The Wonderful, Huge Dream: Progressive Education, Humanness, and Keeping On

Recent educational reforms in England have sought to reshape public education by extending central government control of curriculum and assessment, while replacing local government control of schools with a quasi-private system of academies and multi academy trusts. In this paper, we resist reading this as the latest iteration of the debate between “traditional” and “progressive” education. Instead, we note how, despite the mobilisation of the rhetoric of the public and public education, schooling in England has never been public in any deeply meaningful sense. We develop a genealogical reading of public education in England, in which ideas of British universalism – “the public” – and inequality and exclusion in education and society have not been opposed but have gone hand-in-hand. This raises the question whether it is possible to envisage and enact another form of collective – one that is based on action rather than fantasy and that is co-authored by, comprising, and exists for, the people. The final part of this paper seeks to grapple with this challenge, in the context of past, present and future potential developments in education, and to consider possibilities for the imaginary reconstitution of public education in England in the twenty-first century.

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The Origins of Progressive Education

History of Education Quarterly ◽

10.1111/j.1748-5959.2001.tb00072.x ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 41 (1) ◽

pp. 1-24 ◽

Cited By ~ 34

Author(s):

William J. Reese

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Progressive Education ◽

Academic Standards ◽

Popular Press ◽

Economic Productivity ◽

Educational Discourse ◽

Child Centered ◽

The Subject ◽

Way Of Thinking

By the dawn of the twentieth century, a new way of thinking about the nature of the child, classroom methods, and the purposes of the school increasingly dominated educational discourse. Something loosely called progressive education, especially its more child-centered aspects, became part of a larger revolt against the formalism of the schools and an assault on tradition. Our finest scholars, such as Lawrence A. Cremin, in his magisterial study of progressivism forty years ago, have tried to explain the origins and meaning of this movement. One should be humbled by their achievements and by the magnitude of the subject. Variously defined, progressivism continues to find its champions and critics, the latter occasionally blaming it for low economic productivity, immorality among the young, and the decline of academic standards. In the popular press, John Dewey's name is often invoked as the evil genius behind the movement, even though he criticized sugar-coated education and letting children do as they please. While scholars doubt whether any unified, coherent movement called progressivism ever existed, its offspring, progressive education, apparently did exist, wreaking havoc on the schools.

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“The Illegible Contours of Progressive Education—An Effort at Clarification”

The Educational Forum ◽

10.1080/00131726309340659 ◽

1963 ◽

Vol 27 (2) ◽

pp. 219-225 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Lloyd Williams

Keyword(s):

Progressive Education

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Theory into practice in Australian progressive education

History of Education Review ◽

10.1108/her-03-2014-0027 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 44 (1) ◽

pp. 115-127

Author(s):

John P. Hughes

Keyword(s):

Design Methodology ◽

Progressive Education ◽

Local Level ◽

Historical Trends ◽

Content Type ◽

School Practice ◽

Historical Literature

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize the avowedly progressive curriculum delivered in the 1930s at the Enmore Activity School. Through this examination it delineates a gap in Australia between the theoretical formulations of progressive education and school practice. The study of this curriculum is used to locate historical trends and influences that aided or hindered the application of progressive education in Australia during the 1930s. Design/methodology/approach – Through a review of the archival and historical literature on the curriculum at the Enmore Activity School the paper defines the ways progressive education was understood in Australia at that time. Findings – The analysis reveals that Enmore delivered a type of progressive education Tyack dubs “administrative progressivism” in a programme that remained essentially orthodox. Yet although an authentically progressive curriculum proved elusive at Enmore the school did, by example, influence several later curriculums. Originality/value – This close up study provides insights into how central tenets of progressive education were understood, accepted, or rejected at the local level in Australia in the 1930s. It offers fresh perspectives on contemporary educational debates about progressive education.

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