John Dewey, Edward Thorndike, and Progressive Education

This is a video exploring the two types of "progressivism" (pedagogical and administrative) that affected American public schools in the 1920's though the 1950's. It makes the conventional narrative that "progressivism" affected American public education a bit more complex; there were two kinds of "progressivism" both with different philosophical approaches.

[@jandaeads]

Thank you, this was a helpful delineation.

[@ozzy5146]

Good analysis but not the recording, voice, and speed combine to not be clear enough.

[@politicalphilosophy-thegre3894]

"By the 1920s it was still fairly typical for people to go to school and spend of time memorizing poems and reciting poems memorizing facts about history reciting facts about history learning classical languages- *stuff that didn't have a lot of value."*
Deweyite Progressivism encapsulated in eight words. Thank God it's on the way out.

[@jamesdragonforce]

Wait your criticizing Deweyism?

[@politicalphilosophy-thegre3894]

@@jamesdragonforce Yes, it has been a disaster. Read about the growth of functional illiteracy since around 1960 in U.S schools and the introduction of whole-language learning since around 1967 (I think it was roughly 1967) and you will see the connection.

[@jamesdragonforce]

@@politicalphilosophy-thegre3894 I honestly have a hard time believing you. It’s pretty hard to argue with Dewey’s child centered approach. It’s also hard to ignore the fact that schools really haven’t deviated much from the antiquated formulas of regurgitation and rote learning.
It looks more like the ideas Thorndike than the philosophy of Dewey. From what I can tell, it looks like Dewey gets shit largely because the word “progressive” evokes communism in some people’s minds.

[@cjstevens6405]

@@politicalphilosophy-thegre3894 Whole-language advocates lean on Dewey's educational philosophy, but he didn't advocate for it himself. As far as I know, it didn't really exist in his time. We can say he would have been open to trying it as a method, experimentally, but he would also, in theory anyway, have been open to dropping it if/when the results of observation and testing showed it to be an inferior approach to gaining literacy. I don't know an awful lot about the whole-language movement though; if you have strong sources for the connection to Dewey, you've a taker here.