual learning and the
importance of curriculum. As an idealist, his thoughts on human nature
Wallace, S. (ed.), “Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich”, A Dictionary of Education (Oxford 2009)
visited on 17 June 2012 , accessible on
<http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t267.e760>.
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resembled Rousseau’s proto-Romantic ideas on the regenerative capability of
humankind. He foresaw both great possibilities for the individual, but also for
the collective, facilitating the German idea unification through education. He
mainly focused on young children, laying the foundation for the kindergarten, a
method (although varying in execution) widespread nowadays for educating
young children. The original kindergarten presented the children with carefully
designed toys that would stimulate optimal individual development. Although
not thoroughly successful in his own life, his ideas were picked up rapidly in
the 1870s. Even today according to ‘the Oxford Companion to the Mind’,
“the importance of play, the unified curriculum, links with home and
community, and non-directive rather than authoritarian teaching remain live
issues.”23
***
As I have highlighted above, the relationship between state and citizen
changed vastly throughout the nineteenth century. One of the fields the state
increasingly took interest in was education. Achievements like Pestalozzi’s
attempt to eradicate illiteracy helped greatly to ensure the belief in the necessity
of the state’s interventions. The large-scale disappearance of illiteracy was
extremely beneficial to both the citizen and the state; for example, it made it
possible for the state to increase communication with the population and made
the people more knowledgeable through the upcoming media. From
decreasing illiteracy, it was a small step to expand the curriculum for children,
from the teaching of sheer facts and figures, to include more moral teachings.
These moral teachings, ranging from guidelines for sanitation to behaviour in
society, were instilled to ensure a healthy, educated population that could
participate in society as a ‘well-willing and responsible burgher’.
Stephenson, N., “Froebel, Friedrich Wilhelm August”, The Oxford Companion to the Mind
(Oxford 1987) visited on June, 19, 2012, accessible on:
<http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t159.e355>.
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It is in this trend—the quest to create the ideal citizen that was both
responsible and conscious—that we must situate Maria Montessori’s approach
at reforming education. Although I have largely sketched a pan-European
trend in the social discontinuities of the nineteenth century, the situation in
Italy was complied with this. Soit, the degree of urbanisation was somewhat
higher; education was on a much lower level, regarding literacy and factual
education, compared to the northern part of Europe, thus allowing enough
space for educational reform.24 Because the educational grade was low, the
urbanisation high (meaning both the rich and the poor classes lived close to
each other), and there were ample examples of social mobility, the population’s
aspirations of improvement reached an all-time high. Montessori tried to
address the educational and moral deficits with a system that combined both,
creating opportunities for the lower strata of society and reaffirming those for
the upper ones. This hopefully would ensure the possibility of social mobility,
soothe the tensions and lessen the gap between the two classes. First, let us
uncover the person she was herself.
24
Duggan, C., The Force of Destiny: a History of Italy since 1796 (London 2007) 148, 274-282.
| 32
The person
After having given an overview of the era in which Montessori must be
situated, I will address her position in it a bit more specifically. Several aspects
spring to mind which I will expound upon, to sketch the person behind the
method: religion, social issues, theoretical background, and lastly, her gender.
Coming from a Catholic background, relief for the poor was part of her
education, rendering her more prone to asserting the social issues of the day.
The Catholic Church, arguably being at the peak of its influence in its ‘home
country’, Italy, had provided poor relief since its insurrection.25 Nevertheless,
as I have showed before, the state increasingly took it upon itself to meddle
with the citizen’s business. Nonetheless, Maria Montessori, a devoutly religious
person herself (Catholic in the early stages of her life, but resorting to a more
theosophical approach to religion in later stages), was inclined, one way or
another, to do something about the state of education in her country.
Montessori, born in 1870, moved several times during her youth. She was
born in a small community close to Ancona, but moved to Firenze and Roma
at early stages in her life. Thus, growing up in two of the biggest cities in Italy,
she came in contact with the urban issues described in the previous chapter:
the paradox of social mobility that created a seemingly bridgeable gap. The
slums of Rome proved to be a testing ground for her first school, as she was
allowed government permits and funding to start up a school in the poor
neighbourhood of San Lorenzo. It was here that the ideas were put into
practice; a testing ground for theory, feedback for the publication of ‘The
Montessori Method’. However, more on that later.
Thirdly, the early twentieth century provided some theoretical background
for Maria Montessori. Jean-Jacques Rousseau stood with one leg in Early
Modern philosophy and the Enlightenment tradition, he stood with a ‘future
Kahl, S., The Religious Roots of Modern Poverty Policy: Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed
Protestant Traditions Compared, (2005) visited on May, 31, 2012, accessible on:
<www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/mead/V53.0395/Kahl.pdf> 7.
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leg’ in the Romantic era, foreseeing many of the to be formed opinions of later
intellectuals. Like Rousseau, Montessori’s legacy plays out in a crucial,
transitional phase of history. The hey-day of positivism, in the latter part of the
nineteenth century, was starting to wane as influential philosophers like Max
Weber and Georg Simmel started to question the infallibility of the concept.
Simultaneously, newly founded studies like sociology and evolutionary biology
reaffirmed the belief in the conformity of mankind and society to scientific
laws. The tensions resulting from these two contradictory movements in
science were accompanied by the third component present in Montessori:
religion. This resulted in a recipe for a highly volatile mix of ideas.
The last ingredient to be added to brewing pot was Montessori’s gender.
Being a woman, this era proved to be particularly interesting as women started
to demand rights, after the entire male population had been set free and made
participants in democratic society. The first wave feminists demanded basic
equality, focusing on having the ability to go to university, to vote, and to have
economic independence. They demanded that men and women were to be
treated equally both officially (before de judicial system) and culturally, as there
was no real equality between men and women in many aspects of life such as
career choice and matrimony.26
Montessori’s progressive and first wave feminist nature was made visible
through the choices she made in life. She was ambitious, and did not let
conventions stand in the way of pursuing her interests. She enrolled in the
University of Rome’s medicine programme, and withstood an outbreak of
protest, as her male fellow-students did not deem it appropriate that they were
dissecting naked bodies in the company of a woman. Notwithstanding, she was
the first woman to obtain the title doctor of medicine in 1896.
An apt student, she started her own practice and worked at the university
with mentally challenged children. We see a striking similarity in background of
educational reformers. Fröbel, Pestalozzi, Rousseau, Séguin, Itard and Dewey
Buchanan, I., “First Wave feminism”, A Dictionary of Critical Theory (Oxford 2010) visited on
June, 19, 2012, accessible on:
<http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t306.e251>.
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all came into contact with children suffering from a form of mental or physical
handicap. Perhaps because it is possible to apply new educational methods to
these children as conventional methods did not work, these thinkers were able
to devise new methods and approaches to learning.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, the traditional role of women
in society was evaluated. Montessori took active part in the early feminist
movements, founding the radical ‘Associazione per la donna’ in 1905 and one
year later aiding Anna Maria Mozzoni, an advocate for the emancipation of
women, in forcing the government to take a stand on women’s rights.27 She
was active on the cutting-edge of feminist movements, speaking at women’s
conferences, spreading her ideas about participation and equal opportunity of
education.
Montessori thus was born in a time composed of new and old
methodologies. A devout religious person, a woman in a time when genderrelated power structures were beginning to shift, and lastly living in a country
that had both problems to solve and solutions, Maria Montessori emerged as a
key educational practitioner and reformer. As mentioned before, the
Montessori Method came to being as an experiment, as an application of
theoretical and practical findings. San Lorenzo, Rome, proved to be the testing
ground. Now let us look at these early stages of the development of
Montessori education.
The method
After working with mentally challenged children and doing research at the
university, Montessori was invited to join a governmental programme. The
neighbourhood of San Lorenzo, one of Rome’s poorest districts was to be
restructured. The aforementioned positivism, present in the state’s decisions,
resulted in the view that if a human body lived in poor sanitation, his mental
capacity—read: morality—had to be in bad condition too. Thus, the
Schwegman, M.J., Maria Montessori, 1870-1952: Kind van haar Tijd, Vrouw van de Wereld
(Amsterdam 1999), 96.
