Welcome to CyberEssays Website

Progressive Education

GRESHA BAYONA
PSY34
PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION
Individualized attention from caring, respectful teachers is terribly important. But it does not a progressive school make. To assume otherwise not only dilutes progressivism; it’s unfair to traditional educators, most of whom are not callous Grad grinds or ruler-wielding nuns. In fact, it’s perfectly consistent to view education as the process of filling children up with bits of knowledge — and to use worksheets, lectures, quizzes, homework, grades, and other such methods in pursuit of that goal — while being genuinely concerned about each child’s progress. Schools with warm, responsive teachers who know each student personally can take pride in that fact, but they shouldn’t claim on that basis to be progressive.
Moreover, traditional schools aren’t always about memorizing dates and definitions; sometimes they’re also committed to helping students understand ideas. As one science teacher pointed out, “For thoughtful traditionalists, thinking is couched in terms of comprehending, integrating, and applying knowledge.” However, the student’s task in such classrooms “comprehends how the teacher has integrated or applied the ideas… and reconstructs the teacher’s thinking.” There are interesting concepts being discussed in some traditional classrooms, in other words, but what distinguishes progressive education is that students must construct their own understanding of ideas.
We believe that the values and ideals of progressive education have remained remarkably relevant as society has moved from the industrial age to our era of astonishing technology and information glut. The accelerating pace of global change makes it difficult to guess what the world that our students will inhabit as adults will be like. As we anticipate the 21st century skills and aptitudes that our students should take with them into adulthood, publicly mandated standards and curricula seem sadly inadequate to the task of guiding the...