Condescension and critical sympathy: Historians of education on progressive education in the United States and England

Abstract

Although progressive education was an international phenomenon, historical interpretations of it may be affected on the national level by academic and institutional contingencies. An analysis of how US and English historians of education interpret progressive education reforms in their respective countries identified a strain of condescension toward progressive education in history of education scholarship in the US, which often resulted in misrepresentations of the historical record. English historians of education tend to regard progressive education with critical sympathy. These findings are possibly explained by different institutional and academic circumstances of historians of education in England and the US.

Keywords:

• progressive education
• historiography
• comparative education
• England
• United States

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2012 meeting of the Society for the Study of Curriculum History, Vancouver, Canada, and at the 2012 International Standing Conference for the History of Education, University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Notes

¹ For example, Hermann Rohrs and Volker Lenhart, eds. Progressive Education Across the Continents: A Handbook (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995); Maria del Mar del Pozo Andres, “The transnational and national dimensions of pedagogical ideas: The case of the project method, 1918–1939”, Paedagogica Historica 45 (2009): 561–84.

² The analysis excludes consideration of the so-called “revisionist” historians in the US because their work was inherently critical.

³ Edward A. Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880–1920 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 379, 381, 387, 400–402, 392–393. Also see Theodore R. Sizer, Secondary Schools at the Turn of the Century (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1964), 132, 197, 201. Cf. Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, Bulletin 1918, No. 35, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1918), 9; William G. Wraga, “A progressive legacy squandered: The Cardinal Principles report reconsidered”, History of Education Quarterly 41 (2001): 494–519. See Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1893).

⁴ Arthur G. Powell, Eleanor Farrar and David K. Cohen, The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1985), 256, 347, note 91; also see Robert L. Hampel, The Last Little Citadel: American High Schools Since 1940 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), x.

⁵ Herbert M. Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958 (Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), 112, 114. Kliebard later reinforced this interpretation; see Herbert M. Kliebard, Schooled to Work: Vocationalism and the American Curriculum, 1876–1946 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), 143, 147, 154–155. Cf. Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies, 51; Commission on the Reorganization, Cardinal Principles, 27–28; Wraga, “A progressive legacy squandered”; Thomas D. Snyder and Charlene M. Hoffman, Digest of Education Statistics 2002, National Center for Education Statistics (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2003), 69; Susan B. Carter et al., eds. Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present, Millennial Edition, vol. 2, part B, Work and Welfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2–421.

⁶ Jurgen Herbst, The Once and Future School: Three Hundred and Fifty Years of American Secondary Education (New York: Routledge, 1996), 51; Committee of the Corporation and Academical Faculty, Reports on the Course of Instruction in Yale College (New Haven, CT: Hezekiah Howe, 1828).

⁷ Herbst, The Once and Future School, 156, 142.

⁸ David L. Angus and Jeffrey E. Mirel, The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890–1995 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), 15, 10, 15, 16. See quote on 10; cf. Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies, 51. For mention of academic subjects in the Cardinal Principles report, see Commission on the Reorganization, Cardinal Principles, 12, 14, 15, 20, 22, 23, and esp. 27–28 and the footnote on 18.

⁹ Diane Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 42, 125; Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies, 51; Snyder and Hoffman, Digest of Education Statistics 2002, 69.

¹⁰ William J. Reese, America’s Public Schools: From the Common School to ‘No Child Left Behind’ (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 192, 191, 290. Cf. Commission on the Reorganization, Cardinal Principles, 9, 14, 27–28, 21.

¹¹ Wayne Urban and Jennings Wagoner, American Education: A History, 4th edn. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 235–237, 272. Cf. Commission on the Reorganization, Cardinal Principles, 9, 10.

¹² W.H.G. Armytage, Four Hundred Years of English Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 208. See Board of Education (Great Britain) Consultative Committee, The Education of the Adolescent (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1926).

¹³ R.J.W. Selleck, English Primary Education and the Progressives, 1914–1939 (London: Routledge, 1972), 135.

¹⁴ R.F. Dearden, “The Plowden philosophy in retrospect”, in R. Lowe, ed. The Changing Primary School (London: Falmer Press, 1987), 69, 70, 76, 84; Central Advisory Council for Education (England), Children and their Primary Schools, vol. 1: The Report (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1967), 185, par. 494.

