21st CENTURY EDUCATION:
PROGRESSIVE AND CLASSICAL EDUCATION
An account of the education most children receive today, by default, and the one they all ought to receive from now on, by inheritance.
Jason Caros | March 24, 2019
Four Score and Seven Years Ago… If we were to travel back in time just a few generations, let’s say 87 years ago, the education landscape would have been quite different than today’s. All in all, the teaching methods were more traditional, greater emphasis was placed on acquiring knowledge, and consistent enforcement of classroom discipline was the norm. Over half of the students in public schools were still studying Latin as it was commonly required for admission to college and was seen as a mark of a well-educated individual. When people today look at the books that young students used in the old days, they are surprised by the advanced levels of schoolwork in grammar, spelling, composition, mathematics, literature, and history, not to mention Latin. To take just one example, how many of today’s students, or parents for that matter, can parse and diagram sentences, something grade school students were doing in previous generations to help them master the English language? Something else that stands out in the older schoolbooks is an emphasis on moral education. Gone are the days when parents could take for granted that the content in the books, and the words and the actions of the teachers, mirror the type of virtues and beliefs taught in their homes.
A few generations ago most students received what today is known as a classical education. What exactly is a classical education? Historically referred to as a “liberal education” because it was meant to prepare people to live well in a free society (“liber” is the Latin root for liberty), it is an education rooted in beliefs and practices that go back to ancient Greece and Rome and that developed over a long period of time, up through the American Founding and into the 1800’s. It is an approach to education characterized by a traditional liberal arts and sciences curriculum and pedagogy, and an orientation towards truth, beauty, and goodness that aims to cultivate wise and virtuous citizens. This is not, however, the education that the great majority of American students receive today, nor have our people received it for quite some time. In fact, American education has been experiencing a malaise for decades and if we want to see improvements in schooling for our children, we need a restoration in our education. We need to return to our roots.
When did changes in education take hold in The United States, and what was lost as a result? A new kind of education reform began to appear in the states in the late 1800s, but took hold slowly as the great majority of teachers stayed true to the classical tradition. With the support of the American philosopher, John Dewey, and his colleague, William Heard Kilpatrick, “progressive education” took root in teacher colleges. Little by little, primary and secondary schools began to populate with teachers that supported the new ideas of Dewey and Kilpatrick. By the 1970s, a large number of public schools across the country had been transformed into one or another type of child-centered,[1] process-oriented schools influenced by new theories of learning, whether the teachers liked it or not. It was only in private schools, especially in the more elite private institutions, that the flame of classical education remained lit, although there were individual “old school” teachers in public schools that went kicking and screaming, so to speak. Those old school teachers still exist today. In recent years there has been a revival of classical education, first seen in small private schools and among some homeschool families, and more recently in classical charter schools.
In the paragraphs that follow, I will briefly contrast the philosophical underpinnings of classical education to what is today referred to as progressive education by emphasizing four topics: nature, purpose, content, and teachers. Before doing so, it is important to note that there are schools and individual educators that go all out for progressive education, so to speak, but there are others that blend the traditional with the progressive. Education policy-makers and public-school leaders, on the whole, promote progressive education, as do many private and charter schools that often mirror the kinds of curriculum options offered at public schools, generally in smaller settings. Additionally, it is important to note that the following is not a critique of the many good and loving teachers and administrators who serve children in modern schools. It is rather a discussion about a faulty education philosophy that steers the ship.
David Hicks, the author of Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, said “Education reflects primary assumptions about the nature of man.” The way in which a society understands what it means to be human determines the type of education it provides to its children. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, great thinkers of the Western tradition have described education as a noble enterprise worthy of a free people. According to this age-old view, each person has been given a fixed human nature. Humans are rational and relational beings whose education should be approached with dignity and gravity. As history has shown and as we know from our own experiences, humans have both an innate desire to know and a spirit of inquiry. They also have the propensity to act in virtuous ways and to succumb to vice. Each person, no matter how good, is imperfect and needs direction, boundaries, and a solid guiding hand; human babies do not come out of the womb with a bank of knowledge nor a historic memory, these are acquired over time. In the schoolroom context, because children lack knowledge and experience, they need wise teachers to lead them. The progressive assumption about the nature of man is quite different. According to the progressive paradigm, human nature is malleable. Children are born pure and later corrupted by their surroundings; they need less guidance and more time for self-discovery in more natural environments. In this view, what one needs to do is teach children to think for themselves, allow them to construct their own learning and discover their moral compasses.
In terms of the telos, or purpose of education, the classical educator holds that education’s chief aim is human formation, to ennoble hearts and minds and to grow responsible citizens, a citizen in a classical-liberal sense, not a subject to be ruled. Classical schools promote a spirit of inquiry and learning for the sake of learning, they develop thinkers based on “who” they are as dignified human beings meant to live good and happy lives. Classical education is oriented toward truth, beauty, and goodness (universals) and classically educated students are encouraged to pursue the summum bonum, or highest good. To the progressive educator, education’s primary goal is utility, to make students work ready, or college ready and then work ready. This education develops students based on what they will produce in an economic sphere, and it supports global citizenship. Progressive education also fosters skeptical analysis; truth, beauty, and goodness are relative to each individual and the highest good is therefore subjective.
In terms of the content, classical curriculum is knowledge-rich and premised on the understanding that all learning is built upon previous learning—the approach that also happens to be confirmed by modern cognitive science.[2] This means that content is systematic and taught in a hierarchical manner. Students must acquire strong foundations in content knowledge in order to move more effectively into higher order logical thought and expression. In this view there is a common body of knowledge all Americans should gain in history, languages, literature, mathematics, science, and in the fine arts in order to promote overall literacy, well-rounded citizens, and societal cohesion and harmony. Moral education, or formation in virtue, is an inherent part of the student experience at a classical school—moral precepts are taught via classic literature, history, philosophy, etc. The progressive program tends to diminish the importance of knowledge. In this view, students do not need to learn many facts but should focus on student socialization, the learning process, critical thinking and creativity, and on how to find the information they need for the activity at hand. After all, today’s students can “just look things up” online (Or can they? Ironically, the very things progressive educators hope for like thinking, creativity and discovery through online research require the very academic knowledge that is neglected in modern schools). An additional feature of progressive education is that students should choose what they want to learn, when they want to learn, and perhaps where they want to learn, à la “child-centered learning.” A high priority is for students to experience multi-cultural studies; socialization skills and critical thinking are meant to prepare students to become global citizens and productive workers. Values clarification is emphasized rather than virtues, and at progressive schools, special programs are implemented for character education, bullying prevention, and topics that will enable students to become societal change agents.
Finally, classical teachers impart knowledge but also cultivate virtue in students by modeling good character, by fostering good habits in them, and by teaching moral precepts, as noted above. These teachers instruct directly and indirectly using Socratic and other methods of questioning, storytelling, interactive lecture and discussion, drill and practice, and more. A classical instructor might be negatively referred to in some contemporary settings as a "sage on the stage" but this is taken as a badge of honor. Conversely, progressive teachers, besides implementing a school’s character education program, promote inclusiveness, bias reduction and equity. They are facilitators of learning, guides on the side rather than sages on the stage. They emphasize cooperative learning and project-based learning (to improve social skills), flipped classrooms, gamification, etc. and they are perpetually in search of newer and more “relevant” methods and content.
Fully unpacking all of the aforementioned differences between classical and progressive education would require at least a small book, but for now it’s enough to note that the differences are stark, and about a hundred years’ worth of progressive reforms in education beg a couple of questions. Where have the progressive education reforms of the last few generations taken American students? What gains have been made in the transition from classical traditional education to progressive education? You probably know that gains have been difficult to find.
The United States’ system of education used to be the envy of the world, but public education in America has been in a state of flux for over 60 years. During this period, reformers have experimented with America’s children by trying one new reform or fad after the next in their educational laboratories: “Whole Language,” "Open Classrooms," "New Math," "Outcome-Based Education," and "Cafeteria Curricula" to name a few. Policy-makers at the state and federal levels have implemented one new costly initiative after the next such as No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core. To what end? Using the incomplete measures policy-makers themselves demand such as test data and graduation rates, the verdict is in. Since the 1960s, SAT scores have noticeably declined, results of state and national assessments of reading, mathematics, history, civics, and science are low, international test scores of America’s high achieving students are in the mid-range, and graduation rates are strikingly sub-par considering the nation's affluence and our easy access to public, tax-supported education (note that the latest round of NAEP results only confirm what we have known for a long time). Sadly, many of today’s high school graduates are neither college nor work ready. In addition to academic struggles, high levels of discipline problems and crime in schools, and postmodern mores are driving many families across the nation to homeschool their children and to enroll them in private and charter schools.
Is it a coincidence that the declines in American education described above happened as schools adopted new and untested models of education? It is interesting to note that a similar type of decline took place in Great Britain as they adopted comparable types of education reforms. Needless to say, classical schools reject progressive education, although not everything modern. They use methods that pass the test of time and also pass muster with confirmed education research in the cognitive sciences. Classical education is one of the great legacies of Western Civilization; however, students in this country have not received their educational inheritance for the better part of the last century and into the 21st century. Instead, American education has taken an academic detour. Fortunately, there is a better road ahead. As C.S. Lewis once wrote, “If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road…” Paradoxically, while classical schools provide the most time-tested methods of educating students they are today among the most cutting-edge schools in America. With a view toward human nature, a focus on a hierarchical approach to learning, a knowledge-rich and systematic curriculum consisting of the classical liberal arts and sciences, and teachers who lead students in learning and virtue necessary for self-governing citizens in a republic, classical schools provide a refreshing education alternative for today’s families.
With all of that said, classical education is not a panacea for all of society’s maladies. Other facets of life in America including family, faith and government also require remedies, but better education is a sine qua non for a flourishing people. Regarding the “work-ready” aspect of modern education, classical schools do not provide a servile education as such, nor do they aim to mold students into economic commodities that will attend to the interests of a ruling or business class, but a good and well-rounded education will, in fact, help students to become stronger employees one day, and even give them a competitive advantage. This is not nothing, as the saying goes. Instead, classically educated students’ experiences are primarily aimed at helping them to better understand their human nature, who they are, and how to make their way in our complex world so that they can live well. As a result of this education, they will possess knowledge and tools of learning that they will use the rest of their lives—in future studies and at work, in family life, in the service of their country, etc. Finally, this education helps students to become culturally literate, civil, thoughtful, civic-minded, and oriented toward the good, the true, and the beautiful. In short, the formation these students receive prepares them to learn to truly live as they are made to live, as human beings. All children deserve this type of education.
Jason Caros is a husband, father and classical school headmaster.
Endnotes
[1] “Child-centered” learning sounds right. Aren’t educators teaching children, after all? This phrase, however, refers to a specific type of education, a modern progressive one, whereby motivation to learn is stimulated through the child’s inherent interest in a subject, not through a common, structured experience that leads students to shared knowledge. Child-centered education may be rooted in a Romantic Era work by Jean Jacques Rousseau entitled, Emile Or On Education.
[2] For more information, read Dan Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom.