Thursday, March 17, 2011

Introduction

Welcome to The Progressives, a blog dedicated to teaching about the Progressive Educational philosophy. To get started, here is a basic background of the movement.

Progressive education's primary focus is to make schools more democratic, and to help teach students how to be active in democracy. Democracy, in this case, means "active participation by all citizens in social, political and economic decisions."* What better place to start than in school?

Progressive education has two core beliefs:

1. Respect for diversity- It is key to acknowledge and encourage each individual and their differences in ability, interest, ideas, needs and background. In other words, if a student excels in math but not English, they should be encouraged to study math, not punished for getting poor grades in English.
2. The development of critical, socially engaged intelligence. This allows citizens to actively take part in decisions made within their community.

Sometimes called "child-centered" or "social reconstructionist" learning, the goal is clear: Train students early so they can become good citizens later.

*Source: http://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/articles/proged.html

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