Progressive Education Isn't What You Think It Is
I have been teaching at Sarah Lawrence College for almost 15 years now. Despite its many problems, one of the College’s greatest assets is its progressive education. Regrettably, this pedagogical tool is often misunderstood as a political approach to education.
Sarah Lawrence and other progressive schools from kindergarten to college are built on the idea that students take significant responsibility for directing their education based on their curiosities, passions, and particular needs. To help our students realize these goals, Sarah Lawrence offers interdisciplinary, intensive small classes. Students engage in independent research and spend significant amounts of time with faculty who work to create “a tailored academic program of students' own design.” Students are not running around aimless and untethered; they are guided and given choices about what they study, read, and explore. When historical errors or conceptualizations are wrong, I and other professors work to correct them and explain our rationale. We hopefully nurture students’ “entrepreneurial spirit to embrace a broad range of personal, professional, and creative pursuits” and help our students thrive in an increasingly complex world.
I was intrigued by a recent headline declaring that “progressive education made my peers morally confused.” In the piece, the author clearly, though understandably, confuses progressive education with progressive politics. To be clear, progressive teaching is not inherently ideological. Many who work in education happen to hold strong progressive views, making progressive pedagogical schools appear extremely liberal. However, progressive teaching does not hold a political predisposition—and nor should it.
Specifically, the piece talks about Friends Central School in Philadelphia, a Quaker school with Quaker values and a traditional pedagogical teaching style—I would know, I grew up five minutes from the school. The author laments that while he was a student, the school had already become a place where teachers failed to correct misinformation and asserts that, “we were taught that everyone had an equal voice and worthwhile perspective…All were considered equal, and everyone was entitled to their own opinion. All cultures, religions, and worldviews deserved respect, including, apparently, objective falsehoods.” The author complains that liberal ideologies pervaded the school and biased many students’ understanding of democracy and fairness, and the right to life, safety, and self-determination.
These critiques are reasonable but have nothing to do with the school’s approach to teaching. The dilemma the author captures is that far too few teachers are taught to correct student mistakes and flawed narratives. Schools regularly suggest limiting corrections in the name of self-esteem and encourage dialogue even if it is off base. Schools are awash in misguided ideas about teaching that often emanate from politically progressive diversity, equity, and inclusion offices that have pushed aside the philosophical approach toward understanding the world.
Educating students in progressive pedagogy involves learning how to establish truth, teaching resilience when mistakes are made, and demonstrating how to grow from errors and misfires. Current thinking involving the promotion of self-esteem and avoiding correcting or questioning students is regressive and harms their intellectual and personal development. This happens too often in too many schools. It has nothing to do with the classic model of progressive education.
Consider the author’s anecdote: A classmate makes a factual error about the history of baseball. In response, rather than correcting the error, the teacher refused to accept another student’s desire to correct the record and instead responded to the falsehood, “Thank you for that illuminating presentation. Who’s next?” This is simply teacher malpractice and hurts both the student and the entire class. Progressive education does not mean that there are no rules or guidelines. It does not mean that students are uniformly affirmed when they are making factually inaccurate statements. It is true that progressive schools rightly believe that all voices should be at the table and multiple perspectives should be heard, but it does not mean that all ideas and views should be accepted when they are simply wrong.
Our K-12 schools are in trouble because truth is under attack. The behavior of teachers and administrators is often overtly political and ideologically motivated. Conversely, progressive pedagogy’s support of free and flexible inquiry is a virtue; it gives students a controlled environment to work out ideas, make mistakes and fail, and discover their talents and passions. Indoctrination in classrooms is a pervasive problem nationwide and it damages our students and their authentic learning, and obfuscates their moral compasses. But that is a function of bad teaching and administrative oversight, not progressive education.
