essay on progressivism in education

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6 Chapter 6: Progressivism

Dr. Della Perez

This chapter will provide a comprehensive overview of Progressivism. This philosophy of education is rooted in the 
 philosophy of pragmatism. Unlike Perennialism, which emphasizes a universal truth, progressivism favors “human experience as the basis for knowledge rather than authority” (Johnson et. al., 2011, p. 114). By focusing on human experience as the basis for knowledge, this philosophy of education shifts the focus of educational theory from school to student.

In order to understand the implications of this shift, an overview of the key characteristics of Progressivism will be provided in section one of this chapter. Information related to the curriculum, instructional methods, the role of the teacher, and the role of the learner will be presented in section two and three. Finally, key educators within progressivism and their contributions are presented in section four.

Characteristics of Progressivim

6.1 Essential Questions

By the end of this section, the following Essential Questions will be answered:

• In which 
 school 
of thought is Perennialism rooted?
• What is the educational 
 focus of Perennialism?
• What do Perrenialists 
 believe are 
 the primary 
 goals of schooling?

Progressivism is a very student-centered philosophy of education. Rooted in pragmatism, the educational focus of progressivism is on engaging students in real-world problem- solving activities in a democratic and cooperative learning environment (Webb et. al., 2010). In order to solve these problems, students apply the scientific method. This ensures that they are actively engaged in the learning process as well as taking a practical approach to finding answers to real-world problems.

Progressivism was established in the 
 mid-1920s and continued to be one of the most 
influential philosophies of education through the mid-1950s. One of the primary reasons for this is that a main tenet of progressivism is for the school to improve society. This was sup posed to be achieved by engaging students in tasks related to real-world problem-solving. As a result, progressivism was deemed to be a working model of democracy (Webb et. al., 2010).

6.2 A Closer Look

Please read the following article for more information on progressivism: Progressive education: Why it’s hard to beat, but also hard to find. As you read the article, think about the following Questions to Consider:

• How does the author define progressive 
 education?
• What does the author say progressive 
 education is not?
• What elements of progressivism make sense, 
 according to the author?

Progressive education: Why it’s hard to beat, but also hard to find

6.3 Essential Questions

• How is a progressivist curriculum best described?
• What subjects 
 are included in 
 a progressivist curriculum?
• Do you think 
 the focus of this curriculum is beneficial for students? Why 
 or why not?

As previously stated, progressivism focuses on real-world problem-solving activities. Consequently, the progressivist curriculum is focused on providing students with real-world experiences that are meaningful and relevant to them rather than rigid subject-matter content.

Dewey (1963), who is often referred to as the “father of progressive education,” believed that all aspects of study (i.e., arithmetic, history, geography, etc.) need to be linked to materials based on students every- day life-experiences.

However, Dewey (1938) cautioned that not all experiences are equal:

The belief that all genuine education comes
 about through experience does not mean that
 all experiences are genuinely or equally 
 educative. Experience and education cannot
 be directly equated to each other. For some
 experiences are mis-educative. Any experience
 is mis-education that has the effect of arresting
 or distorting the growth or further experience 
 (p. 25).

An example of miseducation would be that of a bank robber. He or she many learn from the experience of robbing a bank, but this experience can not be equated with that of a student learning to apply a history concept to his or her real-world 
 experiences.

Features of a Progressive Curriculum

There are several key features that distinguish a progressive curriculum. According to Lerner (1962), some of the key features of a progressive curriculum include:

• A focus on the student
• A focus on peers
• An emphasis on growth
• Action centered
• Process and change centered
• Equality centered
• Community centered

To successfully apply these features, a progressive 
 curriculum would feature an open classroom environment. In this type of environment, students would “spend considerable time in direct contact with the community or cultural surroundings beyond the confines of the classroom or school” (Webb et. al., 2010, p. 74). For example, if students in Kansas were studying Brown v. Board of Education in their history class, they might visit the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka. By visiting the National Historic Site, students are no longer just studying something from the past, they are learning about history in a way that is meaningful and relevant to them today, which is essential in a progressive curriculum.

• In what ways have you experienced elements 
 of a progressivist curriculum as a student?
• How might you implement a progressivist 
 curriculum as a future teacher?
• What challenges do you see in implementing 
 a progressivist curriculum and how might 
 you overcome them?

Instruction in the Classroom

6.4 Essential Questions

• What are the 
 main methods of instruction in a progressivist classroom?
• What is the teachers 
 role in the classroom?
• What is the students 
 role in the classroom?
• What strategies do students use in a progressivist classrooms?

Within a progressivist classroom, key instructional methods include: group work and the project method. Group work promotes the experienced-centered focus of the progressive philosophy. By giving students opportunities to work together, they not only learn critical skills related to cooperation, they are also able to engage in and develop projects that are meaningful and have relevance to their everyday lives.

Promoting the use of project work, centered around the scientific method, also helps students engage in critical thinking, problem solving, and deci- sion making (Webb et. al., 2010). More importantly, the application of the scientific method allows progressivists to verify experi ence through investigation. Unlike Perennialists and essentialists, who view the scientific method as a means of verifying the truth (Webb et. al., 2010).

Teachers Role

Progressivists view teachers as a facilitator in the classroom. As the facilitator, the teacher directs the students learning, but the students voice is just as important as that of the teacher. For this reason, progressive education is often equated with student-centered instruction.

To support students in finding their own voice, the teacher takes on the role of a guide. Since the student has such an important role in the learning, the teacher needs to guide the students in “learning how to learn” (Labaree, 2005, p. 277). In other words, they need to help students construct the skills they need to understand and process the content.

In order to do this successfully, the teacher needs to act as a collaborative partner. As a collaborative partner, the teachers works with the student to make group decisions about what will be learned, keeping in mind the ultimate out- comes that need to be obtained. The primary aim as a collaborative partner, according to progressivists, is to help students “acquire the values of the democratic system” (Webb et. al., 2010, p. 75).

Some of the key instructional methods used by progressivist teachers include:

• Promoting discovery and self-directly learning.

• Integrating socially relevant themes.
• Promoting values of community, cooperation, 
 tolerance, justice, and democratic equality.
• Encouraging the use of group activities.
• Promoting the application of projects to enhance 
 learning.
• Engaging students in critical thinking.
• Challenging students to work on their problem 
 solving skills.
• Developing decision making techniques.
• Utilizing cooperative learning strategies. (Webb et. al., 2010).

6.5 An Example in Practice

Watch the following video and see how many of the bulleted instructional methods you can identify! In addition, while watching the video, think about the following questions:

• Do you think you have the skills to be a 
 constructivist teacher? Why or why not?
• What qualities do you have that would make you 
 good at applying a progressivist approach in the 
 classroom? What would you need to improve 
upon?

Based on the instructional methods demonstrated in the video, it is clear to see that progressivist teachers, as facilitators of students learning, are encouraged to help their stu dents construct their own understanding by taking an active role in the learning process. Therefore, one of the most com- mon labels used to define this entire approach to education to- day is: constructivism .

Students Role

Students in a progressivist classroom are empowered to take a more active role in the learning process. In fact, they are encourage to actively construct their knowledge and understanding by:

• Interacting with their environment.
• Setting objectives for their own learning.
• Working together to solve problems.
• Learning by doing.
• Engaging in cooperative problem solving.
• Establishing classroom rules.
• Evaluating ideas.
• Testing ideas.

The examples provided above clearly demonstrate that in the progressive classroom, the students role is that of an 
 active learner.

6.6 An Example in Practice

Mrs. Espenoza is an 6th grade teacher at Franklin Elementary. She has 24 students in her class. Half of her students are from diverse cultural- backgrounds and are receiving free and reduced lunch. In order to actively engage her students in the learning process, Mrs. Espenoza does 
not use traditional textbooks in her classroom. Instead, she uses more real-world resources 
 and technology that goes beyond the four walls of the classroom. In order to actively engage 
 her students in the learning process, she seeks out members of the community to be guest 
 presenters in her classroom as she believes 
 this provides her students with an way to 
 interact with/learn about their community. 
 Mrs. Espenoza also believes it is important for 
 students to construct their own learning, so she emphasizes: cooperative problem solving, project-based learning, and critical thinking.

6.7 A Closer Look

For more information about progressivism, please watch the following videos. As you watch the videos, please use the “Questions to Consider” as a way to reflect on and monitor your own learnings.

• What additional insights did you gain about the 
 progressivist philosophy?

• Can you relate elements of this philosophy to 
 your own educational experiences? If so, how? 
 If not, can you think of an example?

Key Educators

6.8 Essential Questions

• Who were 
 the key educators 
 of Progressivism?
• What 
impact did 
 each of the 
 key educators 
 of Progressivism have 
 on this philosophy of education?

The father of progressive education is considered to be Francis W. Parker. Parker was the superintendent of schools in Quincy, Massachusetts, and later became the head of the Cook County Normal School in Chicago (Webb et. al., 2010). 
 John Dewey is the American educator most commonly associated with progressivism. William H. Kilpatrick also played an important role in advancing progressivism. Each of these key educators, and their contributions, will be further explored in this section.

Francis W. Parker (1837 – 1902)

Francis W. Parker was the superintendent of schools in Quincy, Massachusetts (Webb, 2010). Between 1875 – 1879, Parker developed the Quincy plan and implemented an experimental program based on “meaningful learning and active understanding of concepts” (Schugurensky, 2002, p. 1). When test results showed that students in Quincy schools outperformed the rest of the school children in Massachusetts, the progressive movement began.

Based on the popularity of his approach, Parker founded the Parker School in 1901. The Parker School

“promoted a more holistic and social 
 approach, following Francis W. Parker’s 
 beliefs that education should include the 
 complete development of an individual 
 (mental, physical, and moral) and that 
 education could develop students into 
 active, democratic citizens and lifelong learners” (Schugurensky, 2002, p. 2).

Parker’s student-centered approach was a dramatic change from the prescribed curricula that focused on rote memorization and rigid student disciple. However, the success of the Parker School could not be disregarded. Alumni of the school were applying what they learned to improve their community and promote a more democratic society.

John Dewey (1859 – 1952)

John Dewey’s approach to progressivism is best articulated in his book: The School and Society

(1915). In this book, he argued that America needed new educational systems based on “the larger whole of social life” (Dewey, 1915, p. 66). In order to achieve this, Dewey proposed actively 
 engaging students in inquiry-based learning and experimentation to promote active learning and growth among 
 students.

As a result of his work, Dewey set the foundation for 
 approaching teaching and learning from a student-driven 
 perspective. Meaningful activities and projects that actively engaging the students’ interests and backgrounds as the 
 “means” to learning were key (Tremmel, 2010, p. 126). In this way, the students could more fully develop as learning would be more meaningful to them.

6.9 A Closer Look

For more information about Dewey and his views on education, please read the following article titled: My 
 Pedagogic Creed. This article is considered Dewey’s 
 famous declaration concerning education as presented in five key articles that summarize his beliefs.

My Pedagogic Creed

William H. Kilpatrick (1871-1965)

Kilpatrick is best known for advancing progressive 
 education as a result of his focus on experience-centered 
 curriculum. Kilpatrick summarized his approach in a 1918 
 essay titled “The Project Method.” In this essay, Kilpatrick (1918) advocated for an educational approach that involves

“whole-hearted, purposeful activity proceeding in a social 
 environment” (p. 320).

As identified within The Project Method, Kilpatrick (1918) emphasized the importance of looking at students’ 
 interests as the basis for identifying curriculum and developing pedagogy. This student-centered approach was very 
 significant at the time, as it moved away from the traditional approach of a more mandated curriculum and prescribed 
 pedagogy.

Although many aspects of his student-centered approach were highly regarded, Kilpatrick was also criticized given the diminished importance of teachers in his approach in favor of the students interests and his “extreme ideas about student- centered action” (Tremmel, 2010, p. 131). Even Dewey felt that Kilpatrick did not place enough emphasis on the importance of the teacher and his or her collaborative role within the classroom.

Reflect on your learnings about Progressivism! Create a T-chart and bullet the pros and cons of 
 Progressivism. Based on your T-chart, do you 
 think you could successfully apply this 
 philosophy in your future classroom? Why 
or why not?

Chapter 6: Progressivism Copyright © 2023 by Dr. Della Perez. All Rights Reserved.

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29 Progressive Education

William J. Reese is the Carl F. Kaestle W.A.R.F. and Vilas Research Professor of educational policy studies and history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

• Published: 13 June 2019
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Progressive education emerged from a variety of reform movements, especially romanticism, in the early nineteenth century. Reflecting the idealism of contemporary political revolutions, it emphasized freedom for the child and curricular innovation. The Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi established popular model schools in the early 1800s that emphasized teaching young children through familiar objects, such as pebbles and shells, and not from textbooks. A German romantic, Friedrich Froebel, studied with Pestalozzi and invented the kindergarten, which spread worldwide. Progressive education mostly influenced pedagogy in the early elementary school grades. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, progressive ideals survived at other levels of schooling. Innovative teaching and curricular programs appeared in different times and places in model school systems, laboratory schools on college campuses, open classrooms, and alternative high schools. The greatest barriers to student-centered instruction included the widespread use of standardized testing and the prevalence of didactic teaching methods.

“ Progressive education ” remains a familiar phrase in the lexicon of educational historians but commonly eludes a precise definition or agreement about its origins, nature, or impact upon schools. By the first half of the nineteenth century, however, a variety of educators and writers in Europe and America claimed that a “new education” would inevitably replace outmoded instructional methods and curricula. Offering a new way of thinking about the nature of children and how to teach them, men and women on both sides of the Atlantic drew inspiration from a range of sources, promising a revolution in the history of childhood. By the early twentieth century, the phrase “new education” was gradually replaced by “progressive education.” Often reduced to slogans such as “learning by doing” or “experiential learning,” progressive education found expression in many schools worldwide through curriculum reforms and new teaching practices. It often found a home in teacher training programs. Yet the cluster of ideas embraced by many progressives usually failed to transform schools as they anticipated. By the early twenty-first century, standardized testing, didactic instructional methods, and classroom competition remained common in many nations.

In a speech at Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1959, the historian Lawrence A. Cremin claimed that “the early progressives knew better what they were against than what they were for.” 1 He was referring to twentieth-century American educational reformers who more easily criticized conventional schools than agreed about how to implement “natural” pedagogical methods or to meet the needs of the “whole child.” Cremin’s insights can also be applied to many European and American activists in the early nineteenth century who complained about schools and called for a “new education.” They found existing pedagogical practices and the overall treatment of children in the larger society abhorrent, much like reformers today who still dream of greater well-being for all and more child-friendly schools where freedom for teacher and pupil takes precedence.

Throughout the Western world in the early 1800s, critics of schools and traditional childrearing practices could easily find grounds for optimism and despair. The American and French revolutions had toppled kings and promised greater equality and opportunity for more citizens. But child labor, abysmal poverty, slavery, the suppression of women’s rights, and other ancient evils endured despite growing movements for abolition, rising literacy rates and investment in schools, and an appreciation for women’s roles as mothers and teachers, part of the humanitarianism of the age. Advocates of the “new education” attacked time-honored school practices, including pupil memorization of textbooks, Bibles, and other reading materials, enforced when necessary by the rod. Influenced by political revolution, the Enlightenment, and romanticism, these reformers never formed a coherent movement, but they nevertheless shared fundamental beliefs, including a radical critique of conventional educational theories and practices. 2

Historical Roots and Nineteenth-Century Developments

In Europe and America, reformers were influenced by an array of thinkers who came before them. This ensured that advocates of the “new education” held eclectic views while calling for school improvements and greater attention to children’s welfare. While often deeply spiritual and Christian, they rejected the well-established religious claim that children were born in sin and thus evil by nature; traditionally, stubborn wills had to be broken, like horses, through physical restraint and harsh discipline. Some reformers drew upon the ideas of John Amos Comenius, a Moravian minister who wrote that young children especially learned best from familiar, age-appropriate materials, including visual sources. Even more influential, the English writer John Locke changed pedagogical theory forever by insisting that education above all—not inheritance—decisively shaped children’s development; this elevated human agency, highlighted the uniqueness of every individual, and encouraged additional speculation on effective childrearing.

More controversial but equally revolutionary were the various works of Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose political radicalism and religious views horrified the established leaders of church and state. Rousseau also fueled the growth of romanticism, which emphasized the innocence of children and the failures of adult institutions. Like Locke’s writings, Rousseau’s Emile (1762) was translated into many languages and challenged tradition; it became famous for its depiction of a pedagogically rich, imaginary world in which a male tutor raised a child through “natural” means. Advocating experiences over books, Rousseau urged adults to see the world through the eyes of a child, a revolutionary concept if taken literally, since schools had long been teacher- and textbook-, not child-centered. Rousseau’s insight—to treat children as children—seems commonsensical today but was revelatory at the time.

Criticisms of schools abounded in the nineteenth century, and the champions of the “new education” aimed to establish education and schooling on a more rational, humanitarian, child-sensitive foundation. Guidance came not only from luminaries such as Comenius, Locke, and Rousseau but also from the immediate romantic stirring of the period. In the late eighteenth century in England, the religious poet William Blake penned his Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), which contrasted the purity and innocence of youth with their destruction by the baleful influence of church and state, including schools. Blake wrote sympathetically about the plight of chimney sweeps and the urban poor and condemned the use of corporal punishment. Like many romantics, William Wordsworth lamented the soul-destroying effects of formal education. “Heaven lies about us in our infancy!” he claimed in 1804; soon enough the “Shades of the prison-house begin to close / Upon the Growing Boy.” In the United States, transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Unitarian minister, similarly linked childhood and innocence, and he applauded European educators and theorists who demanded more humane treatment of children, whether within families, at the workplace, or at school. The child, he wrote in Nature (1836), was a “perpetual Messiah,” calling adults back to an innocent state. 3

On both sides of the Atlantic, numerous citizens echoed the views of poets, philosophers, liberal clerics, and other advocates of the “new education.” Schools force-fed students arcane knowledge from textbooks; pupils memorized and recited lessons like parrots; teachers threatened pupils with physical punishment instead of making learning more appealing. While schools, according to many romantics, were often undesirable places, leading figures of the Enlightenment had also concluded that people could behave rationally and, contrary to orthodox Christian belief, promote progress. Individuals were not predestined to heaven or hell, and some reformers dreamed of establishing a heaven on earth. At the least they hoped to improve the lives of the most helpless individuals in society, including the young.

By the late eighteenth century, the publication of encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other means to advance learning beyond the elite classes seemed to portend an age of educational advance. “After bread, education is the first need of the people,” said the French revolutionary George Jacques Danton in 1792, and less revolutionary figures also spoke of a coming millennium of peace and prosperity. Thanks to technological innovations that reduced publishing costs by the 1820s, newspapers and magazines reached a wider readership; they often reported on the latest educational ideas. The desirability of education and school improvements thus drew sustenance from a variety of sources, including rising literacy rates in many Western nations.