¹⁵ Peter Cunningham, Curriculum Change in the Primary School Since 1945: Dissemination of the Progressive Ideal (London: Falmer Press, 1988), 155–160, 173; quote from 155.

¹⁶ Ken Jones, Education in Britain, 1944 to the Present (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 83, 84.

¹⁷ Krug, Shaping of the American High School, xi, 354, 325. Also see Kliebard, Struggle for the American Curriculum, 89ff. Several recent studies have problematised the evidentiary grounds of the social efficiency-social control interpretation of early twentieth-century school reform in the US. See J. Wesley Null, “Social efficiency splintered: Multiple meanings instead of a hegemony of one”, Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 19 (2004): 99–124; Michael Knoll, “From Kidd to Dewey: The origin and meaning of social efficiency”, Journal of Curriculum Studies 41 (2009): 361–391; Thomas D. Fallace, “John Dewey’s influence on the origins of the social studies: An analysis of the historiography and new interpretation”, Review of Educational Research 79 (2009): 601–624; and Thomas Fallace and Victoria Fantozzi, “Was there really a social efficiency doctrine? The uses and abuses of and idea in educational history”, Educational Researcher 42, no. 3 (April 2013): 142–150.

¹⁸ David Tyack, The One Best System (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 126–127, 196–197.

¹⁹ David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 6–7, 113, 130, 141.

²⁰ Powell and others, Shopping Mall High School, 274–277; Hampel, The Last Little Citadel, 105, 43, 44, 47; also Ravitch, Left Back, 331. Charles Allen Prosser, Secondary Education and Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939). US Office of Education, Life Adjustment Education for Every Youth, Bulletin 1951, no. 22, Office of Education, Federal Security Agency (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1951); US Office of Education, A Look Ahead in Secondary Education, Bulletin 1954, no. 4, Office of Education, Federal Security Agency (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1954). For a comprehensive history of life adjustment education in the US, see Dorothy E. Broder, “Life adjustment education: An historical study of a program of the United States Office of Education, 1945–1954” (PhD thesis, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1977); also see William G. Wraga, “From slogan to anathema: Historical representations of life adjustment education”, American Journal of Education 116 (2010): 185–209.

²¹ Kliebard, Struggle for the American Curriculum, 219, 221, 221–222, 242. For curriculum development in the Eight-Year Study, see H.H. Giles, S.P. McCutchen and A.N. Zechiel, Exploring the Curriculum (New York: Harper, 1942); Thirty Schools Tell Their Story (New York: Harper, 1942). For the follow-up study, see Dean Chamberlin, Enid Straw Chamberlin, Neal E. Drought and William E. Scott, Did They Succeed in College? (New York: Harper, 1942). For a comprehensive history of the Eight-Year Study, see Craig Kridel and Robert V. Bullough, Jr., Stories of the Eight-Year Study: Reexamining Secondary Education in America (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007); Broder, “Life adjustment education”; US Office of Education, Life Adjustment Education, 12. Also see Kliebard, Schooled to Work, 205.

²² Herbst, The Once and Future School, 241 note 12, 178, 177; cf. US Office of Education, Life Adjustment Education, 12.

²³ Angus and Mirel, Failed Promise, 82. Also see Ravitch, Left Back, 327ff.

²⁴ Reese, America’s Public Schools, 2, 308, 224–225; Arthur E. Bestor, Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1953).

²⁵ Urban and Wagoner, American Education, 307, 307–308, 332. According to Aikin, “Practically all accredited colleges and universities” in the US participated. Story of the Eight-Year Study, 12; see Wilford Aikin, The Story of the Eight-Year Study (New York: Harper, 1942) 12, 111–112, 113–114, 115.

²⁶ Armytage, Four Hundred Years, 228–2230, 242–243, 260–261.

²⁷ H.C. Barnard, A History of English Education, From 1760 (London: University of London Press, 1963), 330. Barnard endorsed the contribution of experimental “progressive” schools, as well (p. 248).

²⁸ Selleck, English Primary Education, 61, 64ff, 127.

²⁹ Roy Lowe, ed. The Changing Primary School (London: Falmer Press, 1987), 32ff, 50ff.

³⁰ Cunningham, Curriculum Change, 48, 213.

