5.6) A Neo-Deweyan Critique of the Pedagogical Progressives

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American Education Reform: History, Policy, Practice

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University of Pennsylvania

American Education Reform: History, Policy, Practice

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Discover what shapes how we talk about schools today by exploring the history of U.S. education reform. Engage with the main actors, key decisions, and major turning points in this history. See how social forces drive reform. Learn about how the critical tensions embedded in U.S. education policy and practice apply to schools nationally, globally— and where you live.

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John Dewey and the Pedagogical Progressives

This module takes up the major characteristics of Dewey’s Laboratory School at the University of Chicago, 1896–1904; the role of reflective thinking in Dewey’s theory of knowledge; Dewey’s conception of the school as a social center; Dewey’s disengagement from public schools after 1904; William Heard Kilpatrick and the pedagogical progressives’ distortion of Dewey’s theory; and the cornerstones of Dewey’s educational philosophy.

5.1) The Laboratory School of the University of Chicago7:51

5.2) Dewey’s Theory of Knowledge 5:10

5.3) Dewey’s Idea of the School as a Social Center4:17

5.4) Dewey: Missing in Action 6:00

5.5) The Pedagogical Progressives7:13

5.6) A Neo-Deweyan Critique of the Pedagogical Progressives8:02

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Dr. John L. Puckett
Professor of Education
Graduate School of Education
Dr. Michael Charles Johanek
Senior Fellow
Graduate School of Education

Dewey no doubt compounded the problem of his theory being misrepresented

in the public mind as exclusively child-centered by agreeing to serve as

honorary President of the Progressive Education Association.

A position he held from 1926 until his death, in 1952.

So what did the pedagogical progressives miss in Dewey's theory?

The answer to that question requires a brief consideration of the four

cornerstones of Dewey's pedagogy.

>> The first cornerstone is reflective thinking.

As we have seen,

Dewey highlighted the importance of academic subject matter as a tool.

That provides the resources for solving a problem, dilemma, or

situation of dissonance.

Subject matter and reflective thinking go hand in glove in productive thinking.

The best learning occurs when they supplement one another.

>> Mm.

The second cornerstone is the continuity of experience.

New learning is always dependant on what's already in the learner's head.

That is, the learner's ongoing experience.

Students have to pose their own problems,

base on the new subject matter, within a context that is of interest to them.

This puts a heavy burden on teachers.

There's a body of subject matter to be mastered at the developmental

level of the child.

How does the teacher get students to pose problems that are of inherent

pressing interest to them?

Problems that require mastery of the subject matter the teacher

wants them to learn.

This requirement points to problem solving as the appropriate vehicle for

optimal learning.

>> The third cornerstone of Dewey's pedagogy is the social function of

education.

Learning is a social, cooperative enterprise.

Cooperative learning, Dewey called it conjoined activity,

enhanced individual learning by making it more efficient.

Putting more ideas in play and suggesting alternative problem solving strategies.

It also teaches young people how to organize themselves

democratically to accomplish desired goals.

As we've seen, Dewey thought of the school as a miniature community, and

embryonic democracy.

Dewey's philosophy envisions a community minded citizenry, accustomed to working

cooperatively, and using the method of science to solve pressing social problems.

>> Mm-hm.

The fourth cornerstone is the progressive organization of subject matter.

Incorporating the other three cornerstones,

the teacher must organize a curriculum that moves students to increasingly

higher levels of intellectual mastery.

Better cognitive strategies, a stronger foundation of disciplinary knowledge.

Dewey famously theorized the curriculum as a continuum.

Ranging from the child's eye perspective, the psychological.

To the teacher's-eye perspective of logically ordered subjects, the logical.

Elsewhere he called this concept the progressive organization

of subject matter.

>> Dewey believed that history and

geography studies provided the best opportunities for teachers to develop

entry point activities that would tap inherent interests in children.

Guided activities that would list questions in children and

read them in search of answers under the teacher's careful scrutiny.

To literature, mathematics, to physical and the social science.

Intellectual studies his turn, as well as art, drama, and music.

As he demonstrated at the laboratory school at the University of Chicago

from 1896 to 1904, practical studies such as weaving, metal-working and

wood-working taught within a historical, geographical framework.

Were a means for

children to learn the central role of technology in human history.

He called this industrial education and distinguished it from vocational

education, which he associated with secondary schooling for

particular trades and viewed as a narrow and limiting form of education.

>> Hm.

There is no denying the child-centered of Dewey's theory.

Yet, unlike extreme pedagogical progressivism,

Dewey's theory recognized the importance of subject matter, as both a means for

problem solving and as a building block for future learning.

Subject matter has it's demands on the school, just as the child's needs,

interests, and capabilities have their demands.

And society has it's demands and in Dewey's time progressive education became

virtually synonymous in the public mind with extreme pedagogical progressivism.

And the unfortunate public caricature was a cartoon of a little girl playing in

a sandbox, that was her project curriculum.

>> [LAUGH] >> The caption read,

did Sally get an A in sandbox today?

This fatal stereotype depicted progressive education as unplanned, unstructured,

unguided, and dependant on children's whims and impulses for the curriculum.

Put children to a classroom filled with interesting objects and

they'll find their own way to learning.

>> Mild-mannered, bookish, John Dewey was loathed to take his arrant

disciples to task harshly or by name even though they zealously carried his banner.

In his later career,

he wrote some mild-mannered critiques of the pedagogical progressives.

Critiques [LAUGH] that included, in simplified forms.

The elements we identify as the four cornerstones of this pedagogy.

Neither Dewey's theory nor pedagogical progressivism, even in its milder forms,

ever gained a sure footing in the mainstream of American public education.

There would be a short lived activity curriculum in

New York City Public Schools, in the 1930s.

And a short lived aflouresecence of pedagogical pro, progressivism, practiced

and promoted by so called radical romanticists in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Today a theory called constructivism claims allegiance to Dewey.

Scholars debate the extent to which some pedagogically progressive

practices are generically embedded in modern public schools.

What they do not debate is the stranglehold that teacher talk and

traditional textbook and

workbook based learning have on the public schools in this country.

To be fair,

the demands of actually carrying out Dewey in pedagogy are quite considerable.

Particularly on the preparation and support for teachers.

Such recognition and support seems largely inconsistent with the US approaches to,

and funding for, teacher recruitment, preparation and support.

>> Hm.

In contradistinction to Dewey,

we have seen that the educational psychologist Edward L Thorndike and

his disciples in the administrative progressive camp provided, as breakthrough

innovations, instruments for differentiating the American curriculum.

Are testing and sorting young people into curricular tracks

with programs tailored to their probably career destinations.

Dewey's theory rejected tracking, it rejected restricting student pot,

potentialities by means of differentiated curricula of varying quality and

degrees of difficulty.

It rejected social efficiency schooling as anti-democratic in both its practice

and its outcomes.

From the perspective of the last century of public education in the US,

as the historian Ellen Lagemann observes, Thorndike won and Dewey lost.

Perhaps ironically, Thorndike's approach addressed more immediate concrete

problems that were most pressing for administrative leaders at the time,

challenges arising in rapidly expanding urban school systems, under resource,

and packed with a vast range of students, backgrounds, and contexts

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