Transformation+of+the+School

[|Back to Book Summaries] Cremin begins his book, __The Transformation of The School__, with the different traditions of education. In the 1890s, there was a mesh relationship between education and national progress. It was a very dismal study. There were many problems in the classrooms. Horace Mann was on the quest for political support. Mann had faith in the ideal of human life and institutions. The fight for free schools was a harsh one. In 1892, the nation's schools were not well appraised which was sensed by Walter Hines Page, editor of New York's //The Forum//. His articles gave rise to Joseph Mayer Rice's series of schools. Rice coined the concept of "progressive school" for students. The movement was obvious in diversity of teaching protest and improvement. The key theme of the relation between education and national progress was Centennial. Russian educators scored a breakthrough with the work of Victor Della Vos. This was a school that specialized in construction. American education was never the same after that. All through the 1980s, schools were basically occupational in character and purpose. Schools needed to have the functions of apprenticeship. The year 1910 marked a turning point in occupational education movement. A survey was taken that revealed that twenty-nine states provided industrial education. The American for Labor Legislation saw that occupational education held the key to industrial progress which made them made them to think for federal assistance. As war in Europe progressed, occupational took a back seat which meant federal aid did not exist. There was extreme poverty and disease in the 1900s. Surprisingly, the people began to care. Young reformers were convinced that the real cause of industrialism was in human associations. The underprivileged were immigrants. Chapter III of the book begins to explain how people moved to the city to begin farm life. Student, Hyde Bailey, of Cornell’s Agriculture school stresses the importance of farming and how it relates to democracy, morality, and justice. She further states how farming influences the foundation of country life. Thus, she wanted to start an experiment to explore the benefits of farming for all people. This experiment would allow more people to be interested in farming. As a result, Cornell started producing pamphlets, nature-clubs, leaflets, and periodicals to further re-instate the importance of farming in the cities. Furthermore, Bailey has transformed the process of education and focused on the importance of country life in private and public schools. He established rural education and influenced students to relate education to their daily lives. As a result of Bailey’s influence on Education as a whole, Mabel Carney’s book, Country life and the Country School, shows how rural school teachers would explain farming and agricultural life to their students. Thus, the book emphasizes that school environment and course subject matter are vital factors to the re-establishment of country life to all. As a result of changes in course curriculum (in rural schools), social life has also changed due to the swaying of opinion of corporate board officials. For example, new establishments for the mental and physical impaired children were set up by the Public Education Association. Also, new organizations stressed the importance of improving schools as a whole. Furthermore, the Promotion of Industrial Education established progressive education and subsequently the Progressive Movement (this stressed the recognition of Francis W. Parker as “father of progressive education”). Thus, scientists, like Herbert Spencer, stressed the importance of progressive education and how education should be the act of promoting science to learning. He stressed the importance of evolution in teaching and later was the teacher of social Darwinism. He believed the aim of education was to prepare for one’s future and provide knowledge for students to adapt more readily to the circumstances that surround them. He also argued for the proponent of private schools. He disliked the fact that public schools undermined parental freedom and was led by public welfare. Spencer’s work, though, was widely pondered by Sumner, who was a professor of political and social science at Yale University. Sumner yielded sociology. He brought about an act of laissez-faire amongst people and promoted individuality. Likewise, another active figure in science was paleontologist, Lester Frank Ward, who further studied Spencer’s observations on evolution. He came to the conclusion that evolution doesn’t change by nature but through the emergence or the transformations of one’s own mind. Furthermore, an active educator, Albion Small, of the University of Chicago, was conservative in views. He stressed that education was a means of interdependence, cooperation, and progress. Darwinism promoted evolution. Granville Stanley Hall stated that physical life or individual behavior constitutes the changes in one’s evolution. He thus stressed the concept of //scholiocentric// and //pedocentric// schools. Subsequently, William James, a leading educator at Harvard, made efforts to establish psychology as scientific discipline. Therefore, he related evolution to changes in one’s mind. Additionally, Edward L. Thorndike focused on success or failure of one’s actions. He stressed “rewarded learning”, emphasizing that mankind could be changed for the better (regarding actions and commitments to society). Not only were there social and curriculum changes in education but there were also changes in attendance habits. Therefore, compulsory school attendance was formulated to improve national education rates. The end of World War I heralded a great change in progressive education. By 1919, the Progressive Education Association was founded and gave an executive voice to what was a “loosely joined revolt.” (179) It was during this time that the modern intellectual thinkers took a great interest in the art of education. An engineer named Harold Rugg shifted his field to education stating that the transition was “a painless one… both fields were consumed with a passion for precise measurement (181).” Rugg went on to research and eventually published //Statistical Methods Applied to Education// which put the focus on education to testing and quantifying the values that the educated needed. When the depression struck, so did the emphases of Rugg’s thinking. In //The Great Technology//, Rugg stated that “potential could be liberated only as scientific method was applied to government, social relations, and to the industrial production.(183)” However, interest in progressivism was falling and Rugg’s new tomes found few eyes. Rugg’s fervor never faded and as late as 1959(184) he was considering a two-volume semi-autobiographical work. He died before he ever began it, faithful in the regenerative power of education, and distressed by the teaching profession which had “clothed itself in the mantle of progressivism only to allow that mantle to be torn to shreds before his very eyes.” Rugg’s chronicle demonstrates clearly the shift in progressive education. Professionalism moved relentlessly forward as pedagogical progressivism split from its roots in the progressive movement. Professionalism propelled progressivism enormously in its desire to change American education. On the other hand, professionalism would leave education when public sentiment began to change in the 1940’s only to return when the Russian Sputnik satellite took to space. Although Dewey supported the progessive movement at first, he had become its critic by the 1920's. In 1926, he attacked the lack of adult guidance in schools for children, proclaiming this method was "really stupid." He disliked the freedom being practiced in school curriculums, because he believed people did not start out with freedom; they attained it. Another quibble Dewey had with the system was that education itself was fast becoming a science, whereas Dewey firmly believed it was an art. Another trait of Dewey's in regard to progressive education was that he was against the teaching of fixed social beliefs. However, he admitted that schools needed to choose the social and cultural changes that would best serve education, even if this meant changing the established curriculum. Progressive education reached its peak just before World War II began. During the mid forties, the Educational Policies Commission legislated several acts which all had one common goal. A comprehensive school system must be organized for all young people ages three through twenty. This system would be divided into the nursery schools, the elementary school,s and the secondary schools. Nursery schools would focus on teaching young children between the ages of three and six how to participate in a democratic group. In elementary schools, the emphasis is social development without restrictive curriculums. The secondary school is where the children begin to branch out and learn specific skills that will help them in their field of choice with respect to occupational and recreational interests. One critic of the progessive education movement was Arthur Bestor, author of Educational Wastelands. He believed the purpose of education was intellectual training, "the deliberate cultivation of the ability to think" (344). He wanted the arts and sciences in school to recieve top priority because they enhanced the problem-solving skills of students. He also wanted the institutions that employed teachers to decide the curriculum for the teachers they employed. Although many ideas from progressive education were still accepted, the movement had almost completely collapsed by the end of the fifties. There were several reasons for this fall. One was the development of different factions within the key progressive leaders. Another was that while it was crystal clear what progressive educators had always been against, like universal curriculums, it was harder to pinpoint exactly what they stood for. The biggest reason for progessive education's downfall was its own sucess made it impossible to move forward. The stigma of progressive education became attached to different programs so much so that it was impossible to continue expanding the movement. It simply became part of the everyday system of American life.
 * Summary:**