27
35 |
government set out to profoundly restructure society: physically and spiritually,
starting with San Lorenzo.
In San Lorenzo, Montessori was to open a moral and educational
institution that made better citizens out of people born in the lowest stratus of
society. This first Casa dei Bambini was opened in 1907 and it was an allencapsulating institution that provided the children with all sorts of lessons,
ranging from sensory experiences to moral education on sanitation guidelines
to learning to write. The method, founded on the belief in the individuality of
the child, focused on the child’s capacity to determine its own speed and the
sublimation of the free, natural manifestations of the child.28 The recognition
that children have different paces does not imply, however, that children are
individually different, a major difference we find with our next educational
reformer Helen Parkhurst. Instead, Montessori set out to blend the current
curriculum with ideas about God, morality and various previous research,
among them anthropology and psychology.29 In short: attention is given to
“the education, health, the physical and moral development of the children”.
This was largely in keeping with the governmental plans to both reform and
educate the lower class.
Montessori’s spirituality assured Montessori’s belief in the relentless growth
of mankind, guided by divine providence. The result of the Montessori school
was a “clockwork, whose ingenious cogs facilitated merely one goal: physical,
mental and spiritual growth”30 In the first years the children are taught to use
what God gave them: their senses. Through various exercises, the children
learn to make use of their senses. Sight, smell, hearing, tasting and the ‘crown
sense’ of touch are trained in a manner not unlike those of Rousseau. Through
staged events or exercises, the teacher helps to develop optimally the senses.
Senses are trained through exercises or with the help of carefully crafted
objects designed to help the children develop skills in a natural and playful way.
These objects, named ‘development material’ by Montessori, are designed to
Montessori, M., The Montessori Method : Scientific Pedagogy, as applied to Child Education in ’The
Children’s Houses’ (A. George, transl.) (London 1912, original work published in 1911) 15.
29 Ibidem, 73.
30 Schwegman, 115.
28
| 36
stimulate a specific sense or skill, accentuated through colour and shape.
Examples include wooden cubes that increase a sense of estimation or surfaces
varying in texture to stimulate a sense of touch and distinctions between
smooth and rough.31 Moving from the concrete to the abstract, or in other
words from the particular to the universal, the child progresses through various
stages laid out by the teacher, but on the child’s own initiative. A well-known
example of this ‘freedom’ comes from Montessori’s own experiences. In
December 1907, a true ‘writing explosion’ took place when one of the children,
playing with sandpaper letters, arranged them in a certain order, after which a
word was formed. Children gathered around the former one, and soon enough
numerous children were composing words. The classroom soon was filled with
cries of joy: “Look, I write! I write!”32 Although the order of learning was
changed, writing preceding reading, the children maintained their joy and own
inventiveness, learning through objects and initiative, not through books and
coercion.
This is the core of Montessori’s thought. The curriculum, still the same,
was no longer linear, as it did not comply with the individual wants, needs and
pace of the children. Every child, in order to maintain his or her eagerness,
should be able to learn in his or her own order. They would learn through
objects and exercises, not through adult-created books that required the
children to sit still in rigid benches. These benches were exemplary for
Montessori; fixed to the ground to instil discipline. Children sitting in benches
were solely required to reproduce facts, all in the same order, extinguishing
juvenile innovativeness. Structure was still necessary, but instead of coming
from the curriculum and the way of teaching, it came in the form of other
exercises. Menial tasks like setting the table, participating in exercises of
maintaining silence, and dressing oneself were arranged at a fixed time in order
for the child to get a grasp of responsibility, structure and obedience. One can
see that the curriculum could be left untouched, but the methods, approach
and order were completely restructured. Virtues like obedience and
31
32
Montessori, 186.
Schwegman, 124.
37 |
responsibility, thoroughly important for the lower classes, were instilled
through wholly different means, whilst at the same time maintaining the child’s
eagerness to learn.
After two years, Montessori’s experiment was over. According to friends,
she wrote il Metodo in just twenty days, truly inspired by her findings. Rapidly,
the methodology was applied in different cities, first in a second school in
Roma, then onward to Milano. Lack of space does not allow me to go into
much detail on how Montessori took her ideas abroad, first in Europe, and
then touring around the USA, maintaining a monopoly position on her didactic
materials and meeting with Helen Parkhurst and John Dewey. Her method
reached India, where it was received with wild acclaim. There was an episode
with Benito Mussolini, who offered her state support, which she willingly
accepted. However, when fascist’s totalitarianism revealed its true nature,
Montessori became increasingly reluctant to take the funding. After ten years
of teaming up with one of the world’s most maligned regimes, Montessori
broke with Mussolini, resulting in the forced closing of all Montessori schools
in Italy, Germany, Spain and Austria. However, the Method has survived until
today, thriving in Northwestern Europe and India, and less so, but surely,
elsewhere in the world.
Montessori was (in her own words) a piano teacher, guiding the children to
play better, correcting them where they make mistakes, but letting them figure
it out on their own. They set their own pace, their own order, to help them
maintain their interest. The system should not be reward-oriented, but interest
motivated.33 Thus, children retained a confined form of freedom not unlike in
Rousseau’s system. Nevertheless, how do they compare overall?
Montessori and Rousseau
For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the nature of the child was the founding
principle of his entire thoughts on education. Basically an autodidact, the child
33
Montessori, 24.
| 38
would roam the lands, encountering objects, learning from them and thus
shaping his own moral and sensory skills and knowledge of the world.
Paradoxically, Rousseau stages events that introduce the child to various
concepts like property. Therefore, although Rousseau sketches a somewhat
extreme version of ‘raising’ a child in which the child is left unattended most of
the time, he acknowledges that there should be some sort of guiding principle
to ready him for the ‘real world’.
Maria Montessori, having faith in a sort of providence or the belief in a
divine ‘relentless growth’, revisits the way the curriculum should be transferred
to the child. By analysing what the perfect system was to facilitate an optimum
of physical, mental and spiritual growth, in which the child’s eagerness was
perfectly preserved, she developed a method founded on exercises and rituals.
These ‘events’, not unlike Rousseau’s, ensured that the child would acquire the
necessary skills, but in a natural way. Rousseau’s nature was replaced by a
theosophical or Catholic regenerative spirit, and his staged events were
replaced by didactic materials, carefully designed by Montessori, and rituals
that instilled order, responsibility and obedience.
Montessori, trained as a medical and psychological scholar, did not sit
down to write up a contemplation on education. She worked with mentally
deficient children, was introduced to the work of Édouard Séguin and JeanMarc Gaspard Itard and had her own ‘test case’ in the slums of Rome. Thus,
through trial and error, hypothesising and experimentation, she created a
methodology, applicable to society. This method, unlike Rousseau’s highly
theoretical and impracticable ideas, proved to be successful enough to be
exported to many different countries. Its practicality renders this work wholly
different from the theoretical ruminations of Rousseau. Furthermore, because
Rousseau’s work was based on little more than his own thoughts (a bit of
Plato, a bit of Locke, a bit of Comenius), it is hard to place in a tradition. There
are neither scientific facts nor experimental conclusions that support his
findings. Montessori’s work, standing in a tradition of Rousseau himself,
Fröbel, Pestalozzi, Séguin and Itard, arising in a time when educational reform
was a popular topic with writers like Steiner, Dewey, Freinet and Parkhurst
39 |
publishing books in compliance or in concurrence with hers, is thus part of a
larger tradition and more valuable to pedagogical science. In addition,
Montessori’s natural charisma, alliance with the feminist movement and tactical
approach increased the popularity of her work. Montessori’s Dutch biographer
Marjan Schwegman combines these elements: “Séguin and Itard paved the way
for Montessori, and her legacy henceforth differed wholly from those of her
predecessors, not as obscure, male heroes, but as a woman that rose to fame
and acclaim in an ‘unfeminine’ way.”34
As I stated in an earlier remark, both Rousseau and Montessori lived in a
time characterised by a shift in zeitgeist, the former standing with one foot in
the Enlightenment and another in the Romantic era, the latter bridging
positivism and modernism. Both tried to find a middle ground between
universalism and particularism. When engaging in debate about philosophical
and moral subjects, it is easiest to reduce everything to commonalities,
capturing them in absolutes and laws. However, often this leads to
unsatisfactory results. Rousseau realised this through the use of nature and
feeling. He perceived mankind as uncontrollable and -directable, and that
goodness was inherent in the nature of man. Against the prevailing view of his
contemporaries, he argued that the artificial constructs of thousand years of
history and intellectual tradition were just clouding the view of a positive
outcome. Montessori, got inspired through the education of mentally deficient
children, seeing the shortcomings of universalist positivism, as one method did
not work for all of them. Further applying her findings to healthy, yet poor
children, she came up with a method that left individual freedom intact, but
taught the necessary curriculum.
