Birth of Progressive Education

 The following is from John De Gree’s books, American History, the Story of Liberty from America’s Heritage through the Reagan Revolution and  also Modern American History, Reconstruction through the Reagan Revolution.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Progressives changed the traditional way American teachers educated children. Since the early 1600s, when Europeans colonized North America, American educators taught with a classical method. For three hundred years, Americans learned basics of reading, writing, and math, and if they continued their education beyond the 6th grade or so, they read classical literature and discussed the works with their parents, a tutor, or in small groups. Focus was placed on mastery of basic skills and building of analytical skills. Students began with the Bible at an early age and were expected to read, understand and discuss complicated stories. In science, students learned the basics of the natural sciences in an orderly way, learned skills applicable to science, and then applied these skills in experimentation and discovery. The classical method teaches students basic knowledge and then how to be a free-minded, independent thinker.
 
Progressives wanted to apply science and technology to all things, even to human affairs. They believed that human affairs could be studied in a standardized and objective manner, with rules and methodology. New subjects emerged: sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, and others. Progressives believed that human behavior could be regulated and controlled, just like the laws of gravity can be counted on. Thorsten Veblen, one of the first sociologists, wrote in Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) that there should be a new economic system in which an elite would hold all the power in deciding economic matters.
 
Progressive education in America began in the mid-1800s. Massachusetts Secretary of Education Horace Mann (1796-1859) visited Prussia and was impressed with the obedience and discipline of students. Mann liked how the Prussian education system focused on drilling, learning with many students in one classroom, forcing unruly students to behave, and training students how to be organized and function within a community. Mann also wanted every American to have access to a non-religious, secular education, where the teacher was certified by the state, and where the state determined what the education would be. He wanted compulsory state education for all children and an obedient population. He transformed education in Massachusetts and this kind of learning spread throughout the country.
 
In the early 1900s, the most influential person in education was John Dewey (1859-1952). The Progressive Dewey wanted to transform all American education so no one taught using the classical method. As a University of Chicago professor and president of the American Psychological Association, Dewey had great influence. Dewey believed that students learn best by experiencing learning and that school should be a place of experimentation, social reform, and the promotion of democracy, as he defined it. He felt that individuals should adjust their ideas and actions to conform to a social consciousness of the group. Dewey wanted schools to focus on allowing students freedom to work on projects in the classroom as a community instead of having individual mastery of subjects. Dewey opposed the traditional American attitudes toward religion and education and became an atheist as an adult. Dewey believed that religion and faith should not be part of the classroom. He wanted schools, not parents, to play the largest role in a child’s life. In the early 1900s, every American classroom, public or private, began with a Christian prayer. By the 1960s, the American classroom had banished prayer and looked much different. Dewey and other Progressives transformed American education and society throughout the 1900s.