Progressivism may be regarded as the outcome of the influence of pragmatism in education. The term progressive education was first used in 1919 while founding the progressive education associated in Washington, D.C. being predominantly child-centered , this association embraced the following given principles:-
- Freedom to develop naturally.
- Interest the motive of work.
- The teacher, a guide not a task master.
- Scientific study of pupil development.
- Greater attention to all that affects the child’s physical development.
- Cooperation between school and home to meet the needs of child life. The progressive school is a leader in educational movement. It is based on the belief that education be child-centered rather than focused on the teacher or the content area but it should be child-centered, lesson should be derived from students’ interests.
Progressive Education
Progressivism is the development of pragmatism, instrumentalism, and reconstructionalism. It is a broad movement for educational reform in the 20th century.
Progressive education is mainly associated with John Dewey, but it contains many different and often conflicting ideas. In general progressive educators view that the existing schools as too rigid, formal and attached from the real life. They prefer informal
Classroom arrangements and informal relation between the students and the teachers. They also prefer that schools teach the useful subjects and emphasis on “learning by doing” rather than instruction purely from text books. Some place the developing personality of the child at the center of educational thinking and insist, “Teach the child, not the subject.” To run this principle ahead continuously he published a book named “School of Tomorrow
It is the movement in American Education confined to a period between the late 19th and mid 20th century. The term “Progressive education” is generally used to refer only to those educational programmes that grew out of the American reform effort known as the “Progressive Movement”.
The source of movement, however, partly lies in the pedagogy of Jean Jacques Rosseau, Johann Pestalozzi, and Friedrich Froebel.
Progressive education was a pluralistic phenomenon, embracing industrial training, agricultural education, and society education as well as the new techniques of instruction advanced by educational theorists. Postulate of the movement were that children learn best in those experiences in which they have a vital interest and that modes of behaviour are most easily learned by actual performance. The progressivisms, thus, insisted that education must be a continuous reconstruction of living experience based on activity directed by the child. Identifying the individual differences was also considered crucial. Progressive education opposed formalized authoritarian procedure and fostered reorganization of classroom practice and curriculum as well as new attitudes toward individual students.
Progrssivists believe that education should focus on the whole child, rather than on the content or the teacher. This educational philosophy stresses that students should test ideas by active experimentation. Learning is rooted in the questions of learners that arise through experiencing the world.
It is active, not passive. The learner is a problem solver and thinker who makes meaning through his or her individual experience in the physical and cultural context effective teachers provide experiences so that students can learn by doing curriculum content is derived from students interests and questions. The scientific method is used by progressivist educators so that students can study matter and events systematically and first hand. The emphasis is laid on the process how one comes to know.
The progressive education philosophy was established in American from the mid 1920s through the mid 1950s. John Dewey was its foremost proponent whose main aim is that school should improve the way of life of our citizens through experiencing freedom and democracy in schools. Shared decision making, planning of teachers with students, student-selected topics are all aspects. Books are only the tools rather than authority.
Deweyan Progressivism
Deweyan progressivism is based on three central assumptions:-
- The content of the curriculum should be derived from students’ interests rather than from the academic discipline.
- Effective teaching takes into account the whole child and his or her interests and needs.
- Learning is essentially active rather than passive.
Progressivism declares that education is always in the process of development. The core of education is not adjustment to society or to the external world, or to certain perennial standards of goodness, truth, and beauty. It is continual reconstruction of experience. In relation to this John Dewey said, “We thus reach a technical definition of education; It is that reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increase the ability to direct the course of subsequent experience”.
Various Progressive Plans
John Dewey, an early proponent of progressive education, maintained that schools should reflect the life of the society. He suggested that the schools take on such responsibilities as the acculturation of immigrants in addition to merely teaching academic skills. He also proposed a number of specific curricular changes that had strong impact on subsequent reformer.
At his laboratory school in Chicago
Other efforts to recognize the schools included the Gary Plan, developed in Gary , Ind Gary
The Dalton plan (1919), at Dalton Winnetka plan, established (1919) at Winnetka , III., Separated the curriculum into subjects handled by the Dalton
Basic principles of Progressivism
The basic principles of Progressivism are given below:-
1. Education should be active and related to the interest of the child:-
Progressivism thinkers have introduced the concepts of the “whole child” as an answer to what they consider partial interpretations of the child’s nature. In this way, the thought or the concept of the “whole child” brings forward two things,
-We wish at no time to disregard the varied aspects of child life;
- The child as an organism properly responds as one unified whole.
Thus, they give priority to the child-centered schools or education because the teaching process is determined not on the basis of teacher and the content of area but on the basis of individual student. The student should learn, then, because he needs and wants to learn, not necessarily because someone else thinks that he should. It is right of the students to choose and get the education which is related with the life.