Montessori wrote a practical guide to channel what she perceived as divine
natural growth in the best possible way. The teacher, a clockmaker or piano
teacher, stimulated the children by promoting their own interest instead of
quenching their caprioles and rewarding their good behaviour. It is a guide for
preserving an intrinsic freedom and eagerness of the child. Senses, as in Émile,
34
Schwegman, 95.
| 40
are the foundations of learning, as they are needed for every lesson. Exercises
and rituals provide stability and obedience, regenerating morality and ethics
among the lower classes on which the method was tested. These social issues
were vital to the origin and the success of Montessori’s method.
Montessori saw freedom as ultimately key to the success of society. She
held a firm positive belief in humanity, seeing its capability to do well. This
positive feeling came into true being when she noted that ‘first the slaves were
set free, then the women, and now, it is time to liberate the children.’35
35
Montessori, 22.
41 |
Parkhurst
In the previous chapters we saw that Jean-Jacques Rousseau applied
eighteenth-century concepts to the education of man, and wrote a—albeit
highly theoretical and impracticable—treatise on the betterment of education.
Then we saw how both Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Friedrich Fröbel
picked up on these ideas and put them to practice. However, the time was not
ripe for such progressive ideas on education. Roughly a hundred years later
however, Maria Montessori’s intelligence and ambition created an education
system when the world needed it. The state’s relation with its citizens changed,
and the social situation concerning the lower classes was dire enough to call for
a transformation of education. I have tried to give a rough sketch of the fin de
siècle zeitgeist, to see how the time had changed, and how the demand for
educational reform had peaked. It is important to grasp the circumstances
under which the various reformers devised their plans. As with most reform
plans, there is always a hint of regenerative impulse to be traced. Social issues
are addressed, and perceived concrete solutions are given to better society and
to be well rid of malevolent habits amongst people. The final decades of the
nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth were ones of great
social
upheaval,
containing
large-scale
demographic
changes
and
industrialisation; moreover, shifting gradually to modern society. It is in these
years that many educational reform plans gained momentum, as both the state
and citizens showed interest in them. Montessori sought to educate the lower
classes of San Lorenzo, to help them gain a fair chance in society. Now, we will
see what ideas surfaced with Helen Parkhurst and her Dalton Plan.
However, in order to continue to the next chapter we first have to make
several leaps. The first one is a geographical leap. Unlike Montessori and
Rousseau, our next subject lived in the United States. This continent on the
other side of the ocean faced similar problems in the nineteenth century, but
| 42
also ones deviating from their European counterparts. Moreover, we are
dealing with a slightly different intellectual tradition, as American educational
reformers like John Dewey (1859-1952) and Carleton Washburne (1889-1962)
(developer of the Winnetka Plan) were much more influential in their own
country than abroad.
Secondly, we are dealing with leap in time, albeit a small one. Ever since
Rousseau, there was an almost constant output of educational reformers, each
predecessor influencing the next generation. Montessori, born in 1870,
experienced many of the nineteenth century issues happening in the Italian
city. Although Helen Parkhurst was only seventeen years younger, she became
acquainted with Montessori’s work at a young age, taking in her lessons, and
interwove Montessori’s philosophies with her later experiment. Thus, we will
see that Helen Parkhurst, only slightly younger of age was influenced by
Dewey and Montessori, but also Rousseau and was shaped by her time and
experiences, and duly developed a unique approach at educating children.
The person
Rousseau wrote his book about raising and educating children in solitude,
far away from society in the countryside. This was unrealistic, perhaps, but as a
theoretical foundation, it was rewarded according to its merits. Montessori, on
the other hand, wrote a book about educating the city dwellers, with a special
place reserved for the lower class. This book differed immensely, as it
proposed a concrete example on how to arrange a school and educational
material. The third person I am discussing provides a third setting: the village.
Although adapted as an educational system elsewhere, Parkhurst’s ideas arose
from a village setting and the difficulties a schoolteacher dealt with there. In
1903, in rural Wisconsin, when she was just a teenager, Dalton started to teach
forty pupils in a one-room schoolhouse.36 The setting posed obvious problems:
one room accommodated children from several ages, backgrounds and
36
Lager, D., Helen Parkhurst and the Dalton Plan (Ann Arbor 1983) 20.
43 |
different levels of intelligence, headed by just one person. In order to educate
the children, Parkhurst thus relied on a great sense of responsibility of the
children themselves, ordering them to instruct each other. This would become
one of the key principles to the Dalton Plan, as we will see later.
After she had taught the Durand children for several years, she rapidly got
through higher education. She attended Rapid Falls College in 1907(now the
University of Wisconsin) and graduated in just two years with the highest
honours professionally rewarded.37 From there, it took her just five years to
become Director of the Primary Training Department at the University. Whilst
in that position, she was appointed by the Wisconsin State Department of
Education to investigate the value of the Montessori Method. Montessori’s
project had begun in 1907, spread nation-wide in Italy in a couple of years, and
world-wide in the sequential years. In 1911, Montessori addressed a large
audience in Carnegie Hall, expounding on her ideas. It must have been in this
period that the Wisconsin State Department took interest in Montessori’s work
and sent Helen Parkhurst to study it. She went to Rome, studied with Maria
Montessori herself, and became the only person in the world legally authorised
to train Montessori teachers.38 After studying a year Montessori, Parkhurst
returned to the United States, where she picked up several smaller jobs for a
small amount of time, before fully devoting her to development of the Dalton
Laboratory Plan.
In this short biography, I have noted three influences on the realisation of
the Dalton Plan: the Wisconsin school, intellectual training at Rapid Falls and
the year with Montessori. I will expound on the latter two further, as they are
important to both the story of the Dalton Plan, as well as to the general theme
of this dissertation.
Dewey
37
38
Semel, S., The Dalton School, Transformation of a Progressive School (New York 1992) 19.
Ibidem, 20.
| 44
John Dewey was a political and moral philosopher of the latter half of the
nineteenth century. On top of that, he wrote extensively on the role of
education and how it should be organised. Central to the foundation of
Dewey’s work on education is his belief in the shaping potential of education.
Social reform could be realised through proper education, solving many of the
problems modern society struggled with, argued Dewey. Although of a
different origin and specificity, the United States of America contended with
many of the same problems Europe did. Mass (im)migration led to chaotic
urban life with an accompanying gap between rich and poor people. The
problems these demographic shifts posed could be solved through a number
of means, but education was the most effective, according to Dewey.39 Thus,
lessons should focus heavily on experience and moral education, as to ensure
maximum growth. School was for Dewey “that form of community life in
which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing
the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own
powers for social ends”.40 Dewey distinguished between two movements in
education: the curriculum-oriented and the child-oriented. The curriculums
focus too much on theoretical material, and thereby thoroughly discard the
children’s interest and own initiative. The party that favours the child-centred
approach tends to discard the role of the teacher as vital, places the child in the
position to determine quantity and quality and disregards the importance of
content.41 Dewey then stood at the base of founding the ‘progressive education
movement’. Lawrence A. Cremin has nailed this movement down to four
points, which I find essential in order to see how both Montessori’s, and
Parkhurst’s methods neatly fit this category. Progressive education is:
1. A broadening of the school to include a direct concern or
health, vocation, and the quality of community life.
Dewey, J., ‘My pedagogic creed’ in: School Journal, Vol.: 54 (January 1897) 77-80.
