The Progressive Movement

What was the Progressive Movement?

The effort to refashion American Society in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

After the civil war, there were concerns about increased industrialization, about political system that was ineffective, and about what was happening to American society and its children.

People dealing with children in the 1800’s were ministers, who were very ignorant and whose advice reflected the dominant attitudes of the day.

A new group of professionals appeared—psychologists, social workers, and economists—who all wanted to reshape American society, focusing principally on children and their schooling.

Reformers sought to influence the behavior of children directly as individuals rather than as members of families.

The creation of public schools and compulsory school attendance began.

A new discipline emerged: “Child Psychology”

Horace Mann

† 1796-1856† Born in Franklin, Massachusetts.† Gave us universal education

through free public schools. † Introduced teacher training by

creating normal schools. † Discouraged corporal

punishment.

District Common School

His childhood was unhappy, he suffered poverty, unremitting toil, repression, and fear.

Mann attended the district common school, which was the smallest, had the poorest schoolhouse, and employed the cheapest teachers. The schools had no comfortable seats, no blackboards, no maps or other visual aids.

Methods of District Common School

The studies and methods of the district school were stultifying.

The masters were ignorant.

Discipline was severe and terrifying such as corporal punishment, imprisoning children in a dark and solitary place, bringing the whole class to a fellow pupil to ridicule and shame him/her.

School year was about 10 weeks.

School was strongly connected to religion! Sunday sermons preached by Reverend Nathaniel Emmons in which he pictured the eternal torments of those dammed were terrifying. Reverend Emmons made regular visits to the classroom to question pupils on moral and doctrinal matters.

Mann’s Education and Career

Mann was admitted to Brown University as a sophomore in 1816. He excelled in scientific studies, joined the library groups, and graduated with honors in 1819. The theme on his graduation oration: “The Progressive Character of the Human Race”

In 1821Mann decided to study law in Litchfield, Connecticut.

In 1823 was admitted to the bar at Dedham, Massachusetts.

In 1827 he became the Massachusetts’ House Representative. That same year the legislature authorized the establishment of high schools (action that did not reverse the decline of the common school).

In 1829 he championed a public institution for the care of the mentally ill.

In 1837 Mann resigned from the senate and accepted the secretary position of the State Board of Education, embarking on a twelve-year career that influenced not only his life but also the lives of generations of children and teachers to come.

Problems faced as Secretary of Education

As the common schools declined, private academies appeared during the second half of the eighteenth century.

As private academies proliferated, the common schools degenerated into neglected schools for the poorer classes only. (class distinctions appeared in Massachusetts).

Free schools were no longer supported by the public; therefore, schoolhouses became dilapidated, unsanitary and deteriorated.

Lack of standardized textbooks.

Untrained and underpaid teachers.

High teacher turnover.

Lack of state supervision.

Child labor in factories caused non-attendance.

Child Labor

1.7 million children under age of 16 working

National Child Labor Committee Worked to abolish child labor

States began passing laws to set minimum age for employment

Lewis Hine photographs children

The History Place - Child Labor in America

Horace Mann’s View of Education

Mann was aware of destructive possibilities of religious, political, class discord and the institution of slavery in the South.

Mann knew that ‘knowledge’ is power, but a power that could be used for good or evil. He knew that the essence of a democratic education could not only be intellectual. Moral values had to be part of it.

Mann believed that education must be universal.

Mann believed that the qualifications of voters is as important as the qualifications of governors.

Mann believed that every man by the power of the reason and the sense of duty shall become fit to be a voter.

Mann believe that education must prepare our citizens to become municipal officers, intelligent jurors, honest witnesses, legislators… to fill all the manifold relations of life.

Mann’s Pedagogical method Mann’s pedagogy was influenced by Pestalozzi.

The child is to be treated with tenderness and affection.

Reward should be the motivation for instruction, with meaningful learning instead of rote memorization.

Children’s curiosity should be gratified.

Learning and pleasure should go hand in hand.

Learning is an active process in which “the effective labor must be performed by the learner himself.”

Believed that young children can be prepared for reading by being read interesting and inspiring stories, that the child’s earliest words are learned as wholes, so it is inappropriate to begin with the alphabet or syllables.

Had a strong aversion to corporal punishment or other methods practiced at the time.

Mann’s Teacher Qualifications

Mann outlined the following qualifications for a teacher in his fourth annual report (1840):

Teacher should have a thorough knowledge of common school subjects.

Possess aptness to teach.

Possess skills in management, government, and discipline.

To teach/model good behavior.

Possessing morals.

William Torrey Harris (1835-1909)

Born on September 10, 1835 in North Killingly, Connecticut.

Educator and philosopher.

One of the most frequent speakers in the history of the National Education Association (NEA).

Founding editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy.

Fought against any of the past philosophies or philosophers being called the one true system.

William Torrey Harris Career Entered Yale College in 1854, resigning as a “troubled

junior” three years later.

