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Progressive Education M Education/Ideology U R Progressive Education: FO One Parent’s Journey By Rob Kremer I didn’t have a lot of back- supported them. So we bought ground knowledge upon which a fixer-upper house in the dis- to base my impressions, but trict, and enrolled our kids in after months of visiting schools, Riverdale Elementary School. My interest in talking with teachers and prin- At about the same time, cipals and other parents, what I started a job administering a education started we wanted for our kids started large federal education grant to become clear. Most of the project that sought to advance just like many par- schools we looked into spoke progressive education prin- in pretty much the same lan- ciples in the teaching of math associations, teacher certification, ents: deciding on guage— a language that really and science in the northwest the federal and state bureaucra- made sense to us. Education region of the United States. The cies, and the history of public the best school for should be a journey of discovery, philosophy and teaching meth- education in the US. not some exercise in cramming a ods the project advocated were I was in a somewhat unique my children. I had child’s brain with facts, dates and right in line with the approach place: it was my job to become an figures. Kids should make this used at Riverdale, which gave us expert on the progressive educa- recently moved journey by engaging in mean- comfort that we had chosen the tion philosophy and practice, ingful projects and activities right school. and at the same time my own back to Oregon designed to develop higher-order My new job gave me the children were starting their aca- thinking skills, rather than by opportunity to dive deep into the demic careers at a school wholly with my wife and sitting through dry lectures or education industry. I reviewed committed to its principles. I was being drilled for rote memoriza- research on education methods, able, therefore, to look at the two kids after tion of factual information. talked with educators at all lev- progressive education model from Most of the schools we visit- els, and read extensively about all sides: not just its history, its spending a decade ed, both public and private, used pedagogy, educational principles, academic research, its theoretical some variation of this philosophy, and philosophies. My personal and philosophical underpinnings, in Chicago. As our which goes by many names but children reached can be generally referred to as “progressive education.” There From the start, progressive education school age, my seemed to be a solid consensus among the educators that the …sought to use the schools to “build progressive education philosophy wife and I spent a and the teaching methods that a new social order,”…its adherents spring from it constitute the “best lot of time inves- practices” in schooling. believed the schools should instill We were most impressed by tigating different the version of progressive educa- in students “democratic behaviors” tion adopted by the Riverdale schools and differ- School District, called the and “humanistic values.” ent teaching philos- “Coalition of Essential Schools” model. The Coalition model journey of discovery took me and its pedagogy, but also its out- ophies in order to was developed by Ted Sizer, a through every nook and cranny comes with my own children and well-known Harvard educated of the education establishment their schoolmates. make an informed reformer/guru who did most of and the challenges it faces: the Progressive education is not his development work out of standards-setting organizations, a ew reform. As a philosophy of choice about where Brown University. The principles assessment methods, special how schools should teach, it start- of the Coalition model seemed education, learning disabilities, ed in the early 20th century as a to send our kids. very well thought out, and the the achievement gap, colleges of response to the traditional way staff at Riverdale understood and education, the role of the various of teaching kids, which was very 32 Winter 2005 Oregon’s Future Another View of Whole Language Education/Ideology M U The term “whole language” was coined to reflect a cur- riculum that included strategies that looked at whole this is true, but what has survived R words, not just discrete letter sounds. Please note that is the philosophical belief that I wrote “not just letter sounds.” I did not write “in place schools should be “child-cen- My first uneasy of letter sounds.” Using visual and contextual clues, and tered.” That is, schools should not feeling at Riverdale FO sounding out words are all important reading skills. directly teach a pre-defined canon of academic knowledge and skills Comprehension strategies that go beyond word rec- to students, but rather, students came when attend- ognition are also crucial. As the International Reading should be taught through projects Association and the National Council of Teachers of and activities, carefully guided by ing the parent English note in their standards students need to “apply a trained teacher in an ongoing a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, process of discovery. night in my son’s evaluate and appreciate texts. They draw on prior All of the professional teach- first grade class. experience, their interactions with other readers and ers’ organizations, which deter- writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other mine curriculum standards, accept Written in big texts, their word identification strategies, and their this idea as self-evident fact. understanding of textual features (e.g. sound-letter “Within the educational commu- letters across the correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).” nity,” says the noted critic of pro- gressivism, E.D. Hirsch, “there is blackboard were no thinkable alternative.” Efforts to frame the problem of public schools as As the modern form of the words: “We are progressive vs. traditional, such as Rob Kremer’s article progressivism grew to dominate in this issue of Oregon’s Future, ignore the most the public education landscape, a a whole language important factor in creating good public schools: the body of teaching beliefs and prac- knowledge and capacity of the teacher in the classroom. tices emerged, and to some extent classroom.” Schools, including those based on the Coalition of became codified, in the form of Essential Schools principles which Kremer criticizes the various “standards” docu- to recognize and say the several in his article, are affected by the teacher’s ability in ments put out by the professional dozen phonemes, and then have an individual classroom to draw on the practices and teaching organizations. I saw the them practice combining them research in his or her day-to-day efforts for connecting impact of these beliefs in my own into words. students with learning. A substantial body of research kids’ classrooms. Both my kids were read- confirms that the single biggest obstacle to maintaining My first uneasy feeling at ing before they entered school, Riverdale came when I attended so at the time my wife and I progressive reforms is the extensive skills needed by the parent night in my son’s were not too concerned with teachers to teach both subjects and students well. first grade class. Written in big Riverdale’s approach to reading letters across the blackboard instruction, one way or the other. Kimberly Cambell were the words: “We are a whole Then, I got my son’s first grade language classroom.” Whole lan- Reading Report Card. It had a (This sidebar is an excerpt from Kimberly’s article guage is progressive education’s list of “reading strategies,” and “One Teacher’s Journey: A Response to Rob Kremer.” belief system applied to reading. a check mark which indicated Please also see Joanne Yatvins’s article—Ed) Its theorists believe learning to how effectively he used each of read is as natural as learning to them. Among the reading strate- speak, and therefore it isn’t nec- gies: “Skips words,” “Substitutes structured, dry, and authoritarian. believed the schools should instill essary (and indeed it could be words,” “Uses visual cues,” and Developed by John Dewey, pro- in students “democratic behav- harmful) to directly and system- “Uses contextual cues.” I found gressivism shuns teacher-directed iors” and “humanistic values.” atically teach and drill children out that this is right out of the curriculum standards in favor of In the latter half of the 20th on the sound-letter relationships, whole language playbook. Instead open-ended projects and hands-on century, elements of progressivism called phonemes. of trying to sound out phonemes activities. From the start, progres- became the dominant pedagogy in They believe learning to of words they do not recognize, sive education was at least in part public schools. Some people argue read is primarily an exercise in students are taught to just skip a political movement. It sought that progressive education ended recognizing whole words, as if the the word, put another in its place, to use the schools to “build a as the prevailing orthodoxy in English language was written in look at the pictures and guess a new social order,” as one of its public schools after World War II. pictograms, like Chinese. Phonics word that might work, or base a early leaders, George Counts, To the extent that progressivism proponents, on the other hand, guess on the text up to that point. advocated. As such, its adherents is no longer a social movement, systematically teach students (See Joanne Yatvin’s article for Winter 2005 33 Oregon’s Future M Education/Ideology U R another description of whole moted by these standards are the abstract domain.
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