Dworkin, M. S. (ed), Dewey on Education (New York 1959) 43.
41 Dewey J., The Child and the Curriculum (Chicago 1956, original work published in 1902) op. cit.
39
40
45 |
2. The application in the classroom of more humane, more
active, and more rational pedagogical techniques derived from
research in philosophy, psychology and the social sciences.
3. The tailoring of instruction more directly to the different
kinds and classes of children who were being brought within
the purview of school.
4. And finally the use of more systematic and rational
approaches to the administration and management of the
schools.42
Dewey set up a few experiments at the University of Chicago, bringing
them under the header ‘Laboratory School’. Advocating “active learning,
starting with the needs and interests of the child’ he emphasised the role of
experience and education and introduced the notion of teacher as facilitator of
learning, rather than the font from which all knowledge flows.”43 Now, where
have we seen this notion before? Rousseau played with the exact same notions,
focusing foremost on experience and active learning, whilst facilitating the
right circumstances.
Helen Parkhurst read Dewey, admired him for his focus on group work
and experience, and mentioned him as an influence in her work ‘Education on
the Dalton Plan’. In the same sentence even, another person we are well
acquainted with is mentioned: Maria Montessori.44
Montessori.
When Helen Parkhurst made her way to Rome to study the Montessori
Method, the Method had started to grow almost uncontrollably. After being
particularly successful in Rome and after the bureaucrats saw what it had done
to the education of the lower classes and their morale, the experiment was
transplanted all over the country. Accordingly, it attracted a lot of attention
internationally where it was translated in many languages.
One of the leading groups that called for innovation of education was a
group of leading industrialists in the United States. Members ranged from
Cremin, L. A., American Education: The Metropolitan Experience (New York 1988) 229.
Semel, 8.
44 Parkhurst, H., Education on the Dalton Plan (London 1922) xvi.
42
43
| 46
Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, the noted inventors of electricity
related devices, to Henry Ford, the automobile producer, and the Crane family,
owners of the paper printing company for the American mint. This new
wealthy bourgeois group increasingly sought the perfect educational system, as
they were concerned with the new social situations in the country. Alexander
Graham Bell and his wife Mabel founded the Montessori Educational
Association in 1913 in Washington, DC and Maria Montessori was invited
under the auspices of Thomas Edison and Graham Bell himself in 1915 to
speak at Carnegie Hall about her Methods.45 Thomas Edison, highly interested
in her pedagogy of play stated: “I like the Montessori method. It teaches
through play. It makes learning a pleasure. It follows the natural instincts of the
human being (...) The present system casts the brain into a mould. It does not
encourage original thought or reasoning.”46
This group of industrialists recognised that the problems the US was
struggling with, and a possible solution was received with open arms. There
was, however, a language barrier, one Montessori was not willingly prepared to
overcome.
The attention given to the problems of immigration, class differences and
the resulting educational reform proposals surged when the First World War
broke out. During this world-shaking event, through which many members of
society got disillusioned and were forced again to think about how to reorder
society to create moral citizens, new interest arose in the social and educational
reformers. Increasingly, man turned to educational reformers that tried to root
out immoral behaviour from the earliest years of education.47 Perhaps the most
striking example was the erection of the New Education Fellowship, which
organised conferences where educational reformers shared their ideas.
Singh, Renu, ‘The Montessori Method’, in: Seminar, Vol.: 546 (Febuary 2005) visited on June,
21, 2012, accessible at:
<http://www.eledu.net/rrcusrn_data/The%20Montessori%20method.pdf> 8.
46 Author unknown, ‘Frequently asked questions’ (June, 6, 2012) visited on June, 17, 2012,
accessible on: <http://www.nps.gov/edis/faqs.htm.>.
47 Fox Lee, L., ‘The Dalton Plan and the Loyal, Capable Citizen’, in: History of Education: Journal
of the History of Education Society, Vol.: 29, No.: 2 (2000), 132.
45
47 |
Countless educational reformers participated in this programme, amongst them
Dewey,
Freinet,
Petersen,
Montessori
and
Parkhurst.
Given
these
circumstances, it came as no surprise that educational reform had its hey-day
during the First World War and in the Interbellum. The Dalton Plan proved to
be a striking example of an educational system that prepared its pupils for
society, instilling the necessary qualities in the child to make him a righteous
person. From the very start of the programme, the child is prepared for society
in all its forms; prepared to solve problems and to interact with others.48 It
complied with the hopes for moral regeneration of mankind, after the horrors
portrayed in the battles of the First World War. Many of these ideas reached
the United States, but a full-scale impact remained remarkably absent. There
was a desperate need for either English-speaking practical reformers, or the
increasing practicability of English reform plans. Thus, with American officials
interested heightened though not satisfied and social tensions requiring a
solution, Helen Parkhurst was sent to study fully the Montessori Method.
48
Parkhurst, 21, 29.
| 48
***
After studying with Montessori for a year, Parkhurst became fully
acquainted with Montessori’s body of thought and was awarded the authority
to train Montessori teachers. Lesley Fox Lee, a commenter on the educational
reform plans of Helen Parkhurst, stated that: “Parkhurst understood the
Method better than her creator. (... and that probably) Parkhurst was the
closest thing to an alter ego Montessori would have amongst those whom she
trained to do her work.”49 She returned to the USA in 1915 to teach the
Montessori Method to future progressive educators in San Francisco.
Although Montessori had created an immensely powerful, it had to carried out.
It was already applied increasingly in her home country, but to make it even
more successful it had to be taken abroad. Helen Parkhurst dissolved the
language barrier and added a fine portion of social skills as an endeavouring
and enterprising person. Thus, by adding qualities that Montessori lacked and
being at the right place to employ them, Parkhurst contributed much to the
diffusion of progressive education.
Dalton, MA and New York City
Parkhurst possibly would have become a great advocate of Montessori
education if she had not possessed a drive that encouraged her to improve the
model. She was also able to obtain the funds to realise her goal. Around the
time Parkhurst was spreading the Montessori Method in California, she was
summoned to take interest in the education of the child of one of the richest
families in the United States: the Crane family. Being licensed to print the
paper for the United States Mint, this family was no lightweight in the political
and economic sphere of the USA. Helen Parkhurst was requested by Mrs W.
Murray Crane to take direct control over the education of their child, Louise
49
Fox, 130.
49 |
Crane.50 The family funded a new project in Dalton, Massachusetts, where
Helen Parkhurst set up the first experiment with her educational system. After
a year, she was allowed to further move her plans ahead, implementing her
system at the public high school of Dalton, MA. Here, the system derived its
name from this place and this school. Being presented with the opportunity to
reside in a marvellous building in New York’s posh neighbourhood the Upper
East Side, Parkhurst decided that the development of the system might be
more effective in a populated place. Thus, again after a project lasting one year,
she made the leap to New York City in 1920. It was in this school that Helen
Parkhurst’s Dalton Laboratory Plan grew to full stature. Being at the school
from day to day, she came to know the flaws and strengths of the system. She
supervised the general outset of the school, helped in the classes and evaluated
the successes and failures of the system. Her treatise ‘Education on the Dalton
Plan’ was published in 1922, showing that much of the experience and
preliminary work had been conducted in the years preceding her move to New
York. The Dalton School in New York was the first ‘real’ application of the
Dalton Plan, providing a testing ground for Parkhurst, which provided direct
feedback. The school is still in existence, being one of the few instances in the
world where such a reformist school is still a success.
The Dalton Plan
The events leading up to the writing of ‘Education on Dalton Plan’ were of
direct consequence to the final product. We see that the teaching in rural
Wisconsin and the fortunate testing ground at Dalton and New York were
extremely beneficial to the developing of an educational method. Let us
consider what the Dalton Plan entailed for the children.
First and foremost, Parkhurst perceived the Dalton Plan as an
improvement of the Montessori Method. We have seen that Parkhurst spent
several months working with Maria Montessori, and consequentially she was
50
Semel, 21.
| 50
the only person ordained by Maria to train Montessori teachers. This made her
a true expert of the Montessori Method, coming to know its strengths and
flaws. Furthermore, after training numerous future teachers, attending
conferences to explain the material, and working ‘in the field’ for several years
in varied schools, it comes as no surprise that she started to evaluate the
method she came to study so closely.
The Dalton Method focuses on three key aspects: responsibility, selfdiscipline and individuality. These three concepts all seem to stem from
Parkhurst’s experience in rural Wisconsin. As she was teaching at a one-room
school, with more pupils than one person could survey, she began to focus on
the redistribution of tasks. She told the older pupils to help the young ones
when they required help and the teacher was unavailable. Furthermore, she
disbanded largely whole-class teaching, as the curricula of the different age
groups did not allow for such methods. This required a different attitude from
both the pupil and the teacher.
The teacher, having had to let go of class teaching and having undergone a
shift in the classic view of the tutor as transferor of knowledge, was now
required to be a guide and a surveyor. The third role s/he has to fulfil, and this
is where we stray from the familiar path of Dewey, Montessori and Rousseau,
is that the teacher is now a careful designer of what Parkhurst calls ‘the task’.51
The task is a carefully laid out piece of work that is assumed to stimulate the
child into obtaining knowledge. The route, speed and means are undefined and
of secondary importance, for this is unique to every child, as the personal
assets (intellect, reading ability, and cultural baggage) differ greatly from child
to child. The ‘task’ should contain enough interest-arousing elements to make
the child thoroughly understand the object of learning. This implies two things:
primarily, it requires education to be structured along stimulating goals and
questions that arouse the child’s interest and force him to look for solutions in
multi-disciplinary places. Secondly, it results in the aforementioned fading of
Interestingly, many Dalton schools in the Netherlands, including my former school the
Helen Parkhurst College in Almere, translated 'the task' to 'learning track' (leerlijn) a set of
'goals' instead of tasks. This, at least in Dutch, has a much less strict ring to it, and with more
attention to progress and interest
51
51 |
disciplinary boundaries. Mathematics intrinsically is used in physics and Latin
can be used in studying history. This may result in the converging of subjects,
and especially in the lower grades, this is not an inconceivable way to bring
across information.52 Perhaps this can be best elucidated with a concrete
example from Parkhurst’s book: instead of telling the child to study Newton’s
Three Laws of Motion, from such-and-such page and oblige him to conduct
six pre-made experiments, Parkhurst foresees greater eagerness and potential
of practicality and remembrance in getting a child to think about Newton’s
laws in a much more playful and interdisciplinary manner; through the asking
of triggering questions the child is forced to think of an answer (hypothesise)
before the laws are given as a clear verity. The questions Parkhurst gives as an
example in this case include: “Will an automobile start without an explosion of
the gasoline?” and “What makes a screw go into wood?”, furthermore, on the
execution of an experiment the child is posed questions like: “How do you
think the action of gravity upon one side of this spot compares with that upon
the other?” and “If two equal forces act upon a body in opposite directions,
what would be the result?”53 The child, in this occasion, is forced to think of
both the theoretical and the practical implications of Newton’s laws, through
being presented both examples and theory.54
This brings us back to the second change in attitude: that of the pupil. The
pupil now heavily relying on his or her own initiative and independence is
given completely different modus operandi in class. One of the principles that
allows for the granting of so much freedom is Parkhurst’s belief in selfregulating discipline that comes with responsibility. Parkhurst argues that if a
child is the own creator of his or her learning path, speed and solutions to the
created problems, s/he is responsible for his or her own success and failures.
The child is much more likely to stay disciplined on a project that s/he feels
At my aforementioned high school, this resulted in the subjects: Knowledge of Nature
(Physics, Chemistry and Biology) and MEGA, an abbreviation for Social Studies, Economics,
History and Geography (Maatschappijleer, Economie, Geschiedenis and Aardrijkskunde).
Furthermore, we had interdisciplinary group projects where multiple teachers would supervise
projects along which used material from various subject. This might have included less obvious
combinations like biology and economy.
53 Parkhurst, 74-85
54 For the full versions, both 'inadequate' and 'amended', see Appendix A
52
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belongs to him, than on a fixed curriculum that might alter in the
aforementioned criteria like speed and path of preference. Furthermore, a child
is less likely to get bored if s/he chooses his or her own approach at solving
problems that are presented to him.55 Key to the Dalton Plan are these
initiative provoking ‘goals’ or ‘tasks’ that arouse a child’s interest and keep him
hooked till the very end, urging him to go on and explore more aspects of the
given problem.
Apart from decentralisation and the restructuring of curriculum in tasks,
the third major change to the traditional educational system as described in the
Dalton Plan entails the shift from traditional subjects and classrooms to
‘laboratories’. Whereas in the traditional educational system pupils stay in one
classroom and listen to teacher explaining different subjects, Parkhurst
introduces a school consisting of several laboratories; these core class rooms
which are devoted to a single subject. Children are allowed to go to the
classroom corresponding to the subject they want to spend time on. There
they will find the materials to conduct the experiment, the teacher and
other/older children who can provide them with explanation and the books to
obtain knowledge from. Helen Parkhurst abolished bells and time tables, for
those might interfere with the working process of the children, and ensured
that subjects were taught by teachers who thoroughly knew their theory and
were passionate about it, for they only taught what they loved, being able to
truly convey their teachings.
As we have seen, the three concepts I have introduced in the beginning
work through in all of these practical alterations of the traditional model. The
child is forced into being responsible and independent, inflicting self-discipline
and initiative. It dissolves former disciplinary boundaries, coinciding with
‘tasks’ and ‘goals’. The focus of Parkhurst was to render a self-correcting pupil,
driven by the force of initiative, corrected through reflection. Likely, she saw it
as an adaptation of the Montessori Method; a completion of what was started.
55
Parkhurst, op. cit.
53 |
However, if we make a direct comparison of Montessori and Parkhurst, we
are comparing apples and oranges. Whereas the Montessori Method focuses
mainly on the first part of primary education, the Dalton Plan tends to
emphasise the latter part of primary education and high school. The qualities
Parkhurst requires of children are evidently more likely to grow or be present
in children aged nine and up. In addition, her system largely applies to ‘school
subjects’, whereas Montessori’s system largely applies to acquiring basic skills
like reading, distinguishing shapes, and moral behaviour. There is overlap in
the covered grades, as there are Montessori high schools, and Dalton primary
schools, but the two educational systems do not thwart each other. Parkhurst,
coming from the United States, being more influenced by Dewey, tries to
create the perfect independent system which is self-disciplined and apt in
finding its own solutions and answers, Montessori, growing up in Italian cities,
is a benevolent societal reformer, moulding the coarse urban dweller into a
potential (individual ) success story.
Parkhurst and Rousseau
Besides this quick comparison between the Montessori Method and the
Dalton Plan, which I have given to elucidate the (minor) differences that can
be easily overlooked when discussing both authors, let us return to the main
question of this dissertation. The background I have laid out here tells us that
structurally, Parkhurst came up with an educational plan in a wholly different
way than Rousseau did. Whereas Rousseau, spins an educational web from a
purely philosophical point of view, Parkhurst arrives at her final plan through
the influence of others (Dewey, Montessori), being lucky with certain
opportunities and pure empirical findings. Through conclusions derived from
studying Montessori and Dewey and working in Wisconsin, Dalton and New
York, she comes up with a method that works best for the children she taught
or supervised. Like Montessori, she finds a way to instil certain character traits
| 54
in children that will be beneficial for the rest of their lives gives them the ability
to pick up new knowledge and skills.
Though, like Rousseau, she believes in a form of ‘tempered’ freedom, I am
not under the impression that Parkhurst believes in the intrinsic capability of
man to become a ‘good’ and wise person. The reason for this is the
preservation of the original curriculum, which is only altered in outset and
approach, but not in content. Although the content is the same, Helen
Parkhurst does believe in the individual differences of children that lead to
different approaches, paces and solutions. A child’s background, mental
baggage, and capability to learn varies from person to person. It is in the spirit
of ‘American liberalism’, the ideology concerning equality of opportunity and
independence that Parkhurst’s ideas of transforming the approach to the
curriculum must be placed. Helen Parkhurst thus believes in a fixed
curriculum, for some knowledge is invaluable, and must be passed on.
