Progressivism, schools and schools of education: An American romance

Abstract

This paper tells a story about progressivism, schools and schools of education in twentieth‐century America. Depending on one's position in the politics of education, this story can assume the form of a tragedy or a romance, or perhaps even a comedy. The heart of the tale is the struggle for control of American education in the early twentieth century between two factions of the movement for progressive education. The administrative progressives won this struggle, and they reconstructed the organization and curriculum of American schools in a form that has lasted to the present day. Meanwhile the other group, the pedagogical progressives, who failed miserably in shaping what we do in schools, did at least succeed in shaping how we talk about schools. Professors in schools of education were caught in the middle of this dispute, and they ended up in an awkwardly compromised position. Their hands were busy—preparing teachers to work within the confines of the educational system established by the administrative progressives, and carrying out research to make this system work more efficiently. But their hearts were with the pedagogues. So they became the high priests of pedagogical progressivism, keeping this faith alive within the halls of the education school, and teaching the words of its credo to new generations of educators. Why is it that American education professors have such a longstanding, deeply rooted and widely shared rhetorical commitment to the progressive vision? The answer can be found in the convergence between the history of the education school and the history of the child‐centered strand of progressivism during the early twentieth century. Historical circumstances drew them together so strongly that they became inseparable. As a result, progressivism became the ideology of the education professor. Education schools have their own legend about how this happened, which is a stirring tale about a marriage made in heaven, between an ideal that would save education and a stalwart champion that would fight the forces of traditionalism to make this ideal a reality. As is the case with most legends, there is some truth in this account. But here a different story is told. In this story, the union between pedagogical progressivism and the education school is not the result of mutual attraction but of something more enduring: mutual need. It was not a marriage of the strong but a wedding of the weak. Both were losers in their respective arenas: child‐centered progressivism lost out in the struggle for control of American schools, and the education school lost out in the struggle for respect in American higher education. They needed each other, with one looking for a safe haven and the other looking for a righteous mission. As a result, education schools came to have a rhetorical commitment to progressivism that is so wide that, within these institutions, it is largely beyond challenge. At the same time, however, this progressive vision never came to dominate the practice of teaching and learning in schools—or even to reach deeply into the practice of teacher educators and researchers within education schools themselves.

Notes

This paper is a revised version of an invited lecture delivered at the 25th annual meeting of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 18 July 2003. It draws from material found in my recent book (Labaree, David F. The Trouble with Ed Schools. New Haven: CT, 2004): chapter 7) and in an earlier paper (Labaree, David F. “The Ed School's Romance with Progressivism.” In Brookings Papers on Educational Policy, 2004, edited by Diane Ravitch. Washington, DC, 2004: 89–129.

Cremin, Lawrence A. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1976–1957. New York, 1961: 328.

Hirsch Jr., E. D. The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them. New York, 1996; Public Agenda. Different Drummers: How Teachers of Teachers View Public Education. New York, 1997; Ravitch, Diane. Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms. New York, 2000.

Cuban, Larry. How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890–1980. New York, 1993; Zilversmit, Arthur. Changing Schools: Progressive Education Theory and Practice, 1930–1960. Chicago, 1993; Goodlad, John. A Place Called School. New York, 1984; Cohen, David K. “A Revolution in One Classroom: The Case of Mrs. Oublier.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 12 (1990): 311–329.

Clifford, Geraldine Joncich, and James W. Guthrie. Ed School: A Brief for Professional Education. Chicago, 1988; Labaree, The Trouble with Ed Schools.

Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe. An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Educational Research. Chicago, 2000; Kennedy, Mary M. “Choosing a Goal for Professional Education.” In Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, edited by W. Robert Houston. New York, 1990; Floden, Robert E. “Research on Effects of Teaching: a Continuing Model for Research on Teaching.” In Handbook of Research on Teaching, edited by Virginia Richardson. Washington, DC, 2001: 3–16.

Tyack, David. The One Best System. Cambridge, 1974.

Church, Robert L., and Michael W. Sedlak. Education in the United States. New York, 1976.

Kliebard, Herbert. The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958. Boston, 1986.

See for example: Rury, John L. Education and Social Change: Themes in the History of American Education. Mahwah, NJ, 2002.

Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe. “The Plural Worlds of Educational Research.” History of Education Quarterly, 29 (1989): 185.

Hirsch, The Schools We Need: 74.

Ibid.: 75.

This discussion of administrative progressivism draws heavily on: Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum.

There are striking similarities between the faculty psychology that supported learning of traditional academic subjects and the skill‐oriented learning theory of the pedagogical progressives—which is ironic, since faculty psychology was the grounding for the classical curriculum that the pedagogical and administrative progressives so strongly opposed.

Commission on Reorganization of Secondary Education. “Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education.” Bulletin no. 35, US Department of Interior, Bureau of Education, 1918.

Krug, Edward A. The American High School, 1880–1920. Madison, WI, 1964; Id., The American High School, 1920–1941. Madison, WI, 1972.

Angus, David L., and Jeffrey E. Mirel. The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890–1995. New York, 1999.

Dewey, John. “The Child and the Curriculum.” In The School and Society and the Child and the Curriculum. Chicago, 1902/1990: 205.

Cremin, The Transformation of the School; Church and Sedlak, Education in the United States; Ravitch, Left Back; Rury, Education and Social Change.

Zilversmit, Changing Schools: 168.

Dewey, John. The Sources of a Science of Education. New York, 1929.

Lagemann, “The Plural Worlds of Educational Research”.

Katz, Michael B. “From Theory to Survey in Graduate Schools of Education.” Journal of Higher Education 36 (1966): 325–334.

In this way, many misguided followers of Dewey ignored his explicit faith in a form of schooling that emphasized equally both the child and the curriculum: Dewey, “The Child and the Curriculum”.