Robert Peal in 'Progressively worse' in Engels onderwijs voorbije 50 jaar: historiek van progressivisme in Engels onderwijs
The burden of bad ideas in British schools
Zogenaamd progressief onderwijs was alles behalve progressief
Bedenking vooraf:: we maakten in Vlaanderen de voorbije 50 jaar een afgezwakte versie mee van wat zich in Engeland afspeelde: comprehensief secundair onderwijs en egalitaire ideologie, child-centred-onderwijs, anti-autoritair onderwijs, kennisrelativisme, constructivistisch onderwijs...
In Vlaanderen was er de voorbije 50 jaar wel meer weerstand tegen beeldenstormerij en neofilie vanwege veel praktijkmensen, tal van lerarenopleiders uit de klassieke normaalscholen en regentaten, Onderwijskrant ... Dit verklaart ook waarom Vlaamse leerlingen voor PISA/TIMSS ... zoveel beter scoorden dan Engelse. Onze sterke Vlaamse onderwijstraditie heeft de progressieve storm iets beter doorstaan dan b.v. in Engeland - ook al was/is ook hier de averij aanzienlijk.
Uit de inleiding van het boek:
"Progressive education seeks to apply political
principles such as individual freedom and an aversion
to authority to the realm of education. As such, it
achieved great popularity amongst an idealistic younger
generation of teachers influenced by the ideas of the
New Left and the counter-culture of the 1960s.
Although often associated with the political left, it is wrong to
see progressive education as its direct corollary. Many
within the British Labour movement forcefully opposed
progressive education during the 1960s and 1970s, and
again during the 1990s.
The idealism of progressive education had, and
continues to have, a strong emotional appeal to modern
sympathies. Freeing pupils from the overbearing authority
of teachers, allowing them to follow their own interests,
and making learning fun as opposed to coercive, all
appear as sensible measures to the enlightened, liberalminded onlooker. However, as I hope to show, such anapproach has had a devastating effect on pupils education.
There are four core themes that constitute progressive
education, which have been increasingly influential on
state education since the 1960s. They require some prior
discussion.
1 Education should be child-centred.
Perhaps the most important of progressive educations
themes, child-centred learning states that pupils
should direct their own learning. Set against
a more traditional vision of teacher-led or
whole-class teaching, child-centred learning
relegates the role of the teacher from being
a sage on the stage to a guide on the side. It
states that learning is superior when pupils find
things out for themselves, and are not simply
told information by a knowledgeable authority.
To achieve this, teachers should play the role of
facilitators, designing lessons that are active,
relevant or fun in an environment where pupils
can learn for themselves.
Child-centred advocatestypically have an aversion to practices imposed
upon the pupils by the teacher, such as discrete
subject divisions, homework, examinations, notetaking or rote-learning, preferring to organise lessons around topics, group work, activities and extended projects.
The analogy of a child with agrowing plant is popularly used, suggesting thatno external input is needed to nurture a childseducation, but simply the provision of the right
environment in which they can flower.
2 Knowledge is not central to education.
This theme is set against the more traditional idea of
education as the transfer of knowledge. Progressive
educators parody this as rote-learning or filling
buckets a reference to the aphorism Education
is not the filling of a vessel, but the lighting of a
fire, often attributed to W. B. Yeats but actually
from Plutarch.
Knowledge is re-characterised as a
transitory component of education, only necessary
for the ultimate aim of developing certain abilities
or traits. These could be critical thinking,
creativity or a love of learning. More recently,
educationists have challenged the knowledge that
the teacher seeks to impart as being politically or
culturally partisan, for example promoting the
work of dead white men in the canon of English
literature. Also, this aversion to knowledge has
fused with the modern, managerial language of
skills. Subjects now seek to equip pupils not with
knowledge but with certain transferable skills,
which will aid them in later life.
3 Strict discipline and moral education are oppressive.
Whilst the previous two themes
challenge the teachers role as an authority in their
subject, this theme challenges the teachers role as
a moral authority. Strongly influenced by romantic
idealism, which proclaims the innate good of a
child, this theme leads to a greater leniency in
dealing with poor pupil behaviour.