“The question of the course of study…is the most important question which the educator has before him”(18). "It was the farm that had given America its greatness, and it was the farmer who would continue to be the "moral mainstay" of the nation" (76). "A studied informality pervaded the organization and life of the Organic School. Achievement groupings of all sorts were abandoned in favor of a simple classification based on age. Children were never compared; they were judged only in terms of their own abilities" (149). "Mrs Johnson conceived of the progam as an articulated whole, borrowing Dewey's idea that more formal studies should grow out of activities and occupations intrinsically interesting to young children" (150). "Individuality is something developing and to be continously attained, not something given all at once and ready made" (234-235). " "Our aim from the very beginning had in it little of modesty" Cobb reminisced in 1929. "We aimed at nothing short of reforming the entire school system of America." "(241). "Teachers would have to use their collective intelligence to plan the best society possible, and then they would have to abandon their timid fear of indoctrination and forthrightly teach the vision of this new society in schools" (260). "As childrewn completed the parcels of their individual work, they asked their teacher for a test; if successful, they went on, if unscuccessful, they labored at the weaknesses revealed by the test and then requested a retest. No child failed; no child skipped" (297). "Americans must organize a comprehensive public school system concerned with all young people from the age of three through twenty, those in school as well as those outside" (329).
 * Key Passages:**


 * Key Terminology:**
 * Progressive Education:** is the belief that education must be based on the principle that [|humans] are [|social animals] who learn best in real-life activities with other people. [|Progressivists] claimed to rely on the best available scientific theories of learning. Most progressive educators believe that children learn as if they were scientists.
 * Industrialism:** movement during the nineteenth century when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation improved. New schools was established for a specific occupation.
 * __Scholiocentric Schools:__** The dominant ideal of Western education; it fitted the child to the school
 * __Pedocentric Schools:__** In Granville Stanley Hall’s views, the only ideal for a republic was to fit the school to the child
 * __Progressive Movement:__** Based on the former definition of Progressive education, it was a movement, in which, educational facilities shifted the act of progressivism towards the classrooms.
 * Statistical Methods Applied to Education** – Proclaimed the need for a “clear, scientific, and complete statement” of the statistical and graphic methods that schoolmen would need “to determine the present status of school practice and to direct scientifically the course of its development.”
 * Franklin Bobbitt** - Wanted curriculum reform during the 20’s. “education was preparation for adulthood; hence the job of the curriculum maker was to classify and detail the full range of human experience with a view of building a curriculum that would prepare for it.”