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PROGRESSIVISM in Education - Philosophical Foundations of Education

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progressive education, movement that took form in Europe and the United States during the late 19th century as a reaction to the alleged narrowness and formalism of traditional education. One of its main objectives was to educate the "whole child"-that is, to attend to physical and emotional, as well as intellectual, growth. The school was conceived of as a laboratory in which the child was to take an active part-learning through doing. The theory was that a child learns best by actually performing tasks associated with learning. Creative and manual arts gained importance in the curriculum, and children were encouraged toward experimentation and independent thinking. The classroom, in the view of Progressivism's most influential theorist, the American philosopher John Dewey, was to be a democracy in microcosm.
(Read Arne Duncan's Britannica essay on "Education: The Great Equalizer.")
The sources of the progressive education movement lay partly in European pedagogical reforms from the 17th through the 19th century, ultimately stemming partly from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's É mile (1762), a treatise on education, in the form of a novel, that has been called the charter of childhood. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Rousseau's theories were given practical application in a number of experimental schools. In Germany, Johann Bernhard Basedow established the Philanthropinum at Dessau (1774), and Friedrich Froebel founded the first kindergarten at Keilhau (1837). In Switzerland, Johann Pestalozzi dedicated himself, in a succession of schools, to the education of poor and orphaned children. Horace Mann and his associates worked to further the cause of universal, nonsectarian education in the United States.

Throughout the late 19th century, a proliferation of experimental schools in England extended from Cecil Reddie's Abbotsholme (1889) to A.S. Neill's Summerhill, founded in 1921. On the European continent some pioneers of progressive educational methods were Maria Montessori in Italy; Ovide Decroly in Belgium; Adolphe Ferrière in Geneva; and Elizabeth Rotten in Germany. The progressive educational ideas and practices developed in the United States, especially by John Dewey, were joined with the European tradition after 1900. In 1896 Dewey founded the Laboratory Schools at the University of Chicago to test the validity of his pedagogical theories.

From its earliest days progressive education elicited sharp and sustained opposition from a variety of critics. Humanists and idealists criticized its naturalistic orientation, its Rousseauean emphasis on interesting and freeing the child, and its cavalier treatment of the study of classic literature and classical languages.

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Progressive education | Benefits, Principles & History

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Progressive education, movement that took form in Europe and the United States during the late 19th century as a reaction to the alleged narrowness and formalism of traditional education. One of its main objectives was to educate the "whole child"-that is, to attend to physical and emotional, as

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During most of the twentieth century, the term "progressive education" has been used to describe ideas and practices that aim to make schools more effective agencies of a democratic society. Although there are numerous differences of style and emphasis among progressive educators, they share the conviction that democracy means active participation by all citizens in social, political and economic decisions that will affect their lives. The education of engaged citizens, according to this perspective, involves two essential elements: (1). A Brief Overview of Progressive Education Respect for diversity, meaning that each individual should be recognized for his or her own abilities, interests, ideas, needs, and cultural identity, and (2). the development of critical, socially engaged intelligence, which enables individuals to understand and participate effectively in the affairs of their community in a collaborative effort to achieve a common good. These elements of progressive education have been termed "child-centered" and "social reconstructionist" approaches, and while in extreme forms they have sometimes been separated, in the thought of John Dewey and other major theorists they are seen as being necessarily related to each other.

These progressive principles have never been the predominant philosophy in American education. From their inception in the 1830s, state systems of common or public schooling have primarily attempted to achieve cultural uniformity, not diversity, and to educate dutiful, not critical citizens. Furthermore, schooling has been under constant pressure to support the ever-expanding industrial economy by establishing a competitive meritocracy and preparing workers for their vocational roles. The term "progressive" arose from a period (roughly 1890-1920) during which many Americans took a more careful look at the political and social effects of vast concentrations of corporate power and private wealth. Dewey, in particular, saw that with the decline of local community life and small scale enterprise, young people were losing valuable opportunities to learn the arts of democratic participation, and he concluded that education would need to make up for this loss. In his Laboratory School at the University of Chicago, where he worked between 1896 and 1904, Dewey tested ideas he shared with leading school reformers such as Francis W. Parker and Ella Flagg Young. Between 1899 and 1916 he circulated his ideas in works such as The School and Society, The Child and the Curriculum, Schools of Tomorrow, and Democracy and Education, and through numerous lectures and articles. During these years other experimental schools were established around the country, and in 1919 the Progressive Education Association was founded, aiming at "reforming the entire school system of America."

Led by Dewey, progressive educators opposed a growing national movement that sought to separate academic education for the few and narrow vocational training for the masses. During the 1920s, when education turned increasingly to "scientific" techniques such as intelligence testing and cost-benefit management, progressive educators insisted on the importance of the emotional, artistic, and creative aspects of human development--"the most living and essential parts of our natures," as Margaret Naumburg put it in The Child and the World. After the Depression began, a group of politically oriented progressive educators, led by George Counts, dared schools to "build a new social order" and published a provocative journal called The Social Frontier to advance their "reconstructionist" critique of laissez faire capitalism. At Teachers College, Columbia University, William H. Kilpatrick and other students of Dewey taught the principles of progressive education to thousands of teachers and school leaders, and in the middle part of the century, books such as Dewey's Experience and Education (1938) Boyd Bode's Progressive Education at the Crossroads (1938), Caroline Pratt's I Learn from Children (1948), and Carlton Washburne's What is Progressive Education? (1952) among others, continued to provide a progressive critique of conventional assumptions about teaching, learning and schooling. A major research endeavor, the "eight-year study," demonstrated that students from progressive high schools were capable, adaptable learners and excelled even in the finest universities.

Nevertheless, in the 1950s, during a time of cold war anxiety and cultural conservatism, progressive education was widely repudiated, and it disintegrated as an identifiable movement. However, in the years since, various groups of educators have rediscovered the ideas of Dewey and his associates, and revised them to address the changing needs of schools, children, and society in the late twentieth century. Open classrooms, schools without walls, cooperative learning, multiage approaches, whole language, the social curriculum, experiential education, and numerous forms of alternative schools all have important philosophical roots in progressive education. John Goodlad's notion of "nongraded" schools (introduced in the late 1950s), Theodore Sizer's network of "essential" schools, Elliott Wigginton's Foxfire project, and Deborah Meier's student-centered Central Park East schools are some well known examples of progressive reforms in public education; in the 1960s, critics like Paul Goodman and George Dennison took Dewey's ideas in a more radical direction, helping give rise to the free school movement. In recent years, activist educators in inner cities have advocated greater equity, justice, diversity and other democratic values through the publication Rethinking Schools and the National Coalition of Education Activists.

Today, scholars, educators and activists are rediscovering Dewey's work and exploring its relevance to a "postmodern" age, an age of global capitalism and breathtaking cultural change, and an age in which the ecological health of the planet itself is seriously threatened. We are finding that although Dewey wrote a century ago, his insights into democratic culture and meaningful education suggest hopeful alternatives to the regime of standardization and mechanization that more than ever dominate our schools.

For further reading:

The Stone Trumpet: A Story of Practical School Reform by Richard A. Gibboney (SUNY Press, 1994).

Democracy, Education, and the Schools edited by Roger Soder (Jossey-Bass, 1996).

