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Essay on Progressivism in Education
Progressive education is a pluralistic phenomenon, embracing industrial training, agricultural education, and social education as well as the new techniques of instruction advanced by educational theorists. Postulates of the movement is that children learn best in those experiences in which they have a vital interest and that modes of behavior are most easily learned by actual performance. The progressives insisted, therefore, that education must be a continuous reconstruction of living experience based on activity directed by the child. The recognition of individual differences is also considered crucial. Progressive education opposes formalized authoritarian procedure and fosters reorganization of classroom practice and curriculum as well as new attitudes toward individual students.
Progressive education, maintains that schools should reflect the life of the society. Schools should take on such responsibilities as the acculturation of immigrants in addition to merely teaching academic skills. A method would be in which younger student groups work on a central project related to their own interests. The division of more advanced work into units organized around some central theme is an attempt to adapt the method to the academic needs of older children.
Young people should be taught to use the experimental method in meeting problems of the changing environment. My school plan will be devised to utilize the school plant more efficiently, to provide opportunity for more practical work, and to coordinate various levels of schooling. The plan will divide the school building into classrooms and space for auditorium, playground, shops, and laboratories. Two schools will ran simultaneously in this space so that every facility is in constant use. The school day will be eight hours long, and schools will be open six days a week. Another plan will subdivide the work of the traditional curriculum into contract units, which the student will undertake to accomplish in a specified amount of time...........
