Progressive education philosophy and its theoretical foundations

¶ … Education

In the U.S. The conflict between progressive and traditional education has been going on for over 100 years, and E.D. Hirsch and John Dewey are polar opposites in this pedagogical and philosophical conflict. Dewey was indeed a support of the Left in politics who wanted the U.S. To become a social democracy and move away from more traditional conservative ideas. He thought that democratic socialism would be the wave of the future in urban, industrial society, and that the traditional education system was not preparing students to participate as active citizens in this new society. It was rigid, authoritarian and hierarchical, with teachers acting like dictators in the classroom and often dispensing plenty of corporal punishment. Rather than follow a rigid, old-fashioned curriculum, the teacher had to allow students to participate in designing lessons that were relevant to their lives and experiences. Only this way could the public schools become dynamic and flexible, keeping up with rapid change in society. Hirsch, on the other hand, rejects these progressive ideas completely and claims they have destroyed public education in the United States. He advocates a standardized curriculum at every grade level that would include history, politics, reading, writing, mathematics and science. It would not only teach students the basics but also prepare them for higher education, and emphasize academics from as young an age as possible, rather than individual freedom or self-esteem.

John Dewey's main theory of progressive education was that the entire system had to be reformed so that it would serve the needs of an urban, industrial society, and teachers had a duty to provide students with experiences that were practical and relevant to their lives. Traditional education was too structured, focused on old-fashioned content and authoritarian to meet these social and individual needs, while progressive education would be flexible, democratic and designed to benefit the student (Dworkin 1961). At the same time, progressive education was often directionless and lacking a central purpose beyond freeing the students to learn what they liked. Dewey was influenced by progressives and pragmatic philosophers like William James and George Herbert Mead in formulating these new educational principles. Mead was also from Chicago like Thorstein Veblen and considered himself both a sociologist and an activist. He was hostile to the Ku Klux Klan, American Protective Association and other racist and anti-immigrant groups, arguing that the capitalists had encouraged foreign workers to come to the U.S. As cheap labor to do the "dirty work," yet business, government and the education system ignored their needs and treated them with racist contempt (Fernandez, 2003, p. 142). Mead was also educated in pragmatism at Harvard, studying under William James and Josiah Royce, and then studied the latest European sociology at the University of Berlin. Like his lifelong friend John Dewey, he argued that the purpose of sociology and education was to bring about "conscious social change" (Fernandez, p. 159). Like Emile Durkheim, he was also concerned with creating a new sense of community and cooperation in modern society in the place of alienated individualism.

Dewey emphasized that each individual required different experiences from education, and the only real meaning they would derive from these was the contribution they made to society. Teachers could serve as guides and arrange lessons as needed, but they were not in the classroom simply to impart knowledge, follow a standardized curriculum and lecture while the students passively took notes. Teachers would also have to be aware of the previous experiences of their students in order to design useful and rewarding lessons. Social control was necessary in the schools and in the larger society, but it did not have to be authoritarian or autocratic. Just the opposite, students should be involved in planning lessons while the teacher would not issue commands and instructions but also participate in the group (Dewey 1938/1997). While he did not wish an all-out war with the traditional system, neither did he intend to compromise with it and mix elements of both into a meaningless mishmash. Ultimately, the purpose of education was not to control the students but to help them develop self-control and become useful participants in democratic society. It had to take them as they are and start with lessons that were relevant to their everyday experience before assisting them to transcend that (Dewey 1938/1997).

E.D. Hirsch denounced progressive education as based on faulty theories and hostility to knowledge, and blamed it for doing tremendous damage to the American public schools. He is not interested in putting more money into this failed system of offering school choice and vouchers, but only in restoring the traditional idea of a core curriculum, and getting children started with learning at as early an age as possible. This is the type of system that society needs in the information age, and the only one that will reduce social and economic inequalities in public education. Hirsch is emphatic in insisting on the need for a core, academic curriculum and has created a grade-by-grade curriculum followed in hundreds of private schools. This curriculum includes history, politics, math, reading, writing, art and music, and has proved very effective with minority and disadvantaged students. He maintains that the U.S. public school system was a failure, the worst in the Western world, while its colleges and universities were the best. American universities were much less interested in self-esteem compared to depth and accuracy of knowledge, although in the last thirty years the quality of students they received from high schools is so poor that they have had to set up remedial math, reading and writing classes (Hirsch 1996).

American schools simply do not take learning and academics seriously enough below the tertiary level, although scientific studies show that the greatest level of learning occurs at the ages of two to eleven. Head Start might be a useful program for poor and minority children, but once they entered the regular public school system the benefits disappeared. Unlike preschools in other countries, it had classes for only three hours a day and was not staffed by academics or professionals, nor did it have coherent educational goals. American education is fragmented and incoherent, lacking any core, and this situation is made worse by the fact that so many children move and change schools. Unlike France, Germany and Japan, the U.S. has no national core curriculum. Schools opposed standardized tests but Hirsch thought they were a good idea, and unlike Dewey he thought that tests and grades motivated learners. He definitely did not agree with Dewey's philosophy of teachers working with students to plan lessons, since mostly they did not know what they wanted or needed. They were not motivated by love of the subject or learning in general (Hirsch 1996).