Progressive Education is Not a Foundation

Progressive education is the philosophy that rules in our schools and has for the past hundred years. This philosophy, or viewpoint, is based on the notion that there is a way to provide a context in which children can be educated, naturally, automatically, without being compelled, forced, to deal with the stress of studying things they won’t need to know anyway. Progressive education philosophy claims to provide a friendly and open atmosphere that makes learning joyful and painless. The purpose of progressive education is to free students for complete personal fulfillment.

Personal fulfillment is, or should be, a result of all education. School, useful as it should be, does not make up all of children’s education. School is an institution, dealing with large numbers of children; it was established to pass on information needed in life.

The purpose of transmitting information, an academic curriculum, is intellectual challenge. The purpose of progressive education, a freedom curriculum, is emotional nurture. Both are necessary for children. Nevertheless, this question must be asked: What is the function of the institution that is school?

Opposition to progressive education is generally interpreted as hostility to the well being of children. But providing a foundation of knowledge about the world is not hostile to the needs of the young. Nor is it a denial of the fact that children do need emotional nurture. Emotional maturing is, so to speak, a “side effect” of schooling, when it is a solid and well thought out academic curriculum providing intellectual challenge.

The Case for Foundations

The search for improvement in educational results needs to begin with this question: What does being educated mean?

Uninformed, ignorant, unlettered, illiterate, untutored; these are some of the words describing lack of education. The common characteristic is that of not knowing, not being informed. The notions of stupid, incompetent, dumb, or incapable are not included in that list. The term “uneducated” is not the equivalent of “stupid,” lacking the attributes needed to become educated.

Those comments introduce the theme. The United States is today, and has been from its inception, a largely uneducated society [1]. Although there have always been well educated individuals, and pockets in which good teaching has existed, the quality has not ever extended to the majority of citizens.

I say this in an attempt to clarify. We know that the first Europeans who became Americans did not, for the most part, have access to education before their emigration. Those who did have education abused the rest of the population, using human beings as underpaid labor. Education was a sign of superiority and often valued only for that. To escape that culture did not in and of itself lead to a desire for education, associated with practices that were objectionable, even abhorrent.

And so, as a generalization, Americans today, descendants of those courageous people who worked to create a better life for their children, still tend more toward thinking of education as something undesirable, at best not useful, at worst a threat to freedom. The commonly accepted default position—education is unnecessary—has honorable roots, even though this concept is now less appropriate than ever. In the world, forever, and with intensity today, every citizen needs to become educated. Lack of education is a greater threat to freedom. Yet as a society we are handicapped by a lack of awareness concerning what education means.

The idea that education (in part) means a common background covering a wide area of learning does not consciously exist in our contemporary understanding of schooling. Individuals educated broadly do exist, but too many of us, especially those of us who received a public school education, and including many who are competent and productive specialists [2], have not been taught any more than snippets here and there of vast general background knowledge.

So we don’t understand what education is. Does it matter?  I believe that it does matter, and therefore believe we should try to find out what we are missing.

THE NUCLEUS QUESTION

First, I am addressing here only school education. The needed focus has two parts, two sides of the same issue.

1. What is the purpose of school education?
2. What do all children need that school can offer?

I offer here answers that are not meant to be complete. My opinions and perspectives come out in these short answers. I know there are other possible answers.

Remaining on focus involves addressing objections and comments to these short answers. That is, comments and objections relative to major points of existing progressive education—individuality, experience, freedom, discovery, imagination, creativity, testing—must be made within the context of these statements.

THE SHORT ANSWERS

1. The central purpose of school education for the young can be defined as instruction of content, information about the world. The premise is that school best provides other things children need—moral, social, and skills learning—when the core purpose, the principle focus, is academic, that is, transmitting information about the world, intellectually and conceptually.
2. School can offer all children a foundational academic instruction, basic knowledge of what the world is (including but not limited to mathematics). Equally essential, all children need to be able to read and to listen. All children need to know their native language, how to use it, how to express themselves orally and in writing. Specializations come after this foundation is laid.

Basic education as described here applies to the elementary years, to children from five or six to twelve or thirteen years of age. This description refers only to what can be transmitted in school. Schooling is a major part of children’s education, but children’s education neither begins nor ends in school. These foundations in place, education can take many and varied forms. Only basic education is the same for all children. [3]

---

[1] Historically this can be said of almost all countries. These reflections refer to the fact that after more than a hundred years of mass public education we consider ourselves educated.

[2] By specialist I mean people with proficiency in one field of knowledge who may or may not have general background learning of other subjects.

[3] These reflections do not touch on the concept of  “college for all.” Taking them seriously involves redefining post-secondary education. Presently colleges too often must give information that belongs in basic, foundational education.