Progressive Education: From Arcady to Academe by Patricia Albjerg Graham (Teachers College Press, 1967)

Progressive Education for the 1990s: Transforming Practice edited by Kathe Jervis and Carol Montag (Teachers College Press, 1991).

Schools that Work: America's Most Innovative Public Education Programs by George Wood (Dutton, 1992).

The Struggle to Continue: Progressive Reading Instruction in the United States by Patrick Shannon (Heinemann, 1990).

The Story of the Eight-Year Study by Wilford M. Aikin (Harper, 1942).

John Dewey and American Democracy by Robert B. Westbrook (Cornell Univ. Press, 1991).

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A Brief Overview of Progressive Education

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During most of the twentieth century, the term "progressive education" has been used to describe ideas and practices that aim to make schools more effective agencies of a democratic society. Although there are numerous differences of style and emphasis among progressive educators, they share the conviction that democracy means active participation by all citizens in social, political and economic decisions that will affect their lives.

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Progressive education, or educational progressivism, is a pedagogical movement that began in the late 19th century and has persisted in various forms to the present. In Europe, progressive education took the form of the New Education Movement. The term progressive was engaged to distinguish this education from the traditional curricula of the 19th century, which was rooted in classical preparation for the early-industrial university and strongly differentiated by social class. By contrast, progressive education finds its roots in modern, post-industrial experience. Most progressive education programs have these qualities in common:

Emphasis on learning by doing - hands-on projects, expeditionary learning, experiential learning

Integrated curriculum focused on thematic units

Strong emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking

Group work and development of social skills

Understanding and action as the goals of learning as opposed to rote knowledge

Collaborative and cooperative learning projects

Education for social responsibility and democracy

Integration of community service and service learning projects into the daily curriculum

Selection of subject content by looking forward to ask what skills will be needed in future society

De-emphasis on textbooks in favor of varied learning resources

Emphasis on lifelong learning and social skills

Assessment by evaluation of child's projects and productions

Progressive education can be traced back to the works of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, both of whom are known as forerunners of ideas that would be developed by theorists such as John Dewey. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, Locke believed that "truth and knowledge... arise out of observation and experience rather than manipulation of accepted or given ideas". He further discussed the need for children to have concrete experiences in order to learn. Rousseau deepened this line of thinking in Emile, or On Education, where he argued that subordination of students to teachers and memorization of facts would not lead to an education.

In Germany, Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724-1790) established the Philanthropinum at Dessau in 1774. He developed new teaching methods based on conversation and play with the child, and a program of physical development. Such was his success that he wrote a treatise on his methods, "On the best and hitherto unknown method of teaching children of noblemen".

Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (1744-1811) was the founder of the Schnepfenthal institution, a school dedicated to new modes of education (derived heavily from the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau). He wrote Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children, one of the first books translated into English by Mary Wollstonecraft.

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) was a Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer who exemplified Romanticism in his approach. He founded several educational institutions both in German- and French-speaking regions of Switzerland and wrote many works explaining his revolutionary modern principles of education. His motto was "Learning by head, hand and heart". His research and theories closely resemble those outlined by Rousseau in Emile. He is further considered by many to be the "father of modern educational science" His psychological theories pertain to education as they focus on the development of object teaching, that is, he felt that individuals best learned through experiences and through a direct manipulation and experience of objects. He further speculated that children learn through their own internal motivation rather than through compulsion. (See Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic motivation). A teacher's task will be to help guide their students as individuals through their learning and allow it to unfold naturally.

Friedrich Fröbel

Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel (1782-1852) was a student of Pestalozzi who laid the foundation for modern education based on the recognition that children have unique needs and capabilities. He believed in "self-activity" and play as essential factors in child education. The teacher's role was not to indoctrinate but to encourage self-expression through play, both individually and in group activities. He created the concept of kindergarten.

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) emphasized the connection between individual development and the resulting societal contribution. The five key ideas which composed his concept of individual maturation were Inner Freedom, Perfection, Benevolence, Justice, and Equity or Recompense. According to Herbart, abilities were not innate but could be instilled, so a thorough education could provide the framework for moral and intellectual development. In order to develop a child to lead to a consciousness of social responsibility, Herbart advocated that teachers utilize a methodology with five formal steps: "Using this structure a teacher prepared a topic of interest to the children, presented that topic, and questioned them inductively, so that they reached new knowledge based on what they had already known, looked back, and deductively summed up the lesson's achievements, then related them to moral precepts for daily living".

John Melchior Bosco (1815-1888) was concerned about the education of street children who had left their villages to find work in the rapidly industrialized city of Turin, Italy. Exploited as cheap labor or imprisoned for unruly behavior, Bosco saw the need for creating a space where they would feel at home. He called it an 'Oratory' where they could play, learn, share friendships, express themselves, develop their creative talents and pick up skills for gainful self-employment. With those who had found work, he set up a mutual-fund society (an early version of the Grameen Bank) to teach them the benefits of saving and self-reliance. The principles underlying his educational method that won over the hearts and minds of thousands of youth who flocked to his oratory were: 'be reasonable', 'be kind', 'believe' and 'be generous in service'. Today his method of education is practiced in nearly 3000 institutions set up around the world by the members of the Salesian Society he founded in 1873.

While studying for his doctorate in Göttingen in 1882-1883, Cecil Reddie was greatly impressed by the progressive educational theories being applied there. Reddie founded Abbotsholme School in Derbyshire, England, in 1889. Its curriculum enacted the ideas of progressive education. Reddie rejected rote learning, classical languages and corporal punishment. He combined studies in modern languages and the sciences and arts with a program of physical exercise, manual labour, recreation, crafts and arts. Schools modeling themselves after Abbotsholme were established throughout Europe, and the model was particularly influential in Germany. Reddie often engaged foreign teachers, who learned its practices, before returning home to start their own schools. Hermann Lietz an Abbotsholme teacher founded five schools (Landerziehungsheime für Jungen) on Abbotsholme's principles. Other people he influenced included Kurt Hahn, Adolphe Ferrière and Edmond Demolins. His ideas also reached Japan, where it turned into "Taisho-era Free Education Movement" (Taisho Jiyu Kyoiku Undo)

Education according to John Dewey is the "participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race" (Dewey, 1897, para. 1). As such, education should take into account that the student is a social being. The process begins at birth with the child unconsciously gaining knowledge and gradually developing their knowledge to share and partake in society.

For Dewey, education, which regulates "the process of coming to share in the social consciousness," is the "only sure" method of ensuring social progress and reform (Dewey, 1897, para. 60). In this respect, Dewey foreshadows Social Reconstructionism, whereby schools are a means to reconstruct society. As schools become a means for social reconstruction, they must be given the proper equipment to perform this task and guide their students.

The American teacher Helen Parkhurst (1886-1973) developed the Dalton Plan at the beginning of the twentieth century with the goal of reforming the then current pedagogy and classroom management. She wanted to break the teacher-centered lockstep teaching. During her first experiment, which she implemented in a small elementary school as a young teacher in 1904, she noticed that when students are given freedom for self-direction and self-pacing and to help one another, their motivation increases considerably and they learn more. In a later experiment in 1911 and 1912, Parkhurst re-organized the education in a large school for nine- to fourteen-year-olds. Instead of each grade, each subject was appointed its own teacher and its own classroom. The subject teachers made assignments: they converted the subject matter for each grade into learning assignments. In this way, learning became the students' own work; they could carry out their work independently, work at their own pace and plan their work themselves. The classroom turned into a laboratory, a place where students are working, furnished and equipped as work spaces, tailored to meet the requirements of specific subjects. Useful and attractive learning materials, instruments and reference books were put within the students' reach. The benches were replaced by large tables to facilitate co-operation and group instruction. This second experiment formed the basis for the next experiments, those in Dalton and New York, from 1919 onwards. The only addition was the use of graphs, charts enabling students to keep track of their own progress in each subject.