³¹ Brian Simon, Education and the Social Order, 1940–1991 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1991), 380, 444–445, 445; C.B. Cox and A.E. Dyson, Fight for Education (London: Critical Quarterly Society, 1969), 6. On the impact of Simon’s politics on his scholarship, see Gary McCulloch, “A people’s history of education: Brian Simon, the British Communist Party and Studies in the History of Education, 1780–1870”, History of Education 39 (July 2010): 437–457; Gary McCulloch and Tom Woodin, “Learning and liberal education: The case of the Simon Family, 1912–1939”, Oxford Review of Education 36 (April 2010): 187–201.

³² Simon, Education and the Social Order, 272, 280, 301–302, 348.

³³ Peter Gordon, Richard Aldrich and Dennis Dean, Education and Policy in England in the Twentieth Century (London: Woburn Press, 1991), 186, 198, 260–261.

³⁴ Jones, Education in Britain, 54–55, 103.

³⁵ Roy Lowe, The Death of Progressive Education: How Teachers Lost Control of the Classroom (London: Routledge, 2007), 3, 47–48, 59–60.

³⁶ Ibid., 161.

³⁷ Sizer, Secondary Schools, 201, 206–207; Bestor, Educational Wastelands, 105–106; John Latimer, What’s Happened to Our High Schools? (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1958); James Koerner, ed. The Case for Basic Education (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1959).

³⁸ Herbst, The Once and Future School, 179, 198–200, 208.

³⁹ Reese, America’s Public Schools, 224. Bestor, Educational Wastelands, 81ff.

⁴⁰ Urban and Wagoner, American Education, 332–335; Bestor, Educational Wastelands, 81ff.

⁴¹ Gordon et al., Education and Policy, 88–89; Central Advisory Council, Children; Cox and Dyson, Fight for Education; C.B. Cox and A.E. Dyson, eds. Black Paper Two (London: The Critical Quarterly Society, 1970); C.B. Cox and A.E. Dyson, eds. Goodbye Mr Short (London: Davis-Poynter, 1971); C.B. Cox and Rhodes Boyson, eds. Black Paper 1975 (London: Dent & Sons, 1975); C.B. Cox and Rhodes Boyson, eds. Black Paper 1977 (London: Temple Smith, 1977).

⁴² Simon, Education and the Social Order, 379, 319, 396; Cox and Dyson, Fight for Education, 6.

⁴³ Jones, Education in Britain, 103.

⁴⁴ Frank Musgrove, “The Black Paper movement”, in Roy Lowe, ed. The Changing Primary School (London: Falmer Press, 1987), 106, 108, 106, 123; Cox and Dyson, Fight for Education.

⁴⁵ Sol Cohen, “The history of American education, 1900–1976: The uses of the past”, Harvard Educational Review 46 (1976): 324.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 325.

⁴⁷ Milton Gaither, American Educational History Revisited: A Critique of Progress (New York: Teachers College Press, 2003), 163, 161; Bernard Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study (New York: Norton, 1960).

⁴⁸ Gaither, American Educational History Revisited, 143.

⁴⁹ Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society, 8, 10, 9; Gaither, American Educational History Revisited, 159.

⁵⁰ Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society, 11–12.

⁵¹ Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School (New York: Knopf, 1961); Sol Cohen, Progressive and Urban School Reform: The Public Education Association of New York City, 1895–1954 (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1963); Daniel Tanner and Laurel Tanner, History of the School Curriculum (New York: Macmillan, 1990); Arthur Zilversmit, Changing Schools: Progressive Education Theory and Practice, 1930–1960 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993); John L. Rury, Education and Social Change: Themes in the History of American Schooling (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005).

⁵² Tyack, The One Best System.

⁵³ William J. Reese and John L. Rury, eds. Rethinking the History of American Education (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

⁵⁴ William Richardson, “Historians and educationists: The history of education as a field of study in post-war England. Part I: 1945–72”, History of Education 28 (1999): 2, 5, 3.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 8.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 14.

⁵⁷ William Richardson, “Historians and educationists: The history of education as a field of study in post-war England. Part II: 1972–96”, History of Education 28 (1999): 109–141.

⁵⁸ Andy Green and Susanne Wiborg, “Comprehensive schooling and educational inequality: An international perspective”, in Melissa Benn and Clyde Chitty, eds. A Tribute to Caroline Benn: Education and Democracy (London: Continuum, 2004), 239–240; Susanne Wiborg, Education and Social Integration: Comprehensive Schooling in Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).