However, to stimulate the child’s interest and to preserve its uniqueness, the
road to the destination is blank, waiting to be filled out by the individual child.
This is an important difference with Rousseau; Parkhurst’s stimulating of
initiative in children, reveals the fact that she does not believe in the child’s
capability to do it all by himself.56 Parkhurst believes in the ability of children
to learn, but not in their having an unquenchable thirst for knowledge; this
thirst for knowledge must be constantly stimulated.
Besides Parkhurst more ‘negative’ vision on the child’s initiative and the
rejection of the intrinsically good nature of man, the third issue we find in the
Dalton Plan concerns the preparation of the child for interaction with other
members of society. While in Rousseau’s treatise, this is constantly put on the
back burner, delaying Émile’s introduction to society and the other sex for as
long as possible, Parkhurst regards society and its ‘unwritten laws’ as one of the
key elements. As mentioned, the American spirit has shaped Parkhurst’s piece
into a much more independence- and opportunity-oriented educational
method. The child is ultimately prepared to cope with life’s problems and
56
Parkhurst, 151
55 |
possibilities, even more so in the interaction with other human beings.
Through individual solutions and the asking for help from other/older
classmates, the child is introduced to innumerable social conventions and rules
of behaviour.
***
Corresponding to Rousseau’s view, the child in the Dalton Plan is the
experimenter. While Montessori sees the teacher as the one conducting the
experiments, with the pupils as her assets, the children themselves are the
experimenters in both Rousseau’s and Parkhurst’s view.57 They look for
problems and solutions, make plans and interact with their environment, in
their own pace. Nevertheless, Parkhurst’s laboratory is much more confined to
boundaries than Rousseau’s wild, natural universe. The children are constantly
monitored through graphs of progress and forms of reflection, to be handed in
through assignments. The laboratories are well-designed and the assignments
carefully constructed to ensure optimum result.
A second correspondence we can find in the role of the teacher as a
personal mentor and guide. Through the abolishing of the autocratic top-down
vision of transmitting knowledge, the child is able to bond with the teacher:
“The Dalton Plan creates so intimate a bond between pupil and teacher that
the latter becomes less of an autocrat and more of a guide. Our stores of
knowledge are open to all who wish to enter.”58
***
The child thus is free but confined, kept in a place where his or her
initiative is stimulated for s/he is being coerced in being proactive, while
preserving his or her interest. Rousseau’s roaming wilderness is turned into a
57
58
Montessori, the Montessori Method, and Parkhurst, Education on the Dalton Plan.
Early adopter of the Dalton Plan in: Parkhurst, 186.]
| 56
laboratory, where the child has his or her ‘tasks’ to use as a guidebook. S/he
has his or her other students as teachers of the rules of society and to help him
out on his or her assignments, and lastly, as a final resort, there is the teacher
that can provide him with the necessary support. Like Rousseau’s equivalent,
s/he is a mentor and a guide, not a supplier of ready-made solutions.
57 |
Concluding
Life changed for the average Western child being born in the early
twentieth century. Whereas his or her eighteenth-century counterpart would
likely have had to struggle for its survival, because s/he received little to no
education, the average Western twentieth-century child would have received
full primary education, and was at the least being able to read. The roughly 150
years I have covered—from the publication of Émile in 1762 to the foundation
of the Dalton School in New York in 1919—show a tremendous course of
change for the citizen of the Western world, with results of revolutions and
restorations, the penetrating state and industrialisation as its main components.
In the eighteenth century, society was divided along between opposites;
one minor and one major. Urban life versus rural life, lower versus upper class,
power versus subject, wealth versus poverty, these were all fairly fixed forms of
dichotomies that existed in this age and the preceding ones. However,
philosophers and other intellectuals increasingly started to question these
centuries-old structures. They started to ask questions about what it is to have
true freedom and equality. Together with an increasing belief in rationality and
the deductive capability of the human mind, these intellectuals either set forth
ideas about the utopian restructuring of society and its individual aspects, or
ushered for a revaluation of the current structures. Through careful projects
like novels, stories or anonymous pamphlets, the writers expressed their ideas
about the betterment of society.
These tracts formed a prelude to the turmoil that would ensue in the weeks
preceding and the years following the French Revolution in 1789. Radical ideas
about the liberalisation of the ‘third class’ (comprising the middle and lower
classes) were put into practice, with philosophically interesting and practically
horrifying results. As a consolidation of the political dissatisfaction preceding
1789, the French Revolution paved the way for almost a century of domestic
| 58
unrest. In a series of coups d’état, the revolutionaries and those in favour of
restoration ensured a new role for the state, increasingly interfering with the
life of the citizen. Paradoxically, the eighteenth century, with its increasing
space for ‘public’ thoughts and the vastly increasing state apparatus, rendered
the separation of public and private sphere possible. After this separation was
at its peak, the newly formed boundaries again began to shift, (re)taking up
certain aspects of life as a public task, instead of posed in the newly formed
public sphere. To make matters a bit less abstract: curing the ill went from
being a communal affair to a private affair and in the nineteenth century to a
state affair. The same goes for e.g. education, armies and social security. Thus,
first, we see a separation of the public and private sphere in the early modern
era, then a consolidation of the two in the nineteenth century, and lastly a
shifting in what affairs belongs in which realm, reducing the private sphere
almost wholly to the home.
The state’s increased interest in the citizen’s affairs played itself out in
many different fields. Besides the increasing engagement of citizen and the
political system, with the acquisition of voting rights and the lowering of
electoral thresholds for men (and women in the twentieth century), we can
discern an increase in the state’s interest in social issues. Increasing systems of
social security and health care originally arose to help with the dangerous
conditions factory workers were exposed to in the industrious centres, but as
the age progressed from first-wave industrialisation to second-wave
industrialisation these issues were also extended beyond these initial hotbeds. A
third manifestation of the increased interest in social issues is that of education.
This heightened interest plays a pivotal role in the history I have laid out in this
thesis.
The first three educational reformers I have described (Rousseau
extensively, Pestalozzi and Fröbel less so) had immensely progressive ideas for
their times. So progressive, that they might have been uttered too soon. Society
and the state needed the odd hundred years of revolution and restoration to
consolidate these radical ideas that would touch upon the lives of ‘the common
man’ so extensively. It was not until the 1870s that the first demands for
59 |
educational reform were made from an institutionalised point of view. This
explains why—apart from Pestalozzi’s literacy rate successes— most ideas of
these early educational reformers were not picked up until much later.
The second contemporary circumstance, beneficial to the adoption of ideas
on educational reform regarded the ethical and moral state of society.
Problems with immigration or stratification within and outside classes lead
certain members of society to believe that educational reform was necessary,
and some thought that it was the state’s job to ensure equality of opportunity
through it. We have seen that Montessori’s ideas thrived in physically and
mentally challenged children’s homes and poor neighbourhoods of capitals,
and that the idea of the kindergarten was increasingly implemented from the
1870s. In addition, the coming of the First World War and its ensuing
disillusion with the moral state of mankind did much to contribute to the
interest in and organisation of educational reformers. The New Education
Fellowship (1921) in which e.g. Maria Montessori, John Dewey, Helen
Parkhurst, Jean Piaget and Peter Petersen participated, was an example of such
an organisation and focused on spreading progressive ideas about education
and debating amongst themselves what would be the best theoretical and
practical assets of educational reform.
Thirdly, we have seen that the first feminist wave of the eighteen- and
nineteen-hundreds gave Parkhurst and Montessori enough momentum,
opportunity and ambition to carry out their ideas in a thorough fashion.
Montessori achieved the feat of being the first female Medicine graduate, and
Parkhurst mingled as a professional woman with the highest ends of the
industrialist middle class. Both travelled abroad and attended numerous
conferences, spoke before men, conveying a message so progressive and
appealing that it lead to rapid success in the years that followed.