In the nineteen-twenties and nineteen-thirties, Dalton education spread throughout the world. There is no certainty regarding the exact numbers of Dalton schools, but there was Dalton education in America, Australia, England, Germany, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, India, China and Japan.

Rudolf Steiner (1869-1925) first described the principles of what was to become Waldorf education in 1907. He established a series of schools based on these principles beginning in 1919. The focus of the education is on creating a developmentally appropriate curriculum that holistically integrates practical, artistic, social, and academic experiences. There are more than a thousand schools and many more early childhood centers worldwide; it has also become a popular form of homeschooling.

Maria Montessori (1870-1952) began to develop her philosophy and methods in 1897. She based her work on her observations of children and experimentation with the environment, materials, and lessons available to them. She frequently referred to her work as "scientific pedagogy", arguing for the need to go beyond observation and measurement of students, to developing new methods to transform them. Although Montessori education spread to the United States in 1911 there were conflicts with the American educational establishment and was opposed by William Heard Kilpatrick. However Montessori education returned to the United States in 1960 and has since spread to thousands of schools there.

In 1914 the Montessori Society in England organised its first conference. Hosted by Rev Bertram Hawker, who had set up, in partnership with his local elementary school in the Norfolk coastal village of East Runton, the first Montessori School in England. Pictures of this school, and its children, illustrated the 'Montessori's Own Handbook' (1914). Hawker had been impressed by his visit to Montessori's Casa dei Bambini in Rome, he gave numerous talks on Montessori's work after 1912, assisting in generating a national interest in her work. He organised the Montessori Conference 1914 in partnership with Edmond Holmes, ex-Chief Inspector of Schools, who had written a government report on Montessori. The conference decided that its remit was to promote the 'liberation of the child in the school', and though inspired by Montessori, would encourage, support and network teachers and educationalists who sought, through their schools and methods, that aim. They changed their name the following year to New Ideals in Education. Each subsequent conference was opened with reference to its history and origin as a Montessori Conference recognising her inspiration, reports italicized the members of the Montessori Society in the delegate lists, and numerous further events included Montessori methods and case studies. Montessori, through New Ideals in Education, its committee and members, events and publications, greatly influenced progressive state education in England. (references to be added).

In July 1906, Ernest Thompson Seton sent Robert Baden-Powell a copy of his book The Birchbark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians. Seton was a British-born Canadian-American living in the United States. They shared ideas about youth training programs. In 1907 Baden-Powell wrote a draft called Boy Patrols. In the same year, to test his ideas, he gathered 21 boys of mixed social backgrounds and held a week-long camp in August on Brownsea Island in England. His organizational method, now known as the Patrol System and a key part of Scouting training, allowed the boys to organize themselves into small groups with an elected patrol leader. Baden Powell then wrote Scouting for Boys (London, 1908). The Brownsea camp and the publication of Scouting for Boys are generally regarded as the start of the Scout movement which spread throughout the world. Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes Baden-Powell introduced the Girl Guides in 1910.

Traditional education uses extrinsic motivation, such as grades and prizes. Progressive education is more likely to use intrinsic motivation, basing activities on the interests of the child. Praise may be discouraged as a motivator. Progressive education is a response to traditional methods of teaching. It is defined as an educational movement which gives more value to experience than formal learning. It is based more on experiential learning that concentrate on the development of a child's talents.

21st century skills are a series of higher-order skills, abilities, and learning dispositions that have been identified as being required for success in the rapidly changing, digital society and workplaces. Many of these skills are also defining qualities of progressive education as well as being associated with deeper learning, which is based on mastering skills such as analytic reasoning, complex problem solving, and teamwork. These skills differ from traditional academic skills in that they are not primarily content knowledge-based.

Hermann Lietz founded three Landerziehungsheime (country boarding schools) in 1904 based on Reddie's model for boys of different ages. Lietz eventually succeeded in establishing five more Landerziehungsheime. Edith and Paul Geheeb founded Odenwaldschule in Heppenheim in the Odenwald in 1910 using their concept of progressive education, which integrated the work of the head and hand.

Janusz Korczak was one notable follower and developer of Pestalozzi's ideas. He wrote The names of Pestalozzi, Froebel and Spencer shine with no less brilliance than the names of the greatest inventors of the twentieth century. For they discovered more than the unknown forces of nature; they discovered the unknown half of humanity: children. His Orphan's Home in Warsaw became a model institution and exerted influence on the educational process in other orphanages of the same type.

The Quaker school run in , Co Kildare in the 18th century had students from as far away as Bordeaux (where there was a substantial Irish émigré population), the Caribbean and Norway. Notable pupils included Edmund Burke and Napper Tandy. Sgoil Éanna, or in English St Enda's was founded in 1908 by Pádraig Pearse on Montessori principles. Its former assistant headmaster Thomas MacDonagh and other teachers including Pearse; games master Con Colbert; Pearse's brother, Willie, the art teacher, and Joseph Plunkett, and occasional lecturer in English, were executed by the British after the 1916 Rising. Pearse and MacDonagh were two of the seven leaders who signed the Irish Declaration of Independence. Pearse's book The Murder Machine was a denunciation of the English school system of the time and a declaration of his own educational principles.

In Sweden, an early proponent of progressive education was Alva Myrdal, who with her husband Gunnar co-wrote Kris i befolkningsfrågan (1934), a most influential program for the social-democratic hegemony (1932-1976) popularly known as " Folkhemmet". School reforms went through government reports in the 1940s and trials in the 1950s, resulting in the introduction in 1962 of public comprehensive schools ("grundskola") instead of the previously separated parallel schools for theoretical and non-theoretical education.

The ideas from Reddie's Abbotsholme spread to schools such as Bedales School (1893), King Alfred School, London (1898) and St Christopher School, Letchworth (1915), as well as all the Friends' schools, Steiner Waldorf schools and those belonging to the Round Square Conference. The King Alfred School was radical for its time in that it provided a secular education and that boys and girls were educated together. Alexander Sutherland Neill believed children should achieve self-determination and should be encouraged to think critically rather than blindly obeying. He implemented his ideas with the founding of Summerhill School in 1921. Neill believed that children learn better when they are not compelled to attend lessons. The school was also managed democratically, with regular meetings to determine school rules. Pupils had equal voting rights with school staff.

Early practitioners

Fröbel's student Margarethe Schurz founded the first kindergarten in the United States at Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1856, and she also inspired Elizabeth Peabody, who went on to found the first English-speaking kindergarten in the United States - the language at Schurz's kindergarten had been German, to serve an immigrant community - in Boston in 1860. This paved the way for the concept's spread in the USA. The German émigré Adolph Douai had also founded a kindergarten in Boston in 1859, but was obliged to close it after only a year. By 1866, however, he was founding others in New York City.

William Heard Kilpatrick (1871-1965) was a pupil of Dewey and one of the most effective practitioners of the concept as well as the more adept at proliferating the progressive education movement and spreading word of the works of Dewey. He is especially well known for his "project method of teaching". This developed the progressive education notion that students were to be engaged and taught so that their knowledge may be directed to society for a socially useful need. Like Dewey he also felt that students should be actively engaged in their learning rather than actively disengaged with the simple reading and regurgitation of material.

The most famous early practitioner of progressive education was Francis Parker; its best-known spokesperson was the philosopher John Dewey. In 1875 Francis Parker became superintendent of schools in Quincy, Massachusetts, after spending two years in Germany studying emerging educational trends on the continent. Parker was opposed to rote learning, believing that there was no value in knowledge without understanding. He argued instead schools should encourage and respect the child's creativity. Parker's Quincy System called for child-centered and experience-based learning. He replaced the traditional curriculum with integrated learning units based on core themes related to the knowledge of different disciplines. He replaced traditional readers, spellers and grammar books with children's own writing, literature, and teacher prepared materials. In 1883 Parker left Massachusetts to become Principal of the Cook County Normal School in Chicago, a school that also served to train teachers in Parker's methods. In 1894 Parker's Talks on Pedagogics, which drew heavily on the thinking of Fröbel, Pestalozzi and Herbart, became one of the first American writings on education to gain international fame.

That same year, philosopher John Dewey moved from the University of Michigan to the newly established University of Chicago where he became chair of the department of philosophy, psychology and education. He and his wife enrolled their children in Parker's school before founding their own school two years later.

Whereas Parker started with practice and then moved to theory, Dewey began with hypotheses and then devised methods and curricula to test them. By the time Dewey moved to Chicago at the age of thirty-five, he had already published two books on psychology and applied psychology. He had become dissatisfied with philosophy as pure speculation and was seeking ways to make philosophy directly relevant to practical issues. Moving away from an early interest in Hegel, Dewey proceeded to reject all forms of dualism and dichotomy in favor of a philosophy of experience as a series of unified wholes in which everything can be ultimately related.

In 1896, John Dewey opened what he called the laboratory school to test his theories and their sociological implications. With Dewey as the director and his wife as principal, the University of Chicago Laboratory school, was dedicated "to discover in administration, selection of subject-matter, methods of learning, teaching, and discipline, how a school could become a cooperative community while developing in individuals their own capacities and satisfy their own needs." (Cremin, 136) For Dewey the two key goals of developing a cooperative community and developing individuals' own capacities were not at odds; they were necessary to each other. This unity of purpose lies at the heart of the progressive education philosophy. In 1912, Dewey sent out students of his philosophy to found The Park School of Buffalo and The Park School of Baltimore to put it into practice. These schools operate to this day within a similar progressive approach.

At Columbia, Dewey worked with other educators such as Charles Eliot and Abraham Flexner to help bring progressivism into the mainstream of American education. In 1917 Columbia established the Lincoln School of Teachers College "as a laboratory for the working out of an elementary and secondary curriculum which shall eliminate obsolete material and endeavor to work up in usable form material adapted to the needs of modern living." (Cremin, 282) Based on Flexner's demand that the modern curriculum "include nothing for which an affirmative case can not be made out" (Cremin, 281) the new school organized its activities around four fundamental fields: science, industry, aesthetics and civics. The Lincoln School built its curriculum around "units of work" that reorganized traditional subject matter into forms embracing the development of children and the changing needs of adult life. The first and second grades carried on a study of community life in which they actually built a city. A third grade project growing out of the day-to-day life of the nearby Hudson River became one of the most celebrated units of the school, a unit on boats, which under the guidance of its legendary teacher Miss Curtis, became an entrée into history, geography, reading, writing, arithmetic, science, art and literature. Each of the units was broadly enough conceived so that different children could concentrate on different aspects depending on their own interests and needs. Each of the units called for widely diverse student activities, and each sought to deal in depth with some critical aspect of contemporary civilization. Finally each unit engaged children working together cooperatively and also provided opportunities for individual research and exploration.

In 1924, Agnes de Lima, the lead writer on education for The New Republic and , published a collection of her articles on progressive education as a book, titled Our Enemy the Child.

In 1918, the National Education Association, representing superintendents and administrators in smaller districts across the country, issued its report "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education." It emphasized the education of students in terms of health, a command of fundamental processes, worthy home membership, vocation, citizenship, worthy use of leisure, and ethical character. They emphasized life adjustment and reflected the social efficiency model of progressive education.

From 1919 to 1955, the Progressive Education Association founded by Stanwood Cobb and others worked to promote a more student-centered approach to education. During the Great Depression the organization conducted the Eight-Year Study, evaluating the effects of progressive programs. More than 1500 students over four years were compared to an equal number of carefully matched students at conventional schools. When they reached college, the experimental students were found to equal or surpass traditionally educated students on all outcomes: grades, extracurricular participation, dropout rates, intellectual curiosity, and resourcefulness. Moreover, the study found that the more the school departed from the traditional college preparatory program, the better was the record of the graduates. (Kohn, Schools, 232)

By mid-century, many public school programs had also adopted elements of progressive curriculum. At mid-century Dewey believed that progressive education had "not really penetrated and permeated the foundations of the educational institution."(Kohn, Schools, 6,7) As the influence of progressive pedagogy grew broader and more diffuse, practitioners began to vary their application of progressive principles. As varying interpretations and practices made evaluation of progressive reforms more difficult to assess, critics began to propose alternative approaches.

The seeds of the debate over progressive education can be seen in the differences of Parker and Dewey. These have to do with how much and by whom curriculum should be worked out from grade to grade, how much the child's emerging interests should determine classroom activities, the importance of child-centered vs. societal-centered learning, the relationship of community building to individual growth, and especially the relationship between emotion, thought and experience.

In 1955, the publication of Rudolf Flesch's Why Johnny Can't Read leveled criticism of reading programs at the progressive emphasis on reading in context. The conservative McCarthy era raised questions about the liberal ideas at the roots of the progressive reforms. The launching of Sputnik in 1957 at the height of the Cold War gave rise to a number of intellectually competitive approaches to disciplinary knowledge, such as BSCS biology PSSC physics, led by university professors such as Jerome Bruner and Jerrold Zacharias.

Some Cold War reforms incorporated elements of progressivism. For example, the work of Zacharias and Bruner was based in the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget and incorporated many of Dewey's ideas of experiential education. Bruner's analysis of developmental psychology became the core of a pedagogical movement known as constructivism, which argues that the child is an active participant in making meaning and must be engaged in the progress of education for learning to be effective. This psychological approach has deep connections to the work of both Parker and Dewey and led to a resurgence of their ideas in second half of the century.

In 1965, President Johnson inaugurated the Great Society and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act suffused public school programs with funds for sweeping education reforms. At the same time the influx of federal funding also gave rise to demands for accountability and the behavioral objectives approach of Robert F. Mager and others foreshadowed the No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2002. Against these critics eloquent spokespersons stepped forward in defense of the progressive tradition. The Open Classroom movement, led by Herb Kohl and George Dennison, recalled many of Parker's child centered reforms.

The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a rise and decline in the number of progressive schools. There were several reasons for the decline:

Demographics: As the baby boom passed, traditional classrooms were no longer as over-enrolled, reducing demand for alternatives.

The economy: The oil crisis and recession made shoestring schools less viable.

Times changed: With the ending of the Vietnam War, social activism waned.

Co-optation: Many schools were co-opted by people who didn't believe in the original mission.

Centralization: The ongoing centralization of school districts

Non-implementation: Schools failed to implement a model of shared governance

Interpersonal dynamics: Disagreement over school goals, poor group process skills, lack of critical dialogue, and fear of assertive leadership

Progressive education has been viewed as an alternative to the test-oriented instruction legislated by the No Child Left Behind educational funding act. Alfie Kohn has been an outspoken critic of the No Child Left Behind Act and a passionate defender of the progressive tradition.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was one of the most effective practitioners of the concept of progressive education. He expanded Santiniketan, which is a small town near Bolpur in the Birbhum district of West Bengal, India, approximately 160 km north of Kolkata. He de-emphasized textbook learning in favor of varied learning resources from nature. The emphasis here was on self-motivation rather than on discipline, and on fostering intellectual curiosity rather than competitive excellence. There were courses on a great variety of cultures, and study programs devoted to China, Japan, and the Middle East. He was of the view that education should be a "joyous exercise of our inventive and constructive energies that help us to build up character."

Seikatsu tsuzurikata is a grassroots movement in Japan that has many parallels to the progressive education movement, but it developed completely independently, beginning in the late 1920s. The Japanese progressive educational movement was one of the stepping stones to the modernization of Japan and it has resonated down to the present.

Bernstein, Richard J. "John Dewey", Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Macmillan, 1967, 380-385

Brehony, Kevin J. (2001). "From the particular to the general, the continuous to the discontinuous: progressive education revisited". History of Education. 30 (5): 413-432. doi:10.1080/00467600110064717. S2CID 143416550.

Bruner, Jerome. The Process of Education (New York: Random House, 1960)

Bruner, Jerome. The Relevance of Education (New York: Norton, 1971)

Cappel, Constance, Utopian Colleges, New York: Peter Lang, 1999.

Cohen, Ronald D., and Raymond A. Mohl. The paradox of progressive education: The Gary Plan and urban schooling (1979)

Cremin, Lawrence. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (New York: Knopf, 1962); The standard scholarly history

Dewey, John. Dewey on Education, edited by Martin Dworkin. New York: Teachers college Press, 1959

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. (New York: Free Press, 1944.)

Dewey, John. Experience and Nature. (New York: Dover, 1958.)

Fallace, Thomas. Race and the Origins of Progressive Education, 1880-1929 (2015)

Knoester, Matthew. Democratic Education in Practice: Inside the Mission Hill School. New York: Teachers College Press, 2012.

Kohn, Alfie. The Case Against Standardized Testing (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 2000)

Kohn, Alfie. The Schools Our Children Deserve (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999)

Mager, Robert F. Preparing Behavioral Objectives (Atlanta: Center for Effective Instruction, 1969)

Pratt, Caroline. I Learn from Children (New York: HarperPerennial/HarperCollins, 1948; republished by Grove Atlantic in 2014)

Ravitch, Dianne. Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform (New York, Simon and Schuster, 2000)

Snyder, Jeffrey Aaron. "Progressive Education in Black and White: Rereading Carter G. Woodson's Miseducation of the Negro." History of Education Quarterly 55#3 (2015): 273-293.

Sutinen, Ari. "Social Reconstructionist Philosophy of Education and George S. Counts-observations on the ideology of indoctrination in socio-critical educational thinking." International Journal of Progressive Education 10#1 (2014).

Blossing, Ulf, Gunn Imsen, and Lejf Moos. "Progressive Education and New Governance in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden." The Nordic Education Model (Springer Netherlands, 2014) pp 133-154.

Brehony, Kevin J. (1997). "An 'undeniable' and 'disastrous' Influence? John Dewey and English Education (1895-1939)". Oxford Review of Education. 23 (4): 427-445. doi:10.1080/0305498970230401.

Christou, Theodore Michael. Progressive Education: Revisioning and Reframing Ontario's Public Schools, 1919-1942 (2013)

Hughes, John Patrick. "Theory into practice in Australian progressive education: the Enmore Activity School." History of Education Review 44#1 (2015).

Keskin, Yusuf. "Progressive Education in Turkey: Reports of John Dewey and his Successors." International Journal of Progressive Education 10#3 (2014).

Knoll, Michael. "The Project Method - Its Origin and International Influence". In: Progressive Education Across the Continents. A Handbook, ed. Hermann Röhrs and Volker Lenhart. New York: Lang 1995. pp. 307-318.

Graham, Patricia Albjerg. Progressive Education from Arcady to Academe: A History of the Progressive Education Association, 1919-1955 (1967)

Reese, William J. "The origins of progressive education." History of Education Quarterly 41#1 (2001): 1-24.

Wraga, William G. "Condescension and critical sympathy: Historians of education on progressive education in the United States and England." Paedagogica Historica 50#1-2 (2014): 59-75.

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Progressive education, or educational progressivism, is a pedagogical movement that began in the late 19th century and has persisted in various forms to the present. In Europe, progressive education took the form of the New Education Movement.

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The Enlightenment: Crash Course European History #18

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Education during the Enlightenment: Public Education and Social Reform

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Education during the Enlightenment: Public Education and Social Reform

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education - Education during the Enlightenment

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education - education - Education during the Enlightenment: The writings of the late 17th-century empiricist John Locke on philosophy, government, and education were especially influential during the Enlightenment. In the field of education, Locke is significant both for his general theory of knowle…

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The Renaissance Period Explained | All You Need To Know

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The Influence of the Renaissance on CurrentTeaching Methods

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The Influence of the Renaissance on CurrentTeaching Methods

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humanism, system of education and mode of inquiry that originated in northern Italy during the 13th and 14th centuries and later spread through continental Europe and England. The term is alternatively applied to a variety of Western beliefs, methods, and philosophies that place central emphasis on the human realm. Also known as Renaissance humanism, the historical program was so broadly and profoundly influential that it is one of the chief reasons why the Renaissance is viewed as a distinct historical period. Indeed, though the word Renaissance is of more recent coinage, the fundamental idea of that period as one of renewal and reawakening is humanistic in origin. But humanism sought its own philosophical bases in far earlier times and, moreover, continued to exert some of its power long after the end of the Renaissance.

Origin and meaning of the term humanism

The ideal of humanitas

The history of the term humanism is complex but enlightening. It was first employed (as humanismus) by 19th-century German scholars to designate the Renaissance emphasis on Classical studies in education. These studies were pursued and endorsed by educators known, as early as the late 15th century, as umanisti-that is, professors or students of Classical literature. The word umanisti derives from the studia humanitatis, a course of Classical studies that, in the early 15th century, consisted of grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy. The studia humanitatis were held to be the equivalent of the Greek . Their name was itself based on the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero's concept of , an educational and political ideal that was the intellectual basis of the entire movement. Renaissance humanism in all its forms defined itself in its straining toward this ideal. No discussion of humanism, therefore, can have validity without an understanding of humanitas.

Humanitas meant the development of human virtue, in all its forms, to its fullest extent. The term thus implied not only such qualities as are associated with the modern word humanity-understanding, benevolence, compassion, mercy-but also such more assertive characteristics as fortitude, judgment, prudence, eloquence, and even love of honour. Consequently, the possessor of humanitas could not be merely a sedentary and isolated philosopher or man of letters but was of necessity a participant in active life. Just as action without insight was held to be aimless and barbaric, insight without action was rejected as barren and imperfect. Humanitas called for a fine balance of action and contemplation, a balance born not of compromise but of complementarity.

