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Progressive Education National Conference (Washington, DC- October 9, 2009)
Katy Dalgleish (Director the Peninsula School in Menlo
Park, CA) and Tom Little (Director of Park Day School in Oakland, CA) provided
a snippet of the history of Progressive Education in a brief presentation to
the 2009 PEN Conference in Washington D.C. This dialogue took place on Day 2 of
the conference at Green Acres School.
Katy - First- thanks to Neal and the staff at Green Acres for hosting this event on your beautiful campus. It is not easy to have 450 strangers traipsing through the school, and you have been gracious and welcoming hosts. One of the ways that Neal has described Progressive Education is that it means having “deep respect for kids as individuals.” We have certainly seen evidence of that as we have been on your campus in the past several days – the students have been kind and polite, and your staff, to a person, warm and inviting.
Tom: And, PEN wants
to especially thank and acknowledge the work of Terry Strand. Terry has been involved with the
progressive education movement for over thirty years, and she has been actively
involved on the regional and national level in creating opportunities such as
this for progressive educators to come together. She guided the work of the
steering committee and coordinated everything here on the ground in DC. Terry
– Brilliant work! We thank you.
2. Katy: OK, turning
to our history now. I want to read you something, and then I am going to ask
you a question.
“The
Progressive School should be a leader in educational movements. It should be a
laboratory where new ideas, if worthy, meet encouragement; where tradition
alone does not rule but the best of the past is leavened with the discoveries
of today, and the result is freely added to the sum of educational knowledge.”
Let’s
see if anyone can tell me when and where this statement appeared?
[ One of the audience members responded: “It is one of
the Principles of the Progressive Education Association, from 1924.”]
Katy: Indeed, It is one of the Principles of Progressive
Education, adopted by the Progressive Education Association in 1920, and the
eight principles of progressive education appeared in every early edition of
Progressive Education, the journal of the Association. Creating these
principles was likely a collaborative effort among the early members of the
executive committee of PEA.
We are sure that careful thinking went into the crafting of
this particular principle, as it must have for all of the principles.
3. Tom: Recently,
Katy and I spent some time at the library at Stanford looking over old editions
of Progressive Education magazine, to explore some of our roots. The library
houses the entire collection of the journal – all 34 editions, that ran
from 1924 until 1957. (Of course Katy’s school, founded in 1925, goes back that
far). The thinking in
education exploding at that time all over the country, and which laid the
foundation for our work today, is rooted in these principles, and in the
accomplishments of the educators creating great ideas after WWI.
To look through the journals is extraordinary, and we see
the involvement of many of the schools represented here at this conference. I
am sure the folks from Winnetka have heard of the Winnetka System.
4. Katy: This system
was chronicled in one of the earliest editions of Progressive Education by one
of its originators, Carleton Washburn. It encouraged radical ideas for the day, such as collaborative
approaches to learning, self expression, and moving away from formalistic
lock-step teaching. Mr. Washburn was writing about his experience visiting one
of the Winnetka Schools, and I want to read to you a passage about one of his
visits to a second grade classroom.
“A second grade girl came home to her mother a few weeks ago and said, 'Oh,
mama, I’m on the committee. I don’t know the name of it, but it’s to make
everybody good and happy.'
I do not know which particular committee the child was on. I do know, however,
that children in the Winnetka Schools are participating in the governing of
their own schools, the keeping of the playgrounds in order, the beautifying of
their classrooms, the management of their assemblies. We are not having the
children do these things because we think they can do them better than we can.
It is because we are trying to train them in the habit of working together to a
common end. We are trying to give them the rudimentary lessons of citizenship
not by precept but by actual work.”
And,
Tom, this was in 1924!!
5. Tom: Well there
you go Winnetka. Like I said at our conference in 2007, you are the “county
seat” of progressive education.
One of the early issues also features the Dalton Plan. The
Dalton School, sadly not joining us today, continues to refer to itself as a
progressive school, and the fundamental principles of the plan were:
•
Freedom for individual progress and instruction
•
Time freedom with responsibility
•
provision for a social environment, or community living
So progressive educators stand on the shoulders of these
pioneers, featured in the pages of Progressive Education. The great educators of the day who founded some
of the schools in the room this morning– Lucy Sprague Mitchell (Bank
Street) Elizabeth Irwin (The Little Red School House), Caroline Pratt (City and
Country School), Francis W. Parker, Helen Parkhurst (Dalton) and of course,
John Dewey (The Lab School). Imagine that all of these schools were starting up
around the same time!
6. Katy: So to go
back to that principle that I read earlier. These schools were truly leaders in
the educational movement of the time.
7. Tom: And, as
Lawrence Cremin points out in his book, The Transformation of the School,
these educational movements arise from greater social and political movements.
In the 20’s, the time was ripe.
8. Katy: But, Tom,
let’s not get so sentimental about the past. Our good friend Marian Wright
Edelman reminded us last night that there is lots of work for us to do today.
We need to be thinking about the other part of that principle from the 1920’s
that “tradition alone does not rule, but the best of the past is leavened by
with the discoveries of today, and the result is freely added to the sum of
educational knowledge.”
9. Tom: And that
brings us to this conference: A New Century of Progressive Education.
Democratic Principles, Practices and Possibilities. You know Katy, may of the schools in
this room have been working very hard to create a vital progressive mission for
the 21st Century.
Let’s consider of few (some of them are very beautiful):
Children’s
Community School:
Children’s Community School is a progressive elementary school
committed to educating children to be actively involved citizens in a
democratic society. To this end, we strive to sustain a community that is
ethnically, economically, and culturally diverse. Through a dynamic, creative
curriculum, we seek to capitalize on the educational benefit of play and foster
teaching that cultivates innovation, collaboration, and personal engagement in
a non-competitive environment.
10. Katy: How about this one,Tom:
Reflecting the
vision of the civil rights movement, Manhattan Country School teaches students
in a community with no racial majority and broad economic diversity. Our
goals for students are academic excellence, intellectual freedom, social
awareness, self-confidence, and first-hand knowledge of the natural
world.
11. Tom: I found a good one, Katy:
The
School in Rose Valley is a progressive school for children in preschool through
sixth grade. In our classrooms and our wooded campus, teachers and students
create experiences that arouse curiosity, stretch muscles, strengthen
initiative, and stimulate questions. We guide children to know themselves, to
delight in learning, and to understand their opportunities and responsibilities
in our community and the world.
12. Katy: I have one more
Tom:
The
Miquon School treasures and celebrates childhood. We give our students time to
play and grow. Our program and our environment encourage wonder, inquiry,
independence and discovery.
We seek to create confident, life-long learners who will move out into the
wider world
with strong academic and social skills, intense personal interests, a love of
arts, and a commitment to building inclusive and peaceful communities. This is
the progressive school
13. Tom: These are all so
inspiring, Katy. And that’s a good note to send these folks off to their workshop
sessions. We hope you have a wonderful day of rich learning and discourse.
