Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T16:07:33.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Education and Progressivism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Joel Spring
Joel Spring*
Affiliation:
Case Western Reserve University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A major problem with Lawrence A. Cremin's The Transformation of the School is the neglect of one aspect of progressive political ideology and one stream of educational thought during the pre-World War I period. The neglect of these two movements was probably caused by a failure to give a coherent statement as to the nature of educational reforms during this period and the use of a rather vague definition of progressive political and social change. What Cremin calls “progressive education” during the pre-World War I period appears to be a conglomeration of educational changes with no particular common bonds except that they represented something new. This lack of clarity gives the impression that a strange combination of people were called “progressive educators.” Under the roof of this title is mixed the free atmosphere of Marietta Johnson's Organic School with the well ordered air of the platoon system of the Gary Public Schools. The title also houses the educational elitist and test-oriented Edward L. Thorndike with Caroline Pratt's Play School. This confused picture of educational change is a function of an equally obscure definition of progressive political and social change. Cremin vaguely defines “American Progressivism writ large” as social and political change designed to improve the lives of individuals, a valueless definition since it literally includes everyone.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 1970 , pp. 53 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 by New York University 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Alsworth Ross, Edward, Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922), p. 11.Google Scholar

2. Chandler Bagley, William, The Educative Process (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1924), pp. 62–64.Google Scholar

3. Rowe, L. S., “Social Consequences of Cities,” Yale Review, 10 (November 1901), 298–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Riis, Jacob A., How the Other Half Lives (New York: Hill and Wang, 1957), p. 200.Google Scholar

5. Ginger, Ray, Altgeld's America (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1958), pp. 248–50.Google Scholar

6. Croly, Herbert, The Promise of American Life (New York: Capricorn Books, 1964), pp. 1–26, 399-421.Google Scholar

7. O'Shea, Michael V., Social Development and Education (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909), p. 272.Google Scholar

8. Howerth, Ira W., “Education and the Social Ideal,” Educational Review, 24 (September 1902), pp. 150–65.Google Scholar

9. Dutton, Samuel T., Social Phases of Education in the School and the Home (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899), p. 22.Google Scholar

10. “The Social Motive in School Work,” The Francis W. Parker School Year Book (Chicago, 1912), p. 7.Google Scholar

11. John, and Dewey, Evelyn, Schools of Tomorrow (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1962), p. 92.Google Scholar

12. Social Education Association, undated announcement.Google Scholar

13. Scott, Colin, Social Education (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1908).Google Scholar

14. Social Education Quarterly, I, 1907.Google Scholar

15. Gillette, John M., “An Outline of Social Study for Elementary Schools,” American Journal of Sociology, 19 (January 1914), 491–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Cox, Philip, “The Ben Blewett Junior High School: An Experiment in Democracy,” School Review, 27 (May 1919), p. 346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Owen, William B., “Social Education Through the School,” School Review, 15 (January 1907), 11–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Lilner, Florence, “School Management from the Side of Social Life,” School Review, 7 (April 1899), 215–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Froula, V. K., “Extra-Curricular Activities: Their Relation to the Curricular Work of the School,” National Education Association Proceedings (1915), pp. 737–42.Google Scholar

20. Cloyd, D. E., “Student Organizations in City High Schools,” Education, 31 (September 1910), 17–20.Google Scholar

21. Froula, , “Extra-Curricular Activities,” p. 739.Google Scholar

22. Garraty, John A., Right-Hand Man: The Life of George W. Perkins (New York: Harper, 1957).Google Scholar

23. See Garraty, Right-Hand Man, pp. 243-309, and Mowry's, George E. Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement (New York: Hill and Wang, 1960), pp. 256–304.Google Scholar

24. Perkins, George W., “Modern Industrialism” (address given before the Southern Commercial Congress, Atlanta, Ga., March 8, 1911).Google Scholar

25. Gompers, Samuel, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1948), II, 110-12.Google Scholar

26. “Annual Message to the State,” The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Memorial Edition (New York: L. Scribner's Sons, 1925), XVII, 46-47.Google Scholar

27. “Second Annual Message,” ibid., XVII, 162–66.Google Scholar

28. “The New Nationalism,” ibid., XIX, 10–37.Google Scholar

29. Croly, The Promise of American Life, pp. 100-40.Google Scholar

30. Krug, Edward, The Shaping of the American High School (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 249–84.Google Scholar

31. Parsons, Frank, Our Country's Need (Boston, 1894), p. 69.Google Scholar

32. See ibid. and Parsons, The Drift of Our Time (Chicago, 1898).Google Scholar

33. Weaver, Eli W., Wage-earning Occupations of Boys and Girls (Brooklyn, 1912).Google Scholar

34. Parsons, , Our Country's Need p. 2.Google Scholar

35. Parsons, Frank, Choosing a Vocation (Boston, 1909), p. 32.Google Scholar

36. Davis, Jesse B., Vocational and Moral Guidance (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1914), and “Vocational and Moral Guidance in the High School,” Religious Education, 7 (February 1913).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. Krug, , The Shaping of the American High School p. 330.Google Scholar

38. Gosling, Thomas, “Educational Reconstruction in the Junior High School,” Educational Review, 57 (May 1919), 384–85.Google Scholar

39. Cox, , “The Ben Blewett Junior High School,” and R. L. Lyman, “The Ben Blewett Junior High School,” School Review, 28 (January 1920), 26–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education (Washington: Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1918), p. 35.Google Scholar

41. See Eric Goldman's Rendezvous with Destiny (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), pp. 248–68; and Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1963), pp. 279-305.Google Scholar