Harris taught himself shorthand, geometry, trigonometry, and German, and made a telescope.

Harris started as a teacher assistant and teacher of 180 students ages 10-15.

He worked his way up through the system as school principal and assistant superintendent of schools and became superintendent of the entire system in 1867. Remaining in the position until 1880.

In 1889 became the United States Commissioner of Education.

Harris’s Beliefs Harris’s philosophical rationale was related to readiness. He

believed that when a child began to use language, set goals, and act to realize them, the kindergarten method of instruction would prove helpful.

He believed and advocated kindergarten, endorsing the 1873 NEA committee report, and providing extensive oral and written testimony of his support for the movement.

As superintendent of schools, Harris “employed women exclusively as educators in elementary grades. He acknowledged that women used milder forms of discipline, and that they would work for lower wages…

Harris believed and promoted education for teachers.

Believed education was power that help people climb up to better paid and more useful industries out of lives of drudgery.

Believed that black children had an equal educational need just as white children.

A kindergarten classroom in the Sherman School St. Louis, 1899

Kindergarten room in Des Peres School in 1873 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Granville Stanley Hall (1844-1924)

Born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, on February 1, 1844.

Became the first President of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1892.

First American to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology.

Founded the first American psychology laboratory at John Hopkins University.

Contributions to Psychology

G. Stanley Hall's primary interests were in evolutionary psychology and child development. He was heavily influenced by Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory, which suggested that embryonic stages of an organism resemble the stages of development of the organism's evolutionary ancestors; a theory that is today rejected by most evolutionary scientists.

Perhaps his greatest contribution was to the development and growth of early psychology. By the year 1898, Hall had supervised 30 out of the 54 Ph.D. degrees that had been awarded in the United States. Some of those who studied under his influence include Lewis Terman, John Dewey and James McKeen Cattell.

William Heard Kilpatrick (1871-1965)

Born on November 20, 1871 in White Plains, Georgia.

Was an American pedagogue and a pupil, a colleague and a successor of John Dewey.

His progressive message was that schools needed to be more child-centered, democratic, and socially oriented.

Project Method for ECE Kilpatrick developed the Project Method for early childhood

education, which was a form of Progressive Education organized curriculum and classroom activities around a subject's central theme. He believed that the role of a teacher should be that of a "guide" as opposed to an authoritarian figure. Kilpatrick believed that children should direct their own learning according to their interests and should be allowed to explore their environment, experiencing their learning through the natural senses.

Proponents of Progressive Education and the Project Method reject traditional schooling that focuses on memorization, rote learning, strictly organized classrooms (desks in rows; students always seated), and typical forms of assessment. He has been described as a developmentalist.

Eudora (1835-1920) and William Nicholas Hailmann

Education Pioneer. He and his wife, Eudora Lucas Hailmann, introduced kindergarten to American school systems.

He also served as superintendent of the Indian School Service in 1894, and fought to hire more Native American teachers to teach Indian children.

Together with Theodore Roosevelt, then commissioner of Civil Service, he developed an exam which ensured applicants for teaching jobs on reservations were aware of the unique hardships of American Indians, thereby ensuring a surge in the employment of Native American teachers.

Eudora worked alongside her husband in all his efforts.

John Dewey (1859-1952)

John Dewey was born October 20, 1859 in Burlington, Vermont.

Dewey's work had a vital influence on psychology, education and philosophy and he is often considered one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th-century.

His emphasis on progressive education has contributed greatly to the use of experimentation rather than an authoritarian approach to knowledge.

Dewey was also a prolific writer, publishing numerous books and articles on a wide range of subjects including education, art, nature, philosophy, ethics and democracy over his 65-year writing career.

Dewey’s contributions to education…

Dewey's concept of education put a premium on meaningful activity in learning and participation in classroom democracy. Unlike earlier models of teaching, which relied on authoritarianism and rote learning, progressive education asserted that students must be invested in what they were learning. Dewey argued that curriculum should be relevant to students' lives. He saw learning by doing and development of practical life skills as crucial to children's education. Some critics assumed that, under Dewey's system, students would fail to acquire basic academic skills and knowledge. Others believed that classroom order and the teacher's authority would disappear.

To Dewey, the central ethical imperative in education was democracy. Every school, as he wrote in The School and Society, must become "an embryonic community life, active with types of occupations that reflect the life of the larger society and permeated throughout with the spirit of art, history and science. When the school introduces and trains each child of society into membership within such a little community, saturating him with the spirit of service, and providing him with instruments of effective self-direction, we shall have the deepest and best guarantee of a larger society which is worthy, lovely and harmonious

References

Lascarides, Celia V., Hinitz, Bythe, F. History of Early Childhood Education (2011) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data.

http://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/john.html

http://northreadinghistoricalcommission.blogspot.com/2011/07/william-and-eudora-hailmann.html

http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesal/p/g-stanley-hall.htm