It was one thing to condemn schools, another thing entirely to improve them. Some romantics, such as Blake, doubted that schools could ever play a positive role in society, but the nineteenth century became an age of institution building, including asylums, prisons, workhouses, and schools. Many of them did not advance the cause of humanity, and historians have long criticized their failings. But two European visionaries, Johann Pestalozzi and Friedrich Froebel, contributed to the hopefulness of the times and offered innovative ways to undermine hide-bound schools. Pestalozzi would forever be associated with “object teaching,” while Froebel became synonymous with his invention, the kindergarten. They became central to what contemporaries called the “new education,” a romantic, “natural” approach to teaching and learning. Reformers who called themselves progressives in the twentieth century stood upon their shoulders.

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was born in Switzerland and was initially swept up in the fervor of the French Revolution. His life transformed after reading Emile , he established model schools that taught many orphans, the victims of the continental wars. Pestalozzi became a sainted figure, his image sketched and painted, his writings widely quoted, his schools visited by many educational pilgrims. Children, he argued, learned naturally by handling familiar objects. Pebbles could be used to teach arithmetic, and the close study of nature revealed the mysteries of science, geography, and history. As Rousseau had written, educators should see the world through children’s eyes and introduce lessons to them in a natural way, drawing upon their immediate environment. Young children learned from things, not words, as Pestalozzi’s followers often said. Books, especially textbooks, represented adult-centered understandings of the world, far removed from children’s experiences. Children, so active outside of school, were expected to sit still in classrooms and often whipped when they failed to conform to the unrealistic expectations of teachers. Pestalozzi imagined a different approach. He idealized peasant mothers, deemed superior in teaching the young compared with schoolmasters wed to textbooks and corporal punishment. Children needed a harmonious education, one where adults in all settings treated them humanely, educating the hand, the heart, and the mind through pleasant means. 4

Pestalozzi came of age in an era without extensive systems of state-financed schools. Like many famous teachers, he apparently had a charismatic personality, attracting pupils and followers alike, while few teachers anywhere enjoyed such allure. Turning ideas conceived by a charismatic individual into everyday practices in systems of education raised a serious question: Was it possible? Pestalozzians quarreled over how to interpret his writings, which they often read in translation in newspapers and magazines or heard about in lectures. This produced obvious problems in describing a genuinely Pestalozzian school, though most utilized a method called “object teaching,” which was packaged in Europe and America in training manuals and textbooks with step-by-step lesson plans in the basic subjects. In the United States they were often written by urban school superintendents far removed from the rural worlds that had shaped the great master’s schools and teaching with things, not words.

Prominent educational leaders helped popularize Pestalozzian ideals beyond Europe. For example, Horace Mann, America’s leading reformer in the late 1830s and 1840s, praised them in his writings and lectures. He and like-minded educators drew attention to the Swiss master in editorials and articles in leading periodicals, including the Common School Journal , which Mann edited. Saying schools should adopt more “natural” pedagogical methods was nevertheless easier than changing time-tested practices. While object teaching certainly became part of teacher training in the United States, historians have discovered that many pupils at the newly established normal schools had to concentrate on mastering the common school subjects before they might learn about alternative pedagogical methods. And most teachers seemed to teach as they had been taught, which meant mastering textbooks, not exploring sylvan fields.

Facing growing numbers of pupils in New York, Boston, and other cities, mainstream educators tried to bring order out of chaos, so they implemented not a flexible but a more uniform curriculum, set by administrators and approved by the local school board. Cities also built larger, better age-graded schools after midcentury. They increasingly hired women as elementary teachers, whose salaries were lower than males’ and often had classrooms with fifty to sixty pupils. Paying attention to each individual was very difficult, if not impossible, and teachers often could not model instruction on the scripted lessons in instructional manuals. More schools purchased globes and blackboards, and teachers sometimes taught subject matter with the aid of “objects” such as watches, coins, and rock collections; many schools, which were often overcrowded, nevertheless lacked the resources to buy expensive teaching aids. Reports thus circulated in Europe and America that schools remained textbook-based and teacher-, not child-centered. Traditional practices were difficult to dislodge.

Occasionally a charismatic individual carried the banner of the “new education” forward and demonstrated its practical character. Probably the best example in the United States was Colonel Francis W. Parker. Parker was a popular lecturer, writer, and administrator, the living embodiment of the “new education.” Having himself traveled to Europe to study education, he criticized rote methods of instruction, corporal punishment, and competitive written tests, the last becoming more common in urban schools after the 1850s. Between 1875 and 1880, Parker, a Civil War veteran, became nationally renowned for his achievements as school superintendent in Quincy, Massachusetts. He helped create a model public school system, where teachers apparently eschewed excessive memorization and recitation. The Quincy school board appointed teachers who shared his views on child-centered pedagogy. Forward-thinking educators and aspiring teachers flocked to Quincy, seeking guidance. But Parker’s tenure was short. Called the “father of progressive education” by none other than John Dewey, a close friend, Parker later headed a well-known teacher training college in Chicago. 5

The great question from the time of Pestalozzi and Parker to the present was whether teachers would embrace “natural” and child-centered methods when they themselves had often succeeded in old-fashioned schools and found jobs in similar types of institutions. Of course, the “new education” should not be judged only by whether it changed schools wholesale in any particular community or nation; at times, some of what Pestalozzi’s followers and other innovators had in mind made a visible dent in the system.

Indeed many urban schools lacking charismatic leadership or full support for the “new education” adopted some aspects of object teaching after the 1860s. On the edges of the curriculum, for example, “learning by doing” found expression in a range of manual training classes in many towns and cities. Nature study also became popular, supplementing textbook-based science instruction. A remarkable collection of photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston at the turn of the twentieth century demonstrates that many white and black schools in Washington, D.C., offered classes in dancing, cooking, and manual training, sponsored field trips, and initiated laboratory courses to enliven instruction. But detailed studies of the curriculum in the post–Civil War era show that urban and rural schools nationwide mostly focused on the basic subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic in the elementary grades, wherein most pupils were enrolled, and on core academic subjects taught in traditional ways to the smaller numbers of pupils enrolled in high school. Many books and magazine articles in the 1890s noted that, even when districts adopted object teaching or manual training, they occupied only a small part of the school day. Most classes resembled the past. Textbooks reigned supreme, and memorization, recitation, and increasingly written examinations were common. Visitors to manual training classes sometimes found teachers lecturing, testifying to the firm grip of tradition. 6

In 1900 the U.S. Commissioner of Education, William T. Harris, a staunch supporter of an academic curriculum who frequently disparaged the “new education,” said that teachers were basically conservative. Most had succeeded as students in traditional classrooms. Writing in the journal Education , Harris explained that children were typically “full of caprice and wayward impulses,” and teachers endeavored to socialize them to adult norms. Teaching, he concluded, “is the most conservative of all occupations, excepting always the ministry. For the teacher has to deal with the unformed, undeveloped human being, and educate it into the manners and customs of civilized life, and above all open it for the storehouse of the wisdom of the human race.” Such statements rattled every progressive. Harris recognized that textbooks might be boring, but he regarded them as tools of democracy; an informed citizenry, as the Founders of the nation believed, needed access to the same basic knowledge. Textbooks were even more important to the many pupils who had dull, uninspiring teachers.

Harris was no stranger to debates about what knowledge or teaching methods merited a place at school. A Connecticut Yankee, Harris had dropped out of Yale and moved west, rising up the ranks to become the much-heralded superintendent of the St. Louis public schools between 1868 and 1880. As advocates of the “new education” there as elsewhere urged schools to become more child-friendly, Harris, a Hegelian philosopher and admirer of German culture, rejected romantic claims about the value of object teaching. But he notably embraced a key innovation that had originated in Europe: kindergartens.

Kindergartens were first established in the United States in the 1850s and were often found in urban areas populated with German immigrants, who were well represented on the St. Louis school board. While Harris doubted that kindergarten methods would transform the elementary grades as many reformers desired, he built a model system that attracted visitors from around the nation. A local training school prepared hundreds of women teachers, who ultimately spread the kindergarten gospel to many communities. The “child’s garden,” Harris believed, would not usher in a paradise of learning, but it could help adjust children from the informality of the home to the stricter demands of elementary school.

Kindergartens, like manual training, engaged children in numerous activities. They provided living proof that the “new education” could enter school systems otherwise committed to teacher authority and student mastery of textbooks. Children in kindergartens sat in a circle, not in fixed rows, and in moveable chairs, not bolted-down seats. Kindergartens promoted cooperative learning, stressed the educational value of structured play, and provided a sequenced set of lessons employing objects (balls, string, and so forth) and not books as the central means of instruction. Photographs of kindergartens reveal their home-like, middle-class atmosphere, with pleasant pictures adorning the walls and plants and flowers brightening the room. Women dominated in kindergarten teaching and supervision and helped popularize the reform in articles, books, and speeches. Women’s reputation for gentle treatment of little children—especially compared with men’s treatment—made them central to this aspect of the “new education.” 7

Friedrich Froebel, the German inventor of the kindergarten, had apprenticed in one of Pestalozzi’s schools, and the “child’s garden” became one of the most popular, long-lasting innovations associated with the “new education.” Initially banned in Prussia because of its links to political radicalism, the kindergarten spread to all corners of the world, though the followers of Froebel, like those of Pestalozzi, often disagreed about specific aspects of his educational philosophy and “gifts and occupations,” his richly symbolic curricular exercises. Rival professional associations in many nations debated how to organize kindergartens. By the late nineteenth century, only a small percentage of America’s school systems had funded them, but kindergartens were also found in settlement houses, orphan asylums, and private schools. City systems faced the challenge of paying teachers and constructing new buildings for a burgeoning population. In many large cities such as New York and Chicago, thousands of children in the 1890s could not find a seat in public elementary schools, which remained overcrowded. Providing universal access to new programs in early childhood education was prohibitively expensive in many school districts and inconceivable in some. But kindergartens were here to stay, as the “new education” traveled from Europe to America and other nations.

Emphasizing activities over books led critics then and in later generations to call the movement anti-intellectual. Pestalozzi and Froebel would have found the charge puzzling, since they expressly desired a harmonious education that cultivated the head, heart, and hand. But some champions of object teaching believed it was a basis for vocational education, particularly for outcast groups such as Native Americans, African Americans, and poor whites. Native American boarding schools that formed after the Civil War as well as public schools for African Americans in different parts of the country tried to downplay academics in favor of trade training. Males at boarding schools and other institutions attended by these groups were often taught obsolete handcraft skills; women received instruction in housekeeping skills deemed suitable for future domestics. Most schools still taught academic subjects, and neither Pestalozzi nor Froebel imagined that hand-training sufficed in a well-rounded education. 8

By 1900, then, some key developments emerged related to the “new education,” which increasingly became known as “progressive education.” Theorists focused on young children, not older ones, since they were seen as more malleable. Children over the age of twelve or so were usually working or attended school sporadically in Western nations, so the focus on the very young seemed sensible. Charismatic individuals associated with the “new education” established model schools, which attracted legions of the curious, who struggled to re-create what they saw in established systems. The “new education” was also expensive, requiring teaching aids, shop and kitchen tools, and more and better trained teachers, straining school budgets. This ensured that even when reformers promoted vocational education programs, such innovations never replaced the basics, which usually continued to be taught in familiar ways.

Obstacles to adopting reform on a grand scale were many. Schools faced the wrath of taxpayers who attacked “fads and frills” during economic recessions and depressions, which happened frequently in the second half of the nineteenth century. And the notion that children—not teachers and textbooks—should occupy the center of the educational universe struck many parents, taxpayers, and teachers as utopian. Supporting an innovation, including the kindergarten, did not mean one had romantic views of children or hoped that its methods would permeate the entire system. Object teaching, kindergartens, and manual training were nevertheless clear signs that the “new education” left a discernable mark on many schools around the world.

Twentieth-Century Developments

John Dewey, America’s preeminent philosopher in the first half of the twentieth century, wrote critically about the romantics, including Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel, and in a series of articles and books consistently criticized the excesses of “child-centered” education. In the late 1890s and early decades of the new century, he frequently contrasted the “old education”—seats in a row, children reciting subject matter they did not understand, schools that emphasized order instead of the joy of learning—with a “new education” that tried to recognize children’s interests and needs and to reconstruct pedagogy and curricula accordingly. Dewey recognized, however, that otherwise intriguing proposals for reform could themselves become ossified or counterproductive, as when object teaching was reduced to formulaic prescriptions in guides to teaching and critics sneered at traditional education, which emphasized pupil mastery of academic subjects. Dewey reminded child-oriented educators that learning (as most teachers and parents believed) required considerable effort by students and that teachers erred in trying to sugarcoat the educational process. The historian Herbert M. Kliebard succinctly explains, “Dewey’s position in curriculum matters is sometimes crudely described as ‘child-centered,’ though he was actually trying to achieve a creative synthesis of the child’s spontaneous interests and tendencies on the one hand and the refined intellectual resources of the culture on the other.”

Examples of “new” or “progressive” educational practices surfaced in a variety of schools over the course of the twentieth century. Sometimes the new generation of reformers lacked much knowledge about the activists and visionaries who preceded them, which might have led to more prudence as they denounced existing schools and proclaimed the dawn of a new age. As Dewey and other observers discovered, progressive schools had diverse characteristics, though they generally stressed the importance of children’s interests and needs, more creative, pupil-friendly pedagogy, and learning activities that eschewed or downplayed textbooks, memorization, and competitive examinations. The aim was to make students active participants in their own education. Like their predecessors, early twentieth-century champions of progressivism labored to make learning inviting by tapping the curiosity of pupils, whose intellectual growth and personal development were reportedly crushed by the old-fashioned methods and curricula still found in most schools.

Over the course of the twentieth century, educational experimentation drew upon familiar sources: dissatisfaction with the status quo, a sense that the vast social changes of the day made educational change inevitable, and the assumption that progress and educational reform were inextricably linked. By the 1890s reformers often drew upon the new discipline of psychology, particularly research on child and adolescent development. As education and psychology became university-based disciplines, child study became fashionable. G. Stanley Hall, one of John Dewey’s teachers in graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, studied the “contents of children’s minds” in the 1880s through surveys, providing early inventories of knowledge. Obstetrics and the study of childhood diseases gained more attention from the medical community, and measuring pupil achievement through the latest quantitative methods became common by the early twentieth century. Research at universities expanded and some cities established their own research bureaus. Despite disagreements about what it meant to study children scientifically, researchers increasingly questioned whether schools should focus on academic subjects alone, to the exclusion of a student’s physical or psychological needs. 9

Educational experimentation flourished in the early decades of the twentieth century. Between 1896 and 1904, for example, Dewey and his wife, Alice, epitomized the trend, having established the world-renowned Laboratory School at the University of Chicago. The school had a selective student body, mostly the children of faculty members. They studied standard academic subjects but also clay modeling, raised and sheared sheep and spun wool, and constructed buildings, an echo of the “object teaching” popularized by Pestalozzi’s disciples. The lessons emphasized the connections between subject matter and everyday life, showing how occupations evolved over time. The aim was not vocational: teachers were not training future carpenters or shepherds. Teachers guided children and encouraged them to seek knowledge through their own initiative. For example, they could learn to boil an egg by consulting a cookbook, but it was far better if they experimented on their own, learning through trial and error. As Dewey explained in School and Society (1899) and other writings, textbooks were filled with abstractions, based on adult understanding of subject matter. Teachers should breathe life into the abstractions and tie them to everyday experience.

Other educational experiments were under way elsewhere. Like the Laboratory School, they became meccas for educators and interested citizens who lamented the still powerful grip of traditional theories and practices in most schools. People interested in reform read about or tried to visit Maria Montessori’s Casa dei Bambini in Italy; the platoon system of schools in many American cities, folk schools in Scandinavia, model progressive ones in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the 1920s; private child-centered schools and public suburban systems such as in Winnetka, Illinois, that incorporated some of Dewey’s ideas, in the 1930s and 1940s; Dalton schools and Waldorf schools; infant schools established in England; and “open classrooms,” “schools without walls,” and alternative high schools in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.

As in the nineteenth century, progressives learned about innovative practices by visiting schools at home and abroad, by reading extensively, and increasingly by attending college, often earning credentials in education or in the social sciences. Upon finishing their degrees, graduate students who became professors of education often helped establish laboratory schools at their home institutions, whether they had studied at the University of Iowa or at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City. Some reformers such as Dewey traveled extensively, gaining insights into how educational ideas developed and expressed themselves in diverse cultural settings. Ideas traveled across national borders and were reshaped to fit into new contexts. American progressives, in turn, visited schools in Mexico and other nations to gain insights on the wide range of educational subjects, from the use and abuse of intelligence tests to how to improve teaching. 10

Generalizing about such a range of schools, why they were established, and their ultimate importance in different times and places is very difficult. As Dewey and his daughter Evelyn explained in Schools of Tomorrow (1915), many aspects of innovative schools varied. Some appeared in rural settings, others in cities. Some were more libertarian than others. School founders and teachers debated how much freedom to grant to pupils and what children should study and why. Activists usually stereotyped the existing institutions most children attended as backward, too rooted in the past and disconnected from the present. Progressive schools, in contrast, usually promised greater freedom for the child, enriched curricula, and disdain for anything conventional.

Women continued to play a crucial role as progressive teachers and as the founders of prominent experimental schools. In Fairhope, Alabama, in the early twentieth century, Marietta Johnson established the Organic School, which, as the historian Joseph W. Newman explains, attracted teachers who shared her views on child-centered instruction. Caroline Pratt’s City and Country School in New York City offered an alternative to the conventional teaching methods entrenched in the public system. Over the course of the twentieth century, some progressive schools (e.g., the Dalton School in New York City) had high academic standards and evolved into selective institutions for a college-bound elite; others, such as some alternative high schools in American cities in the 1960s and 1970s, taught pupils unsuited for conventional classrooms. Some progressive leaders and their staff and students wanted a refuge from society, others to radically transform it. In the romantic language of the 1960s, many idealists, sounding like the original romantics, dreamed of allowing a thousand (or more) flowers to bloom. That seemed impossible in regular schools then and even more so in the coming decades, when many national systems joined a frantic race to raise test scores and race to the top of league tables. 11

A few examples of what many contemporaries called “progressive education” in America’s urban public schools illuminate their diversity. One fascinating experiment emerged in Gary, Indiana. Established in 1906, the city was home to U.S. Steel, the largest steel plant in the world. The local school board comprised a small elite of businessmen and professionals who generally supported the innovative ideas of the local school superintendent, William A. Wirt, who served from 1907 until his death in 1938. As Ronald D. Cohen demonstrates in his exemplary history of the Gary schools, Wirt, who became acquainted with Dewey’s ideas while studying at the University of Chicago, drew upon diverse theories. Like many contemporary reformers, he believed that schools should meet the needs and interests of the child; they did not exist simply for the adults who paid for or worked in the system. Wirt and like-minded educational leaders elsewhere thus challenged the belief that schools should focus on academics alone; modern schools should address a widened horizon of concerns of childhood, adolescence, and the local community. “Schools did not just offer curricular and extracurricular choices to pupils,” Cohen writes, “but also provided medical care, baby sitting, social welfare services, recreation for the entire family, adult programs … facilities for the handicapped, and employment opportunities, and served as an anchor for the community.” This became central to the modern vision, Cohen concludes, of “progressive education.” 12

Superintendent Wirt devised the “work-play-study” approach to schooling, popularly known as the “platoon” system, and promoted student engagement, a hallmark of progressivism. Students spent part of the day in academic study of an enriched curriculum that included the arts and music, then moved to shop and manual training classes, with time reserved for sports and physical education. Visitors described the schools as active sites for learning; some had swimming pools, extensive playing fields, and evening classes for adults. According to Wirt, work, play, and study were ideally mutually reinforcing. As children and increasingly adolescents were removed from the full-time labor force, schools also provided more social services, including meals and medical and dental inspection. Above all, Wirt wanted children to stay busy, to find something they enjoyed and in which to excel. Left-wing radicals and conservatives alike praised the system, which promised the efficiency of industrial plants as well as a more cohesive and culturally enriched community.

Dozens of urban districts in America adopted a version of the platoon system, one of the most widely discussed and debated innovations of the early twentieth century. After the stock market crash of 1929, the economic depression that followed caused business leaders to reduce financial support for the platoon system, which unraveled after Wirt’s death. But progressive practices entered many public schools in the first half of the twentieth century, irrespective of the fate of Wirt’s system. Educators often embraced the language and some of the practices of the new, or progressive education. Since the romantic era of the nineteenth century, more educators claimed that children’s needs (always difficult to define) were paramount, that traditional curricula and pedagogical methods repelled many children, and that schools should better appeal to them. While the platoon system disappeared, a full range of social services, including the expansion of programs for special needs pupils, became common in Gary and other school districts after World War II. The academic mission of schools hardly disappeared, but schools performed many social and vocational functions, as advocates of the “new education” earlier anticipated.

While a number of elite private schools in the 1920s and 1930s became famous exemplars of child-centered education, Gary’s schools demonstrated that progressivism formulated in a unique way could thrive in a largely working-class city and in a public system. Another example of how progressive ideas flourished for a time in public schools arose in Winnetka, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. According to Cohen, many of Wirt’s associates regarded him as aloof. Not so with his contemporary Carleton Washburne, Winnetka’s superintendent between 1919 and 1943. Like many leaders associated with the “new education” in the nineteenth century, Washburne was charismatic. Like Wirt, he had an unusually long tenure and until nearly the end of his career enjoyed strong support from parents and the school board.

Winnetka was a wealthy community, committed to building a first-class system when it hired Washburne. Drawing upon an array of ideas, including Dewey’s, Washburne offered yet another version of what contemporaries called progressive education. Washburne attended the progressive Parker School in Chicago and graduated from Stanford. After a stint at teaching, he joined the faculty of a normal school in San Francisco, where he was influenced by a colleague, a former student of G. Stanley Hall who emphasized the importance of individual instruction. The uniqueness of the individual, central to romanticism, remained Washburne’s abiding concern, and parents in many communities worried that their children would feel lost as schools mushroomed in size. But how could one individualize teaching in age-graded classrooms? The “Winnetka Plan,” as it became known, was reassuring to parents, since the local schools offered pupils solid training in academic subjects, which they studied in the morning. Every pupil completed assignments in workbooks, took numerous tests, and progressed at their own pace. In the afternoon, however, students had access to arts, crafts, and more innovative activities. They operated a credit union and post office and built tepees, all in the spirit of “learning by doing.” Washburne cultivated a teaching force that shared his ideas; he established a teacher training college within the system, spent considerable time with his staff, and frequently praised them. As in Gary and other districts, the Depression of the 1930s led to budget cuts, attacks on “fads and frills,” and a refocusing of the system on academics, which intensified after Washburne left office. But during its heyday Winnetka became a famous expression of progressive education. 13

Just as normal schools had tried to popularize the “new education,” so too did the new schools of education and teacher training colleges in the twentieth century. Many state universities as well as private universities with graduate schools of education established laboratory schools, as John and Alice Dewey had done in the 1890s. Here future teachers could observe master teachers and study how children best learned, which usually meant discrediting methods based on memorize-and-recall for a test. Influential schools such as Teachers College, Columbia University, hired professors who contributed to different versions of progressive education. At Teachers College, William H. Kilpatrick, a devotee of Dewey, popularized the “project method,” which challenged the separation of disciplinary knowledge; it found favor in many elementary schools nationwide. Children might work alone or together for days on problems and projects, not on memorizing facts in isolated subjects. At the Institute of Education in London, Susan Isaacs pioneered new pedagogical practices for nursery and primary schools. Similarly influential and innovative educationists taught at the leading teacher training institutions in other nations.

Progressive education was often in the professional spotlight in the first half of the twentieth century. Progressives published specialized journals that featured articles on the project method, kindergartens, manual training, arts and crafts, and numerous ways to break the strongly forged chains of educational tradition. They interacted in prominent professional groups, including the Progressive Education Association, established in 1919 in New York City, and in the New Education Fellowship, founded in Europe a year later. Members of these organizations usually wanted to tailor instruction for the individual, enhance children’s freedom, and offer students an enriched curriculum; they often lamented the glacial pace of change and realized that other educational innovations proved much more influential than theirs. Most struggled to persuade the public that child-centered instruction was compatible with high academic standards, the enhancement of which became ever more important in public policy over the course of the century. 14

While the discipline of psychology had contributed to child study, it had also shaped the modern testing movement, which became the bête noire of the progressives. Testing left an indelible mark upon actual classroom practices, far more than romantic notions of child-centered pedagogy. Moreover Dewey and other intellectuals and academics associated with progressivism were red-baited in the 1930s, accused of undermining teacher authority and weakening allegiance to capitalism. The reaction against liberalism and progressive education intensified during the cold war in the 1950s. A figure no less than President Dwight D. Eisenhower claimed that Dewey’s influence had undermined academic standards, and many observers, not only conservatives, still occasionally claim that Dewey had enormous influence upon instructional practice. It matters not that Dewey was fairly consistent in his criticisms of romantic notions of children and child-centered education. When the Soviet Union launched its satellites late in the decade, the public schools were blamed, and it was easy to find fault with the system. High school enrollments boomed, but a smaller percentage of secondary pupils than earlier in the century pursued academic courses. Biology enrollments rose while physics declined; social studies replaced many history courses; and foreign-language course enrollments dropped precipitously after World War I. There were many causes for these changes, and few could be linked to Dewey. But the boogey-man of progressivism was invoked nonetheless, since single-cause explanations for complex phenomena never lose their appeal. 15

Schools had clearly assumed many new vocational and social functions since the early twentieth century. Critics of the domestic programs of the New Deal, particularly Republicans, frequently complained that liberalism infected society and its institutions, which accounted for the presumed superiority of Russian science and technology. And, without question, a version of the welfare state existed in the public schools, which probably reinforced the notion that schools had become “soft” and without rigor. Welfare programs existed in varying degrees in the form of breakfast and lunch programs, medical and dental inspections, physical education and health courses (of widely varying quality), and counseling for jobs or college placement. Schools offered vocational training, sports programs, extracurricular activities, and other forms of hands-on learning. Usually limited to male participants before the 1970s, sports programs were often hugely popular with local communities, and many high schools were better known for their basketball or football programs than for academics. Obviously schools had not invented sports mania, whose sources lay in the larger society.Attacks on progressivism were ubiquitous in the 1950s. Prominent historians such as Arthur Bestor, a liberal, attacked schools of education for undermining excellence, since they had weak admission standards and supported more nonacademic programs in the schools. “Back to the basics” became the rallying cry, and groups such as the Council for Basic Education tried to restore standards and weaken the appeal of child-centered ideas. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Progressive Education Association disbanded in 1955, though, like swallows returning to Capistrano, child-centered educators made an impressive comeback in the 1960s. They faced the same sort of criticisms that hounded previous generations of reformers.

When outside evaluators discovered that academic achievement was often low in Gary, Indiana’s, schools, Superintendent Wirt understandably responded that test scores were inappropriate measures of what schools contributed to pupils and to the larger community. Such a response was ridiculed in the post–World War II era, when conservatives equated progressive education with low standards and letting children do as they pleased. Critics exaggerated how many changes the progressives wrought. The historian Roy Lowe, for example, discovered that child-centered pedagogy was not commonly practiced in England. Similarly Larry Cuban found that while elementary schools in the United States were more receptive to child-sensitive pedagogy than high schools, traditional practices often ruled. Team teaching and the use of television, film strips, and other innovative technologies promised to enliven high schools. Ironically they (like work books) instead reinforced pupil passivity. The schools had added many social services and dramatically expanded their mission by 1960, compared to a few decades earlier. But many classrooms still had bolted-down desks, permitted corporal punishment (allowed by law in the majority of states), and had not become a child’s garden. Portable desks did not prevent teachers from lecturing, a common practice in high school. 16

During the civil rights movement and the Great Society of President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the 1960s, progressive educational ideas and practices nevertheless reemerged and attracted considerable publicity. A loosening of dress codes, greater informality between teachers and pupils, grade inflation, and other reforms changed the atmosphere of many public schools by the early 1970s. “Open” classrooms, alternative high schools, “schools without walls,” and other expressions of liberal values meant that change was real, though never as extensive as critics sometimes claimed. Important new federal programs such as Head Start revived the idea that early childhood education could help break the bonds of poverty by socializing the poor to middle-class norms. Soon, however, a powerful conservative movement arose in reaction to the “liberal” 1960s, ushering Richard Nixon into the presidency in 1968 on a promise of “law and order,” and conservative movements since then have often dominated policymaking. It has not been a hospitable environment for most progressives.

The old nemesis of progressivism, testing, reared its ugly head in dramatic fashion in 2002. The Republican president, George W. Bush, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the liberal lion of the Democratic Party, for different reasons helped usher in a massive federal effort to raise standards in the schools, documented by standardized testing, with the passage of No Child Left Behind. Republicans wanted to bring market forces to bear on public schools and, in the process, help privatize the system; liberal Democrats wanted to better document how well ethnic and racial minorities fared in the race to the top. Test scores are currently the gold standard in many national school systems. They are published just like those for athletic events.

By the early twenty-first century, schools in the United States had retained many of the broadened social functions accumulated over many decades. Early childhood education retained its importance, and Head Start enjoyed bipartisan congressional and public support. Teachers in elementary schools remained most amenable to child-friendly pedagogy, but the emphasis on test results ensured the survival of drill and memorization, and talk and chalk. Teaching to tests—a wide assortment of them—drew the ire of some liberals but approval from many moderates and conservatives, who wanted schools to produce better, measurable results. Schools have also borne the heavy responsibility of lifting achievement in systems that by law include virtually all students through high school, including the physically and mentally handicapped.

David L. Labaree has written that schools of education still teach a version of progressive education to future teachers, rebranded as “constructivism.” Instruction, they are told, should be based on the “needs, interests and developmental stage of the child,” should include group work and projects, and promote “discovery” methods that allow more “self-directed” learning to enable pupils to learn “how to learn.” The aim is to enhance “critical thinking” and “problem solving.” 17 The language has changed, but the old dream persists: that the schools should conform to the child, not the other way around, and that learning should be enjoyable and exciting, which is precisely what romantics said two centuries ago.

Lawrence A. Cremin, “What Was Progressive Education, What Happened to It?,” Vital Speeches of the Day 25 (September 1959): 723; William J. Reese, America’s Public Schools: From the Common School to “No Child Left Behind” (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), chapter 3 .

Reese, America’s Public Schools , chapter 3 ; Hermann Röhrs and Volker Lenhart, eds., Progressive Education across the Continents: A Handbook (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995) ; William J. Reese, “Progressive Education,” in The Routledge International Encyclopedia of Education , ed. Gary McCulloch and David Crook (London: Routledge, 2008), 461 .

Tal Gilead, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” in McCulloch and Crook, Routledge International Encyclopedia , 497–498; William J. Reese, “The Origins of Progressive Education,” History of Education Quarterly 41 (Spring 2001): 3, 6, 24 ; William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” in The Portable Romantic Poets: Blake to Poe , ed. W. H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson (London: Penguin Books, c. 1978), 199; Reese, America’s Public Schools , 80–84.

Quote is from William J. Reese, Power and the Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements during the Progressive Era (New York: Teachers College Press, c. 2002), 188; Reese, America’s Public Schools , 80–99.

Christine A. Ogren, The American State Normal School: “An Instrument of Great Good” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 35–38; Reese, “Origins,” 19–22; Reese, America’s Public Schools , 91–92, 112; Cremin, “What Was Progressive Education,” 722. Bettina Berch, The Woman behind the Lens: The Life and Work of Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1864–1952 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000), 42–46; Reese, America’s Public Schools , 116.

Berch, The Woman behind the Lens , 42–46; Reese, America’s Public Schools , 116.

Quote is from William T. Harris, “The Study of Arrested Development in Children as Produced by Injudicious School Methods,” Education 20 (April 1900): 454; Reese, America’s Public Schools , 63–65; Barbara Beatty, Preschool Education in America: The Culture of Young Children from the Colonial Era to the Present (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).

Beatty, Preschool Education ; Norman Brosterman, Inventing Kindergarten (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), chapters 1 – 2 ; Kristen Nawrotzki, “Kindergarten,” in McCulloch and Crook, Routledge International Encyclopedia , 338–339; David W. Adams, “Federal Indian Boarding Schools,” in Historical Dictionary of American Education , ed. Richard J. Altenbaugh (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 137; Reese, America’s Public Schools , 98–108.

Herbert M. Kliebard, “John Dewey,” in Altenbaugh, Historical Dictionary , 112; Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Herbert M. Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum 1893–1958 (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2004), 11–12; O. L. Davis Jr., “Child Study Movement,” in Altenbaugh, Historical Dictionary , 73.

Kliebard, Struggle , chapter 3 ; Röhrs and Lenhart, Progressive Education ; Ruben Flores, Backroads Pragmatists: Mexico’s Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 3, 11, 107–115.

John Dewey and Evelyn Dewey, Schools of Tomorrow (New York: E. P. Dutton, c. 1962); Aaron R. Sadovnik and Susan F. Semel, eds., Founding Mothers and Others: Women Educational Leaders during the Progressive Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Joseph W. Newman, “Experimental School, Experimental Community: The Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education in Fairhope, Alabama,” 80–81, and Susan F. Semel, “The City and Country School: A Progressive Paradigm,” 121–140, in “Schools of Tomorrow,” Schools of Today: What Happened to Progressive Education , ed. Susan F. and Aaron R. Sadovnik (New York: Peter Lang, 1999); Susan F. Semel, The Dalton School: The Transformation of a Progressive School (New York: Peter Lang, 1992).

Ronald D. Cohen, Children of the Mill: Schooling and Society in Gary, Indiana, 1906–1960 (New York: Routledge Falmer, c. 2002), x, 1–2, chapter 8 ; also see Cohen’s essay, “William Albert Wirt,” in Altenbaugh, Historical Dictionary , 387–388; Arthur Zilversmit, Changing Schools: Progressive Education Theory and Practice , 1930–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) ; Arthur Zilversmit, “Carleton Wolsey Washburne,” in Altenbaugh, Historical Dictionary , 378–379.

Zilversmit, Changing Schools ; Robert A. Levin, “Laboratory Schools,” in Altenbaugh, Historical Dictionary , 206–208; Kliebard, Struggle , 135–140; Craig Kridel, “William Heard Kilpatrick,” in Altenbaugh, Historical Dictionary , 202–203; Richard Aldrich, The Institute of Education 1902–2002: A Centenary History (London: Institute of Education, University of London, 2002), 100–102; Craig Kridel, “Progressive Educational Association,” in Altenbaugh, Historical Dictionary , 303–304.

William J. Reese, “In Search of American Progressives and Teachers,” History of Education 42 (May 2013): 320–334. Also see Reese, America’s Public Schools , 203–204; Westbrook, John Dewey , 543.

Reese, America’s Public Schools , chapters 6 and 9 ; Charles E. Jenks, “Arthur Eugene Bestor, Jr.,” in Altenbaugh, Historical Dictionary , 39–40; Cohen, Children of the Mill ; Roy Lowe, The Death of Progressive Education: How Teachers Lost Control of the Classroom (London: Routledge, 2007); Larry Cuban, How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms 1890–1980 (New York: Longman, 1984) .

Jo Anne Anderson, “Accountability,” 9–10, and Donna Marie Harris, “High-Stakes Testing,” 291–292, in McCulloch and Crook, Routledge International Encyclopedia .

Anderson, “Accountability,” 9–10; Harris, “High-Stakes Testing,” 291–292; David F. Labaree, “Progressivism, Schools and Schools of Education: An American Romance,” Paedagogica Historica 41 (February 2005): 277 .

Suggested Reading

Allen, Ann Taylor . The Transatlantic Kindergarten: Education and Women’s Movements in Germany and the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017 .

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Altenbaugh, Richard J. , ed. Historical Dictionary of American Education . Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999 .

Beatty, Barbara . Preschool Education in America: The Culture of Young Children from the Colonial Era to the Present . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995 .

Brosterman, Norman . Inventing Kindergarten . New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997 .

Cohen, Ronald D.   Children of the Mill: Schooling and Society in Gary, Indiana, 1906–1960 . New York: Routledge Falmer, 2002 .

Cremin, Lawrence A.   The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education 1876–1957 . New York: Vintage Books, 1961 .

Cuban, Larry . How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms 1890–1980 . New York: Longman, 1984 .

Kliebard, Herbert M.   The Struggle for the American Curriculum 1893–1958 . New York: Routledge Falmer, 2004 .

Labaree, David F. “ Progressivism, Schools and Schools of Education: An American Romance. ” Paedagogica Historica 41 (February 2005 ): 275–288.

Lowe, Roy . The Death of Progressive Education: How Teachers Lost Control of the Classroom . London: Routledge, 2007 .

McCulloch, Gary , and David Crook , eds. The Routledge International Encyclopedia of Education . London: Routledge, 2008 .

Reese, William J. “ The Origins of Progressive Education. ” History of Education Quarterly 41 (Spring 2001 ): 1–24.

Röhrs, Hermann , and Volker Lenhart , eds. Progressive Education across the Continents: A Handbook . Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995 .

Semel, Susan F. , and Aaron R. Sadovnik , eds. “Schools of Tomorrow,” Schools of Today: What Happened to Progressive Education . New York: Peter Lang, 1999 .

Zilversmit, Arthur . Changing Schools: Progressive Education Theory and Practice, 1930–1960 . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 .

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The Progressive Teacher's Role in the Classroom

What active adult involvement does and doesn't entail..

