The Progressive Education Movement

Progressive education is based on the ideal of a democratic society, a society, according to Dewey (1916, p. 115) "which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life. ..." Among the more characteristic tenets of progressive education are the following:

1. Education is not the preparation for life, but the social process that is life itself.
2. Subject matter does not consist of the logically organized data of the school subjects, but "primarily of the meanings which supply content to existing social life" (Dewey 1916, p. 126).
3. Learning is the reorganization of experience.
4. Interest is the basis of learning.

Such doctrines as these not only suggest that the learner's interests be taken into account, but that the learner and his experience assume pivotal importance in progressive curriculum making and teaching.

Dewey outlines certain other characteristics of the progressive viewpoint by making comparisons with "traditional" practices.

"To imposition from above is opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity; to learning from texts and teachers, learning through experience; to acquisition of isolated skills and techniques by drill, is opposed acquisition of them as means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal to preparation for a more or less remote future is opposed making the most of the opportunities of the present life; to static aims and materials is opposed acquaintance with a changing world" (Dewey 1938, pp5,6).