Progressive Education-- “Okay, So What’s That?”

I think the reason that I was initially excited about doing an ELI on progressive education, and what keeps me enthusiastic about it (and I swear that I am, even if it took a month to get this blog entry totally done), is the importance of learning and of finding the best ways to help it along in the world today. It’s pretty clear that the methods that are currently used in most public schools aren’t working for a lot of individuals, and that reforms are badly needed to improve both the learning experience and the developmental experience for all students.

The movement that has been searching and advocating for effective solutions to this problem since the late 19th century is most often known as progressive education--but explaining all of that doesn’t really fit the criteria for a quick definition when I’m talking about my project. In fact, finding a definition for progressive education that can encompass the whole movement has proven to be pretty tough. When I tell someone what I’m doing my ELI on, and they’re not already familiar with it, I still struggle a little bit to explain to them exactly what I’m researching: nothing brief comes to mind, besides something along the lines of “different education” or “better education.”

I’m not the only one with this problem. I’ve been talking to and interviewing educators who have had lifelong careers in this area and still struggle to come up with a concise definition, and a book I’m reading on the movement’s history devotes an entire chapter to defining it. Because of this realization, I’ve decided to devote part of one of my goals to coming up with my own personal definition of progressive education. I’m hoping that doing this may actually help me gain a better sense of my project (and make it a lot easier to explain).

Some inspirations: earlier in the semester I interviewed Lucy Vaughters, who was a longtime teacher in alternative education schools. Like me, she didn’t have a definition off the top of her head, but she was able to come up with a great one: progressive education is a kind of education that recognizes not just the head, but the heart and the hands of every student. Linda Winters, another educator, told me she feels that progressive education both allows for and honors individual differences in human beings. And the book The Big Picture by Dennis Littky has a way of putting it that both Ms. Wissner and I love: the best way of teaching is “treating everyone alike differently.”

And a final thought from Lucy that sums up that “importance of learning”: the aim of education is just to make the world better.

~Clare