Posted May 3, 2021 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

According to Michael Harrington and many other scholars, a careful reading of Marx's work makes it clear that he "regarded democracy as the essence of socialism." Soviet-style Communism, by contrast, corrupted socialism "by equating it with a totalitarian denial of freedom." 1 But, as Noam Chomsky has often pointed out, it served the interests of both the U.S.S.R. and the United States to pretend otherwise—that is, to equate the Soviet system with socialism, as if it represented the very apotheosis of Marx's vision rather than a cynical misuse of it. The Soviets wanted to bask in the glory of Marx's vision of bottom-up control and liberation from oppression, while the Americans wanted to make capitalism seem more appealing by linking the alternative of socialism to the tyranny of Lenin and Stalin.

I was fascinated by this paradox when I first encountered it—the idea that two diametrically opposed belief systems might embrace the same (faulty) conclusion for entirely different reasons. And I recognized it again years later when I saw something similar playing out in the field of education .

Traditional versus alternative education

Traditionalists believe that teachers should have absolute control over a classroom: Adults know more than children do and therefore ought to make all the important decisions—setting and enforcing the rules, managing students' behavior, planning the curriculum, dispensing knowledge, and so on. Groovy alternative educators, meanwhile, believe that children can be trusted to learn and grow and solve their problems essentially on their own, without outside interference.

Their prescriptions are utterly opposed. But both sides—direct-instruction behaviorists and Our Lady of the Fiercely Snapping Ruler, on the one hand; unschoolers and proponents of "free" schools like Summerhill and Sudbury Valley, on the other—share a key premise: Adult authority is necessarily autocratic and power-based. Their disagreement is about whether that’s a good thing.

A progressive education

Progressive education—the tradition of Dewey, Piaget et al.—challenges that premise and, with it, the underlying false dichotomy concerning the role of the adult. In just about any dispute, the assumption that there are only two options often serves the interests of both sides. If I convince you to view a situation in binary terms and then succeed in painting the other one as scary, you're left with whatever I'm selling.

Consider advice for raising children. One side says, "Look at those permissive parents, letting their spoiled kids get away with murder. It's scandalous! We need to assert our authority and impose some good old-fashioned discipline." And the other side says, "Look at those brutal authoritarians, cracking down on kids just for being kids. It's appalling! We need to trust children to do what's right and stop bossing them around." The specter of permissiveness is invoked by those who favor being punitive... and vice versa. Each side rallies support by reducing the number of possibilities to two. 2

Back in the world of education, traditionalists love to conflate all varieties of progressive pedagogy (and constructivist models of learning) with Rousseauvian romanticism. If you're not imposing a prefabricated curriculum and a set of rules on students—or if you're raising objections to practices such as grades, tests, lectures, worksheets, and homework—well, then, you obviously endorse a touchy-feely, loosey-goosey, fuzzy, fluffy, undemanding version of hippie idealism. 3 Conversely, the very same arguments and scenarios offered by progressives can lead free schoolers to summon the bogeyman of authoritarian education just because the adult plays an integral role.

In reality, the progressive approach will play out somewhat differently, depending on the ages being taught, the subject matter, and the needs of the individual students, some of whom may benefit from more structure and adult involvement than others (although no one benefits from being controlled). But there are some truths that apply across populations and circumstances, beginning with the fact that children are active meaning makers. They're not empty receptacles into which knowledge or skills are poured, nor are they beasts that need to be tamed and trained.

However, our determination to avoid controlling children or treating them as passive objects doesn't obligate us to stay at the periphery of the picture most of the time. Those who insist on a purely reactive or observational role for the teacher lest we impede their freedom (or learning, self-expression, or growth) remind me of people who have lately denounced any mask requirements or social-distancing restrictions during a deadly pandemic as assaults on their liberty.

The role of the progressive educator

The progressive educator says to the libertarian educator: Active adult involvement can foster children's intellectual growth. Yes, their needs and interests should be the "center of gravity" in the classroom (as Dewey put it). But the process of understanding ideas is facilitated by being gently challenged to reevaluate one's assumptions.

The teacher offers new possibilities for students to consider, to integrate, perhaps to rebel against. This prompts additional questions and opens up new avenues of discovery. The teacher also prepares the groundwork for students to more effectively learn with and from their peers than if they were left to their own devices, helping them to construct a caring cooperative community, providing guidance, and, when necessary, teaching the skills that promote constructive collaboration .

"But," the progressive educator adds, turning now to the traditionalist, "note how radically different this kind of active adult involvement is from what you're defending—and, indeed, from the coercion that so often takes place in classrooms." (Because of that, I want to be clear that the two options I'm rejecting do not trouble me equally. There is far more to be feared from traditional education than from what is offered in the name of alternative education.) 4

Eleanor Duckworth likes to say that great teachers know when and how to throw a monkey wrench into the gears, artfully complicating what kids have come up with, pushing them to think harder and better, rather than just supplying them with, or reinforcing, right answers. 5 In the Reggio Emilia model, meanwhile, “children are involved right from the start in defining questions to be explored,” 6 but teachers then help to clarify, amend, and reformulate those questions, sometimes combining one child’s query with another’s. Reggio educators sometimes use the metaphor of having a teacher catch a ball thrown to them by the children (their original question) and then toss it back (after having helped to sharpen that question).

This general conception of the adult's role is actually much more challenging for teachers, both pedagogically and psychologically, than either a traditional didactic approach or a laissez-faire approach. It's harder to provide the conditions for learning, to devise challenges and, if necessary, help to illuminate what’s interesting about those challenges. Teachers need to figure out on the fly when to offer guidance and criticism, directions and suggestions—and when to keep their mouths shut. Sometimes they reflect back to a student what she just said, perhaps subtly reframing her idea, using different words to bring out the underlying issues. In short, they are providing kids with what they need to take charge of their own learning—or, as a high school math teacher explained while I was visiting his class, the teacher is "in control of putting the students in control."

As I say, none of this is easy to do, much less to do well. And this way of conceptualizing the teacher's task asks us to rethink the conventional wisdom about a range of issues: which (and whose) questions will drive the curriculum, who gets to (or is required to) participate in class , whether (and to what end) students' understanding is scaffolded , whether educational technology has a role to play, whether learning is "lost" when students are out of school for extended periods, and how we ought to judge the effectiveness of what has taken place.

But the central point to keep in mind is the importance of an active role for the teacher in helping students to think deeply—a role that's neither autocratic nor focused just on issuing instructions and supplying information.

1. Michael Harrington, Socialism (Bantam, 1972), pp. 42, 187.

2. For more about this false dichotomy—along with other ways to think about these issues—please see my book Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason (Atria, 2005).

3. One specific example of this sort of bad-faith, straw-man argument is the assertion that anyone who criticizes the overuse of explicit phonics instruction must believe that all kids just pick up reading spontaneously... followed by vociferous denunciations of that belief rather than a defense of explicit phonics instruction for every child as the core of a reading curriculum.

4. Because the traditional, teacher-centered approach is more prevalent than laissez-faire education by orders of magnitude—and also, I believe, much more damaging than erring on the side of giving kids too much freedom—I have devoted much of my career to challenging traditionalism rather than to inveighing against the excesses of some forms of alternative education. Likewise for parenting: I'm not a fan of permissive child-rearing any more than I am of hands-off teaching, but, as I've argued elsewhere, the dominant problem with parenting in our society isn't permissiveness; it's the fear of permissiveness that leads adults to overcontrol children.

5. Carolyn Edwards et al., eds., The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education (Ablex, 1993), p. 193.

6. Eleanor Duckworth, "The Having of Wonderful Ideas" and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning (Teachers College Press, 1987), p. 133.

Alfie Kohn writes about behavior and education. His books include Feel-Bad Education , The Homework Myth , and What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated?

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Why Progressivism Is Important in the Field of Education?

In education, there is a need for constant progress to ensure that students are getting the best possible education.

This means that educators must always be learning new techniques and approaches and adapting to the latest changes in their field.

Progressive educators are critical to this process, working tirelessly to push for change and innovation.

This blog post will explore the importance of progressivism in education and discuss why it is essential for the field.

Let’s get started.

Importance of Progressivism in the Field of Education:

Progressivism is a philosophy of education that emphasizes the need for students to learn through their own experiences and be actively involved in their own learning process.

It stresses the importance of learning by doing and encourages students to be curious and questioning.

Progressivism also emphasizes the need for educators to be flexible and responsive to the needs of individual students.

There are several reasons why progressivism is important in the field of education.

Emphasizes Active Learning

One of the most important aspects of progressive education is that students should be actively involved in their own learning.

This means that students should be given opportunities to explore their own interests and discover new things.

It also means that they should be encouraged to ask questions and think critically about the information they are presented with.

Encourages Creativity

Creative expression is an important aspect of progressive education.

This means that students should be given opportunities to express themselves creatively and explore their own ideas, which will help them learn in new ways with less risk or frustration than they would otherwise experience if left unchecked by outside influences such as parents who wantonly discourage exploration at every turn because “you can’t do anything worthwhile.”

Innovation is essential to success.

It means that you should encourage your kids, come up with new solutions for problems, and not be afraid of thinking outside the box!

Teaches Students How to Think, Not What to Think

One of the most important goals of progressive education is to teach students how to think, not what to think.

This is done by encouraging them to ask questions and think critically about the information they are presented with.

It is also important to provide them with multiple perspectives on any given issue to develop their own opinions.

Encourages Social Interaction

Progressive education also emphasizes the importance of social interaction.

This means that students should be given opportunities to work together and interact.

It is believed that this kind of interaction is essential for learning.

Promotes Individualized Instruction

Another important aspect of progressive education is the idea of individualized instruction.

This means that each student should be given instruction tailored to his or her own needs and abilities.

It is believed that this kind of instruction is more effective than one-size-fits-all instruction because it allows students to learn at their own pace and in their way.

Encourages Democratic Values

Progressive education also emphasizes the importance of democratic values.

This means that students should be taught to participate in their own governance and make decisions about their own education.

It is believed that this kind of education will promote democratic values and citizenship.

Encourages Lifelong Learning

Finally, progressive education emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning.

This means that students should be given opportunities to continue learning even after leaving the formal education system.

It is believed that this will help them succeed in their careers and personal lives.

Did You Know?

The progressive education movement began in the late 19th century due to the traditional, didactic educational methods that were prevalent at the time.

Proponents of progressive education believed that students should be actively engaged in their own learning and should be taught how to think, not just what to think.

The progressive education movement was spearheaded by John Dewey , who is considered the father of modern education .

Dewey’s ideas about education were based on his belief that learning should be a social process.

He believed that students should learn by doing and be allowed to explore their own interests.

Dewey’s ideas about education were controversial at the time, but they have had a lasting impact on the field of education. Today, many of the principles of progressive education are still used in schools worldwide.

John Dewey, an American educator and key figure in progressivism, wanted his students to have a democratic experience at school.

Instead of having one teacher who knew everything, there was known to stand up front talking all day long.

According to John’s philosophy on education, he believed that the kids themselves should be active participants during class time with opportunities for hands-on involvement, which stressed experiential learning over preparation based solely upon lectures or reading assignments.

How Is Progressivism Applied in the Classroom?

There is no one answer to this question, as progressivism can be applied in many ways in the classroom, depending on the class’s particular goals and objectives.

However, some common ways in which progressivism may be applied in the classroom include:

Student-Centered Learning

Student-centered learning is a method of instruction that focuses on the needs and interests of individual students.

This means that the curriculum is designed to meet the needs of each student and that students are given opportunities to direct their own learning.

Discovery Learning

Discovery learning is a revolutionary teaching method that encourages students’ natural ability and thirst for new information.

In addition, the method emphasizes self-discovery, which means they’re given plenty of opportunities in classrooms and outside them, exploring everything around them with questions at hand!

Project-Based Learning

Project-based learning is an innovative method of instruction that gives your students opportunities to work on long-term projects with real-world applications.

This means they will be able complete hands-on tasks, collaborate in groups (or even alone), and apply what’s learned throughout the course across various disciplines!

Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is a classroom environment that encourages student collaboration and competition.

In this sort, students are allowed to work on projects with their peers and learn from one another’s mistakes or successes!

It also helps them build stronger relationships with their peers, which can also lead to success outside of school!

Experiential Learning

Experiential learning is an exciting and engaging way for students to gain insight into their world.

Taking part in activities, watching videos, or reading articles about topics relevant to your course goals will give you new perspectives that can help guide future decisions!

While there are many essential aspects to progressivism in education , the key themes of individualism, democracy, and social justice provide a foundation for students to become active participants in their own learning and society.

When these principles are embedded into all levels of schooling, from early childhood through higher education, they can create positive change in the classroom and the world.

Achal Mehrotra

Achal Mehrotra is a Content Architect @Educationly. He has been following his passion for reading and writing blogs in various niches for over a decade. His passion for technology has made him understand the actual use of technology platforms to educate people over the web. While not working, he can be found reading books or doing Yoga. He is a spiritual soul.

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The Three Waves of Reform in the World of Education 1918 – 2018 pp 41–64 Cite as

The Decline of Progressive Education

• Ami Volansky 2  
• First Online: 02 January 2023

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The accomplishments of progressive education should be accompanied by an examination of its shortcomings and the processes that brought about its demise. The atmosphere in which it flourished included support for its ideals, intellectual acceptance by scholars and education experts, the accumulation of scientific research validating the child-centered approach, and the readiness of public officials to provide teachers with greater professional freedom. However, those elements gradually lost their appeal. Starting around 1950 in the United States and 1970 in England, Japan, Central Europe, and Australia, serious doubts were raised regarding the pedagogical efficacy of progressive education. Both internal and external criticisms undermined the validity of this educational policy, and a growing body of arguments against the first wave of reform in public education, which had begun in the nineteenth century and spread worldwide after World War I, finally brought it to an end.

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Progressive Education Philosophy: examples & criticisms

The progressive education philosophy emphasizes the development of the whole child: physical, emotional, and intellectual. Learning is based on the individual needs, abilities, and interests of the student. This leads to students being motivated and enthusiastic about learning.

Progressive philosophy further emphasizes that instruction should be centered on learning by doing, problem-based, experiential, and involve collaboration.

When these elements are included in the learning experience, then students learn practical skills, become engaged in the process, and learning will be maximized.

Progressive Education Definition

The progressive movement has its roots in the writings of philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Those postulations regarding education influenced other scholars, including Maria Montessori and John Dewey.

The premise of the progressive movement is that traditional educational practices lack relevance to students and that the memorization of facts is ineffective.

As Dewey stated in his book Experience and Education (1938),

“The traditional scheme is, in essence, one of imposition from above and from outside. It imposes adult standards, subject-matter, and methods upon those who are only growing slowly toward maturity” (p. 5-6).

As a response, progressive educators tend to emphasize hands-on, experiential methodologies that enable the construction of knowledge in the mind rather than mere memorization.

Progressive educators also advocate for student autonomy and the cultivation of democratic values and principles by empowering students to make their own decisions as much as possible.

This pedagogy is distinguished by its less authoritarian structure and more collaborative classrooms, with the teacher acting as a guide and collaborator rather than the sole knowledge holder.

Progressive Education Examples

The following pedagogies and pedagogical strategies are often considered commensurate with a progressive education philosophy:

• Project-based learning
• Problem-based learning
• Inquiry-based learning
• Service learning
• Student-centered learning
• Self-directed learning
• Place-based education
• Montessori education
• Community-based learning
• Co-operative learning
• Constructivist learning
• Authentic assessment
• Action research
• Active learning
• Experiential education
• Personalized learning

Real-Life Examples

• A third-grade teacher places cardboard boxes, paper towel tubes, tape, and scissors on a table so the students can design and construct marble mazes.
• Dr. Singh has his students work in small teams to write a program that will block a computer virus attack. The teams then take part in a class competition.  
• On the first day of school, Mrs. Jones allows her students to generate a list of classroom rules and learning principles.
• Students in this history class work in small groups to write a short play about an event of their choosing in the Civil Rights movement.
• During a leadership training workshop, the facilitator arranges for pairs of participants to engage in conflict resolution role plays.
• To build teamwork and communication skills, high school students work collaboratively to create PowerPoint presentations about what they learned instead of taking exams.
• Mr. Gonzalez has his students debate the pros and cons of political ideologies on social equality.
• Students in an early childhood education course work in small groups to develop an Action Plan for handling a contagious disease outbreak at a primary school.
• Every term, this high school awards 5 students for exemplifying leadership in the classroom.
• Students in this university Hospitality Management course visit one local 5-star hotel restaurant and conduct a customer service analysis.

Case Studies  

1. service-oriented learning: urban farming.

Progressive education can also contain elements of social reconstructionism and the goal of making the world a better place to live. Today’s version of making the world a better place to live encompasses environmental concerns.

For example, food insecurity is a matter that is not evenly distributed across all SES demographics.

Therefore, schools should help students develop a sense of responsibility and build skills that address a broad range of social issues .

The BBC reports that 900 million tons of food is wasted every year. That is more than enough to feed those in need. It is also a problem that has many possible solutions; one of them being Urban farming .

University agriculture majors can coordinate with local disadvantaged communities to implement urban farming solutions. It is possible to grow food on abandoned lots, rooftops, and on the outside walls of buildings and houses.

This is exactly the type of problem-based cooperative learning activity that progressivists support, for several reasons. The students address a pressing societal need and at the same time develop valuable practical skills.

2. Developing Practical Skills: Minecraft

Progressive education means developing practical skills, integrating technology when possible, and tapping into the interests of students. The Minecraft education package meets all of those objectives.

It offers teachers a game-based learning platform that students find very exciting and teachers find very educational. The education edition includes games that foster creativity , problem-solving skills, and cooperative learning.

Teachers in Ireland use Minecraft to demonstrate the connections between history, science, and technology. In one activity , students pretend to be Vikings. They get to build ships and go on raids to establish settlements in faraway lands.

The students learn about archeological reconstruction and how to storyboard their adventures by creating their own digital Viking saga.

As the principal explains, the kids are having great fun, but at the same time they are developing fundamental problem-solving skills , learning to cooperate with each other, and all the while expanding their knowledge base. It’s a win-win-win situation.

3. Student-Centered Learning: Provocations  

Teachers at a primary school in Australia have developed a unique student-centered approach that motivates students and allows them to explore their own interests.

The teachers write various learning tasks on cards, called Provocations, and place them on a bulletin board. Students select the tasks they find most interesting and then go to a designated place in the classroom that has been equipped with the necessary materials.

Students then work alone or individually to complete the task. When they’re finished, they write about what they did and convey their reflections in a Learning Journey book.

Afterwards, the teacher and student go through the book and discuss the student’s experience.

The teacher can highlight key learning concepts and the student can consider what they would do differently in the future.

One of the key benefits of this type of activity is that students develop a sense of responsibility for their learning outcomes.