The goal of such fulfilled and balanced virtue was political, in the broadest sense of the word. The purview of Renaissance humanism included not only the education of the young but also the guidance of adults (including rulers) via philosophical poetry and strategic rhetoric. It included not only realistic social criticism but also utopian hypotheses, not only painstaking reassessments of history but also bold reshapings of the future. In short, humanism called for the comprehensive reform of culture, the transfiguration of what humanists termed the passive and ignorant society of the "dark" ages into a new order that would reflect and encourage the grandest human potentialities. Humanism had an evangelical dimension: it sought to project humanitas from the individual into the state at large.

The wellspring of humanitas was Classical literature. Greek and Roman thought, available in a flood of rediscovered or newly translated manuscripts, provided humanism with much of its basic structure and method. For Renaissance humanists, there was nothing dated or outworn about the writings of Aristotle, Cicero, or Livy. Compared with the typical productions of medieval Christianity, these pagan works had a fresh, radical, almost avant-garde tonality. Indeed, recovering the classics was to humanism tantamount to recovering reality. Classical philosophy, rhetoric, and history were seen as models of proper method-efforts to come to terms, systematically and without preconceptions of any kind, with perceived experience. Moreover, Classical thought considered ethics qua ethics, politics qua politics: it lacked the inhibiting dualism occasioned in medieval thought by the often-conflicting demands of secularism and Christian spirituality. Classical virtue, in examples of which the literature abounded, was not an abstract essence but a quality that could be tested in the forum or on the battlefield. Finally, Classical literature was rich in eloquence. In particular, humanists considered Cicero to be the pattern of refined and copious discourse, as well as the model of eloquence combined with wise statesmanship. In eloquence humanists found far more than an exclusively aesthetic quality. As an effective means of moving leaders or fellow citizens toward one political course or another, eloquence was akin to pure power. Humanists cultivated rhetoric, consequently, as the medium through which all other virtues could be communicated and fulfilled.

Humanism, then, may be accurately defined as that Renaissance movement that had as its central focus the ideal of humanitas. The narrower definition of the Italian term umanisti notwithstanding, all the Renaissance writers who cultivated humanitas, and all their direct "descendants," may be correctly termed humanists.

Other uses

It is small wonder that a term as broadly allusive as humanism should be subject to a wide variety of applications. Of these (excepting the historical movement described above) there are three basic types: humanism as Classicism, humanism as referring to the modern concept of the humanities, and humanism as human-centredness.

Accepting the notion that Renaissance humanism was simply a return to the Classics, some historians and philologists have reasoned that Classical revivals occurring anywhere in history should be called humanistic. St. Augustine, Alcuin, and the scholars of 12th-century Chartres have thus been referred to as humanists. In this sense the term can also be used self-consciously, as in the New Humanism movement in literary criticism led by Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More in the early 20th century.

The word humanities, which like the word umanisti derived from the Latin studia humanitatis, is often used to designate the nonscientific scholarly disciplines: language, literature, rhetoric, philosophy, art history, and so forth. Thus, it is customary to refer to scholars in these fields as humanists and to their activities as humanistic.

Humanism and related terms are frequently applied to modern doctrines and techniques that are based on the centrality of human experience. In the 20th century the pragmatic humanism of Ferdinand C.S. Schiller, the Christian humanism of Jacques Maritain, and the movement known as secular humanism, though differing from each other significantly in content, all showed this anthropocentric emphasis.

Not only is such a large assortment of definitions confusing, but the definitions themselves are often redundant or impertinent. There is no reason to call all Classical revivals "humanistic" when the word Classical suffices. To say that professors in the many disciplines known as the humanities are humanists is to compound vagueness with vagueness, for these disciplines have long since ceased to have or even aspire to a common rationale. The definition of humanism as anthropocentricity or human-centredness has a firmer claim to correctness. For obvious reasons, however, it is confusing to apply this word to Classical literature.

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Humanism | Definition, Principles, History, & Influence

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Humanism, system of education and mode of inquiry that originated in northern Italy during the 13th and 14th centuries and later spread through western Europe. The term is alternatively applied to a variety of Western beliefs, methods, and philosophies that place central emphasis on the human realm.

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Education during the Italian Renaissance was carefully programmed to create students who were well-balanced and embodied the values of their society. What made this educational program so successful?

A university class, Bologna (1350s) (Image: By Laurentius de Voltolina - The Yorck Project (2002)/Public domain)

Any society, including ours, institutionalizes its fundamental values and principles through systems of education. The system of Renaissance education was so successful that it survived well into the 20th century. Up until the First World War, those who enjoyed elite education could know they read the same books, could even complete one another's Latin and Greek quotations. It was believed that with the knowledge of greats-the ancient writers-you could be proconsul of an empire, a captain of industry, a general, or an admiral. You could do anything as long as you had the knowledge of classical antiquity and a good, correct Latin style behind you.

Basic Latin Grammar During the Renaissance

How did this belief develop, and how was it practiced during the Renaissance? Initially, boys were taught at home. Those in the elite classes had tutors within their households, and in these households, tutors were often extremely respected individuals. At about the age of five, boys were introduced to basic Latin grammar. When grammar was discussed, it was always Latin grammar. The vernacular was not taught as a language at all. It was believed that you would learn your native tongue at home, through your nurse, through household conversation, through interaction with your friends. But Latin grammar was taught because Latin was to be an alternate first language. It was to be part of your general approach to life, and it was to be the language with which you communicated with those of equal rank-the language that was seen as the most subtle and appropriate for high thought and high activity.

This is a transcript from the video series The Italian Renaissance. Watch it now, on The Great Courses.

The standard Latin grammars from antiquity were continuously used-Donatus, Priscian-those that had educated the ancient Romans were used to educate Renaissance boys a millennium later. These texts were used as a kind of example, as a series of collections of phrases, sentences, and words that could then be applied as the child began to develop his vocabulary and style. The early texts were things like Caesar's Commentaries -still one of the basic texts in the teaching of Latin today, and the Vulgate, St. Jerome's translation of the Bible.

Renaissance Education-More Difficult Texts

After a boy had acquired enough knowledge to read Caesar and the Vulgate relatively easily, more difficult texts were added. These were often poetic, such as the Aeneid of Virgil. The Aeneid was seen as not just a poem, but as a mythological history of the Italian people, the foundation of Rome, and the mythological connection with the ancient Trojans, as well as great poetry.

By the time a student had completed a comfortable reading of the Aeneid and some of the basic and simpler prose orations of Cicero, it was possible then to move on to more difficult and complex texts, as young teenagers, very difficult Latin texts-for example, the historian Sallust would be added. The difficulty of style and the complexity of the ideas would drive the student to think a little bit more deeply about some of the ideas present in these books.

Learn more about the features of late medieval culture in Italy that paved the way for the Renaissance

Morally Ambiguous Authors During the Renaissance

Building on this foundation, then the morally ambiguous authors were added once it was seen that a boy had reached an age where he could make some form of moral distinction. In this instance, Ovid probably was the most important. His Metamorphoses was one of the most read books of the Middle Ages as well as the Renaissance and whose wonderful stories were easy to learn. At the same time, they provided a kind of frame of reference for mythological ideas that galvanized art as well as the imagination.

