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Progressive
Education
Why It’s
Hard to Beat, But Also Hard to Find
By Alfie
Kohn
If progressive education doesn’t lend itself to a
single fixed definition, that seems fitting in light of its reputation for
resisting conformity and standardization. Any two educators who describe
themselves as sympathetic to this tradition may well see it differently, or
at least disagree about which features are the most important.
Talk to enough progressive educators, in fact, and
you’ll begin to notice certain paradoxes: Some people focus on the unique
needs of individual students, while others invoke the importance of a community
of learners; some describe learning as a process, more journey than
destination, while others believe that tasks should result in authentic
products that can be shared.[1]
What It Is
Despite such variations, there are enough elements
on which most of us can agree so that a common core of progressive education
emerges, however hazily. And it really does make sense to call it a tradition,
as I did a moment ago. Ironically, what we usually call “traditional”
education, in contrast to the progressive approach, has less claim to that
adjective — because of how, and how recently, it has developed. As Jim
Nehring at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell observed, “Progressive
schools are the legacy of a long and proud tradition of thoughtful school
practice stretching back for centuries” — including hands-on learning,
multiage classrooms, and mentor-apprentice relationships — while what we
generally refer to as traditional schooling “is largely the result of
outdated policy changes that have calcified into conventions.”[2] (Nevertheless, I’ll use the conventional nomenclature
in this article to avoid confusion.)
It’s not all or nothing, to be sure. I don’t think
I’ve ever seen a school — even one with scripted instruction, uniforms, and
rows of desks bolted to the floor — that has completely escaped the influence
of progressive ideas. Nor have I seen a school that’s progressive in every
detail. Still, schools can be characterized according to how closely they
reflect a commitment to values such as these:
Attending to the whole child: Progressive educators are
concerned with helping children become not only good learners but also good
people. Schooling isn’t seen as being about just academics, nor is
intellectual growth limited to verbal and mathematical proficiencies.
Community: Learning isn’t something that happens to
individual children — separate selves at separate desks. Children learn with
and from one another in a caring community, and that’s true of moral as well
as academic learning. Interdependence counts at least as much as
independence, so it follows that practices that pit students against one
another in some kind of competition, thereby undermining a feeling of
community, are deliberately avoided.
Collaboration: Progressive schools are characterized by what I
like to call a “working with” rather than a “doing to” model. In place of
rewards for complying with the adults’ expectations, or punitive consequences
for failing to do so, there’s more of an emphasis on collaborative
problem-solving — and, for that matter, less focus on behaviors than on
underlying motives, values, and reasons.
Social justice: A sense of community and responsibility for others
isn’t confined to the classroom; indeed, students are helped to locate themselves
in widening circles of care that extend beyond self, beyond friends, beyond
their own ethnic group, and beyond their own country. Opportunities are
offered not only to learn about, but also to put into action, a commitment to
diversity and to improving the lives of others.
Intrinsic motivation: When considering (or
reconsidering) educational policies and practices, the first question that
progressive educators are likely to ask is, “What’s the effect on students’ interest
in learning, their desire to continue reading, thinking, and
questioning?” This deceptively simple test helps to determine what students
will and won’t be asked to do. Thus, conventional practices, including
homework, grades, and tests, prove difficult to justify for anyone who is serious
about promoting long-term dispositions rather than just improving short-term
skills.
Deep understanding: As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead declared
long ago, “A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God’s
earth.” Facts and skills do matter, but only in a context and for a
purpose. That’s why progressive education tends to be organized around
problems, projects, and questions — rather than around lists of facts,
skills, and separate disciplines. The teaching is typically interdisciplinary,
the assessment rarely focuses on rote memorization, and excellence isn’t
confused with “rigor.” The point is not merely to challenge students — after
all, harder is not necessarily better — but to invite them to think deeply
about issues that matter and help them understand ideas from the inside out.
Active learning: In progressive schools, students play a vital role
in helping to design the curriculum, formulate the questions, seek out (and
create) answers, think through possibilities, and evaluate how successful
they — and their teachers — have been. Their active participation in every
stage of the process is consistent with the overwhelming consensus of experts
that learning is a matter of constructing ideas rather than passively
absorbing information or practicing skills.
Taking kids seriously: In traditional schooling, as
John Dewey once remarked, “the center of gravity is outside the child”:
he or she is expected to adjust to the school’s rules and curriculum.
Progressive educators take their cue from the children — and are particularly
attentive to differences among them. (Each student is unique, so a single set
of policies, expectations, or assignments would be as counterproductive as it
was disrespectful.) The curriculum isn’t just based on interest, but on these
children’s interests. Naturally, teachers will have broadly conceived
themes and objectives in mind, but they don’t just design a course of study for
their students; they design it with them, and they welcome unexpected
detours. One fourth-grade teacher’s curriculum, therefore, won’t be the same
as that of the teacher next door, nor will her curriculum be the same this
year as it was for the children she taught last year. It’s not enough to
offer elaborate thematic units prefabricated by the adults. And progressive
educators realize that the students must help to formulate not only the
course of study but also the outcomes or standards that inform those lessons.
Some of the features that I’ve listed here will seem
objectionable, or at least unsettling, to educators at more traditional
schools, while others will be surprisingly familiar and may even echo
sentiments that they, themselves, have expressed. But progressive educators
don’t merely say they endorse ideas like “love of learning” or “a
sense of community.” They’re willing to put these values into practice even
if doing so requires them to up-end traditions. They may eliminate homework
altogether if it’s clear that students view after-school assignments as
something to be gotten over with as soon as possible. They will question things
like honors classes and awards assemblies that clearly undermine a sense of
community. Progressive schools, in short, follow their core values —
bolstered by research and experience — wherever they lead.
What It Isn’t
Misconceptions about progressive education generally
take two forms. Either it is defined too narrowly so that the significance of
the change it represents is understated, or else an exaggerated, caricatured
version is presented in order to justify dismissing the whole approach. Let’s
take each of these in turn.
Individualized attention from caring, respectful
teachers is terribly important. But it does not a progressive school make. To
assume otherwise not only dilutes progressivism; it’s unfair to traditional
educators, most of whom are not callous Gradgrinds or ruler-wielding nuns. In
fact, it’s perfectly consistent to view education as the process of filling
children up with bits of knowledge — and to use worksheets, lectures,
quizzes, homework, grades, and other such methods in pursuit of that goal —
while being genuinely concerned about each child’s progress. Schools with
warm, responsive teachers who know each student personally can take pride in
that fact, but they shouldn’t claim on that basis to be progressive.
Moreover, traditional schools aren’t always about
memorizing dates and definitions; sometimes they’re also committed to helping
students understand ideas. As one science teacher pointed out, “For
thoughtful traditionalists, thinking is couched in terms of comprehending, integrating,
and applying knowledge.” However, the student’s task in such classrooms is
“comprehending how the teacher has integrated or applied the ideas…
and [then] reconstruct[ing] the teacher’s thinking.”[3]
There are interesting concepts being discussed in some traditional
classrooms, in other words, but what distinguishes progressive education is
that students must construct their own understanding of ideas.
There’s another mistake based on too narrow a
definition, which took me a while to catch on to: A school that is culturally
progressive is not necessarily educationally progressive. An institution can
be steeped in lefty politics and multi-grain values; it can be committed to
diversity, peace, and saving the planet — but remain strikingly traditional in
its pedagogy. In fact, one can imagine an old-fashioned pour-in-the-facts
approach being used to teach lessons in tolerance or even radical politics.[4]
Less innocuous, or accidental, is the tendency to
paint progressive education as a touchy-feely, loosey-goosey, fluffy, fuzzy,
undemanding exercise in leftover hippie idealism — or Rousseauvian
Romanticism. In this cartoon version of the tradition, kids are free to do
anything they please, the curriculum can consist of whatever is fun (and
nothing that isn’t fun). Learning is thought to happen automatically while
the teachers just stand by, observing and beaming. I lack the space here to
offer examples of this sort of misrepresentation — or a full account of why
it’s so profoundly wrong — but trust me: People really do sneer at the idea
of progressive education based on an image that has little to do with
progressive education.
Why It Makes Sense
For most people, the fundamental reason to choose,
or offer, a progressive education is a function of their basic values: “a
rock-bottom commitment to democracy,” as Joseph Featherstone put it; a belief
that meeting children’s needs should take precedence over preparing future
employees; and a desire to nourish curiosity, creativity, compassion,
skepticism, and other virtues.
Fortunately, what may have begun with values (for
any of us as individuals, and also for education itself, historically
speaking) has turned out to be supported by solid data. A truly impressive
collection of research has demonstrated that when students are able to spend
more time thinking about ideas than memorizing facts and practicing skills —
and when they are invited to help direct their own learning — they are not
only more likely to enjoy what they’re doing but to do it better. Progressive
education isn’t just more appealing; it’s also more productive.
I reviewed decades’ worth of research in the late
1990s: studies of preschools and high schools; studies of instruction in
reading, writing, math, and science; broad studies of “open classrooms,”
“student-centered” education, and teaching consistent with constructivist
accounts of learning, but also investigations of specific innovations like
democratic classrooms, multiage instruction, looping, cooperative learning,
and authentic assessment (including the abolition of grades). Across domains,
the results overwhelmingly favor progressive education. Regardless of one’s
values, in other words, this approach can be recommended purely on the basis
of its effectiveness. And if your criteria are more ambitious — long-term
retention of what’s been taught, the capacity to understand ideas and apply
them to new kinds of problems, a desire to continue learning — the relative
benefits of progressive education are even greater.[5]
This conclusion is only strengthened by the lack of data to support
the value of standardized tests, homework, conventional discipline (based on
rewards or consequences), competition, and other traditional practices.[6]
Since I published that research review, similar
findings have continued to accumulate. Several newer studies confirm that
traditional academic instruction for very young children is
counterproductive.[7] Students in elementary and
middle school did better in science when their teaching was “centered on
projects in which they took a high degree of initiative. Traditional
activities, such as completing worksheets and reading primarily from
textbooks, seemed to have no positive effect.”[8] Another recent study
found that an “inquiry-based” approach to learning is more beneficial than
conventional methods for low-income and minority students.[9] The
results go on and on. In fact, I occasionally stumble upon older research
that I’d missed earlier — including a classic five-year investigation of
almost 11,000 children between the ages of eight and sixteen, which found
that students who attended progressive schools were less likely to cheat than
those who attended conventional schools — a result that persisted even after
the researchers controlled for age, IQ, and family background.[10]
Why It’s Rare
Despite the fact that all schools can be located on
a continuum stretching between the poles of totally progressive and totally
traditional — or, actually, on a series of continuums reflecting the various
components of those models — it’s usually possible to visit a school and come
away with a pretty clear sense of whether it can be classified as
predominantly progressive. It’s also possible to reach a conclusion about how
many schools — or even individual classrooms — in America merit that label:
damned few. The higher the grade level, the rarer such teaching tends to be,
and it’s not even all that prevalent at the lower grades.[11]
(Also, while it’s probably true that most progressive schools are
independent, most independent schools are not progressive.)
The rarity of this approach, while discouraging to
some of us, is also rather significant with respect to the larger debate
about education. If progressive schooling is actually quite uncommon, then
it’s hard to blame our problems (real or alleged) on this model. Indeed, the
facts have the effect of turning the argument on its head: If students aren’t
learning effectively, it may be because of the persistence of traditional
beliefs and practices in our nation’s schools.
But we’re also left with a question: If progressive
education is so terrific, why is it still the exception rather than the rule?
I often ask the people who attend my lectures to reflect on this, and the
answers that come back are varied and provocative. For starters, they
tell me, progressive education is not only less familiar but also much harder
to do, and especially to do well. It asks a lot more of the students and at
first can seem a burden to those who have figured out how to play the game in
traditional classrooms — often succeeding by conventional standards without
doing much real thinking. It’s also much more demanding of teachers, who have
to know their subject matter inside and out if they want their students to
“make sense of biology or literature” as opposed to “simply memoriz[ing] the
frog’s anatomy or the sentence’s structure.”[12] But progressive
teachers also have to know a lot about pedagogy because no amount of content
knowledge (say, expertise in science or English) can tell you how to facilitate
learning. The belief that anyone who knows enough math can teach it is a
corollary of the belief that learning is a process of passive absorption —a
view that cognitive science has decisively debunked.
Progressive teachers also have to be comfortable
with uncertainty, not only to abandon a predictable march toward the “right
answer” but to let students play an active role in the quest for meaning that
replaces it. That means a willingness to give up some control and let
students take some ownership, which requires guts as well as talent. These
characteristics appear not to be as common as we might like to think. Almost
a decade ago, in an interview for this magazine, I recalled my own experience
in high school classrooms with some chagrin: “I prided myself on being an
entertaining lecturer, very knowledgeable, funny, charismatic, and so on. It
took me years to realize [that my] classroom was all about me, not about the
kids. It was about teaching, not about learning.”[13] The more we’re
influenced by the insights of progressive education, the more we’re forced to
rethink what it means to be a good teacher. That process will unavoidably
ruffle some feathers, including our own.
And speaking of feather-ruffling, I’m frequently
reminded that progressive education has an uphill journey because of the
larger culture we live in. It’s an approach that is in some respects
inherently subversive, and people in power do not always enjoy being
subverted. As Vito Perrone has written, “The values of progressivism — including
skepticism, questioning, challenging, openness, and seeking alternate
possibilities — have long struggled for acceptance in American society. That
they did not come to dominate the schools is not surprising.”[14]
There is pressure to raise standardized test scores,
something that progressive education manages to do only sometimes and by
accident — not only because that isn’t its purpose but also because such
tests measure what matters least. (The recognition of that fact explains why
progressive schools would never dream of using standardized tests as part of
their admissions process.) More insidiously, though, we face pressure
to standardize our practices in general. Thinking is messy, and deep thinking
is really messy. This reality coexists uneasily with demands for order — in
schools where the curriculum is supposed to be carefully coordinated across
grade levels and planned well ahead of time, or in society at large.
And then (as my audiences invariably point out)
there are parents who have never been invited to reconsider their assumptions
about education. As a result, they may be impressed by the wrong things,
reassured by signs of traditionalism — letter grades, spelling quizzes, heavy
textbooks, a teacher in firm control of the classroom — and unnerved by their
absence. Even if their children are obviously unhappy, parents may accept
that as a fact of life. Instead of wanting the next generation to get better
than we got, it’s as though their position was: “Listen, if it was bad
enough for me, it’s bad enough for my kids.” Perhaps they subscribe to what
might be called the Listerine theory of education, based on a famous ad
campaign that sought to sell this particular brand of mouthwash on the theory
that if it tasted vile, it obviously worked well. The converse proposition,
of course, is that anything appealing is likely to be ineffective. If a child
is lucky enough to be in a classroom featuring, say, student-designed
project-based investigations, the parent may wonder, “But is she really learning
anything? Where are the worksheets?” And so the teachers feel pressure to
make the instruction worse.
All progressive schools experience a constant
undertow, perhaps a request to reintroduce grades of some kind, to give
special enrichments to the children of the “gifted” parents, to start up a
competitive sports program (because American children evidently don’t get
enough of winning and losing outside of school), to punish the kid who did
that bad thing to my kid, to administer a standardized test or two (“just so
we can see how they’re doing”), and, above all, to get the kids ready for
what comes next — even if this amounts to teaching them badly so they’ll be
prepared for the bad teaching to which they’ll be subjected later.[15]
This list doesn’t exhaust the reasons that
progressive education is uncommon. However, the discussion that preceded it,
of progressive education’s advantages, was also incomplete, which suggests
that working to make it a little more common is a worthy pursuit. We may not
be able to transform a whole school, or even a classroom, along all of these
dimensions, at least not by the end of this year. But whatever progress we
can make is likely to benefit our students. And doing what’s best for them is
the reason all of us got into this line of work in the first place.
_______________________________________________________________________________
SIDEBAR:
A Dozen Questions for Progressive Schools
Because of what I’ve described as the undertow that
progressive educators inevitably experience, it’s possible for them to wake
up one morning with the unsettling realization that their school has
succumbed to a creeping traditionalism and drifted from the vision of its
founders. Here are some pointed questions to spur collective reflection
and, perhaps, corrective action.
