Differences between Traditional and Progressive Education

Differences between Traditional and Progressive Education Traditional     Progressive School is a preparation for life.     School is a part of life. Learners are passive absorbers of information and authority.     Learners are active participants, problem solvers, and planners. Teachers are sources of information and authority.     Teachers are facilitators, guides who foster thinking. Parents are outsiders and uninvolved.     Parents are the primary teachers, goal setters, and planners, and serve as resources. Community is separate from school, except for funding.     Community is an extension of the classroom. Decision-making is centrally based and administratively delivered.     Decision-making is shared by all constituent groups. Program is determined by external criteria, particularly test results.     Program is determined by mission, philosophy, and goals for graduates. Learning is linear, with factual accumulation and skill mastery.     Learning is spiral, with depth and breadth as goals. Knowledge is absorbed through lectures, worksheets, and texts.     Knowledge is constructed through play, direct experience, and social interaction. Instruction is linear and largely based on correct answers.     Instruction is related to central questions and inquiry, often generated by the children. Disciplines, particularly language and math, are separated.     Disciplines are integrated as children make connections. Skills are taught discretely and are viewed as goals.     Skills are related to content and are viewed as tools. Assessment is norm-referenced, external, and graded.     Assessment is benchmarked, has many forms, and is progress-oriented. Success is competitively based, derived from recall and memory, and specific to a time/place.     Success is determined through application over time, through collaboration. Products are the end point.     Products are subsumed by process considerations. Intelligence is a measure of linguistic and logical/mathematical abilities.     Intelligence is recognized as varied, includes the arts, and is measured in real-life problem-solving. School is a task to be endured.     School is a challenging and fun part of life. Source: Robert G. Peters, with thanks to the books Schools of Quality, by John Jay Bonstigl, and In Search of Understanding, by Martin C. Brooks and Jaqueline Grennon, Independent Schools. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Bra ov Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 4 (53) No. 2 - 2011 JOHN DEWEY AND PROGRESSIVISM IN AMERICAN EDUCATION Lucian RADU 1 Abstract : This paper is focused on Progressivism, as a reacti on against the American traditional school in order to accomplish the purpose of connecting education to the realities imposed by th e rapid changes of the American society. Progressivism was developed by Jo hn Dewey’s pedagogic theory, being based on Pragmatism, a specific Ameri can philosophy, and on instrumentalism, one of its variants to which John Dewey conferred its climax. Experience represented the core concept of his philosophy. After revising this philosophical current, the paper will deal with John Dewey’s pedagogic theory insisting on the method of solving problems as a general method of instruction. The importance of the two sc hools (Dalton Plan and Winnetka), both based on the progressive theory, wi ll be highlighted. Progressivism opened a new era in American Educatio n based on an active education, which took into account the students’ in dividualities, stimulating teachers’ creativity and focusing on a practice bas ed education. Key words: progressivism, pragmatism, instrumentalism, active school. 1 Faculty of Letters, Transilvania University of Bra ov. 1. Introduction Progressivism is a constituent part of New Education , based on pragmatism, and it constituted a revolution in American education, with an outstanding specificity. It is an educational current of American origin, and all the other orientations that have been profiled in the second half of the century (humanism, social meliorism, and social efficiency) have emerged as reactions reported to it. Progressivism, an educational movement that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century as a reaction to the traditional school in the United States of America, sought to establish an educational system adjusted to the pace of the American societal development. It was based on John Dewey's educational theory, having as a starting point the pragmatism, a specific American philosophical current and its variant, instrumentalism, to which John Dewey conferred the widest expression. Dewey’s work is one ‘ of the most profound and comprehensive theoretical syntheses developed in this century ’ [7]. He made major contributions in almost all areas of the spirit: in philosophy (pragmatism), in pedagogy (progressivism), in logic (instrumentalism), in psychology (functionalism), in aesthetics (aesthetic naturalism), in axiology (empiric congnitivism), and so on. Dewey was inspired by his predecessors C.S. Peirce and W. James. The rigor of Peirce’s rational realism influenced Dewey greatly, while from W. James he took the ‘ doctrine of radical empiricism and the thrills of aspiration to the universal’ [7]. The fundamental coordinates of Dewey’s work Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Bra ov. Series VII • Vol. 4 (53) No. 2 - 2011 86 are Darwinism (the transition principle) and Hegelianism (the dialect principle). These have generated an original conception which, as we mentioned, Viorel Nicolescu called ’ transactional naturalism ’. Although in From Absolutism to Experimentalism (his intellectual biography), Dewey declares a detachment from Hegelianism, he acknowledges in Hegel ‘ a permanent presence’ in his thinking: ‘ The synthesis made by Hegel between the subject and object, between matter and spirit, between divine and human, was not a simple intellectual formula; it operated as a huge relief, as a liberation’ [3]. As for Darwinism, the changes induced by it impose a new logic: ‘ When Darwin said about species such as Galileo said about the Earth, ‘et pur si muove’, he promoted genetic and experimental ideas to the rank of real organon of formulating questions and finding explanations ’ [5]. In fact, Dewey’s philosophy is nothing but ‘ the penetration of the scientific ideas in American philosophic thinking; the exclusion of fixity of species from nature; the inclusion of man and intelligence in nature; adopting a new biological vision upon intelligence ’ [8]. Furthermore, Morton White would notice in Origin of Dewey’s Instrumentalism , that the latter became a pragmatist, an idealist who assimilated the results of modern biology, psychology and social sciences. As a leading representative of pragmatism and its variant, instrumentalism, John Dewey was about to conclude that his primary vocation was philosophy. Considering the significance of the epistemological side that characterizes his philosophy, we often find it in the reference works as naturalist-instrumentalism’. Viorel Nicolescu, in the introductory study to Foundations for a Science of Education , believes that, although ‘naturalist-instrumentalism’ grasps the essential side of Dewey’s philosophy, ‘ transactional naturalism is the most adequate explanatory principle of the philosophic system built by John Dewey’ [7]. Although the terms mentioned bear some specific nuances, fundamental features of pragmatism can be identified in all. 2. Features of Pragmatism Pragmatism ‘ is a specifically American philosophy, as western movies and big cars are specifically American ’ [10]. There still exists a great paradox because, while European philosophy has always looked at American influences with reserve, especially in this area, and has considered pragmatism to be a philosophical concept of American origins, American philosophy claims to follow the European peculiarity of this philosophical orientation. Dewey specifies in this respect that Santiago Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, not only borrowed the term ‘ pragmatic ’ from Kant, but as the latter sought ‘ to establish the law of practical reason in the a priori area, Peirce also sought to interpret the universal concepts in the area of experience ’ [7]. Above all, ‘experience’, a fundamental and unifying concept is the core of Pragmatism. Each experience is based on the interaction between subject and object, between self and its world and represents only the result of the integration of human being into the environment Experience includes action and knowledge. The first one acts on the environment modifying it and the second means understanding the connections within an object, which determine its applicability in a given situation. The process of knowing develops when the human being is in a problematic situation. The dual nature of PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT :)