By the dawn of the twentieth century, a new way of thinking about the nature of the child, classroom methods, and the purposes of the school increasingly dominated educational discourse. Something loosely called progressive education, especially its more child-centered aspects, became part of a larger revolt against the formalism of the schools and an assault on tradition. Our finest scholars, such as Lawrence A. Cremin, in his magisterial study of progressivism forty years ago, have tried to explain the origins and meaning of this movement. One should be humbled by their achievements and by the magnitude of the subject. Variously defined, progressivism continues to find its champions and critics, the latter occasionally blaming it for low economic productivity, immorality among the young, and the decline of academic standards. In the popular press, John Dewey's name is often invoked as the evil genius behind the movement, even though he criticized sugar-coated education and letting children do as they please. While scholars doubt whether any unified, coherent movement called progressivism ever existed, its offspring, progressive education, apparently did exist, wreaking havoc on the schools.

1On educational progressivism, see especially Lawrence A. Cremin,The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (New York: Vintage Books, 1964); Herbert M. Kliebard,The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958 (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986); and Diane Ravitch,Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). E.D. Hirsch, Jr. contends that romantic, child-centered views triumphed in the twentieth century, and he blames Schools of Education for disseminating these and other harmful pedagogical ideals; seeThe Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them (New York: Doubleday, 1996). The literature on progressivism more generally is too vast to cite, but the best recent contributions include Robert M. Crunden,Ministers of Reform: The Progressives’ Achievement in American Civilization, 1889–1920 (New York: Basic Books, 1982); Alan Dawley,Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991); and Daniel T. Rodgers,Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

2The phrase “new education” proliferated in editorials and articles in educational journals and various magazines after the Civil War. Similarly, book titles followed suit, as for example, Joseph Rhodes,The New Education: Moral, Industrial, Hygienic, Intellectual (Boston: Published by the Author, 1882); Mrs. [Elizabeth?] Peabody,The New Education (Cincinnati: Press of Robert Clarke & Co., 1879); and Robert H. Thurston,The New Education and the New Civilization: Their Unity (Columbus, OH: Press of Hahn & Adair, 1892).Google Scholar

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13On Blake's views on children, institutions, and politics, read S. Foster Damon,A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake (Hanover: University Press of New England, c. 1988), 81, 145; Coveney,Image, 54–55; and David V. Erdman,Blake: Prophet Against Empire (New York: Dover Publications, c. 1977), 120–22, 271–72. In various editions ofSongs of Innocence and of Experience, Blake rearranged the placement of some poems, showing that he did not place “hard and fast” boundaries on the two contrary “States of the Human Soul.” See Andrew Lincoln's “Introduction,” in William Blake,Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, c. 1991), 17. Wordsworth's politics, poetry, and views of children have generated an enormous list of secondary sources; consult at least Stephen Gill,William Wordsworth: A Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); Aidan Day,Romanticism (London: Routledge, 1996), 33, 56–58; and Nicholas Riasanovsky,The Emergence of Romanticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), chapter 1.Google Scholar

14Thoreau,Henry DavidWalden (New York:Penguin Books, c.1986),154. On Emerson and teaching, read Robert D. Richardson, Jr.,Emerson: The Mind on Fire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 41, 57.Google Scholar

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23Reese,Origins,52. For a taste of Bushnell's views, see Horace Bushnell,Common Schools: A Discourse on the Modifications Demanded by the Roman Catholics, Delivered in the North Church, Hartford, On the Day of the Last Fast, March 25, 1853. (Hartford, CT: Press of Cass, Tiffany, and Company,1853). Unless Catholics (and Jews) were willing to send their children to Catholic schools, and the former end their campaign to divide the school fund, Bushnell urged them all to leave the country.Google Scholar

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25Middle-class Americans were also attracted to Pestalozzi's emphasis on the individual, which appealed to those who wanted to nurture an ethos of personal responsibility among the young. Emerson even cited him in his famous call for American literary independence, “The American Scholar,” in Ziff,Selected Essays, 103.Google Scholar

26Quoted in Downs,Pestalozzi, 71.Google Scholar

27Quoted in Cremin,Transformation, 237.Google Scholar

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35In addition to the previously cited scholarship by Beatty and Wollons, also read Evelyn Weber,The Kindergarten: Its Encounter with Educational Thought in America (New York: Teachers College Press, 1969), x, chapters 3–4; and Shapiro,Child's Garden, chapters 5–6.Google Scholar

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