1. Is our school committed to being educationally
progressive, or is it content with an atmosphere that’s progressive only in
the political or cultural sense of the word?
2. Is a progressive vision being pursued unapologetically,
or does a fear of alienating potential applicants lead to compromising that
mission and trying to be all things to all people? (“We offer a
nurturing environment . . . of rigorous college preparation.”)
3. Is the education that the oldest students
receive just as progressive as that offered to the youngest, or would a
visitor conclude that those in the upper grades seem to attend a different
school altogether?
4. Is the teaching organized around problems,
projects, and questions? Is most of the instruction truly
interdisciplinary, or is literature routinely separated from social studies –
or even from spelling? Has acquiring skills (e.g., arithmetic,
vocabulary) come to be over-emphasized rather than seen as a means to the end
of understanding and communicating ideas?
5. To what extent are students involved in
designing the curriculum? Is it a learner-centered environment, or are
lessons presented to the children as faits accomplis? How much
are students involved in other decisions, such as room decoration, classroom
management, assessment, and so on? Are teachers maintaining control
over children, even in subtle ways, so that the classrooms are less
democratic than they could be?
6. Is assessment consistent with a progressive
vision, or are students evaluated and rated with elaborate rubrics[16] and grade-substitutes? Do students end up, as
in many traditional schools, spending so much time thinking about how well
they’re doing that they’re no longer as engaged with what they’re
doing?
7. Do administrators respect teachers’
professionalism and need for autonomy – or is there a style of top-down
control that’s inconsistent with how teachers are urged to treat
students? Conversely, is it possible that teachers’ insistence on being
left alone has permitted them to drift from genuinely progressive practice in
some areas?
8. Are educators acting like lifelong
learners, always willing to question familiar ways – or do they sometimes
fall back on tradition and justify practices on the grounds that something is
just “the [name of school] way”? Are teachers encouraged to visit one
another’s classrooms and offered opportunities to talk about pedagogy on a
regular basis?
9. Is cooperation emphasized throughout the
school – or are there remnants of an adversarial approach? Do students
typically make decisions by trying to reach consensus or do they simply
vote? Do competitive games still dominate physical education and even
show up in classrooms? Do most learning experiences take place in pairs
and small groups, or does the default arrangement consist of having students
do things on their own?
10. Is homework assigned only when it’s
absolutely necessary to extend and enrich a lesson, or is it assigned on a
regular basis (as in a traditional school)? If homework is given, are
the assignments predicated on – and justified by -- a behaviorist model of
“reinforcing” what they were taught – or do they truly deepen students’
understanding of, and engagement with, ideas? How much of a role do the
students play in making decisions about homework?
11. Does the question “How will this affect
children’s interest in learning (and in the topic at hand)?” inform
all choices about curriculum, instruction, and scheduling – or has a focus on
right answers and “rigor” led some students to become less curious about, and
excited by, what they’re doing?
12. Is the school as progressive and
collaborative in nonacademic (social, behavioral) matters as it is in the
academic realm, or are there remnants of “consequence”-based control such
that the focus is sometimes more on order and compliance than on fostering
moral reasoning, social skills, and democratic dispositions?
NOTES
1. The latter view is represented in both the
Reggio Emilia approach to early-childhood education and the Foxfire
tradition.
2. James H. Nehring, “Progressive vs.
Traditional: Reframing an Old Debate,” Education Week, February 1,
2006, p. 32.
3. Mark Windschitl, “Why We Can’t Talk to One
Another About Science Education Reform,” Phi Delta Kappan, January
2006, p. 352.
4. As I was preparing this article, a
middle-school student of my acquaintance happened to tell me about a class
she was taking that featured a scathing indictment of American imperialism –
as well as fact-based quizzes and report cards that praised students for
being “well behaved” and “on-task.”
5. See Alfie Kohn, The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving
Beyond Traditional Classrooms and “Tougher Standards” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999),
esp. Appendix A.
