Significance of progressive education Published on InfoNepal Saturday, 13-December-2014 Kumar Thapa A child goes to school with a bag full of books, copies and stationery. There is an established routine and rule system at school, which he has to adhere to. The teacher disciplines students and teaches what she thinks is necessary for students, according to curriculum and text books. And, there is class work, homework and periodic formal examinations decided by the teacher. If the child can follow all this well, he is a very good student. The overall idea is for schooling to support the ever-expanding industrial economy by establishing a competitive meritocracy and preparing workers for their vocational roles. Opposed to what is described above, one movement in education in the mid nineteenth century especially in the US which moved to rest of the world called Progressive Education bypasses a majority of traditional education elements described above, and advocates much more democratic practices in education. John Dewey proponent of this movement saw that with the decline of local community life and small scale enterprise, young people were losing valuable opportunities to learn the arts of democratic participation, and he concluded that education would need to make up for this loss. With a belief that all learning happens through experience which is unique to every individual, the traditional way of cramming up, demonstrating knowledge and preparing for formal exams has very little relevance to real-life, and is not acceptable in progressive education model. The ideas advocated in this movement are construed to be even more relevant today and certainly so in the future. Progressive Education model holds the conviction that children learn effectively through hands-on activities. According to Dewey, students should not be sitting at desk while the teacher is preaching and yelling up to them in class. They should be comfortable and free to move around, ask questions and play. He was against class routine and schedules that are useless to their learning because learning can happen only in context but not as instructed by periods (marked by bells). What kids learnt has to be carefully monitored. He argued that all learning should be experiential; for example, if students should learn about a specific animal, they should be taken to the place where the animal is, and if they are to learn about boats, they should be taken to the harbor. This is because texts given in a book is static whereas the real world and learning are dynamic. Also, fact outside of a context is useless. Besides, the rules and walls should not be there to make a teacher’s life convenient, but to promote students’ learning. Schools can setup guiding principles that help kids’ learn and grow, but these principles should be flexible enough to permit free play for individuality of experience, yet firm enough to give direction towards continuous development. Teachers should play the role of a guide or a gardener, but students bloom when the environment is right. That way, teachers monitor students’ growth, set up activities that are helpful to students, make minimal intervention or explanation. Further, arts and games are highly valued and integrated into education. It is through arts and games, children learn to express themselves and at the same time understand life lessons much better. The education of engaged citizens, according to this perspective, involves two essential elements: (1) Respect for diversity, meaning that each individual should be recognized for his or her own abilities, interests, ideas, needs, and cultural identity, and (2) the development of critical, socially engaged intelligence, which enables individuals to understand and participate effectively in the affairs of their community in a collaborative effort to achieve a common good. These elements of progressive education have been termed child-centered and social reconstructionist approaches. Today, scholars, educators and activists are rediscovering Deweys work and exploring its relevance to a postmodern age, an age of global capitalism and breathtaking cultural change, and an age in which the ecological health of the planet itself is seriously threatened. We are finding that although Dewey wrote more than a century ago, his insights into democratic culture and meaningful education suggest hopeful alternatives to the regime of standardization and mechanization that more than ever dominate our schools. According to progressive education, the child goes to school with lots of curiosity and questions. His bag might have things or his productions that he shows and discusses with his class mates and teacher alike. He knows that he is not the receiver of education from the teacher, but is a part of co-creating knowledge together with his friends and teacher. There are no exams, no cramming up, but just learning and development. In Nepal, there are very few schools that live by the philosophy of progressive education. On the hand, the District Level Grade VIII and national level SLC examinations reward traditional approaches, and on the other educators/ teachers and parents/ community are only beginning to appreciate this methodology. Among these very few schools, one school that’s practicing this model to a large extent is John Dewey Higher Secondary School located at Baluwatar, Kathmandu. Established in 2008, this school has teachers trained into following progressive education model. When one meets/ interacts with students of this school can immediately know how useful this model is for students.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 16:15:30 +0000
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