By the mid-15th century, Greek was introduced as well. It was seen as necessary because so many of the ancient Latin authors were dependent upon, and knew, Greek-Cicero being a classic example. Cicero not only referred to Greek texts constantly, but he actually spoke in Greek. Greek, then, was seen as important because it was a foundation for the idea of Classical wisdom and learning.

Learn more about how Lorenzo Ghiberti developed a new style that we call Renaissance

Mathematics and the Sciences During the Renaissance

Other subjects were introduced as well by the time the boy reached 12 or 13 years of age. Some of these were the ones that we associate with a modern curriculum but from a very different perspective. Science, per se, was not stressed during the Renaissance; nevertheless, science was taught because the ancients were interested in science. In particular, a book that every boy read was Pliny's Historia Naturalis, which contained not only wonderful stories of science and geography but everything from the making of papyrus, to the nature of the inhabitants south of the equator, where the Romans didn't venture.

Arithmetic was important because it was a practical subject. Many of the boys in elite households, especially in mercantile cities like Florence or Venice, had to know arithmetic because they were going to be merchants. They would be responsible for large mercantile organizations, therefore, they had to make sure their accounts balanced. Arithmetic was taught and basic abacus use was applied to make sure that some of the more complicated sums could be done quickly.

Geometry was taught as well, but it was seen in two ways: It was seen as a practical subject so that a boy who might have ambitions to be a military commander could trace the trajectory of a cannonball, could make diagrams of a field of battle, and estimate the distances from one line to another, or from one part of his army to another. But geometry was also seen as an abstraction and an important abstraction. Geometry was seen as absolute truth, something that reflected almost God's plan for humanity because the truths of geometry are absolute, as the truths of religion.

Many boys learned astronomy as well because, in the first instance, it was necessary to understand astrology. Astrology was something of a Renaissance obsession. The belief that you could learn something about yourself and perhaps even about the future by studying the stars was strongly believed in the ancient world, and Renaissance scholars adopted this idea. Astrology was also important for understanding classical poetry, where many allusions are based upon astrological images. But astronomy was also practiced for its own sake, and by the early decades of the 16th century, Nicholas Copernicus published De Revolutionibus-On the Revolution of the Celestial Bodies. His book provided the precondition for Galileo in the next century and determined that the sun had to be the center of the universe, rather than the earth.

Copernicus and his ideas didn't arrive from the aether. They came from a relatively sophisticated knowledge of how the heavens moved, and we have to credit that to a Renaissance education.

Learn more about the civic life of Florence

Common Questions About Education in the Renaissance

This article was updated on August 27, 2020

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Any society, including ours, institutionalizes its fundamental values and principles through systems of education. The system of Renaissance education was so successful that it survived well into the 20th century. Up until the First World War, those who enjoyed elite education could know they read the same books, could even complete one another's Latin and Greek quotations.

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What is Classical Education by Dr. Christopher Perrin

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18 Pros and Cons of the Classical Education Model and Curriculum

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18 Pros and Cons of the Classical Education Model and Curriculum

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The classical model of education could be compared to a large museum. You can see numerous rooms that are filled with exhibits, artifacts, and untold wonders about our past. Studying these items can then lead to new insights for the individual that encourages them to retain the information they've just learned.

The educational system emphasizes truth, goodness, and essentials like grammar, logic, and arithmetic. You would include items like music, geometry rhetoric, and astronomy into the curriculum as well. Using the classic education model also means that students would study Latin.

When examining the pros and cons of the classical education model and curriculum, it is evident immediately to see what it is such an effective approach. Children learn in three different stages regardless of their personal style in a method called "trivium." The processes lead to a lifetime of learning where wisdom and knowledge come together harmoniously.

List of the Pros of the Classical Education Model and Curriculum

1. It encourages every student to engage with the learning process.
The classical education model reaches children in unique ways based on their physical development. Students in the K-6 grades learn more about grammar here because they find it easy to memorize rhymes, songs, and chants to retain information. Kids who can remember specific tunes can remember lessons for a lifetime. Moving into grades 7-9, the logic stage occurs because this time is when children typically challenge facts and the authority of others.

When the rhetoric stage occurs in grades 10-12, the classical education model encourages students to become independent thinkers. The emphasis shifts to their ability to study, practice, and communicate with others. This skill allows them to understand the art of effective writing and persuasive speaking.

2. This approach offers centuries of results to study.
The classical education model is as ancient as our recorded human history. Many of its core elements, including honesty, integrity, and courage work to encourage deeper thinking processes. The goal of this approach is to provide students more than an option to memorize algebraic formulas or remember specific dates from history. It is an educational system that works to explain the "why" component of learning.

Students who graduate from a classical educational curriculum are adept in numerous subjects. Math, science, reading, writing, the fine arts, and Latin are all part of their being. This combination of factors creates people who are thoughtful, gracious, and knowledgeable in their reasoning and logic.

3. Students receive a foundation of usable information.
Despite there being a lack of specialization in this curriculum, students who go through the classical education model have a foundation of usable information. They can take the lessons learned and apply them in a variety of ways. It is not unusual for kids to grow up being artists, musicians, or writers because of the heavy emphasis on logic, rhetoric, and grammar that you see in this system.

Some students might struggle to memorize facts, but kids with dyslexia or other learning disabilities can work on memorizing core information. When they do, then that data becomes an asset that is usable in other areas of life.

4. It passes down our knowledge to the next generation.
The first (and arguably most important) objective of a classical education is to pass along knowledge to the next generation. This process is how humans can preserve their traditions and culture. It's a system of progressive education that focuses on the flaws of the past so that they can be corrected in the present or the future. Although some might argue that this system ignores the progress made by our forefathers, we get the chance to create a family tree that lets everyone feel connected to those who came before - or those that will come after.

5. The classical education curriculum is a broad-based system.
When there is excessive specialization in the educational system, then you create people who have knowledge and wisdom for one field only. If asked what they could do in other areas of life, these graduates would be largely ignorant of their new expectations. That's why there is such an emphasis on retraining when layoffs occur or industries fold. The classical education model suggests that by offering a well-rounded curriculum from the start, it is possible for people to transition between opportunities with greater ease because their knowledge has less fragmentation.

It's the difference between mastering principles or acquiring skills.

6. The classical education model affirms an overarching goal.
The center of the educational process must have a specific outcome in mind for the learning process to be beneficial to the student. This advantage gets to the heart of what makes schools like this unique. Even though there are debates and disagreements about how to implement this component of the curriculum, virtually every provider agrees with the idea that a child's education is about human formation and transformation. Instead of trying to develop clones that turn into adults who lose their critical thinking processes, this approach sees the idea of making an informed choice as one of the most vital skills that anyone can develop.

7. There are opportunities for personalization.
The classical education model might focus on facts and figures, but there is still a lot of room for personalization. You will find many families taking this approach while reading books from C.S. Lewis, Douglas Bond, or J.R.R. Tolkien. Families can have conversations about politics, theology, and other topics because this approach encourages everyone to share ideas in a safe environment. When parents have a healthy, respectful debate when differences are present in their lives, then their children can see and apply the concepts learned so that they can do the same thing in their lives one day.

