Progressive Era Development in the US - Essay Example

The Progressive Era was one of social, political and economic development and reform. New ideas, considered somewhat revolutionary at the time, werebeing publicly debated. These included women's rights, social welfare, equality, public political participation, America's role in international affairs and, importantly, education. The general sentiment was that the earlier educational paradigms and the theoretical precepts which informed them, neither valued the child as a mind or a body, nor gave him the tools requisite for mental and intellectual development. Through an historical overview of the events and philosophies of the Progressive Era, this essay will present the face of the period's schools and the philosophy of education which shaped both them and the curricula they adopted. As Industrial Revolution receded into the background and new modes of production, manufacturing and economic management models emerged, the socio-economic impact of the period was exposed. Indeed, as argued by Anderson (1974), with all its economic contributions and previously unprecedented productivity and growth, industrialisation had given rise to unemployment, labor unrest and poverty. The working classes, as opposed to the middle and upper socio-economic ones, were the victims of disease and poverty. The wide-scale depression which beset America from 1893 to 1897 only compounded the suffering of this class (Anderson, 1974). Within the context of the socio-economic conditions outlined in the preceding, there was a lack of appreciation for childhood and education. Rather than be the recipients of steady and stable education, working class children were sent out to work for minimal wages. Their earning, however meagre, were integral to the survival of their families. There was, accordingly, little room for education or the consideration of the value of education, not just to the child but to the country itself. As the Industrial Revolution passed, implying the evolution of new methods of manufacturing and production, the importance of the child, as a source of labor, decreased and eventually disappeared (Anderson, 1974). It did not decrease in economic terms insofar as working class families were concerned but decreased in relation to employee demand. The new methods of production had simply eliminated the need for child labor (Anderson, 1974). At the same time, the era gave rise to an educated, professional middle class. It was largely due to the efforts of this class that the Progressive Era came about. According to Dumenil (1990), as this class looked towards the conditions that the Industrial Revolution had reduced the working class and urban centers to, they saw poverty, slums, crimes, disease and corruption. They also saw a myriad of discriminatory practices, whether class, gender or race discrimination. Not only did this class, the progressives, establish volunteer organizations such as the American Bar Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and National Municipal League, among many others, to address the identified socio-economic problems but they exerted such political pressure as which incited reform. Teddy Roosevelt's Square Deal emerged in response to the stated (Dumenil, 1990). The issues and concerns of the era, whether civil rights, feminism, childhood or poverty, incontrovertibly impacted attitudes towards education. Apart from education being acknowledged as a right which all children should exploit to the fullest, greater focus was placed on the philosophy which informed education. As Roberston (1992) contends, John Dewey developed a philosophy of education which, rather than focus on children's absorption, often memorisation without assimilation, of a wide body of knowledge, emphasised the imperatives of personal growth. Dewey thought that children's freedom should be constructed, that it is not simply a product of their free will. He made a distinction between freedom based entirely on free will (doing whatever one wants to do) and freedom of intelligence, which is constructed from purposes that are intrinsically worthwhile, through observation and exercise of judgment in real-life situations. He indicated that the aim of education is to develop children's freedom of intelligence, rather to allow children to act randomly on their impulses (Robertson, 1992). Moreover, he argued that freedom of intelligence is the only freedom of importance. He thought that without the existence of freedom of intelligence for each student, it is practically impossible for a teacher to gain true knowledge about the individual students. Therefore, Dewey advocated that the curriculum should be flexible enough to permit free play for children's individuality of experience, yet firm enough to let teachers provide some direction to promote children's continuous development (Robertson, 1992). Dewey suggested that teachers should keep order in the classroom and help promote children's development by giving some guidance to children as the teacher judges it is necessary. Dewey indicated, "There is no intellectual growth without some reconstruction, some remarking, of impulses and desires in the form in which they first show themselves" (1998, p. 74). He believed that "Guidance given by the teacher to the exercise of the pupils' intelligence is an aid to freedom, not a restriction upon it" (1998, p.84). Therefore, the teachers should act as the representative and agent of the interests of the group as a whole, and should be responsible for each child's on-going growth with the community (Dewey, 1998). Moreover, Dewey indicated that the ideal aim of education is the creation of self-control. The mere removal of restriction or external control is no guarantee that children have self-control. As Dewey remarked, "It's easy to jump out of the frying-pan into the fire" (1998, p.75). In addition, teachers should not only deal with children as a whole class hut also engage with children's individual needs. Dewey's philosophy of education effectively influenced the nature of student-teacher interaction, as in teaching styles, and the curriculum. As Franklin (1989) explains, schools underwent a transition from strict formal structures which emphasised the teaching and learning of large volumes of knowledge without the critical consideration of that knowledge, to semi-informal structures which emphasised reflection and critical thinking. Rather than simply memorize knowledge, students were encourage to critically consider and reflect upon that knowledge. The driving rationale here was that the development of a child's critical thinking and reflective capacities would lead to the evolution of a more enlightened population (Franklin, 1989). This population, or so the progressivisms thought, would respond to the challenges posed by the earlier cited concerns and overcome them. An enlightened population would, as was the overriding assumption, lead the nation forward on the road to freedom, equality, social welfare and justice. It is, thus, that the progressivists actively pushed student enrolment rates, reaching a record height of 86% of all children by 1920 (Franklin, 1989). On the basis of the information presented and argued in the above, one may safely assert that the Progressive Era marked a radical departure in educational approaches than previous ages. Schools were not school houses, boasting single classrooms with all students grouped together but school buildings with children divided among classes according to age and ability. Attention shifted to the education of girls and boys, not just boys and to all Americans, irrespective of race. Indeed, the thinking of the era, as influenced by outcome of the Industrial Revolution, tended towards greater emphasis on enlightenment, equality, justice, civil rights and freedom. Education was redefined as the primary strategy for building the nation's most valued natural resource, its children and for transforming those children into an enlightened population with the capacity to carry the country forward. Image of Education in the Progressive Era: An All African-American Class http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks/martin_awl/medialib/download/2104.jpg Image of Education in the Progressive Era: Boys and Girls in a Classroom http://www.esds.ac.uk/qualidata/online/data/edwardians/images/fullsizejpg/education001.jpg References Anderson, W. G. (1973) Progressivism: An historiographical essay.' The History Teacher, 6(3), 427-452. Dumenil, L. (1990) The insatiable maw of bureaucracy: Antistatism and education reform in the 1920s.' The Journal of American History, 77(2), 499-524. Dewey, J. (1998). Experience and education --- The 60" anniversary edition. West Lafayette, IN: Kappa Delta Pi. Franklin, B. M. (1989) Progressivism and curriculum differentiation: Special classes in the Atlanta public schools, 1898-1923.' History of Education Quarterly, 29(4), 571-593 Robertson, E. (1992) Is Dewey's educational vision still viable' Review of Research in Education, 18, 335-381. Read More