2. Learning through problem solving should replace inculcating of subject matter:-
Experience and experiment are the key words for the progressivism method of learning. It is a means by which the child is led from practical issues to theoretical principles from the concrete and sensory to the abstracts and intellectuals, problem solving is not an end.
3. Education should be life itself rather than a preparation for life:-
Intellectual life is learning since it explains and reorganizes the experiences. Therefore school is only the place where the children can learn seriously. Education is the life itself. It has to create a learning environment according to their interest so that they can learn through experience and reconstruction. It should be child centered.
Indeed, education is not simply a means to a future life, but instead represented a full life into itself.
4. School should encourage cooperation rather than competition:-
It rejects the social Darwinists view that society should imitate nature and encourage competition so that the rewards of success will go to those who are fittest to receive them. However, progressivists insist that cooperation is better suited than competition to the biological and social facts of human nature.
They think that competition may create jealousy, and conflict among the students whereas cooperation brings together and feel love, affection for. Since men are social animals, they enjoy and get delight from each others relation. Thus, progressivists emphasis on love cooperation and participation. Love and partnership are more appropriate to education than competition for them.
5. Education and democracy imply each other:-
Democracy is the sharing of experience. This is a system of collective life. The teacher should be a democratic person and give full respect to the needs and interests of the children. He should provide suitable environment for learning to the students. The teacher should encourage them to learn.
Remember that the children make their own curriculum; therefore, he should give full respect to their freedom. The students should be encouraged to learn on the basis of their own interest. Therefore, school should promote student government, the free discussion of ideas, joint pupil staff of planning and the full participation of all the educative experience. This is called the democratic environment of school.
The role of the teacher is to select the appropriate experiences in schooling are interrelated forerunner of interdisciplinary learning. Education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform . Community’s duty to education is a normal one.
6. Truth is always changeable:-
Progrssivists think that truth is possible only after experiment. Truth is man made. So it is nothing, it is an achievement. Thus they consider truth is dynamic not the same always. According to W. James, “Truth is not complete and certain”.
Progressivism and aims of Education
Education means social process whereas philosophy means general principles of education. It must be in touch with the society. Therefore education should fulfill the aims of a person.
According to Dewey,“Education is life. It is laboratory of philosophy and social activities. Education is the process of growth and reconstruction of knowledge. This school is a miniature society. It is life itself, the function of school is not to prepare the child for future life”.
For progressivists, the education should be practical and should be able to develop the new experiences. It shouldn’t be bookish doctrine but means to solve the problems of child in the future. Education should encourage cooperation rather than competition. Cooperation is the foundation of democracy. Democracy and education are also complementary to each other.
Aims of education
1. Education is the process of development
There are no predetermined aims of education since it is always in the process of development. Education should change to face the time pace and conditions in all the time.
2. Education should be related with the interest of the child:-
Education should always emphasis on the interest of the child. Education is always in the process of development. So the participation of the child is necessary in education process. Without the fulfillment of child’s desire, there is not possibility of child’s growth.
3. Education for the formation of new values:-
They believe that education should be able to form the new values in the society for child. Without the formation of new values, education will remain always autonomous and futile.
4. Education should be life itself:-
On the opposite of perennialists, progressssivists think that education is not the preparation of life but it is life itself. They give more priority to the values of life rather the aims of education. Thus they think education and life are same. Giving education means to make the life successful. It is the give and take which should be mediated by both.
5. Education for reconstructing human experiences:-
Education should be always able to reconstruct human experience. It should provide experience to men. The experience of present and past helps anyone to live successful life in the future.
6. Education as the improvement of social order:-
Progressivist said that education should be always able to improve the social order in the society.
7. Improvement of child’s growth:-
Education should give importance to the child’s growth. It should not neglect the students but keep students at the center.
8. Dynamic:-
Education should be dynamic. It should not be constant all the time.
9. No absolute goal of education:-
According to progrssivists, the education can not be dynamic by predetermined aims. When the aims are determined in the education, it can not change and can not help the child to solve his problems. The aims of education must be related with time or according to time.
Progressivism Curriculum
The progressivism curriculum has a strong emphasis on problems solving and analysis for these skills are invaluable in today’s society. Without problem solving abilities, an individual is lost and alone in the puzzling maze of the society that characterizes the world today. It centered on activities and instruction that challenge the students’ problem solving and analysis abilities in an effort to strengthen these skills.
The progressivism curriculum is found on providing for students’ instruction that ranges from basic real world skills to higher levels of investigation and analysis.
John Dewey says’ “A good school program is one which leads students from an early interest in solving problems of an immediately localized and concrete sort to a more matured interest in solving problems which arise through intellectual curiosity and a desire for abstract knowledge”.
Progressivist curriculum emphasizes on the principal of utility such as language, health and Physical Educational, History, Geography, Maths, Science, Home Science, agriculture etc. and next on the principle of integration like interrelationship.