The root of bad behaviour is seen not as the fault of the child, but
the fault of the teacher or institution. Therefore,
the pupil should not be punished, but the teacher
or institution should amend their ways to become
more aligned with the needs of the child. As
such, this theme is related to the first theme, as
there is an assumption that if a teacher makes
a lesson sufficiently child-centred, the pupils
will be willing to learn and coercion will become
unnecessary. In addition, progressive educationists
do not believe that schools have the moral
authority to influence the character formation of
the pupil. Instead, they take a rationalist view of a
childs moral formation, which suggests the school
should give pupils the requisite information to
reach moral conclusions independently, a change
summed up by the mantra teach, dont preach.
4 Socio-economic background dictates success
(En invoering comprehensief onderwijs!)
This theme is really an addendum to the previous
three. Whilst the other themes are concerned
with a pupils education at school, this theme is
aimed at explaining their subsequent academic
performance. It is heavily influenced by the work
of Basil Bernstein, a professor of Educational
Sociology.
In 1970, Bernstein wrote a seminal
essay for New Society entitled Education cannot
compensate for society. Such thinking caused
generations of teachers to believe that schools can
do little to change a pupils academic performance,
as the overriding determinant of their success is
their home background.
This sociological view links with the first theme as many educationistshave concluded that, instead of expecting working-class pupils to access curriculum content
designed by middle-class interests, they should
have schooling tailored to their own interests and
needs. In America the sociological view has led
to the popularity of the saying you cannot solve
education until you solve poverty. This theme has
formed a convenient alliance with the previous
three themes as a means of excusing, or deflecting
attention away from, the problems they have
caused.
These four themes have become an orthodoxy within
British state education over the past half a century. They
may have been watered down at classroom level, but their
underlying principles still govern the behaviour of many
British teachers. This surrender of worldly knowledge to
the existing interests of the child, and the dethroning of
the teacher as both a moral and subject authority, have
led to a profound dumbing down in our schools. As such,
it is reasonable to conclude that progressive education is
as close as one can get to the root cause of educational
failure in Britain.
It has become unfashionable to pose the ideas of
progressive education against those of, for want of a better
term, traditional education.
Education commentators are likely to say that such polarising rhetoric establishes
false dichotomies, when in reality a sensible mixture
of the two approaches is required. This is true. No
one in education should be an absolutist, and the best
traditionalist teacher will still pay heed to the existing
interests of their pupils, and know how to combine
authority with friendliness.
Such dichotomies (skills/knowledge, child-centred/teacher-led) are perhaps better thought of as sitting at opposite ends of a spectrum. If we are to decide what constitutes a sensible position on each spectrum, we need to appreciate better how far British schools currently gravitate towards the progressive ends.
Whilst a wholesale move towards traditionalist modes of education would be harmful, a corrective shift in that direction is desperately needed.
Some may protest that British teachers in the twentyfirst century are not wedded to such ideological thinking as progressive education. Indeed, many within the profession may not even be familiar with the term progressive education. However, this merely goes to show how comprehensive its diffusion into the educational landscape has been. For many, progressive ideas are simply the received wisdom of how to teach, the very definition of best practice. To paraphrase J. M. Keynes, teachers who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct educationist.
Progressive education was not a passing fad of the 1970s; its principles have endured and are now woven into the fabric of state education. Todays teachers are surrounded by the vestiges of progressive education, from the design of textbooks to examinationcontent, from school architecture to teaching methods, from teacher-training workshops to the gurus of the education conference circuit. Many teachers who entered the profession during the idealistic 1960s and 1970s have captured the commanding heights of the profession, and the education establishment made up of teachertraining colleges, teaching unions, government agencies and local authorities is largely defined by its attachment to progressive education. Until recently, it has been very hard for schools to stray from this orthodoxy.
Within education, there will always be debate over issues such as length of holidays, teacher pay and school admissions all important issues, but all unlikely to provoke fundamental change. It is the underlying philosophy of our state education system,the ideas that govern the teaching style of nearly half a million teachers and the curriculums of 24,000 schools across the country, which needs to change. It is not of ultimate importance whether a school is an academy, a free school, a comprehensive or a voluntary aided faith school: if they have a misguided pedagogical philosophy,
they will underachieve regardless of their categorisation.
Parliamentary legislation and changes in bureaucracy alone cannot triumph in what is essentially a culture war in the classroom.
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