Attack on progressive education

[Maestro]

Cross posted in the Health/education forum.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=117&topic_id=4868#4874

Intro:

As a progressive educator I hold two sets of values and beliefs. The first set is pedagogical and curricular --ways of viewing human development, childhood, adolescence, the nature of learning, knowledge, and knowing. Progressive practices aim to engage the learner, nurture imagination, cognitive and artistic expression, and foster social-emotional and moral development. The words most often associated with such practices are whole child and student centered. While these terms oversimplify, they encapsulate core values of the progressive pedagogical tradition. The second set is political and addresses the question of control --how power is distributed throughout the society including schools, and the role of government at all levels. At the core of political progressivism is a commitment to, or more aptly, an aspiration for democracy --that there should not be a hierarchy of privilege based on wealth, status, race, gender, and that everyone should be able to exercise their basic human rights including the right to participate fully in making decisions that affect our lives and the life of our communities. This includes control over the institutions that educate the young. I believe democracy requires economic and social equality, the redistribution down of money, power, cultural capital, pleasure and freedom. In the next several pages I address how these two pillars of progressive education, the pedagogical and political, have fared over the years from the mid sixties and early seventies through today, the era of 'compassionate conservatism' and the No Child Left Behind Act.

[ladjf]

1. That's because educated people are able to resist

the machinations of the Right Wing Cult that is capturing our fellow Americans by the millions.