Progressive and traditionalist education

Some debates will not be going away any time soon

A traditionalist teacher and a progressive teacher

This tweet thread was brought to my attention:

From here

I didn’t think there were still people around who denied the history of the debate between progressives and traditionalists. The most authoritative text on the differences between the two was written by John Dewey and published in 1938 in Chapter 1 of Education and Experience. That chapter can be found here. I recommend that you read it in its entirety, however, here are a couple of lengthy extracts:

Dewey on traditionalism

The history of educational theory is marked by opposition between the idea that education is development from within and that it is formation from without; that it is based upon natural endowments and that education is a process of overcoming natural inclination and substituting in its place habits acquired under external pressure.

At present, the opposition, so far as practical affairs of the school are concerned, tends to take the form of contrast between traditional¹ and progressive education. If the underlying ideas of the former are formulated broadly, without the qualifications required for accurate statement, they are found to be about as follows: The subject-matter of education consists of bodies of information and of skills that have been worked out in the past; therefore, the chief business of the school is to transmit them to the new generation. In the past, there have also been developed standards and rules of conduct; moral training consists in forming habits of action in conformity with these rules and standards. Finally, the general pattern of school organization (by which I mean the relations of pupils to one another and to the teachers) constitutes the school a kind of institution sharply marked off from other social institutions. Call up in imagination the ordinary schoolroom, its time-schedules, schemes of classification, of examination and promotion, of rules of order, and I think you will grasp what is meant by "pattern of organization." If then you contrast this scene with what goes on in the family, for example, you will appreciate what is meant by the school being a kind of institution sharply marked off from any other form of social organization.

The three characteristics just mentioned fix the aims and methods of instruction and discipline. The main purpose or objective is to prepare the young for future responsibilities and for success in life, by means of acquisition of the organized bodies of information and prepared forms of skill which comprehend the material of instruction. Since the subject-matter as well as standards of proper conduct are handed down from the past, the attitude of pupils must, upon the whole, be one of docility, receptivity, and obedience. Books, especially textbooks, are the chief representatives of the lore and wisdom of the past, while teachers are the organs through which pupils are brought into effective connection with the material. Teachers are the agents through which knowledge and skills are communicated and rules of conduct enforced….

I think Dewey is correct in his characterisation of traditionalism, except for his reference to “docility” which seems more of an insult than a serious point. He is less clear in his characterisation of progressive education. While he is renowned as the most famous philosopher of progressive education, he was critical of some attempts to put the philosophy into practice. Rather than endorsing the views of others, he was looking for a way forward with the progressive education project.

Dewey on progressivism

If one attempts to formulate the philosophy of education implicit in the practices of the newer education, we may, I think, discover certain common principles amid the variety of progressive schools now existing. To imposition from above is opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity; to learning from texts and teachers, learning through experience; to acquisition of isolated skills and techniques by drill, is opposed acquisition of them as means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal; to preparation for a more or less remote future is opposed making the most of the opportunities of present life; to static aims and materials is opposed acquaintance with a changing world….

I take it that the fundamental unity of the newer philosophy is found in the idea that there is an intimate and necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and education. If this be true, then a positive and constructive development of its own basic idea depends upon having a correct idea of experience.

…basing education upon personal experience may mean more multiplied and more intimate contacts between the mature and the immature than ever existed in the traditional school, and consequently more, rather than less, guidance by others. The problem, then, is: how these contacts can be established without violating the principle of learning through personal experience. The solution of this problem requires a well thought-out philosophy of the social factors that operate in the constitution of individual experience.

What Dewey captures here is that progressive education is defined primarily by the rejection of some (but not always all) traditionalist ideas. However, the details have not been settled. Progressive education is a collection of themes in educational thought, or perhaps a tradition within educational movements, rather than a single alternative to traditionalism. Hannah Arendt, in her brilliant essay The Crisis in Education, argued that, over time, progressive education is likely to reappear in different forms, “since there are no limits to the possibilities of nonsense and capricious notions that can be decked out as the last word in science”.

Progressive versus traditionalist in practice

The most difficult idea to grasp here is that progressive and traditionalist primarily refer to philosophies rather than practices. For this reason, there is no obvious way to find a middle ground between them. Rejection of traditionalist ideas is inherently progressive. Progressive movements may differ in which traditionalist ideas they reject, or which alternative to tradionalist education they want. However, an idea is either rejected, or it isn’t. It isn’t possible to find a middle position between rejecting and accepting an idea. The quest for a middle position between traditionalist and progressive education, if it leads anywhere, will only ever result in another form of progressive education. Some progressives fail to acknowledge this. They end up arguing against traditionalist education while simultaneously denying there is a debate to be had between progressives and traditionalists.

I can’t say that I have much time for those who end up in this self-contradictory position. It seems like a failure of either integrity or intellect. However, it should be noted that the idea of a middle ground is much more plausible if you ignore the fact that traditionalism and progressivism are philosophical positions. One could claim instead that the words progressive and traditionalist refer only to teaching methods, and not to the philosophical positions behind those methods. Then it can be argued that, by using a mix of teaching methods, you can avoid choosing between being progressive and being traditional.

Some teaching methods, such as investigations, do align with progressive ideology. Other teaching methods, such as giving tests, are consistent with traditionalist ideology. There are also teaching methods, like verbal questioning, that don’t seem to be aligned with either (although how these methods are implemented in practice may reveal an ideological preference).² Therefore, if one only looks at teaching methods, it seems a lot more plausible to claim that some (or even most) teachers are a mixture of progressive and traditionalist. Or alternatively, one could claim that they are neither progressive nor traditionalist. However, this requires a remarkably superficial understanding of teaching. One would end up only paying attention to teaching techniques and strategies and giving little thought to the values, beliefs or aims behind teaching methods. This may explain why some progressives are furious about the use of certain teaching methods, but are unable to make any rational argument against them.³

An alternative to saying progressive and traditional

The debate is further complicated by teacher training that indoctrinated teachers at the start of their careers into believing there was no debate.⁴ Trainee teachers were often fed an undiluted diet of progressive education. Progressive ideas about teaching were the only ideas, and if teachers didn’t follow them, they were bad teachers. If they found something very different in schools, it was seen as some kind of compromise, or guilty secret, rather than an opposing tradition. This situation is used to argue that most teachers don’t know the meaning of progressive and traditionalist and haven’t taken sides in the debate. However, you don’t need to name something to learn to recognise it. I think teachers have always found some vocabulary to describe teaching practices that were aligned with one tradition or another.

Before I adopted the words progressive and traditionalist, I had other ways of describing the types of teaching that corresponded to each tradition. I had one word for traditionalist-inspired teaching, where I told pupils what they needed to know, and told them to do work in their books based on what they had been told. I called it “teaching”. For the other type of teaching, where there was no clear knowledge being passed on, and children were left in groups to do card sorts, I had a phrase. I called it “knitting your own yoghurt”.

If Sue Cowley wants to use those terms instead of progressive and traditionalist, she’s welcome to them.

1. In this post, I have used the word “traditionalist” rather than “traditional” as it seems clearer to me. However, in this context I consider them to be interchangeable. It is possible that, to be consistent, I should have changed “progressive” to “progressivist”. However, that sounded to me like it added almost a note of unnecessary derision. I would be interested to know if any progressives would prefer the term “progressivist”.

2. There is considerable debate between progressives and traditionalists as to the value of open and closed questions.

3. Once again, I find myself turning to the denunciations of SLANT and Teach Like A Champion as examples of the worst arguments in teaching.

4. This was certainly the case when I was training to teach in the early 00s, but I would be interested to know how different things are now.