8. The classical education model requires more accountability.
You will not find students earning grades that they did not achieve simply because no child gets left behind. Students earn their education when this curriculum is the foundation of their learning. You must prove that you have the facts straight, language memorized, and debate ready before you get to proceed to the next lesson. If you're unable to prove that you've retained the knowledge, then you stay put until you have the ability to create that outcome. This process is why many argue that the classical approach is the best one. There is no room for objectivity because everyone must pass the same set of standards to make progress.

9. It is an entertaining approach to learning.
Alex Ross and Brigit Katz offer a lighter advantage to consider when looking at the pros and cons of the classical education model and curriculum. "There's a reason why so many movies and TV shows are based on events of the ancient world," the pair writes. "The history of Greece and Rome can be very entertaining."

When students engage with the materials they need to learn, then it is easier to retain the information needed for a successful outcome. There are some incredible stories from the past, including the times when Emperor Nero would force people to sit through musicals for so long that their only recourse was to pretend to be dead. By remembering who we are and where we've been, it is a lot easier to see where we need to go.

10. The goal of each subject is to foster the humanity of the students.
The classical education curriculum removes the factory approach. It attempts to show students the reasoning behind each action that we take. That process makes it easier to understand why specific reactions occur with our choices. Even though some students can struggle here because it requires them to truly reason instead of memorizing theorems and application steps for some subjects. You're not jumping through hoops as some critics might suggest. The goal is to have a grasp on the lessons learned by our forefathers so that there is active wonderment about the rest of the world.

List of the Cons of the Classical Education Model and Curriculum

1. This approach creates division when paired with the modern educational system.
The classical education model is not what most schools offer to their communities. Some administrators might even say that it goes against the agenda of the public educational system. As Liberty Classical Academy puts it, "This [statement] is accurate as it cultivates excellence rather than conformity, seeking not to conform, but rather reform the way education is practiced."

The classical education model challenges children to leverage their natural abilities at each physical developmental stage of childhood. Students who come from this setting can be better equipped to manage a variety of challenges, but they also might not have the skills needed to get into a new job right away.

2. It is an approach that does not offer specialization.
You will not see any standardized tests in the classical education model. There are no ways to specialize in this system to pursue a specific career. The goal of this approach is to teach students how to think, which encourages them how to live a good life. Anyone can take a certification class after graduation to create new job opportunities for themselves. This curriculum believes that you must know how to engage your logic and creative centers with your reading and writing before you're an effective communicator.

3. This curriculum can change how students approach their first language.
Students who go through the classical education model often experience difficulties when using their first language. This disadvantage is especially prevalent when it is English. Learning Latin or Greek reduces the clarity of other languages because the structures are so different. Why use two words when only one will do?

You will find long sentences where every adjective or adverb possible is used. The goal is to leave nothing to the imagination. Although this issue is not universal, it can be problematic for those who grow up with aspirations for writing.

4. There can be deficiencies in mathematics and science.
When schools take the classical education model and curriculum over a modern approach, then there can be deficiencies in math and science. The ancient approach skips over these subjects because they were in their infancy during the stages of development. Even today, the idea is that you can become a great thinker and figure out the concepts after graduation because you've got a strong foundation to build upon for that work. If you are passionate about these subjects, then your experience in school might not be as beneficial as expected.

The quadrivium has four "liberal arts" elements that fall outside of the trivium in this approach. That means some schools might see problems in their music, astronomy, and geometry classes as well. There are some ways to fix this approach so that the rules of the mathematics language are learned, but there is a prevalence of students to lag behind after graduation from this curriculum.

5. The curriculum is very rigid in its approach.
There is little room for flexibility if the classical education model is the preferred approach to learning. Some kids need legitimate accommodations because of learning disabilities, physical challenges, or other individualistic requirements. The classical approach is a tightly-controlled process that might offer some accountability, but it also has the power to stifle chances for some children to learn. Some kids learn better by going down rabbit trails than they do learning a series of rote facts that require memorization until they reach the seventh grade.

6. There is a performance element to the classical educational model.
Proponents of the classical education model talk about the benefits of not going through standardized tests, but that doesn't eliminate the requirement for specific performance. Kids learn through songs, chants, and rhyme using this method - and some children do not like that kind of attention. It makes them feel embarrassed, especially if they can't remember something and the rest of their friends do.

Sallie Borrink talks about her hesitation in embracing this model because her daughter "does not like to perform in any way, shape, or form." The little girl backed out of being in a wedding because she didn't want people looking at her. If a child isn't interested in singing or chanting, then this curriculum has no way to help.

7. Perfection is the standard for children in this system.
The goal of the classical education model is to teach specific facts to students in a way that helps them to recall the information later in life. That means the only standard for success with this approach is perfection. Kids that are gifted and talented today often struggle with the idea of perfectionism as it is. Telling them that they're failures because they forgot one fact can have a tremendous influence on their self-esteem throughout life. If you judge kids equally without taking into account the possibility of learning differences, then only a handful of children will ever meet that standard.

Think about the people through history that you can name as being the greatest philosophers, artists, thinkers, and scientists. That's the result of the classical educational model. Everyone who doesn't achieve success gets forgotten.

8. There are religious elements heavily influencing the educational process.
The classical education developed during the time when Christianity was conquering Europe. The Medieval thinkers began to refine it to create the three paths that we use today. That's why you will find most private providers of this curriculum coming from religious institutions. Although you don't need to follow the spiritual guidelines often outlined in this approach, there are influences that could be bothersome to individuals that come from a different faith.

Bradley Green exemplifies this disadvantage with a post titled "How Classical Education Shapes Us as God Intended" for The Gospel Coalition. "One of the tragedies of much of contemporary education is a failure to retain the importance of language," he writes. "Classical schools are trying to recover the centrality of the trivium as essential to true education.
Conclusion
When we examine the pros and cons of using the classical education model and curriculum, the emphasis on facts and didactic instruction can lead some students toward success.

Charles Sykes, author of Dumbing Down Our Kids, tells the story of an eighth-grade student named Andrea. She was eager to learn about science, but her school emphasized creativity over fact-based learning. Her goal was to learn real concepts instead of drawing pictures of scientists and picking up cereal with tongue depressors. When she wrote a letter to the school to complain, the district expelled her for being disrespectful.

Supporters also look to E.D. Hirsch and his book Cultural Literacy. He cites an article from the Washington Post where only two students could identify Thomas Jefferson and one could place the date of the Declaration of Independence. No one knew when the U.S. Civil War was fought.

The danger in using this approach is in the assumptions that get made. Those who provide this curriculum often see themselves as rebels. The reality is that a fusion of concepts is often necessary for students to receive a diverse, well-rounded education.

Blog Post Author Credentials
Louise Gaille is the author of this post. She received her B.A. in Economics from the University of Washington. In addition to being a seasoned writer, Louise has almost a decade of experience in Banking and Finance. If you have any suggestions on how to make this post better, then go here to contact our team.

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18 Pros and Cons of the Classical Education Model and Curriculum

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The classical model of education could be compared to a large museum. You can see

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Timeline of the Renewal in Classical Education

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Timeline of the Renewal in Classical Education

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Timeline of the Renewal in Classical Education

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Timeline of the Renewal in Classical Education The Seven Liberal Arts and the Canons of Great BooksFor millennia, classical and later Jewish, Christian, and Muslim educators from vast areas of the world recognized the seven liberal arts and the canons of great texts as central to the formation of vi…