I have given this brief overview, combining the ‘zeitgeist sketches’ I have
presented in the beginning of each chapter, to highlight the transformational
character of the described 150 years. Rousseau (and his direct antecedents)
faced a wholly different world than Montessori and Parkhurst did. In addition,
their message was of a different nature. Social science had changed, and
| 60
transcended (or descended) from a philosophical point of view to a theoretical
and practical science based on experiments and deduction. Ideas could be
adapted or implemented, resulting in a much more concrete version of reform
than was usual in the 1760s.
In this thesis, I have tried to show the connections between these timeperiods, to see which elements survived the troubles and tribulations of the
long nineteenth century. Let us recapitulate which elements were and were not
present in each of the three reform concepts.
Educating
Rousseau, born in 1712, presented his ideas to a wholly different world
than Montessori and Parkhurst did. The ‘public sphere’ was still in its infancy,
rendering freedom of speech a perk still far away. In order to bypass
censorship and public disgrace original ways of publishing had to be found.
One such ways we have encountered is through the publication the ‘novels’
Émile or Héloïse. These ‘novels’, however, have little to do with the modern
meaning of a novel, as they are still filled with endless ruminations on various
subjects, and the protagonists—if there are any—are not followed either
psychologically or as part of an eventful story. The books deal with domestic
and public education, not in an argumentative way, but through describing the
life of a series of fictitious characters. In Émile Rousseau gives us the story—
however shallow—of a tutor and a child in a country-house, far away from
regular society. Here, he describes a laissez-faire experiment with the education
of a child. The child Émile is allowed to roam the countryside surrounding the
house by himself, educating himself from merely two of the three sources of
learning: from nature and from things. Nature, the intrinsically good
component of mankind is able to largely educate the child, for all the good and
untampered knowledge already remains in the individual human himself. The
second source, still reliable, but a less ‘absolute’ source of knowledge is those
coming from things. Man, the origin of corruption, is able to tamper with
61 |
things, and propose them selectively to the pupil, thereby doing away with its
innocuous, unprejudiced value. However, when no humans interfere with these
things, they propose a decent source of learning. The pupil must be shielded
from third source of learning, those of men, for as long as possible, until he is
wise enough to form judgement of its own.
The child thus should be left alone, allowing him to follow his instincts,
with a guiding nature that is perfectly capable of educating an individual. He is
to be protected from the corrupting intellectual tradition, and guarded from
interaction with society or the other sex for as long as possible. Only in the last
part of the book, s/he is introduced to his perfect-behaving, subserviently
constructed counterpart.
Being both a product of its time and ahead of its time, this tract is not
useful in every aspect. At times, it is hard to see what Rousseau meant
concretely with his philosophical ruminations. In addition, its misogynist
nature renders it difficult to see if he believed in a universal nature equally
present in both boys and girls. However, if we read it post-structurally,
Rousseau being a product of its time could have been hardly able to write a
non-religious, gender-transcending, concrete piece of educational advice.
Therefore we should focus on the elements that withstood the societal
upheaval of the nineteenth century and were used by the (nineteenth and)
twentieth century reformers.
| 62
***
Rousseau’s book was largely negatively received. His digressions from the
‘good faith’ as advocated in his La “Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard” (as
a side story in Part IV) were received in outrage. Rousseau felt himself
misunderstood and spent most of his last years in solitude. 59
Among the few people that picked up on his ideas were Johann Heinrich
Pestalozzi and Friedrich Fröbel. They implemented ideas on illiteracy and
socio-ethical betterment of individual humans in a much more practical
fashion. However, the demand—apart from the pushing back of the illiteracy
grade—was not there yet, and it was not until the 1870s that their ideas gained
some momentum. From the 1900s however, when the state as a caring
institution grew to full stature, there was in enormous increase in attention for
educational reform. Intellectuals like John Dewey started to write about
education, and how it should be remodelled to suit the needs of contemporary
society. In this context, of social and ethical ‘demise’, or as many people felt it,
we must locate the increase in popularity of Maria Montessori. Assigned by the
Italian government to completely educate—both in opvoeding and in onderwijs—
the children from a worker’s neighbourhood in Rome, her ideas flourished as
she provided the poor citizens with opportunities to function in society as full
members. They learned to read, to count, but also how to organise their homes
and practice good hygiene. Through a combination of strict rules and temporal
individual freedom through exercises, she created both discipline and
maintained the individual pupil’s interest. She focused on training the senses, as
they were the foundation of learning. One needs his or her senses to acquire
information, rendering them exceptionally important. Montessori focused on
individual discovery and initiative, but also on cooperation between pupils.
Blackburn, S., “Rousseau, Jean-Jacques” The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. (Oxford
2008) visited on June, 19, 2012, accessible on:
<http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t98.e2733>.
59
63 |
Montessori excelled in practicality. She was an excellent observer and an
enormously dedicated tutor. The Montessori Method (1912) was ready to be
implemented, providing photographs of the to be used materials, lesson
outlines and a theoretical and experimental foundation to the reform
programme. This rendered the Method an immediate success, first nationally,
and then abroad. Within several years, she was invited to many different
countries to speak about her new approach to education.
However, due to the language, the Anglo-Saxon world proved to be an
initial barrier to the Italian-speaking Montessori. Enter, Helen Parkhurst.
***
Helen Parkhurst, a Wisconsin-born school teacher came to her reform
system under influence of her background in teaching at a one-classroom
school in rural Wisconsin and her thorough knowledge of other people’s
reform ideas—notably John Dewey’s Chicago Laboratory School, Carleton
Washburne’s Winnetka Plan and Montessori’s Method. After the United
States’ officials’ interest was heightened by the initial success of Montessori,
Parkhurst was sent to Italy to study her Method, and teach it to American
educators. As stated, the language barrier was a severe one, in which
Montessori was not willing to learn English and vice versa. After Parkhurst
became well acquainted with the Method she taught it all around the States.
Just as Montessori had been invited to the United States by members of some
well-to-do industrialist families, Parkhurst was given the opportunity to
experiment with her ideas on education on behalf of the Crane family. Here, in
Dalton, Massachusetts, she laid the groundwork for the Dalton Plan. After a
one-year success story, she was invited to reside in a building in the Upper East
Side of New York City, where the school remains even today as a remnant of
the progressive education spurt of the early twentieth century.
Different than Montessori, which focused on children aged 2-10; the
Dalton Plan focused on children aged 9-16. Parkhurst saw that the child’s
| 64
initiative was there, however it had to be stimulated through poignant goals,
tasks and questions that require the child to think out of the box, see
interdisciplinary connections and plan its own time according to its demands.
Parkhurst prepared the children to form their own solutions, feel responsibility
through a carefully measured supply of freedom and devote their time to
school subjects according to their weaknesses and strengths. Parkhurst
abolished timetables and bells, restructuring the classrooms according to
subject, and longer according to age. This created a wholly new dynamic in
which children were stimulated to look for answers and solutions in the
materials but also with the other pupils. She did not change anything of the
curriculum, but merely changed the questions and restructured them according
to stimulating tasks.
Thus, by allowing the child to choose how to accomplish his or her tasks,
Parkhurst prepared the child for society, giving them a lesson in cooperation,
independence, responsibility and solution-seeking.
Life
What immediately becomes clear after one has read the historical and
cultural background to these three educational reform plans, is how each of
them was thoroughly shaped by their own time and their own experiences.
Rousseau wrote his book in a time shifting from Ancien Régime via
Enlightenment to Romanticism. He stands in a strong philosophes tradition,
and contains both elements from the past and the future. Montessori, growing
up in Italy’s urban centres, notices the poverty and together with her
experience in mentally and physically challenged children’s homes, she comes
up with a method for the betterment of society, focusing not solely on onderwijs
but also on opvoeding. Parkhurst, teaching in rural Wisconsin, growing up in the
United States, home to the ‘American dream’ of independence and selfsufficiency writes a tract on responsibility and being hardened without being
callous, as cooperation is still very important.
65 |
Thus, all three were products of their own lives and their own times. They
proposed different outlooks for educational reform, highlighting different
aspects that they deemed most important for the betterment of society.
