Progressive education
Progressive education, or educational progressivism, is a pedagogical movement that began in the late 19th century and has persisted in various forms to the present. In Europe, progressive education took the form of the New Education Movement. The term progressive was engaged to distinguish this education from the traditional curricula of the 19th century, which was rooted in classical preparation for the early-industrial university and strongly differentiated by social class. By contrast, progressive education finds its roots in modern, post-industrial experience. Most progressive education programs have these qualities in common:[1]
In the West[edit]
Germany[edit]
Hermann Lietz founded three Landerziehungsheime (country boarding schools) in 1904 based on Reddie's model for boys of different ages. Lietz eventually succeeded in establishing five more Landerziehungsheime.[30] Edith and Paul Geheeb founded Odenwaldschule in Heppenheim in the Odenwald in 1910 using their concept of progressive education, which integrated the work of the head and hand.[31]
Poland[edit]
Janusz Korczak was one notable follower and developer of Pestalozzi's ideas. He wrote The names of Pestalozzi, Froebel and Spencer shine with no less brilliance than the names of the greatest inventors of the twentieth century. For they discovered more than the unknown forces of nature; they discovered the unknown half of humanity: children.[32] His Orphan's Home in Warsaw became a model institution and exerted influence on the educational process in other orphanages of the same type.[33]
Ireland[edit]
The Quaker school run in Ballitore, Co Kildare in the 18th century had students from as far away as Bordeaux (where there was a substantial Irish émigré population), the Caribbean and Norway. Notable pupils included Edmund Burke and Napper Tandy. Sgoil Éanna, or in English St Enda's was founded in 1908 by Pádraig Pearse on Montessori principles. Its former assistant headmaster Thomas MacDonagh and other teachers including Pearse; games master Con Colbert; Pearse's brother, Willie, the art teacher, and Joseph Plunkett, and occasional lecturer in English, were executed by the British after the 1916 Rising. Pearse and MacDonagh were two of the seven leaders who signed the Irish Declaration of Independence. Pearse's book The Murder Machine[34] was a denunciation of the English school system of the time and a declaration of his own educational principles.
Sweden[edit]
In Sweden, an early proponent of progressive education was Alva Myrdal, who with her husband Gunnar co-wrote Kris i befolkningsfrågan (1934), a most influential program for the social-democratic hegemony (1932–1976) popularly known as "Folkhemmet". School reforms went through government reports in the 1940s and trials in the 1950s, resulting in the introduction in 1962 of public comprehensive schools ("grundskola") instead of the previously separated parallel schools for theoretical and non-theoretical education.[35]
United Kingdom[edit]
The ideas from Reddie's Abbotsholme spread to schools such as Bedales School (1893), King Alfred School, London (1898) and St Christopher School, Letchworth (1915), as well as all the Friends' schools, Steiner Waldorf schools and those belonging to the Round Square Conference. The King Alfred School was radical for its time in that it provided a secular education and that boys and girls were educated together.[36] Alexander Sutherland Neill believed children should achieve self-determination and should be encouraged to think critically rather than blindly obeying. He implemented his ideas with the founding of Summerhill School in 1921. Neill believed that children learn better when they are not compelled to attend lessons. The school was also managed democratically, with regular meetings to determine school rules. Pupils had equal voting rights with school staff.
In the East[edit]
India[edit]
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was one of the most effective practitioners of the concept of progressive education. He expanded Santiniketan, which is a small town near Bolpur in the Birbhum district of West Bengal, India, approximately 160 km north of Kolkata. He de-emphasized textbook learning in favor of varied learning resources from nature. The emphasis here was on self-motivation rather than on discipline, and on fostering intellectual curiosity rather than competitive excellence. There were courses on a great variety of cultures, and study programs devoted to China, Japan, and the Middle East.[47] He was of the view that education should be a "joyous exercise of our inventive and constructive energies that help us to build up character."[48]
Japan[edit]
Seikatsu Tsuzurikata is a grassroots movement in Japan that has many parallels to the progressive education movement, but it developed completely independently, beginning in the late 1920s. The Japanese progressive educational movement was one of the stepping stones to the modernization of Japan and it has resonated down to the present.[49]