4. Cooperative Learning: Think-Pair-Share

In traditional educational approaches, students are passive recipients of information. They receive and then recall input on exams to demonstrate learning. From a progressive philosophy, this approach fails in so many ways. It does nothing to build practical skills, the level of student motivation is low, and the level of processing is shallow.

Originally proposed by Frank Lyman (1981), Think-Pair-Share (TPS) is just the opposite. It utilizes cooperative learning to improve student engagement, allows students to process information at a much deeper level, and builds teamwork and communication skills.

The instructor presents an issue for students to reflect on individually. Next, pairs discuss their views and arrive at a mutual understanding, which is then shared with the class.  

After all pairs have taken a turn, the instructor engages the class with a broader discussion that can allow key concepts and facts to be highlighted.

TPS is a great way to get students involved and build their teamwork and communication skills.

5. Problem-Based Learning: Medical School

One of the key features of progressive education is that students develop practical skills. Problem-based learning (PBL) is often mentioned as a key instructional approach because it helps students develop practical skills and is collaborative. Some of the most respected medical schools in the world have integrated PBL into the curriculum.

Students are presented with a clinical problem. The file may consist of several binders of patient test results and other data. Students then form teams and work together to reach a diagnosis and treatment plan.

A thorough discussion of the patient’s information will reveal the team’s knowledge gaps. The team will then devise a set of learning objectives and path of study to pursue. Each member of the team is allocated specific tasks, the results of which are then shared at the next meeting.

PBL maximizes student engagement, exercises higher-order thinking , and improves collaboration and communication skills. All key goals of progressive education.

1. Practical Skills Development

Progressive education contains many features of other learning approaches such as problem-based learning and experiential learning. These approaches cultivate practical skills such as teamwork, conflict resolution, and communication.

Because students are “doing something” they develop practical skills. For example, in a marketing course, students will design a campaign. In a management course, students will practice giving performance feedback or conducting team-building activities.

These are the types of skills that students will apply later in life at work and in their careers.

2. Self-Discipline and Responsibility

Most activities in progressive education are student-centered. Students are the focus and often this means that they choose their learning goals and work autonomously .

This results in students learning that they are responsible for their learning outcomes. To accomplish tasks, the teacher is not there standing over their shoulder and coaxing them onward. Students must learn how to pace themselves and stay on-task during class. This builds self-discipline and responsibility.

3. Higher-Order Thinking

In a traditional classroom, students passively receive information transmitted from the teacher. The goal is to commit that information to rote memory so that it can be later used to answer multiple-choice questions. This limits the depth and quality of processing students must engage.

Progressive educational activities are just the opposite. Because students must engage in active learning, they process the information much deeper. Because they are required to engage in problem-solving and critical thinking, they must exercise higher-order thinking skills.

1. It Lacks Structure

Not all students flourish in a progressive classroom. Some students benefit from having well-structured lessons that are directed by the teacher. When an activity lacks these components, some students feel uncomfortable and anxious.

However, when there are clear objectives and learning tasks, they feel at ease and motivated. Without structure they can become overwhelmed with uncertainty and reluctant to get started.

2. Clashes with Teachers’ Preferences

Similar to students, not all teachers enjoy working in a progressive school. They find the lack of structure and clarity on learning outcomes difficult to grapple with.

These teachers work much better when they have a firm set of objectives they need their students to achieve; everything is clearly defined.

3. Overwhelming Work Load

The amount of work involved to create several different activities that can suit the variety of learning styles in one classroom can be overwhelming.

It takes a great deal of time just to think of so many meaningful activities, and then, one must prepare a wide assortment of materials; all for a single lesson.

Teachers in many public schools already feel overwhelmed with job demands. Many teachers casually remark that they have not one second of free time from September to June, and that includes weekends. It is hard to justify such a demanding job when taken in the context of the level of commitment required, and of course, a disappointing pay scale. 

Progressive education seeks to help students develop skills that they will need throughout their lifespan. By implementing activities that foster problem-solving, higher-order thinking, cooperation, and practical skills, students will graduate well-prepared for their future.

Although these are admirable goals, there are some drawbacks. The demands on teachers are substantial, as it takes a great deal of time to think of and prepare all of the necessary materials for a single lesson.

Moreover, not all students benefit from such an unstructured environment. Some students function better in an atmosphere with clearly defined goals and teacher guidance.

Ultimately, each parent must decide on which approach they consider best for their child and try to locate a school that subscribes to that philosophy.

Hayes, W. (2006). The progressive education movement: Is it still a factor in today’s schools? Rowman & Littlefield Education.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education . Toronto: Collier-MacMillan Canada Ltd.

Lyman, F. (1981). The responsive classroom discussion: The inclusion of all students. In A. Anderson (Ed.), Mainstreaming digest (pp. 109-113). University of Maryland College of Education.

Macrine, Sheila. (2005). The promise and failure of progressive education-essay review. Teachers College Record, 107 , 1532-1536. https://10.1177/016146810510700705

Wright, G. B. (2011). Student-centered learning in higher education. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 23(3), 93–94.

Dave Cornell (PhD)

Dr. Cornell has worked in education for more than 20 years. His work has involved designing teacher certification for Trinity College in London and in-service training for state governments in the United States. He has trained kindergarten teachers in 8 countries and helped businessmen and women open baby centers and kindergartens in 3 countries.

• Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ 25 Positive Punishment Examples
• Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ 25 Dissociation Examples (Psychology)
• Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ 15 Zone of Proximal Development Examples
• Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ Perception Checking: 15 Examples and Definition

Chris Drew (PhD)

This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). The review process on Helpful Professor involves having a PhD level expert fact check, edit, and contribute to articles. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Dr. Drew has published over 20 academic articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and holds a PhD in Education from ACU.

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The History of Education and Progressivism Essay

Forces on education, medieval tradition.

Medieval tradition was characterized by cheerless institutions where only grammar and religion were taught. Monasteries and cathedral schools were the chief institutions where learning took place. Medieval tradition was characterized by theology and a great number of people within the society were not taken care of in terms of education. This type of learning however provided a different dimension of life as compared to traditional ways and helped in the establishment of medieval learning institutions.

It was further characterized by teaching strong belief in religion and superstitions (Pulliam and Van Patten, 2007, p.20). An example is the introduction of teachings of Thomas Aquinas which provided scholars in various fields hence considered an improvement from the middle age education system.

The Renaissance

The Renaissance began in Italy in the 14 th century before spreading all over Europe. It is defined as the rebirth of learning. This type of education focussed on the ideals expressed within the books found in the ancient Greece. It shifted learning from religious point of view to secular. Also this system allowed all ages to be taught from children to youths with the curriculum based on the study of Greek and Roman literature.

It led to the inclusion of physical education within the curriculum as a subject. This era saw the development of social structure, economics, and philosophy within the education sector which led to emergence of great interest in books by the majority. It made the culture of reading interesting and popular within the society (Pulliam and Van Patten, 2007, p. 21).

Scientific Thinking

Scientific thinking is considered to have set the stage for the study of development. This is because it focused on the importance of what researchers choose to study and give the appropriate way of conducting the study (Shavelson and Towne, 2002). Scientific thinking as applied to education helps in providing methods that assist in analyzing educational practices.

It challenged the traditional beliefs and brought about the age of reason. A good example is the Leonardo da Vinci who shifted students focus towards the importance of learning through making observations and practising experiments (Pulliam and Van Patten, 2007, pp. 21).

Religious Revolutions

Religious reformation is characterized by religious movements that created impact by reforming the entire humanity. An example can be drawn from Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five theses that affected every culture within the institutions establishing the call for total freedom in the present world.

In this stage emphasis was placed on written word which was aimed at capturing minds of the majority. These revolutions saw the emergence of educational programs that gave students ability to read Bibles in their own languages. Education was meant for all irrespective of status, those destined to joining government institutions were granted special education (Pulliam and Van Patten, 2007, pp.22-23).

Progressivism Theory of Education

This is the education theory that puts a lot of emphasis on improvement of an individual and the society in general. The theory believes that for people to live in happiness and develop the society, happiness must form the core of development. It basically believes in the use of scientific evidences to draw conclusions and provide solutions.

This theory is established on the fact that schools form part of reforms on the social and institution reform. This theory sought to abolish formalism and authoritarian methods used in schools (Pounds, 1992). It asserted that there is possibility of human beings improving the society through science and natural intelligence. The belief that people are equal and no one is greater than the other could be used in education to enhance political reforms.

This theory understands the level of contribution of women and the minority within the society. A good example of progressives are people like Theodore Roosevelt who contributed to American reformation by believing that federal government had the obligation of addressing problems of modernity (Pulliam and Van Patten, 2007, p. 47).

How to increase motivation

Motivation is associated with somebody’s emotions. It is often the key point needed for achievement of results. To increase motivation first of all the student must establish a goal and work on smaller portions of that goal. It is also advisable to work things out till completion, never to procrastinate on issues. Have somebody account for the tasks accomplished and always seek help when necessary (Hutchins, 1954).

Stages of learning

The various stages of learning include; Novice which involves having brief ideas and concepts, then there is advanced stage which involves coping with real life experiences, then followed by being competent which involves having diversified knowledge on specific areas, then proficient stage that involves solving problems based on diverse experiences and finally there is the expert stage which involves full internalization of working processes and gaining more through relating to others. What counts in the contemporary society are the results based on evidence which gives new dimension for solving problems.

Hutchins, R. (1954). Great books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education . New York

Pounds, R., (1992). The development of Education in Western culture . New York: Random House

Pulliam, J. and Van Patten, J., (2007). History of education in America . Pearson Education, Inc New York

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Progressivism In Education: The Evolving Face Of Education In 21st Century

• Category Philosophy
• Subcategory Philosophers
• Topic John Dewey

The development of technology and increased competition has led to several challenges faced by children of all age groups. As such, education plays a very crucial role in the life of an individual. The progressive growth and development of any nation depends upon the education system structured to reshape the young minds. Modern times has reflected growth in the literacy rate. There has been more awareness among the people. With the changing scenario, the schools failed to adapt to the fast-changing needs of the society and fill the ever-increasing gap between education and personal experience of the children as individuals. This demands progressive growth of the students not only confined to the knowledge and information from the textbooks but on various resources to develop their social skills and make them responsible citizens to serve the society. In the words of John Dewey, “Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.” The changing demands of society paved way to progressivism in education. This will not only prepare them for future but also enhance their social understanding and develop their critical thinking a well as problem-solving capabilities to deal with the complex world.

Child-centered approach, critical thinking, problem solving, learning by doing, personalized learning

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Education helps a child to know his real self and his potential. It is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. In the ancient times, the students in Gurukul have imparted practical training also apart from education. Teaching was regarded as a respectable profession. There was a time when a teacher was considered to be a Guru. His respect in society was supreme and the students worshipped the teachers and sought their blessings regularly. Today it is a pitiful condition that neither parents nor students respect the teachers nor the teachers hold such qualities of teachers of past era. Present education system makes difficult for the teachers to handle children due to numerous factors. This is high time to build strong and healthy bonding between students and teachers which keeps on missing with time.

Progressive Education- The concept and meaning

The concept of Progressive education is not new but has gained momentum in the 21st century. Education broadens the vision of the intellectual level of an individual and should be regarded as a multi-dimensional approach in the modern era to cater to the fast-changing needs of the society. It is a child-centered approach and focus on the holistic development of a child. It aims to make the teaching-learning process enjoyable and enrich the experience of an individual beyond the walls of the school thereby improving the quality of life of the students. It prepares the children to face the challenges of life and use the opportunities in the best possible manner as they come their way.

Progressive education leads to a creative environment for the children and direct the immense potential in the children according to their interest, capability, knowledge and experience. Dewey’s influence on education was evident in his theory about social learning. He believed that school should be a representative of the social environment and that students learn best when in natural social settings (Flinders & Thornton, 2013). John Dewey, states-progressive education is “a product of discontent with traditional education” which imposes adult standards, subject matter, and methodologies. It should include socially engaging learning experiences that are developmentally appropriate for young children”.

Principles of Progressive Education

Progressive Education works on following principles:

• Orientation on the needs of children
• Personalized learning using the available resources
• Social learning-as a method and a goal
• A child-friendly environment to enhance learning involves interests, previous experience and capability of students
• Creative transfer of knowledge
• Balance the pace of space in society with the pace of change in education
• Deep understanding and ability
• Addressing performance assessments in an encouraging manner
• Aims to prepare students actively in the democratic society
• Discourage learning confined to text books and encourage learning involving various resources
• Selection of subject matter beneficial to meet societal needs

The “progressivism” concept works involving the development of a child as an individual by transforming the information/ knowledge based on his interests, capability and needs. “If the child is thrown into a passive role as a student, absorbing information, the result is a waste of the child’s education”. This helps to maintain his interest in studies but also be beneficial to improve his productivity and performance in the field of his interest.

Progressivism in Education…….defining new heights of education

The present information age demands a revolutionary change in the existing machinery of Education to comply with the fast-changing needs of society. It involves collaborative learning based on many parameters such as critical thinking, problem-solving, decision making, and expertise in a particular field etc. At the end of 19th century, “Progressivism” started strengthening its roots with time. In U.S, it affected cultural, political, educational issues etc resulting in changes in the work culture. It was an attempt to improve overall quality of a child as an individual taking into account his mental and physical health and overall well-being, providing education to the children in a flexible way. For Dewey, education is not preparation for life, but a part of life itself helping students to think beyond their limitations and make them better citizens. They become self reliant, learn to anticipate the nature of societal problems using their real-time experience and latest technology as well as available resources and come up with better solutions. He believed in the active participation of the citizens in democratic society. This can be achieved if education imparted through school reflects the community life.

Following a “learner-centered approach”, the role of teachers should be not only of providers of education restricted to the walls of the school but act as facilitators to develop the ability of problem-solving and decision making. The concept of “Progressivism” directs the students towards active learning through role play, group discussions and project method and brings an individual closer to society. The vision of education should be broad. 21st-century education should mark school curriculum beyond the school boundaries and should be coupled with creativity and information at a global level enriching the learning environment. This comprehensive approach changes the life of a student in school and as an individual makes him/her self directed, self-confident, self-reliant and establish a strong place in the society.

The problems faced by the individuals in the community mainly arise due to their inefficiency in their social and communication skills. With Progressive education, the children will become capable not only to take their decisions at school level but can also be a part in the decision-making process at home or in society. Their contribution can be valuable in establishing healthy bonding between them and the society. It enhances their social and personal skills like time management, social interaction, task management, communication skills, prioritizing their tasks, optimum use of available resources etc.

The responsibility lies with the schools/colleges/university to produce more successful students as individuals. This requires good and successful teachers as they acts as a role model for the students. One of the key differences in progressivism in education today compared to traditional education is the teacher’s role. In the present times, considering individual differences, the role of a teacher acts as a crucial tool to coordinate the resources necessary for facilitating the children’s experience in school and assist him to enrich his abilities of critical thinking and problem solving. e.g Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was one of the most effective practitioners of the concept of progressive education. He believed that education should be a ‘joyous exercise of our inventive and constructive energies that help us to build up character”.

It motivates students with passion for learning new things and adapts to new situations with confidence. It provides an opportunity to experience real world situations and enhance their skills according to their potential. They learn to lead a healthy life followed by team spirit, systematic planning, creativity and decision making. Schools provide a valuable change in the lives of students. The education system of any nation is a crucial indicator of development. Unfortunately, in our country, the education system still follows a traditional pattern based on rote learning. There is lack of adequate discussions between the teacher and the taught on the topics covered in curriculum. Moreover, the biased attitude of the school authorities towards children further makes it difficult for teachers to handle classrooms situations and modify the behavior of students. The school and college teachers (on temporary basis) are paid comparatively very less or not given salaries regularly due to which they lack interest to put more efforts to meet various demands of the school/colleges. On one side, there is paucity of better teaching opportunities for good teachers. On the other side, there are more opportunities for recruitment of teachers due to many obligations who may not be competent enough. In the present times, there has been shortage of quality teachers too. Moreover, the teachers are pressurized to produce best results inspite of many odd factors. This results in failure of teachers to establish a rapport with the students. Teaching has largely become a profession for women. At times, due to manifold responsibilities, women prove less professional. One of the reasons for this could be the remuneration. There is certainly a change after the seventh pay commission but, still the best of students with professional competence especially the males do not prefer teaching as a profession and consider it as one of their last choices.

Contributions of John Dewey in the field of Progressive Education

The “Progressive Education Movement” started during the late 19th century in the United States by John Dewey, a great philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer. He was regarded as a principal figure in this movement from the 1880s to 1904. It inspired American public schools from a budding idea to the regular norm. It aimed to tune educational philosophy and concrete school reforms with the changing needs of the society.

John Dewey, father of Progressive Education pointed out that the strict authoritarian approach of traditional education was overly concerned with delivering preordained knowledge, and not focused enough on students’ actual learning experiences. He insisted that education requires a design that is grounded in a theory of experience. He sides neither with traditional education, nor with progressive education, but with the understanding of how humans have the experiences they do, and how this understanding is necessary for designing effective education system. Beginning in 1897 John Dewey published a summary of his theory on progressive education in School Journal. His theoretical standpoints are divided into five sections outlined below.

What education is

According to John Dewey, Education is the “participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race”. He further added that “education should take into account that the student is a social being. The process begins at birth with the child unconsciously gaining knowledge and gradually developing their knowledge to share and partake in society.

Dewey considers the psychological form as the basis of educational process in comparison to the sociological form. The basic instincts of children support their knowledge with everything building upon it. This forms the “basis of Dewey’s assumption that one cannot learn without motivation”.

What the school is

Dewey believed education as an integrated part of the society and should be concerned with the community on the whole. “Education fails because it neglects this fundamental principle of the school as a form of community life. It conceives the school as a place where certain information is to be given, where certain lessons are to be learned, or where certain habits are to be formed.” Further, he added “Education is the process of living and is not meant to be the preparation of future living”.

The subject matter of education

Dewey believes that the school curriculum should be designed to understand the society in a better way. According to him, “The study of the core subjects (language, science, history) should be coupled with the study of cooking, sewing, and manual training”. Furthermore, he feels that “progress is not in the succession of studies but in the development of new attitudes towards, and new interests in, experience”.

The nature of method

The method used should consider the powers and interests of the children. John Dewey thinks that the result is a waste of the child’s education if it is only restricted to absorption of information provided to him through school/teachers if confined only to books. But the concept of “progressivism” will take the students to reach new heights of understanding the same concept by inculcating in him the capability to the student will be transform his knowledge into new forms, images and symbols.

The school and social progress

For John Dewey, education regulates “the process of coming to share in the social consciousness,” directing towards social progress.

In 1840, “Progressive Education Movement” was initiated in response to the limitations of the formal education institutions and traditional system of education. It aspires to develop the potential of an individual as a student and enhance the intellectual, emotional, social and mental capabilities. It promoted creativity and art in the school curriculum apart from the course. Progressive education provided an environment where students were taught to connect themselves with society and develop their problem-solving and critical thinking. It aimed to train the students making them self-reliant using project method, understanding the nature of the problem, action programmes etc beneficial for society and extends beyond bookish knowledge.

Following the child-centered approach, educators who believed in “progressivism” in education, pointed out the importance of diversity, multiculturalism, multiple intelligences, cooperative and collaborative learning. Education was not only confined to the boundaries of the school but also represented society as a whole. It follows the assumption that the students can understand life and learn in a better way if it involves their interests and fosters equality in education. It regards each and every student as an individual learner with different potential, learning abilities and interests should be given opportunity to grow socially, intellectually, emotionally, financially and spiritually and improve his personality through education.

• Behera, Arun K. ‘RabindranathTagore’s Progressive Educational Vision’ (PDF), The Dawn Journal, Retrieved 31 January 2017
• Bernstein, Richard J. :’John Dewey’, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Macmillan, 1967, 380-385
• Beyer, Landon E.; Liston, Daniel P.: “Curriculum in Conflict: Social Visions, Educational Agendas, and Progressive School Reform”, Teachers College Press, New York,1996 (ISBN-0-8077-3528-0).
• Butts, R Freeman; Cremin, Lawrence : A History of Education in American Culture, 1958
• Coetzer, I.A: Educare, Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), Sabinet Journals, Volume 30, Issue 1, Jan 2001, p. 73 – 93 (ISSN : 0256-8829)
• David F. Labaree: Progressivism, schools and schools of education: An American romance, p 275-288, 06 Aug 2006 (Published online)
• Dewey, John. Democracy and Education, Free Press, New York, 1944
• Dewey, John” Dewey on Education”(edited Martin Dworkin.), Teachers college Press, New York, 1959
• Dewey, John. (1897). My pedagogical creed, School Journal, Vol 54. pp. 77–80. Retrieved on November 4, 2011 from http://dewey.pragmatism.org/creed.htm
• ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’. Retrieved 10 October 2013
• Graham Vulliamy & Rosemary Webb: Progressive Education and the National Curriculum: findings from a global education research project, 06 Jul 2006, Pages 21-41 (Published online)
• Larry Cuban: “Content vs. skills in high schools – 21st century arguments echo 19th century conflicts”, 3 rd November , 2015. Retrieved 2016-03-12
• Pignatelli, Frank, Ed.; Pflaum, Susanna W.: “Ed.:Celebrating Diverse Voices: Progressive Education and Equity”, Thought and Practice Series, Corwin Press, NewYork, 1993, (ISBN-0-8039-6039-5)

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Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative?

By Emma Green

Listen to this article.

The first thing you notice when walking into the middle-school classrooms at Brilla, a charter-school network in the South Bronx, is the sense of calm. No phones are out. The students are quiet—not in the beaten-down way of those under authoritarian rule but in the way of those who seem genuinely interested in their work. Sixth graders participate in a multiday art project after studying great painters such as Matisse. Seventh graders prepare to debate whether parents should be punished for the crimes of their minor children. Another group of sixth graders, each holding a violin or a cello, read out notes from sheet music. A teacher cues them to play the lines pizzicato, and they pluck their strings in unison.

Brilla is part of the classical-education movement, a fast-growing effort to fundamentally reorient schooling in America. Classical schools offer a traditional liberal-arts education, often focussing on the Western canon and the study of citizenship. The classical approach, which prioritizes some ways of teaching that have been around for more than two thousand years, is radically different from that of public schools, where what kids learn—and how they learn it—varies wildly by district, school, and even classroom.

In many public schools, kids learn to read by guessing words using context clues, rather than by decoding the sounds of letters. In most classical schools, phonics reign, and students learn grammar by diagramming sentences. Some public schools have moved away from techniques like memorization, which education scholars knock as “rote learning” or “drill and kill”—the thing that’s killed being a child’s desire to learn. In contrast, classical schools prize memory work, asking students to internalize math formulas and recite poems. And then there’s literature: one New York City public-high-school reading list includes graphic novels, Michelle Obama’s memoir, and a coming-of-age book about identity featuring characters named Aristotle and Dante. In classical schools, high-school students read Aristotle and Dante.

Classical education has historically been promoted by religious institutions and expensive prep schools. (Many classical schools have adopted the Harkness method, pioneered by Phillips Exeter Academy, in which students and teachers collectively work through material via open discussion.) More recently, powerful investors have seen its potential for cultivating academic excellence in underserved populations: the Charter School Growth Fund, a nonprofit whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies, has put millions of dollars into classical schools and networks.

Republican politicians have also smelled opportunity in the movement, billing its traditionalism as an antidote to public-school wokeism. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has railed against “a concerted effort to inject this gender ideology” into public-school classrooms, and has celebrated the influx of classical schools in his state. Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, proposed launching up to a hundred classical charter schools statewide, touting their mission to preserve American liberty. As more conservatives have flocked to classical education, progressive academics have issued warnings about the movement, characterizing it as a fundamentally Christian project that doesn’t include or reflect the many kids in America who aren’t white, or who have roots outside this country. The education scholar and activist Diane Ravitch recently wrote that classical charters “have become weapons of the Right as they seek to destroy democratically governed public schools while turning back the clock of education and social progress by a century.”

Stephanie Saroki de Garcia, who co-founded Brilla, acknowledged that “classical education is often seen as a white child’s education.” This is partly because of the curriculum: “You’re talking about teaching the canon and mainly white, male authors,” she said. It’s also because these schools have been embraced by white Republicans who have the resources to keep their children out of the local school system. And yet Brilla is not rich, or white, or discernibly right-wing. Many students are English-language learners and immigrants, from Central America and West Africa. According to Brilla’s leaders, nearly ninety per cent of their students meet the federal requirements for free or reduced-price lunches. Saroki de Garcia purposefully opened the first Brilla school in the poorest neighborhood of the Bronx, which has a large population of Latino Catholics. (Brilla is secular, but it offers a free Catholic after-school program.) The students I met were nerdy and earnest, and far from young reactionaries. Angelina and Fatumata, two eighth graders, told me that they started a book club to read about racism in America; one recent pick was “Passing,” the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, set in the Harlem Renaissance. Brilla’s leaders intentionally take a wide view of the canon, and of which texts are valuable to study. “We try to make that connection for our students, who are mostly Black and Hispanic, with faces they can see themselves in,” Will Scott, the principal of one of Brilla’s middle schools, said.

Brilla’s administrators were careful to note that the network isn’t “classical” but, rather, “classically inspired.” This distinction is partly practical. Although teachers invoke Latin root words when they’re teaching kids English, for example, students don’t take Latin as a subject. But it also seemed like the school’s leaders wanted to put some distance between themselves and the broader classical-education movement. “If we say ‘classical school,’ that has a connotation,” Scott said. Still, it’s telling that the schools have found traction by marketing themselves as “classically inspired” in the South Bronx, where voters overwhelmingly prefer Democrats and the college-graduation rate is among the lowest in New York City. During the lead-up to Brilla’s launch, in 2013, volunteers posted up outside a local McDonald’s to pitch families on enrolling. “We billed it as, This is what the élite get,” Saroki de Garcia told me.

Everyone I met at Brilla seemed aware that their school is an implicit rejection of traditional public schools, but not in the way one might expect. Although America’s public-school wars are often depicted as fights over race and gender ideology, there are also a lot of parents who think their local schools just aren’t very good. Brilla’s two middle schools are in New York City’s School District 7, where, last year, less than a third of sixth graders were proficient in math or in reading and writing. Angelina, a recent immigrant from St. Croix, said that most of her friends “go to a public school, and they talk really poorly about their school.” Fatumata added that “they don’t have what we have,” such as Algebra I classes for middle schoolers. “The schools around us are, frankly, failing,” Scott, the principal, told me.

There are many charter schools that aim to address the problem of low achievement, often through an obsessive focus on test scores and discipline. Brilla cares about both of these things, but what sets it apart is its mission. Classical education is premised on the idea that there is objective truth, and that the purpose of school is to set kids on a path toward understanding it. This principle is often framed in philosophical shorthand—classical educators love talking about “truth, beauty, and goodness,” which can sound like a woo-woo catchphrase to the uninitiated—and it’s paired with an emphasis on morality and ethics. Brilla students attend a character-education class every morning, where they talk about how to live out the different virtues reflected in the texts they read. As Alexandra Apfel, an assistant superintendent for Brilla’s middle schools, said, “We’re building students that are not just going to be academic robots but moms and dads someday.”

In 1947, Dorothy Sayers, a motorcycle-riding Anglican crime writer, delivered a paper at Oxford titled “The Lost Tools of Learning,” in which she bemoaned the state of education. “Do you ever find that young people, when they have left school, not only forget most of what they have learnt (that is only to be expected) but forget also, or betray that they have never really known, how to tackle a new subject for themselves?” Young people do not know how to think, she argued, because they’ve never been taught. They may have been introduced to subjects, but not to what it means to learn.

In the face of this contemporary problem, Sayers proposed an ancient solution: the revival of a medieval teaching format called the trivium, which divided learning into three stages—grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. The first stage is about mastering basic skills and facts; the second teaches students to argue and to think critically about those facts. By the third stage, they’re ready to express themselves in essays and oration. This model of education, cultivated by Renaissance thinkers and the Catholic Church alike, was common among European élites for centuries.

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Sayers’s essay built on a long-standing debate about whether this kind of education made sense in a rapidly changing, industrialized world. Classical-education advocates often point to John Dewey, the early-twentieth-century progressive reformer, as the bête noire who marginalized their preferred form of schooling: “There was a war going on between the progressive and the classical educators, and the progressives won in a rout,” Andrew Kern, the founder of the Center for Independent Research on Classical Education, told me. Although this story is perhaps overly simplistic, Johann Neem, a historian at Western Washington University, said, it’s true that Dewey and other progressives thought that the old ways of education were inadequate for modern students. These progressive reformers planted the seeds of two trends. The first was shifting the focus of school toward appealing to the interests of the child, rather than transmitting ancient knowledge and wisdom, which these reformers considered élitist. (“Academic and scholastic, instead of being titles of honor, are becoming terms of reproach,” Dewey wrote.) The second was a utilitarian impulse—some scholars thought that the purpose of education was to train workers. They did not believe that every student needed to read Plato.

In the late nineteen-seventies and early eighties, classical education reëmerged as a pushback against these trends. A handful of schools built around Sayers’s ideas launched in Idaho, Massachusetts, Kansas, and Indiana, independently of one another. They were all Christian, but of different flavors—two had Catholic roots, one was ecumenical, and one was evangelical. Doug Wilson, the pastor who founded the evangelical school, in Idaho, later started a conference for Christian parents and educators who were interested in creating their own schools. This was the beginning of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, or A.C.C.S., which has since grown into a network of more than five hundred and forty schools, most of which are Protestant and use aspects of the trivium model. Even in Christian circles, Wilson is a polarizing figure—he promotes a theology that prizes strictly traditional gender roles and has made inflammatory comments about race relations. But the classical movement has expanded into something much broader: there are more than two hundred Catholic classical schools, which call their approach “Catholic liberal education,” along with a growing number of classical charter schools with no religious identity. The movement is diverse, in part because classical education has boomed among homeschoolers, who run the gamut from serious athletes to kids with learning differences to conservative Christians. These homeschooling families “like the idea of a traditional, rigorous education that really demands a lot out of a child, and that is also responsive to them,” Susan Wise Bauer, the co-author of “The Well-Trained Mind,” a popular guide to classical homeschooling, told me.

The notion of a standardized curriculum, let alone a shared value system, no longer exists in most American public schools. Proponents of classical education argue that any student can find value in the same timeless texts—Augustine and Austen, Chaucer and Chesterton—regardless of that student’s race, religion, or class. James Baldwin once said that reading Dickens “taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had been alive.” Classical-education advocates want kids to read Dickens and feel that same connection.

Though classical schooling might have once been the education of élites, the modern version has egalitarian potential. In Texas, enrollment in classical charter schools is growing most quickly among Asian and Hispanic students. In Arizona, a charter-school network called Espiritu, which mostly serves immigrants, recently overhauled its curricula to be more classical. And yet, perhaps inevitably, the movement has also felt the gravitational pull of the culture wars. With many classical schools focussed on moral formation and civics—and, incidentally, white male authors—this educational mode is primed to be co-opted into something that’s not just traditional but reactionary. The architects of contemporary classical education believed that, by reaching into the past, they could build a better future for American education. Today, many of the people embracing classical education are more interested in running away from the aspects of progressive schooling they fear.

Pete Hegseth, the perfectly coiffed Fox News host, sits on a stage in Franklin, Tennessee, a small city south of Nashville. To his left is a giant American flag. He is here taping a segment of his Fox Nation special “The MisEducation of America” before a live audience of parents who are disturbed by what they’ve encountered in local public schools. “We are fighting the battle of fires,” Cameron Sexton, the speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, tells Hegseth: “You’re talking about C.R.T.”—critical race theory—“you’re talking about books in the library,” which might incorporate ideas about gender or sexuality. Sexton goes on to explain that the only solution is for people to enroll their children in classical schools, like he did with his own daughter, where students won’t be spoon-fed ideology. “There’s nothing more powerful than for an individual to have the ability to think and decide things for themselves,” Sexton says. “That’s how you stop the government from intruding on your life.”

When we spoke, Hegseth acknowledged that his interest in the movement “started as a reaction against” what he saw as progressive indoctrination in typical public schools. He has since reoriented his life around classical Christian education; in 2022, he and his wife moved outside Nashville to send their kids to such a school. He also understands the appeal of the model to a politically conservative audience. “What our viewers are looking for is a back-to-basics approach,” he said, one in which Christianity is “front and center.”

Hegseth is close with David Goodwin, who became the president of A.C.C.S. in 2015. Under Goodwin, the number of A.C.C.S. schools has more than doubled. Goodwin and Hegseth recently co-wrote a book called “Battle for the American Mind,” in which they argue that Marxists “have taken full control of America’s education system.” Wokeism, they explain, is driven by a vision of education that prizes “control of your identity, being accepted for who you are, finding adventure, and creating your own path in life.” Arguably, these are contemporary buzzwords with roots in century-old progressive ideas—that knowledge and virtue are not objective and external but, rather, subjective and internal, to be discovered as one develops one’s sense of self. Hegseth and Goodwin believe that, by focussing students’ education on the civilizations that flowed out of “the convergence of Greece, Rome, and Hebrew cultures,” America can recapture the norms it was built on. “We are the new radicals, the new revolutionaries,” they write.

As part of this revolution, Goodwin and the A.C.C.S. have been promoting classical education overseas. They see Africa, in particular, as fertile ground: over the last twenty-five years, Christian missionaries and pastors have planted classical schools in a dozen countries. This past fall, I went with Goodwin to Nairobi for a conference hosted by the Rafiki network, which runs schools in ten English-speaking African countries and publishes a curriculum used by dozens of other schools. Goodwin lives in Boise—it was his first time in Africa, or south of the equator, for that matter. Wearing a slightly baggy blazer and a yellow tie, he stood in front of roughly two hundred people in a dim auditorium near an Anglican cathedral.

The obvious question of the day was why Goodwin’s version of classical education would be compelling to people living outside the West. “It took me about twenty hours from where I live in the States to get here,” Goodwin said. “Fifteen hours in, I started crossing over the territories that most developed the West. I crossed Macedonia. The plane flew down through Greece and near Alexandria, in Egypt, and then down the Red Sea, with Mt. Sinai on the left.” In Nairobi, he argued, they were far closer to the history of the West than he was back at home. “This is where Christendom grew up,” he said. He noted that the word “Western” is often associated with colonization. Goodwin framed his role not as one of domination and takeover but, instead, as an emissary from a possible future. “We’re in a pitched battle in the United States,” he said, “between the powers of light and the powers of darkness.” His prayer was that the audience wouldn’t let progressive education take root in their country.

After the lecture, Goodwin confessed to me that his earlier argument—that Kenya is closer to the origins of the West than America is—was a bit of a stretch. Despite nearly three-quarters of a century of colonialism in Kenya, he said, “I don’t think it’s dominantly a Western culture, because Greco-Roman philosophy is not deeply ingrained.” In his view, no place on the African continent is currently part of the West. Even Alexandria, which was one of the seedbeds of Western thought and philosophy in the centuries before and after Christ, is now dominated by Islam, which Goodwin does not see as part of the West. Although Christianity might have roots in Africa, it moved westward, toward Europe and the United States, and that’s the intellectual tradition Goodwin is focussed on. It is “existentially evident that Western culture is the most influential in the history of man,” he had told me a few weeks earlier. Goodwin thinks that Kenyans should learn songs and stories from their country and continent, along with the history of Greece and Rome. But, he said, “we don’t buy into the cultural philosophy that all cultures are equally valuable and good.”

The next day, I got in a car with Theodore and Crystal Wilson, the heads of Rafiki Classical Christian, a school on the outskirts of Nairobi that educates kids aged three to eighteen. The Wilsons, a Black, missionary couple, taught at classical schools in America before moving to Kenya, in 2022. We wove through chaotic traffic on our way out of central Nairobi—speeding minibuses taking men to work, throngs of people crossing the street seemingly at random. Churches were everywhere: Israel New Creation House, Abundant Glory International Ministries. Soon, we arrived at the Rafiki compound, originally the summer home of Kenya’s first President, Jomo Kenyatta. Behind a tall rock wall, the campus was a lovely oasis: ibises flew around acacia trees that were scattered among a series of small, squat buildings with red tile roofs, each housing a couple of grades.

Theo Wilson was a Navy chaplain, and his military background showed. When he and his wife arrived in Kenya, they cultivated a morning-assembly tradition—a highly orchestrated performance of students marching along an outdoor basketball blacktop. Wilson, wearing a canvas safari hat, a bow tie, and a sweater vest, stood before the children, who lined up in neat rows with their hands behind their backs. “Why are we in school today?” he asked. “To glorify and enjoy God,” they answered, following a script provided by the A.C.C.S.

In the classrooms, the trivium was everywhere. Preschoolers were memorizing a verse from I Samuel. Third graders took turns reciting lines from “The Fisherman and His Wife,” a fairy tale published by the Brothers Grimm. Some aspects of Kenyan culture were present: on the wall of a second-grade classroom, the Kiswahili alphabet was written out next to the English one. “We go to great lengths to feature their art, their music, but also historical figures of the African diaspora,” Theo Wilson said. Still, there was a jarring emphasis on Western civilization. In one classroom, the history of music was laid out according to European eras—Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic—and the walls were decorated with portraits of white European composers. Later, we visited the library inside Rafiki’s teacher-training college. One wall was covered by a twenty-three-foot-long time line of world history first published in 1871, starting from Adam and Eve. It featured a sketched map of the world that portrayed Europe and the Middle East in colorful detail, whereas the whole of the African continent south of Carthage was a giant black mass. Each civilization had its own line, tracing its evolution through the centuries. By the time of the birth of Jesus, any reference to African history had disappeared.