6. I’ve tackled each of these issues in
separate books. See the sources cited in, respectively, The Case Against Standardized Testing (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann,
2000), The Homework Myth (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press,
2006), Beyond Discipline, rev. ed. (Alexandria, VA: ASCD,
2006), and No Contest: The Case
Against Competition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986/1992). Still
other research exists to challenge assumptions about the benefits of specific
practices ranging from school uniforms to explicit instruction in grammar.
7. See the addendum to "Early-Childhood
Education: The Case Against Direct Instruction of Academic Skills" at www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/ece.htm.
8. Harold Wenglinsky, “Facts or Critical
Thinking Skills?”, Educational Leadership, September 2004, p. 33.
9. Michael Klentschy, Leslie Garrison, and
Olga Ameral’s four-year review of student achievement data is summarized in
Olaf Jorgenson and Rick Vanosdall, “The Death of Science?” Phi Delta
Kappan, April 2002, p. 604.
10. Character Education Inquiry, Studies in
the Nature of Character. Volume 1: Studies in Deceit (New York:
Macmillan, 1928), Book 2, p. 184.
11. Educational historian Larry Cuban’s review
of “almost 7,000 different classroom accounts and results from studies in
numerous settings revealed the persistent occurrence of teacher-centered
practices since the turn of the century” (How Teachers Taught: Constancy
and Change in American Classrooms, 1890-1980 [New York: Longman, 1984]).
John Goodlad, author of the classic study A Place Called School,
revisited the subject in 1999 and concluded that “although progressive views
have enjoyed sufficient visibility to bring down on them and their adherents
barrages of negative rhetoric, they have managed to create only isolated
islands of practice…. Most teachers adhere closely to a view of school as
they experienced it as students and so perpetuate the traditional” (“Flow,
Eros, and Ethos in Educational Renewal,” Phi Delta Kappan, April 1999,
p. 573). His assessment was corroborated as recently as last year by a
national study of first, third, and fifth grade classrooms in more than 1,000
schools: “Children spent most of their time (91.2%) working in whole-group or
individual-seatwork settings” and “the average fifth grader received five
times as much instruction in basic skills as instruction focused on problem
solving or reasoning; this ratio was 10:1 in first and third grades” (Robert
C. Pianta et al., “Opportunities to Learn in America’s Elementary
Classrooms,” Science, vol. 315, March 30, 2007, p. 1795). A study of
669 classrooms in Washington state, meanwhile, found that “strong
constructivist teaching was observable in about 17% of the classroom lessons”
(Martin L. Abbott and Jeffrey T. Fouts, “Constructivist Teaching and Student
Achievement,” Washington School Research Center, Technical Report #5,
February 2003, p. 1). For still more evidence, see Kohn, Schools, pp.
5-9.
12. David K. Cohen and Carol A. Barnes,
“Conclusion: A New Pedagogy for Policy?” in Teaching for Understanding,
ed. by David K. Cohen et al. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993), p.
245. The relevance of this point for the largely unsuccessful efforts of
progressive education to establish itself over time has been noted by many
thinkers, including John Dewey, Lawrence Cremin, and Linda Darling-Hammond.
13. Kitty Thuermer, “In Defense of the
Progressive School: An Interview with Alfie Kohn,” Independent School,
Fall 1999, p. 96. In their book Methods That Matter (York, ME:
Stenhouse, 1998), Harvey Daniels and Marilyn Bizar drove the point home:
“Teachers probably wouldn’t have originally chosen their vocation if they
didn’t crave the spotlight on some deep psychological level. The hunger to
‘really teach something’ has probably derailed more student-centered
innovations than administrative cowardice and textbook company co-option
combined” (p. 12).
14. Vito Perrone, “Why Do We Need a Pedagogy
of Understanding?” in Teaching for Understanding, ed. by Martha Stone
Wiske (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), p. 23.
15. For more on this phenomenon, see my essay “Getting-Hit-on-the-Head
Lessons,” Education
Week, September 7, 2005, pp. 52, 46-47.
16. See Maja Wilson, Rethinking Rubrics in
Writing Assessment (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2006); or my article “The Trouble with Rubrics,” English Journal, March
2006, pp. 12-15.
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