The Ideologies of Progressive Education

Abstract

On the surface, the thesis that progressive education was “the educational phase of American Progressivism writ large” appears valid; but when one examines the various stages in the development of progressive education it becomes more and more like a misleading generality. The thesis suggests, among other things, that progressive education was a unified movement that continued to give expression to the ideology of progressivism until the mid-nineteen-fifties. Even if one were to ignore the other serious problems raised by this thesis, it would still be necessary to explain how it was possible for the educational phase of the progressive movement to survive by some thirty-five years the parent reform movement that came to an untimely end in 1920 with the landslide presidential victory of Warren G. Harding. But there is a more serious difficulty with Lawrence Cremin's thesis that may make it unnecessary to explain the strange tenacity of the progressive educator. In The Transformation of the School, Cremin observed that during the thirties a paralyzing split developed within the movement when influential educationists reacted against the child-centered pedagogy, which had reached its apogee during the twenties, by seeking “to tie progressive education more closely to political Progressivism.” Simply stated, the question that must be answered is whether the ideology of social reform-minded educators like George S. Counts, Harold Rugg, John L. Childs, and William H. Kilpatrick, who were the influential educationists to whom Cremin is referring, can be identified with the ethos of progressivism, with its emphasis on economic and political individualism. And if it cannot, then it would appear that the progressive education movement encompassed at least two distinct and often conflicting ideologies, of which only one can be identified with the progressive movement.