Implications for today's classroom teacher

Unlike the more traditional idealist, realist, perennialist, and essentialist teachers who see the teaching of subject-matter disciplines as their primary responsibility, the pragmatist teacher is more concerned with the process of solving problems intelligently. The pragmatist teacher does not ignore the importance of subject matter but rather uses it instrumentally to fashion solutions to problems. Furthermore, the teacher does not attempt to dominate learning but seeks to guide it by acting as a director or facilitator of the student's research.

For students in a pragmatist classroom, the main objective is to apply the scientific method to a full range of personal, social, and intellectual problems. Through their use of the problem-solving method, it is expected that the students will learn to apply the process to situations both in and out of school. Further, the problem-solving method is believed to reduce the separation of the school from society.

Pragmatist teachers work to make the classroom into a community. They consciously encourage students to share their interests, concerns, and problems with each other. Students build a sense of community as they work together to solve common problems. For those who follow Dewey's philosophy, the use of the experimental method in a sharing community of persons, in school and out, is the surest means of making democracy work.

Text 6 progressiyism

Although progressive education, or the educational theory of progressivism, is often associated with John Dewey's pragmatism or experimentalism, the progressive education movement wove together a number of diverse strands. In its origins the progressive education movement was part of the larger sociopolitical movement of general reform that characterized American life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Political progressives such as Robert La Follette and Woodrow Wilson wanted to curb powerful trusts and monopolies and to make the system of political democracy truly operative. Social welfare progressives such as Jane Addams worked in the settlement house movement to improve living conditions in Chicago and in other urban areas. Thus, progressive education was part of a more general movement to reform American life and institutions.

Although the general reform currents had ebbed by the 1920s, progressive education continued to flourish. There was no central dogma, but progressive educators did stress the view that all learning should center on the child's interests and needs. One described the principles of education as follows:

We believe the educational program should aim to meet the needs of the growing child. We believe that childhood is for itself and not a preparation for adult life. Therefore, the school program must answer the following questions: What does the child of any particular age need to minister to the health of his body, to preserve the integrity of the intellect, and to keep him sincere and unself-conscious of spirit?

The answers to these questions will constitute the curriculum of the school, and as we grow in understanding of the nature and needs of childhood, the curriculum will change.

Others stressed as well the need to make school a pleasant place for learning. Every child has the right to live naturally, happily, and fully as a child.... Childhood in itself is a beautiful section of life, and children should be given a chance for free, full living.

We try to make the schools happy, attractive places for children to be in... . We believe in colorfulness, coziness, hominess in our classrooms; in an opportunity for spontaneity We want children to want to come to school.

PROGRESSIVE PRINCIPLES

The loosely structured Progressive Education Association, organized in 1919, was not united by a single comprehensive philosophy of education. The progressives differed in many of their theories and practices, but they were united in their opposition to certain traditional school practices. They generally condemned the following: (1) the authoritarian teacher, (2) exclusive reliance on bookish methods of instruction or on the textbook, (3) passive learning by memorization of factual data, (4) the four-walls philosophy of education that attempted to isolate education from social reality, and (5) the use of fear or physical punishment as a form of discipline.

The Progressive Education Association refused to proclaim a philosophy of education but did announce certain unifying principles. Among them Were the following: (1) the child should be free to develop naturally; (2) interest, stimulated by direct experience, is the best stimulus for learning; (3) the teacher should be a resource person and a guide to learning activities; (4) there should be close cooperation between the school and the home; and (5) the progressive school should be a laboratory for pedagogical reform and experimentation.

Progressive education was both a movement within the broad framework of American education and a theory that urged the liberation of the child from the traditional emphasis on rote learning, lesson recitations, and textbook authority In opposition to the conventional subject matter of the traditional curriculum, progressives experimented with alternative modes of curricuiar organization — utilizing activities, experiences, problem solving, and the project method. Progressive education focused on the child as the learner rather than on the subject; emphasized activities and experiences rather than verbal and literary skills; and encouraged cooperative group learning activities rather than competitive individualized lesson learning. The use of democratic school procedures was seen as a prelude to community and social reform. Progressivism also cultivated a cultural relativism that critically appraised and often rejected traditional value commitments.

Although the major thrust of progressive education waned in the 1940s and came to an end in the 1950s, it did leave its imprint on education and the schools. Contemporary child-centered progressivism is expressed in humanistic education and in the open educational arrangements based on the British primary school.

THE BASIC QUESTIONS

Since the progressives were not of a single mind, they gave a variety of responses to questions about the nature of education, the school, teaching, and learning. However, they were able to agree on their opposition to traditionalism and authoritarianism. Whereas some progressives believed that education was a process intended to liberate children, others were more concerned with social reform.

Child-centered progressives saw the school as a place where children would be free to experiment, to play, and to express themselves. Those inclined to a more societal perspective saw the school as a community center or as an agency of social reform.

Progressives generally were not interested in using the curriculum to transmit subjects to students. Rather, the curriculum was to come from the child. Learning could take a variety of forms, such as problem solving, field trips, creative artistic expression, and projects. Above all, progressives saw the teaching-learning process as active, exciting, and ever changing.

Progressive educators rejected barriers of class, race, or creed that tended to keep people apart from each other. They believed that as students work together on projects based on their common shared experience, they break down the isolation that diminishes the quality of the human experience.