At the conference, I met a Kenyan woman named Melissa Wakhu, who wore large, geometric earrings and styled her hair in shoulder-length locs. She had worked as a consultant for Deloitte before choosing to homeschool her four children full time using Classical Conversations, a classical-homeschooling curriculum that’s popular in America. Her kids have received the full classical experience, from learning literature and Latin to memorizing the names of Greek and Roman gods. “I’ve watched what it’s done to my children, in terms of opening up their minds, their vocabulary, their thinking, their empathy,” she said. She even works for Classical Conversations part time, as its representative for East Africa.

And yet, as time went on, she started feeling unsettled. Her children would listen to classical music, “but then my kids started asking, ‘Are there no African musicians and composers?’ ” she said. One lesson suggested that children go outside and collect maple leaves, which are nowhere to be found in Nairobi. Her tenth grader was working through a unit on the American government and economy. “They have to memorize a well-written speech and present it, and what they were memorizing was the preamble to the Constitution,” she said. “So I have these African, Kenyan children standing and reading out to me, ‘We the People of the United States . . . ’ For me, that was a conflict.” Wakhu has now written and published more than a dozen kids’ books featuring Kenyan scenes and African heroes, to fill what she saw as a gaping hole in the classical resources available to her family.

Throughout the conference, American speakers kept bringing up Augustine, who lived and wrote in what is now Algeria. “He’s northern Africa, which has a completely different experience than the rest of us,” Wakhu told me. The implication, in suggesting that Augustine is the closest thing to an African thinker that the classical tradition has to offer, is that “there was no philosophical thinking” in places like Kenya, Wakhu said. “It’s a challenge for this group of foreigners to try and come and convince us of something that is beautiful, but is also Western.”

Plenty of Americans are also skeptical of the classical-education movement’s narrow emphasis on the West. In 2021, Angel Adams Parham, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia, became the board chair of the Classic Learning Test, or CLT—an SAT alternative often taken by classical-school students and homeschoolers. Parham came to classical education by the same path as many others: when her oldest daughter was getting ready for school, Parham looked at the available options and wasn’t satisfied, so she started homeschooling. Just like Wakhu, Parham found Classical Conversations, which set her on her own intellectual journey. “As I’m reading the Republic for the first time—I must have been in my forties—I’m thinking, Why have I never read this?” She had an undergraduate degree from Yale and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and yet, she told me, she had never been exposed to these foundational texts.

Parham, who is Black and studies the history of race, came to believe that the Western canon is deeply intertwined with the Black intellectual tradition—after all, Malcolm X read the classics in prison. Black figures have also fundamentally shaped the Western tradition. Parham recently led a reassessment of which authors appear on the CLT; one figure who got added was Olaudah Equiano, a freed slave who was part of the movement to end the slave trade in Britain and wrote an influential autobiography. For the most part, though, Parham has found that “the mainstream of the movement” is hesitant about efforts to widen the aperture of classical education: “Their sense is, There’s a list of texts, and these people are not on the list.” The result tends to be a Eurocentric notion of the West. “You have to take a very sharp scalpel to the world to carve out Africa, the Middle East, and Asia in order to get the version that they want to call ‘Western’ and ‘classical,’ ” Parham argued. Homer talks about Ethiopians. Herodotus tells tales from Asia and Africa. Aquinas engaged with Islamic scholarship. But “we’re not educated in that tradition,” Parham said.

I first encountered Parham in September, when the CLT’s board of advisers held a summit in Annapolis, Maryland, at St. John’s College. Men and women in brightly colored preppy dress milled around before the first activity of the day: croquet lessons. The scene, complete with a nearby lemonade table, felt like the most extreme possible caricature of what people who venerate the classics would do for fun. (Then again, the next day’s activity was sailing.) The impresario of the croquet field was Jeremy Tate, the C.E.O. of the CLT. He schmoozed his way through the small pack of players in a blue summer suit, his blond bangs carefully tousled with gel. He was riding a high: last fall, Florida’s board of governors agreed to let students use the CLT to apply to state universities and scholarship programs, significantly increasing its number of test-takers. (That number is still minuscule compared to those who take the SAT.)

As one might expect, the CLT is heavy on classic texts—one practice exam uses excerpts from the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Federalist Papers to test reading comprehension. But, despite the exam being promoted by conservatives like DeSantis, the sharpest critique that the CLT’s founders make is not about politics but about high-stakes testing—a critique typically associated with progressives. Tate told me that the College Board, which makes the SAT, is cynical and career-focussed. “The point of education was always the preservation of civilization,” Tate said. “It was the cultivation of virtue.” To Tate, this includes the kind of learning that can never be fully measured by a test, such as an appreciation for poetry or theatre. According to Tate, policymakers in other red states are interested in following Florida’s lead by offering the CLT. But when Republicans ask if he wants them to promote the exam, he told me, “we’re trying to say, ‘Not really,’ because your being a champion of this would further politically hijack it.”

Tate represents a common figure in the classical-education world: a dispositionally conservative guy who is also adamant that classical education is not right-wing. He acknowledged that the movement has a natural constituency on the right, among parents who are panicked about wokeism. But “it’s not enough to get some of the ideas out that you consider toxic,” Tate said. “You need a bigger vision for education.” Besides, the G.O.P. has its own utilitarian tendencies when it comes to schooling, which are out of step with classical education. “It wasn’t long ago that you had Marco Rubio on national television making fun of philosophy majors,” he said. “It’s a weird moment, where this kind of education would be championed on the right.”

The right’s suspicion of identity politics has also made conversations about diversity difficult. One of the questions that Parham and the other CLT board members considered during their reassessment of the authors on the test was whether more nonwhite or non-male thinkers should be included, prompting one board member to complain that “the CLT was going woke.” Parham expressed frustration with this kind of attitude. “There are people who really love classical education, but they are really hungry for ‘How do we weave together a more diverse tapestry?’ Does it all have to be Greece and Rome and European authors?” she said. “That is very different than saying, ‘We just want diversity for diversity’s sake.’ ” Parham thinks that kids, and especially kids who are not white, would benefit from learning about the crossroads of the Mediterranean back before modern notions of racial hierarchy existed. But it’s challenging to find an audience for this argument in America’s polarized culture. “Left academia is not helping us,” she said. “People are pushing back against some of the extremes of that. They are fleeing to classical education, unfortunately, thinking it’s going to be a safe space. But it’s all very wrongheaded.”

The tricky thing about truth, beauty, and goodness is that, for all their supposed timelessness and objectivity, not everyone agrees on what is actually true, beautiful, and good. As the classical-education movement grows, it must contend with the fundamental question of pluralism: Does the movement’s notion of truth keep out not only certain texts but certain children?

Doug Wilson, the A.C.C.S. founder, who is often credited with repopularizing classical education, is a difficult figurehead for a movement that wishes to be inclusive. He maintains a “Controversy Library” on his blog, which includes an account of the outrage over his now retracted pamphlet “Southern Slavery as It Was,” in which he described slavery as “producing in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since.” (Wilson says the pamphlet was retracted because of citation problems.) He believes that it is not possible to have a truly classical education without Christianity. This is a common view, even among leaders of the Society for Classical Learning, a more moderate alternative to the A.C.C.S. that deëmphasizes “culture war” in favor of “culture care”—inviting people into the movement, rather than policing its borders.

For people like Susan Wise Bauer, the co-author of “The Well-Trained Mind,” the idea that there’s something fundamentally conservative or Christian about classical education is ahistorical and myopic. A specific type of person tends to dominate the classical speaker circuit, she told me: the “theo bro,” which she defined as a “conservative Protestant-theology fan who likes to smoke cigars, drink whiskey, talk theology, and has a beard.” She sees herself as speaking for a much broader, more diverse constituency, including Jews, Muslims, atheists, and “liberal, pinko, Marxists” who love classical education. If she and Doug Wilson were discussing the classical approach, she added, “we’d probably both agree on the importance of teaching grammar, but I don’t know that we’d have much in common, other than that.” Kevin Hall, the C.E.O. of the Charter School Growth Fund, told me that he sees a particular hunger for classical education among parents who are not religious, and who may find comfort in a public charter school that can partner with them in developing their kids’ character.

By law, classical charter schools are secular, because they are publicly funded. The largest network is Great Hearts, which has twenty-eight thousand students across its schools in Arizona, Texas, and Louisiana, with fifteen thousand more students on its waiting lists. Daniel Scoggin, one of the Great Hearts co-founders, told me that it wasn’t hard to arrive at a version of classical education that was appropriate for a public charter school. “You take out the theology,” he said. “You keep a focus on the Greeks, keep a focus on the classics, the great American tradition as the capstone to the classical story.” Doug Ducey, the former governor of Arizona, who helped push through a significant expansion of charter-school funding, told me that he sent his sons to Catholic school, “but if Jack, Joe, and Sam Ducey were in kindergarten today I would be trying to enroll them in Great Hearts.”

Although networks like Great Hearts and Brilla have attracted many families, some parents find the ideas associated with the movement alienating. The Archdiocese of Portland is one of many Catholic dioceses that is slowly incorporating elements of classical education into its schools. But this transition has become mixed up with sensitive issues of identity, including the place of gay and trans kids and families in the Church. The archbishop, Alexander Sample, recently released guidelines on “dealing with gender issues,” instructing Catholic institutions, including schools, not to support gender transitions in any way. At least one group of parents protested, but they say their concerns were ignored.

“When I look at those who are promoting the classical-education model, there have been a lot of red flags,” Charlene Hannibal, one of the parents, explained. “The main thing that concerns me is the lack of acceptance for trans youth and L.G.B.T.Q. families and children.” Elias Moo, the Archdiocese’s new superintendent, told me, “It does no one any favors if we try to sugarcoat or water down what the Church teaches.” This includes the faith’s understanding that humans are created as male or female. “We will honor the primacy of parents to such an extent that we’re willing to recognize when a parent says, ‘This isn’t the best environment for our child,’ ” he said. In classical schools, inclusion isn’t necessarily the highest virtue.

There can be a sense of urgency in the classical-education world—a feeling that whole generations have been lost, and that the next must be saved. In January, I visited a new classical school on the Upper East Side where that feeling was acute. The school is called Emet Classical Academy; emet means “truth” in Hebrew. Plans for Emet had been in the works for over a year, but after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th Emet’s leaders decided to open the school on an accelerated timeline. Two mothers—both well-dressed, professional-class women—took me on a tour of the Conservative synagogue where, beginning this fall, students will learn about their place in the Western tradition. It will be a contained world of study; classroom windows look out onto a brick wall.

“For me, this is really about antisemitism,” one of the moms, who asked not to be named, told me. “After October 7th, it became abundantly clear that unless my child is in a safe space, like a Jewish school, there is opportunity for antisemitic rhetoric.” The other mom said that she worries about sending her kids to college unprepared for an onslaught of criticism of Jews, and of Israel: “Whatever the antisemitism du jour is in five years, I realized over the last few months that it’s my responsibility as a Jewish parent to make sure they’re prepared to respond to it.” So much of New York City schooling is about helping students understand their identity, she added, “and that’s all excellent. But most schools don’t include Judaism or Zionism in those aspects that they seek to develop in the kids.”

This is the pitch that Emet is making: through a classical education, students can become confident in themselves as Jews, and as Americans. As much as the project is intended to be countercultural—a fix for what’s wrong with modern schooling—it also mirrors modern schooling’s obsession with developing kids’ sense of identity. Both moms were eager to point out that the school will be Jewish but not religious, which they see as a plus. Abraham Unger, the head of the school, told me that every morning the students will say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem, but there will be no mandatory prayers, and kids will not be expected to learn how to participate in synagogue services. Most of the families who have expressed interest in Emet are not from traditionally observant backgrounds, and their kids are not coming out of religious Jewish day schools. They’re parents like the two moms I met. This moment in history has shaken something in them. They’re looking for roots.

Emet is a project of the Tikvah Fund, a prominent Jewish foundation chaired by Elliott Abrams, a neoconservative fixture who served in the Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump Administrations. Eric Cohen, Tikvah’s C.E.O., told me that he hopes Emet will eventually be a model for dozens of schools around the country, including existing Jewish day schools. He also wants to start a Jewish classical-education version of Teach for America.

“The Jews were summoned in history to have a kind of purpose,” Cohen said. “Jews brought certain ideas and ways of understanding reality into the world: that humans are both created and commanded. That we’re covenantal beings that have a responsibility in shaping history. That there’s a moral vision of life that’s articulated in the Jewish tradition that has wisdom and relevance for all human beings.” To him, the story of Jewish civilization is fundamentally Western, and the story of Western civilization is fundamentally Jewish. “The West is Greco-Roman culture recast through a Jewish lens,” he said. The goal of Emet is to cultivate students “who can enter the world with that civilizational vision—those habits of mind and heart and leadership and character that classical learning at its best can shape—for deeply Jewish purposes.”

So far, Cohen said, the school has been welcomed into the Christian-dominated classical-education movement. The movement’s leaders don’t necessarily agree with Cohen’s interpretation of history or his high view of Jewish texts, though. I asked David Goodwin why students in A.C.C.S. schools don’t learn Hebrew—the language of the Old Testament, and the lingua franca of the rabbis who, according to Cohen, helped shape the West. “The Hebrew tradition is one of authority and law, which we study,” Goodwin said. “But the emphasis is on the Greek and Roman tradition, which is one of persuasion and logic. There’s more there to study—in the Greek, it’s a deeper pool.” Plus, he added, Hebrew is too hard for most high schoolers to learn.

Nothing is more classical than Plato’s allegory of the cave, which is really a story about education: how human beings emerge from ignorance and discover truth. In the story, humans are prisoners chained up in a dark chamber, facing a wall. They believe that the shadows on the wall represent the world. Then one day a prisoner makes his way out into the light. He is blinded by the sun, but eventually his eyes adjust. He goes back into the cave to persuade the others to come out. But his eyes no longer work in the darkness; all the prisoners see is a blind man, and they assume that leaving the cave is pointless.

There’s a sly tension in the allegory. Plato clearly believes that it’s better to live in the light and know the truth. But he also acknowledges that a person can be blinded in two ways, both as they’re emerging from the cave and again as they’re returning to it. It can be difficult to know which direction leads to the truth. Even Plato’s fanboys might get lost on their way. ♦

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Equal education, unequal pay: Why is there still a gender pay gap in 2024?

Chantel Adams, a senior marketing executive, sits in her home office Thursday, March 7, 2024, in Durham, N.C. Adams says she isn’t surprised that the gender pay gap persists even among men and women with the same level and quality of education, or that the gap is wider for Black and Hispanic women. (AP Photo/Chris Seward)

Chantel Adams, a senior marketing executive, poses in her home office Thursday, March 7, 2024, in Durham, N.C. Adams says she isn’t surprised that the gender pay gap persists even among men and women with the same level and quality of education, or that the gap is wider for Black and Hispanic women.(AP Photo/Chris Seward)

Chantel Adams, a senior marketing executive, poses in her home office Thursday, March 7, 2024, in Durham, N.C. Adams says she isn’t surprised that the gender pay gap persists even among men and women with the same level and quality of education, or that the gap is wider for Black and Hispanic women. (AP Photo/Chris Seward)

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CHICAGO (AP) — Not even education can close the pay gap that persists between women and men, according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report .

Whether women earn a post-secondary certificate or graduate from a top-tier university, they still make about 71 cents on the dollar compared with men at the same education level, Census Bureau research found .

That difference is coming into stark view on Equal Pay Day , and in spite of the fact that women comprise more than half of college-educated workers and participate in the labor force at record rates .

Rather than comparing full-time working men to full-time working women, the Feb. 22 Census Bureau report juxtaposes men and women with the same education caliber: graduates of certificate degree programs and those who hold bachelor’s degrees from the most selective universities, explained economist Kendall Houghton, a co-author of the research. The report also includes graduates who may have opted out of the labor force, such as women taking on child care responsibilities.

“The main point here is that there’s a substantial gap at every single level,” added Census Bureau economist and co-author Ariel Binder.

Field of study, choice of occupation and hours account for much of the discrepancy, but not all. Field of study, for instance, contributes to the pay gap much more for top graduates (24.6%), but for less selective degree holders accounted for only a sliver (3.8%). And the number of hours and weeks worked affect the pay gap more for certificate earners (26.4%) than selective bachelor’s degree earners (11.3%), suggesting there is a bigger gender difference in work participation for certificate holders, Binder said.

At the same time, about 31% of the gap for each education level remains unexplained, suggesting less easily measured factors such as gender stereotypes and discrimination may be at play.

Chantel Adams says she isn’t surprised that the gender pay gap persists even among men and women with the same level and quality of education, or that the gap is wider for Black and Hispanic women.

A senior marketing executive who holds an MBA from University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, Adams said her qualifications aren’t enough to counteract the headwinds she faces in her career as a Black woman.

Despite taking on extra responsibilities and an undisputedly strong performance, Adams said she was turned down for a promotion because she was told that “I was so articulate and sharp that it was intimidating to some people.”

“I have nearly $300,000 of post-high school education. It would be surprising if I weren’t articulate and sharp,” said Adams, who is based in Durham, North Carolina.

She said her peers at the company — one of whom did not have an MBA — were promoted while she was held back two years in a row.

“It’s unreasonable and unfair to hold someone’s strengths against them,” Adams said. “I would consider that as something that is race-based.”

Broadly, younger women are closer to wage parity with younger men, according to Carolina Aragao, who researches social and demographic trends at Pew Research Center. But the gap widens between the ages of 35 and 44, which coincides with when women are most likely to have a child at home.

“That does not play out the same way for men,” Aragao said, adding that there is actually an opposite phenomenon known as the fatherhood premium , in which fathers tend to earn more than other workers, including men without children at home.

Despite women making vast gains in C-suite and high-earning industry representation, wage gap improvement has stalled for about 20 years , Aragao said. Uneven child care and household responsibilities, falling college wage premiums , and overrepresentation in lower-paying occupations are all contributors to why the pay gap stubbornly remains.

For Adams, the best strategy to overcome them has been to keep changing jobs — six times in 10 years, across multiple states in her case.

“I knew that I needed to be intentional and move with urgency as I navigated my career in order to work against that headwind,” she said. “When those opportunities were not afforded me within one company, I’ve gone elsewhere.”

Adams said job coaching, mentorship, and support from Forte Foundation, a nonprofit focused on women’s advancement, have been instrumental to her success, while salary transparency laws — and even salary transparency within social circles — could help alleviate the significant pay gap challenges women of color face.

But corporate diversity initiatives have been subject to a growing list of lawsuits ever since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions. Adams said she worries that without affirmative action, corporate racial diversity could decrease, too.

“The big question that is looming over my head and probably many other executive leaders is: What does that do to the pipeline of diverse candidates that we may or may not have 10 years from now?” Adams said.

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

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Opinion Guest Essay

The Great Rupture in American Jewish Life

Credit... Daniel Benneworth-Gray

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By Peter Beinart

Mr. Beinart is the editor at large of Jewish Currents and a journalist and writer who has written extensively on the Middle East, Jewish life and American foreign policy.

• March 22, 2024

F or the last decade or so, an ideological tremor has been unsettling American Jewish life. Since Oct. 7, it has become an earthquake. It concerns the relationship between liberalism and Zionism, two creeds that for more than half a century have defined American Jewish identity. In the years to come, American Jews will face growing pressure to choose between them.

They will face that pressure because Israel’s war in Gaza has supercharged a transformation on the American left. Solidarity with Palestinians is becoming as essential to leftist politics as support for abortion rights or opposition to fossil fuels. And as happened during the Vietnam War and the struggle against South African apartheid, leftist fervor is reshaping the liberal mainstream. In December, the United Automobile Workers demanded a cease-fire and formed a divestment working group to consider the union’s “economic ties to the conflict.” In January, the National L.G.B.T.Q. Task Force called for a cease-fire as well. In February, the leadership of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the nation’s oldest Black Protestant denomination, called on the United States to halt aid to the Jewish state. Across blue America, many liberals who once supported Israel or avoided the subject are making the Palestinian cause their own.

This transformation remains in its early stages. In many prominent liberal institutions — most significantly, the Democratic Party — supporters of Israel remain not only welcome but also dominant. But the leaders of those institutions no longer represent much of their base. The Democratic majority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, acknowledged this divide in a speech on Israel on the Senate floor last week. He reiterated his longstanding commitment to the Jewish state, though not its prime minister. But he also conceded, in the speech’s most remarkable line, that he “can understand the idealism that inspires so many young people in particular to support a one-state solution” — a solution that does not involve a Jewish state. Those are the words of a politician who understands that his party is undergoing profound change.

The American Jews most committed to Zionism, the ones who run establishment institutions, understand that liberal America is becoming less ideologically hospitable. And they are responding by forging common cause with the American right. It’s no surprise that the Anti-Defamation League, which only a few years ago harshly criticized Donald Trump’s immigration policies, recently honored his son-in-law and former senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

Mr. Trump himself recognizes the emerging political split. “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” he said in an interview published on Monday. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.” It’s typical Trumpian indecency and hyperbole, but it’s rooted in a political reality. For American Jews who want to preserve their country’s unconditional support for Israel for another generation, there is only one reliable political partner: a Republican Party that views standing for Palestinian rights as part of the “woke” agenda.

The American Jews who are making a different choice — jettisoning Zionism because they can’t reconcile it with the liberal principle of equality under the law — garner less attention because they remain further from power. But their numbers are larger than many recognize, especially among millennials and Gen Z. And they face their own dilemmas. They are joining a Palestine solidarity movement that is growing larger, but also more radical, in response to Israel’s destruction of Gaza. That growing radicalism has produced a paradox: A movement that welcomes more and more American Jews finds it harder to explain where Israeli Jews fit into its vision of Palestinian liberation.

The emerging rupture between American liberalism and American Zionism constitutes the greatest transformation in American Jewish politics in half a century. It will redefine American Jewish life for decades to come.

“A merican Jews,” writes Marc Dollinger in his book “Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America,” have long depicted themselves as “guardians of liberal America.” Since they came to the United States in large numbers around the turn of the 20th century, Jews have been wildly overrepresented in movements for civil, women’s, labor and gay rights. Since the 1930s, despite their rising prosperity, they have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. For generations of American Jews, the icons of American liberalism — Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Gloria Steinem — have been secular saints.

The American Jewish love affair with Zionism dates from the early 20th century as well. But it came to dominate communal life only after Israel’s dramatic victory in the 1967 war exhilarated American Jews eager for an antidote to Jewish powerlessness during the Holocaust. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which was nearly bankrupt on the eve of the 1967 war, had become American Jewry’s most powerful institution by the 1980s. American Jews, wrote Albert Vorspan, a leader of Reform Judaism, in 1988, “have made of Israel an icon — a surrogate faith, surrogate synagogue, surrogate God.”

Given the depth of these twin commitments, it’s no surprise that American Jews have long sought to fuse them by describing Zionism as a liberal cause. It has always been a strange pairing. American liberals generally consider themselves advocates of equal citizenship irrespective of ethnicity, religion and race. Zionism — or at the least the version that has guided Israel since its founding — requires Jewish dominance. From 1948 to 1966, Israel held most of its Palestinian citizens under military law; since 1967 it has ruled millions of Palestinians who hold no citizenship at all. Even so, American Jews could until recently assert their Zionism without having their liberal credentials challenged.

The primary reason was the absence from American public discourse of Palestinians, the people whose testimony would cast those credentials into greatest doubt. In 1984, the Palestinian American literary critic Edward Said argued that in the West, Palestinians lack “permission to narrate” their own experience. For decades after he wrote those words, they remained true. A study by the University of Arizona’s Maha Nassar found that of the opinion articles about Palestinians published in The New York Times and The Washington Post between 2000 and 2009, Palestinians themselves wrote roughly 1 percent.

But in recent years, Palestinian voices, while still embattled and even censored , have begun to carry. Palestinians have turned to social media to combat their exclusion from the press. In an era of youth-led activism, they have joined intersectional movements forged by parallel experiences of discrimination and injustice. Meanwhile, Israel — under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu for most of the past two decades — has lurched to the right, producing politicians so openly racist that their behavior cannot be defended in liberal terms.

Many Palestine solidarity activists identify as leftists, not liberals. But like the activists of the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements, they have helped change liberal opinion with their radical critiques. In 2002, according to Gallup , Democrats sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of 34 points. By early 2023, they favored the Palestinians by 11 points. And because opinion about Israel cleaves along generational lines, that pro-Palestinian skew is much greater among the young. According to a Quinnipiac University poll in November, Democrats under the age of 35 sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis by 58 points.

Given this generational gulf, universities offer a preview of the way many liberals — or “progressives,” a term that straddles liberalism and leftism and enjoys more currency among young Americans — may view Zionism in the years to come. Supporting Palestine has become a core feature of progressive politics on many campuses. At Columbia, for example, 94 campus organizations — including the Vietnamese Students Association, the Reproductive Justice Collective and Poetry Slam, Columbia’s “only recreational spoken word club” — announced in November that they “see Palestine as the vanguard for our collective liberation.” As a result, Zionist Jewish students find themselves at odds with most of their politically active peers.

Accompanying this shift, on campus and beyond, has been a rise in Israel-related antisemitism. It follows a pattern in American history. From the hostility toward German Americans during World War I to violence against American Muslims after Sept. 11 and assaults on Asian Americans during the Covid pandemic, Americans have a long and ugly tradition of expressing their hostility toward foreign governments or movements by targeting compatriots who share a religion, ethnicity or nationality with those overseas adversaries. Today, tragically, some Americans who loathe Israel are taking it out on American Jews. (Palestinian Americans, who have endured multiple violent hate crimes since Oct. 7, are experiencing their own version of this phenomenon.) The spike in antisemitism since Oct. 7 follows a pattern. Five years ago, the political scientist Ayal Feinberg, using data from 2001 and 2014, found that reported antisemitic incidents in the United States spike when the Israeli military conducts a substantial military operation.

Attributing the growing discomfort of pro-Israel Jewish students entirely to antisemitism, however, misses something fundamental. Unlike establishment Jewish organizations, Jewish students often distinguish between bigotry and ideological antagonism. In a 2022 study , the political scientist Eitan Hersh found that more than 50 percent of Jewish college students felt “they pay a social cost for supporting the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.” And yet, in general, Dr. Hersh reported, “the students do not fear antisemitism.”

Surveys since Oct. 7 find something similar. Asked in November in a Hillel International poll to describe the climate on campus since the start of the war, 20 percent of Jewish students answered “unsafe” and 23 percent answered “scary.” By contrast, 45 percent answered “uncomfortable” and 53 percent answered “tense.” A survey that same month by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that only 37 percent of American Jewish voters ages 18 to 35 consider campus antisemitism a “very serious problem,” compared with nearly 80 percent of American Jewish voters over the age of 35.

While some young pro-Israel American Jews experience antisemitism, they more frequently report ideological exclusion. As Zionism becomes associated with the political right, their experiences on progressive campuses are coming to resemble the experiences of young Republicans. The difference is that unlike young Republicans, most young American Zionists were raised to believe that theirs was a liberal creed. When their parents attended college, that assertion was rarely challenged. On the same campuses where their parents felt at home, Jewish students who view Zionism as central to their identity now often feel like outsiders.

In 1979, Mr. Said observed that in the West, “to be a Palestinian is in political terms to be an outlaw.” In much of America — including Washington — that remains true. But within progressive institutions one can glimpse the beginning of a historic inversion. Often, it’s now the Zionists who feel like outlaws.

G iven the organized American Jewish community’s professed devotion to liberal principles, which include free speech, one might imagine that Jewish institutions would greet this ideological shift by urging pro-Israel students to tolerate and even learn from their pro-Palestinian peers. Such a stance would flow naturally from the statements establishment Jewish groups have made in the past. A few years ago, the Anti-Defamation League declared that “our country’s universities serve as laboratories for the exchange of differing viewpoints and beliefs. Offensive, hateful speech is protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment.”

But as pro-Palestinian sentiment has grown in progressive America, pro-Israel Jewish leaders have apparently made an exception for anti-Zionism. While still claiming to support free speech on campus, the A.D.L. last October asked college presidents to investigate local chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine to determine whether they violated university regulations or state or federal laws, a demand that the American Civil Liberties Union warned could “chill speech” and “betray the spirit of free inquiry.” After the University of Pennsylvania hosted a Palestinian literature festival last fall, Marc Rowan, chair of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York and chair of the board of advisers of Penn’s Wharton business school, condemned the university’s president for giving the festival Penn’s “imprimatur.” In December, he encouraged trustees to alter university policies in ways that Penn’s branch of the American Association of University Professors warn ed could “silence and punish speech with which trustees disagree.”

In this effort to limit pro-Palestinian speech, establishment Jewish leaders are finding their strongest allies on the authoritarian right. Pro-Trump Republicans have their own censorship agenda: They want to stop schools and universities from emphasizing America’s history of racial and other oppression. Calling that pedagogy antisemitic makes it easier to ban or defund. At a much discussed congressional hearing in December featuring the presidents of Harvard, Penn and M.I.T., the Republican representative Virginia Foxx noted that Harvard teaches courses like “Race and Racism in the Making of the United States as a Global Power” and hosts seminars such as “Scientific Racism and Anti-Racism: History and Recent Perspectives” before declaring that “Harvard also, not coincidentally but causally, was ground zero for antisemitism following Oct. 7.”

Ms. Foxx’s view is typical. While some Democrats also equate anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the politicians and business leaders most eager to suppress pro-Palestinian speech are conservatives who link such speech to the diversity, equity and inclusion agenda they despise. Elise Stefanik, a Trump acolyte who has accused Harvard of “caving to the woke left,” became the star of that congressional hearing by demanding that Harvard’s president , Claudine Gay, punish students who chant slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” (Ms. Gay was subsequently forced to resign following charges of plagiarism.) Elon Musk, who in November said that the phrase “from the river to the sea” was banned from his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the following month declared , “D.E.I. must die.” The first governor to ban Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at his state’s public universities was Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who has also signed legislation that limits what those universities can teach about race and gender.

This alignment between the American Jewish organizational establishment and the Trumpist right is not limited to universities. If the A.D.L. has aligned with Republicans who want to silence “woke” activists on campus, AIPAC has joined forces with Republicans who want to disenfranchise “woke” voters. In the 2022 midterm elections, AIPAC endorsed at least 109 Republicans who opposed certifying the 2020 election. For an organization single-mindedly focused on sustaining unconditional U.S. support for Israel, that constituted a rational decision. Since Republican members of Congress don’t have to mollify pro-Palestinian voters, they’re AIPAC’s most dependable allies. And if many of those Republicans used specious claims of Black voter fraud to oppose the democratic transfer of power in 2020 — and may do so again — that’s a price AIPAC seems to be prepared to pay.

F or the many American Jews who still consider themselves both progressives and Zionists, this growing alliance between leading Zionist institutions and a Trumpist Republican Party is uncomfortable. But in the short term, they have an answer: politicians like President Biden, whose views about both Israel and American democracy roughly reflect their own. In his speech last week, Mr. Schumer called these liberal Zionists American Jewry’s “silent majority.”

For the moment he may be right. In the years to come, however, as generational currents pull the Democratic Party in a more pro-Palestinian direction and push America’s pro-Israel establishment to the right, liberal Zionists will likely find it harder to reconcile their two faiths. Young American Jews offer a glimpse into that future, in which a sizable wing of American Jewry decides that to hold fast to its progressive principles it must jettison Zionism and embrace equal citizenship in Israel and Palestine, as well as in the United States.

For an American Jewish establishment that equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, these anti-Zionist Jews are inconvenient. Sometimes, pro-Israel Jewish organizations pretend they don’t exist. In November, after Columbia suspended two anti-Zionist campus groups, the A.D.L. thanked university leaders for acting “to protect Jewish students” — even though one of the suspended groups was Jewish Voice for Peace. At other times, pro-Israel leaders describe anti-Zionist Jews as a negligible fringe. If American Jews are divided over the war in Gaza, Andrés Spokoiny, the president and chief executive of the Jewish Funders Network, an organization for Jewish philanthropists, declared in December, “the split is 98 percent/2 percent.”

Among older American Jews, this assertion of a Zionist consensus contains some truth. But among younger American Jews, it’s false. In 2021, even before Israel’s current far-right government took power, the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 38 percent of American Jewish voters under the age of 40 viewed Israel as an apartheid state, compared with 47 percent who said it’s not. In November, it revealed that 49 percent of American Jewish voters ages 18 to 35 opposed Mr. Biden’s request for additional military aid to Israel. On many campuses, Jewish students are at the forefront of protests for a cease-fire and divestment from Israel. They don’t speak for all — and maybe not even most — of their Jewish peers. But they represent far more than 2 percent.

These progressive Jews are, as the U.S. editor of The London Review of Books, Adam Shatz, noted to me, a double minority. Their anti-Zionism makes them a minority among American Jews, while their Jewishness makes them a minority in the Palestine solidarity movement. Fifteen years ago, when the liberal Zionist group J Street was intent on being the “ blocking back ” for President Barack Obama’s push for a two-state solution, some liberal Jews imagined themselves leading the push to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Today, the prospect of partition has diminished, and Palestinians increasingly set the terms of activist criticism of Israel. That discourse, which is peppered with terms like “apartheid” and “decolonization," is generally hostile to a Jewish state within any borders.

There’s nothing antisemitic about envisioning a future in which Palestinians and Jews coexist on the basis of legal equality rather than Jewish supremacy. But in pro-Palestine activist circles in the United States, coexistence has receded as a theme. In 1999, Mr. Said argued for “a binational Israeli-Palestinian state” that offered “self-determination for both peoples.” In his 2007 book, “One Country,” Ali Abunimah, a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, an influential source of pro-Palestine news and opinion, imagined one state whose name reflected the identities of both major communities that inhabit it. The terms “‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’ are dear to those who use them and they should not be abandoned,” he argued. “The country could be called Yisrael-Falastin in Hebrew and Filastin-Isra’il in Arabic.”

In recent years, however, as Israel has moved to the right, pro-Palestinian discourse in the United States has hardened. The phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which dates from the 1960s but has gained new prominence since Oct. 7, does not acknowledge Palestine and Israel’s binational character. To many American Jews, in fact, the phrase suggests a Palestine free of Jews. It sounds expulsionist, if not genocidal. It’s an ironic charge, given that it is Israel that today controls the land between the river and the sea, whose leaders openly advocate the mass exodus of Palestinians and that the International Court of Justice says could plausibly be committing genocide in Gaza.

Palestinian scholars like Maha Nassar and Ahmad Khalidi argue that “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” does not imply the subjugation of Jews. It instead reflects the longstanding Palestinian belief that Palestine should have become an independent country when released from European colonial control, a vision that does not preclude Jews from living freely alongside their Muslim and Christian neighbors. The Jewish groups closest to the Palestine solidarity movement agree: Jewish Voice for Peace’s Los Angeles chapter has argued that the slogan is no more anti-Jewish than the phrase “Black lives matter” is anti-white. And if the Palestine solidarity movement in the United States calls for the genocide of Jews, it’s hard to explain why so many Jews have joined its ranks. Rabbi Alissa Wise, an organizer of Rabbis for Cease-Fire, estimates that other than Palestinians, no other group has been as prominent in the protests against the war as Jews.

Still, imagining a “free Palestine” from the river to the sea requires imagining that Israeli Jews will become Palestinians, which erases their collective identity. That’s a departure from the more inclusive vision that Mr. Said and Mr. Abunimah outlined years ago. It’s harder for Palestinian activists to offer that more inclusive vision when they are watching Israel bomb and starve Gaza. But the rise of Hamas makes it even more essential.

Jews who identify with the Palestinian struggle may find it difficult to offer this critique. Many have defected from the Zionist milieu in which they were raised. Having made that painful transition, which can rupture relations with friends and family, they may be disinclined to question their new ideological home. It’s frightening to risk alienating one community when you’ve already alienated another. Questioning the Palestine solidarity movement also violates the notion, prevalent in some quarters of the American left, that members of an oppressor group should not second-guess representatives of the oppressed.

But these identity hierarchies suppress critical thought. Palestinians aren’t a monolith, and progressive Jews aren’t merely allies. They are members of a small and long-persecuted people who have not only the right but also the obligation to care about Jews in Israel, and to push the Palestine solidarity movement to more explicitly include them in its vision of liberation, in the spirit of the Freedom Charter adopted during apartheid by the African National Congress and its allies, which declared in its second sentence that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and white.”

For many American Jews, it is painful to watch their children’s or grandchildren’s generation question Zionism. It is infuriating to watch students at liberal institutions with which they once felt aligned treat Zionism as a racist creed. It is tempting to attribute all this to antisemitism, even if that requires defining many young American Jews as antisemites themselves.

But the American Jews who insist that Zionism and liberalism remain compatible should ask themselves why Israel now attracts the fervent support of Representative Stefanik but repels the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the United Automobile Workers. Why it enjoys the admiration of Elon Musk and Viktor Orban but is labeled a perpetrator of apartheid by Human Rights Watch and likened to the Jim Crow South by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Why it is more likely to retain unconditional American support if Mr. Trump succeeds in turning the United States into a white Christian supremacist state than if he fails.

For many decades, American Jews have built our political identity on a contradiction: Pursue equal citizenship here; defend group supremacy there. Now here and there are converging. In the years to come, we will have to choose.

Peter Beinart ( @PeterBeinart ) is a professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also the editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook , a weekly newsletter.

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