They emphasis on the child centered curriculum and principles of vocational activities and experiences.
Progressivism and Teacher
Teachers are responsible for the preparation of students for the real world and it is within the classroom setting that teachers must recreate problems which exists in the society and guide students in the direction of solving these problems.
Good teachers always encourage creative thinking as well as analytic thinking. The questions they pose for their students are often open-ended questions that may or may not have prescribed answers. Therefore, a teacher is a responsive guide to students.
A teacher is a supreme person of school who has social and intellectual personality. He creates the environment and new ideas. And a teacher is also a planner of education who evaluates the capacities and needs of the learners in the school. He should respect the freedom of learners. He is highly valued in the society.
A good teacher always understands the individual differences of child and he should always guide the children in all complexities of life. So he is considered a philosopher friend of the learners in the society. Therefore a good teacher should be always punctual, regular, loving or caring and honest to his profession as well as skilled and good knowledge about the subject matter.
Thus the role of the teacher is progressivism teaching is not to direct but to advise the learners who influence the growth of his students, not by drawing bits of information into their heads but rather by controlling the environment in which growth takes place.
The teacher is there only to guide learning but the children plan their own development in the progressivism school. He works with the children for the attain ment of mutually agreeable ends. Therefore, teacher merely has superior and richer experience to bring to bear on the analysis of the present situation.
The teacher is vitally important as stage setter, guide and co-ordination. He is not the sole source of authority in the progressivism.
The role of the Students
The role of the students is vitally important than the teacher in the progressivism. The children are responsible towards group as the groupism life is inevitable for the individual personality development in progressivism education.
- Education is child-centered:-
The child is in the center of learning in progressivism education. Only the school can change the child desire and interest in teaching.
- The child himself creates the truth and values. He., thus gets this environment.
- The child is the developer of experiences.
- He finds the causes of problems.
- The child himself creates values. So is the creator of values.
- The child is involved in developing learning processes. Therefore he is known as developer of it.
- The child co-operates rather than competes.
The Teaching Methods of Progressivism
In progressivism, they emphasis on experimental and methodology. They regard learning as one whole experience a single ting that branches and grows. Hence, the wholeness method is the basis of progressivism learning. Many teachers come to class “armed” only with lectures or one way teaching. But progressivists say that we must learn to use other methods strategically.
They give priority on the idea of problem-based learning wherein the student is required to develop original solutions to existing or potential problems. The students are e given the opportunity to speculate and question the world around them and world awaiting them. For examples, students are encouraged to discuss, share and compromise within small peer groups.
The teacher is there to encourage this process, rather than to provide prescribed solutions in the progressivism. The learning environment is collaborative and democratic, giving opportunity for all to speak their minds and receive feedback from peers as well as the teacher.
This continuous loop of feedback potentially positive or negative, serves as the means of assessment for problem-solving based institution. In the progressivism schools, teaching methods are presented as problem solving tools and experimentation is the main aim of the progressivism. They give importance to the learning by doing.
Progressivism and School
Traditional education has apart the body and mind. It has treated the learning as a head thing only. But in real sense, the body and mind are not two separate things, but one totally integrated whole. In other words, mind is the body, body is the mind. The nerve system and circulatory system tie them together as one. Therefore, we should help let both body and mind involved in the learning.
In progressivism, school is a miniature society which represents the society. School or education is the process of personality development. It is the responsibility of school for social reformation. Progressivism school inspires or encourages the students to create new values and it is the supplier of values of learning. Thus school or education should be safe guarder of democracy in progressivism.
“School, therefore, is to be a reflection of the larger society outside its wall in which life can be learnt by living. But it is to be a purified, simplified and better balance society” says Dewey.
In nutshell, progressivism is the outcome of the influence of pragmatism in education. It is a kind of American Movement that came in existence to improve the education sector in America
Progressivists emphasis on learning by doing-hands-on projects and experimental learning. They are on the side of integrated curriculum focused on thematic units. They led strong emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking. Group work and development of social skills are highly valued in the progressivism education. Education should be understood and action as the goals of learning as opposed to rote knowledge.
Collaborative and cooperative learning projects are the main for the progressivists. They said education should be for social responsibility and democracy. It must be the integration of community service and service learning projects into the daily curriculum.
They de-emphasis on textbooks in favour of varied learning resources but value the selection of subject content by looking forward to ask what skills will be needed in future society. Therefore, education should emphasis on life-long learning and social skills. The progressivism is the development or building or reconstruction of education that modifies the desired behavior. Truth is always dynamic not the constant as well as education is life itself not the preparation of life.
Progressive education opposed formalized authoritarian procedure and fostered reorganization of classroom practice and curriculum as well as new attitudes towards individual students.
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