Because they stressed different aspects, it comes as no surprise that the
educational reform systems were more successful in some countries than in
others.
We can see that the ideas of freedom and self-sufficiency are very strong
components in all three educational systems. However—Rousseau realised this
through his staged events—nature and liberalism cannot be the sole teacher of
humanity, and the curriculum plays as an important role as ever. Nonetheless,
the journey to the goal defines the learning process even more so. Luckily,
these three progressive educators have realised this, stressing the individuality
of children. This individuality is necessary in order to maximise the potential of
each child’s capability to learn. Rousseau, Montessori and Parkhurst agree that
the child’s interest and initiative can be maintained through playful exercises
and freedom of choice instead of coerced teaching and punishment. The
executions of these principles vary among each reform system, but I find that
the core values of Rousseau’s piece are preserved; they have been made
concrete and practical.
In this thesis, I have combined several fields to give a proper analysis of
progressive education from its earliest origins to its practical application.
Although I have chosen three case studies to make the subject more explicit, it
is clear that the concepts related to progressive education are not merely tied to
their respective intellectual; they are used and revalued, emphasised or played
down, and adapted to suit the needs of new theories. Although Montessori and
Parkhurst hardly mention their predecessors, it is clear that they stand in a
philosophical and pedagogical tradition. Thus, although there is no explicit
acknowledgement, the ideas of eighteenth and nineteenth century reformers
resonate through in the numerous pieces that have been drawn up in the
following years.
Through covering a time period of over 150 years, I have given both a
biographical sketch of several main proponents of progressive education, but
| 66
more importantly, I have touched upon some key concepts within the field.
Concepts like ‘negative education’, ‘responsibility through freedom’,
‘preserving initiative’ and ‘natural development’ are recurring themes in the
works of many progressive educators. By describing these concepts’ origin and
prevalence, I thus hope to have contributed to a History of Ideas in the
educational reform field. Many of these concepts are still relevant today, and
can be adapted to modern day societies needs. By tracing their origins, use and
applications, these ideas can be revalued, with possibilities for implementation
in modern school systems.
When society demanded for educational reform, it comes as no surprise
that various interested parties came up with a variety of plans for the
betterment of society. Whether it was due to the progressive or the traditional
educators, education has improved immensely over the last 150 years, but new
challenges lie ahead. Progressive education has come and gone in the last
hundred years. In the Netherlands, the various progressive education
movements are particularly strong, but in many other places of the world
traditional education is still the prime way of transferring knowledge. However,
in the ‘new’ globalising and internet-filled world, it is necessary to revalue these
progressive educators, as they might propose new insights into the acquisition
of knowledge. Internet distracts us from learning too many ‘facts’, but how will
we ever be able to see connections and think abstractly when we do not have
the right knowledge instantly available through memory. These and further
developments pose interesting questions on the future of education. This
history into progressive education focused on three case-studies might provide
some help into revaluing the importance of responsibility, individuality and
cooperation for future educational reformers.
67 |
Epilogue
In this thesis I have analysed the origins of progressive education through
the study of an early and two modern examples of this movement. I have
shown that it is a story closely entangled with the rest of history, for the
educational reformers adapted to the problems of their time. Naturally, the
history of progressive education did not stop in the 1930s. Foremost, Western
Europe still had to endure its most ravaging conflict, World War II, and endure
thorough social changes in the years thereafter. Furthermore, events like 1968,
multiculturalism and the advance of technology force us to cast a new look at
certain aspects of traditional and progressive education.
I, myself, received my high school education at a school for Dalton
education: the Helen Parkhurst College in Almere. I thought it a nice addition
to give some examples how the original reform material as given by Helen
Parkhurst was adapted to the needs of this day and age.
First, let us look at the practical structure. The lower two grades comprised
classes with pupils of all levels. This is unique in the Netherlands, for they
either categorically divide everyone according to level (in order of increasing
difficulty (or theoreticality) VMBO-BBL, VMBO-KBL, VMBO-TL, HAVO,
VWO), or divide between VMBO and HAVO/VWO. Here however, children
aged 12-14 would help each other gain the optimum level of education through
cooperation. In the last three years of education, ages 15 and up, the so-called
‘second phase’, classes would be divided to prepare them for their exams.
A day consisted of five classes of seventy minutes. As a concession to
Parkhurst abolishing a timetable whatsoever, the school realised that if too
large a portion of the time is devoted to the switching of classes and ‘quieting
down’, it would decrease the pupil’s concentration and efficiency. Except for
the middle period, periods were devoted to specific subjects; these you were
required to take with your own class. During the middle period however, the
so-called ‘Dalton Period’, the pupil was free to go to the classroom of the
| 68
subject s/he needed to devote the most time to. The school was divided in
several compartments however, so the distinction between upper (15-18) and
lower (12-15) grades and levels was maintained. In each class, both the ‘free’
and fixed ones, there was roughly ten minutes of class introduction, and the
remaining hour would be spent individually or in small groups.
The year was divided in three trimesters of twelve weeks, plus one week of
exams. Every teacher would hand out a ‘learning track’ with several stimulating
goals to be achieved in the trimester, the reading materials, fields left blank to
fill in expectations and a plan for ‘personal approach’. This highly
individualised method, still full with stimulation of initiative stayed very true to
the original Dalton Plan. After each trimester, individual ‘reflection forms’ had
to be handed in, and personal talks were held with the tutors, reflecting on the
made choice and the achieved results.
Disciplinary boundaries faded, as many subjects merged, among them exact
sciences and social sciences. But also special projects which combined
languages with art or history. The walls between classes were literally torn
down in the so-called ‘department’ were three separate rooms were joined into
a single room, with different corners for different skills necessary for the
acquisition of various languages (reading, listening, speaking). Other rooms
received glass walls to maximise transparency. Thus, children were forced to
cooperate and think out of the box, devote more attention to subjects for a
longer period, come up with their own solutions and acquire skills instead of
‘plain’ knowledge. Concessions were made, as timetables were introduced and
classes were organised according to age, but many elements were kept intact to
maximise individual inventiveness and responsibility.
69 |
***
For many children the system worked, however the transparency and
emphasis on personal responsibility leaves room for the ill-willing student to
slack or devote his or her time only to subjects s/he likes. Progress (or the lack
thereof) is only visible after twelve weeks, rendering it hard for teachers to
keep up with the pupil’s activities. In addition, a lot of strain is put on the tutor
or mentor of a class. Although s/he is specialised in one (or at the most two)
subjects, s/he is the teacher that has weekly meetings with the class, and it is
his or her responsibility to track the pupil’s full functioning within the school
system. Personally, I found that the heterogeneous classes, which include all
levels of education, did not work for most pupils, as smart students are easily
coerced into decreasing their effort in schoolwork to stay ‘cool’. I have seen
many grades drop as a result of social pressure, and the effect of the initial idea,
that of the strengthening of weaker students through cooperation, was utterly
minimal.
Although this and the other education systems described above seem to
support a child-centred approach, the quality of the teachers will make or break
these systems. The teacher’s inspirational qualities are vital to stimulating the
children, to provide them with enough challenge to keep them wanting more
and enough variety to keep it interesting. However, the quality of the teacher as
vital for the well doing of the system is no different in traditional education.
There is one big difference: whereas in the traditional system, education is
centred on the teacher, and his or her skill is needed and tested directly during
class, in progressive education the teacher’s skills are tested in a much less
explicit way. In these systems, s/he is a motivator and a mentor. S/he should
excel in drawing up Dalton goals and tasks, stage Rousseauvian events and/or
arrange Montessorian or Fröbelian materials in a way that it maximises
learning. This background-, implicitly controlling role, requires as much skill —
perhaps more—as traditional teaching. It is directed towards long-term goals;
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skills and qualities, and less to short-term goals which are more easily
measured. It demands a teacher with patience and prescience, capable of
motivating in less explicit ways.
I—unlike Rousseau, but in line with Parkhurst—believe that children
have immense capabilities to learn, but they must be stimulated, kept eager and
supplied with an endless number of goals, solutions and problems. If executed
correctly, education can create moral citizens capable of realising wonderful
things.
71 |
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