Composition: History & Theory: 1940 - 1949
Progressive Education
Description
In Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985 (1987), James Berlin makes good use of Lawrence Cremin to better describe (and understand) the progressive attitude of the 1920-1940 time period by paraphrasing progressivism: “the optimistic faith in the possibility that all institutions could be reshaped to better serve society, making it healthier, more prosperous, and happier” (58). After WWI, “there was a shift to a child-centered pedagogy and creativity,” which provided for the idea that all writing is “creative” (Berlin 60). After the depression, the increase of social connections put in place (or perhaps solidified) the “communal responsibility” of educators (Berlin 81).
In The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education 1876-1957 (1961), Lawrence Cremin looks at the state of Progressive Education at the end of World War II. Progressive education, its values and power structure, had come to be thought of as “conventional wisdom” for how schools should be managed. From 1944 to 1948, the Educational Policies Commission (whose members consisted of highly influential professionals in the field of education) released in three volumes that Cremin refers to as a “comprehensive blueprint” for what education in a post-war America should look like. The Commission outlined the idea educational system in the fictitious worlds of “Farmsville” and “American City” in the state of “Columbia” (329). The Commission’s outline consisted of a nursery school, an elementary school, and a secondary school subdivided into a junior high, senior high, and a community institute (or technical school). The goal was equal access to education with an emphasis at every level on cultivating the individual student and preparing him to enter into occupations for which he was best suited to serve society. The Commission sought support from local, state, and federal governments to successfully implement this ideal vision of education. Cremin states that, “in effect, the Commission was projecting the ‘schools of tomorrow’ that the United States might have if it was willing to buy the progressive dream” (332).
Date of Upload
3/13/09