To further contextualize
this blog’s review of Mortimer Adler’s contribution – his application of the
academic rationalist approach to curriculum development – this posting will
complete its review of the four major philosophic traditions: perennialism (academic rationalism),
essentialism, progressivism, and reconstructionism (critical theory).
What
remains after the last posting’s descriptions of perennialism and essentialism
are those of progressivism and reconstructionism. And as with the last posting, this one will
rely chiefly on Augsberg’s chart
of educational philosophies.[1]
Progressivism. This philosophy takes a more holistic
approach and shies away from making distinctions between content and/or the
teacher. If anything, this approach
zeroes in on process or instructional strategies that have students utilize
experimental testing or studies. By
doing so, students are directed to actively test ideas through experiments; in
short, progressivism calls for interactive education.
As for content, it argues for students to use their
experiences from their social worlds.
They are to question what they see and experience, especially as they
take note of the problems that they, and the people they observe, encounter. “Learning is rooted in the questions of
learners that arise through experiencing the world. It is active, not passive.
The learner is a problem solver and thinker who makes meaning through his or
her individual experience in the physical and cultural context.”[2]
And
with that focus, effective teaching exposes students to active situations in
which students learn by interacting and performing with what the situations demand
or encourage. So, learning becomes first-person,
i.e., it results from what students do within the context of those situations.
Application
of this approach has to date relied heavily on the scientific method which in
turn imposes first-hand experiences in systematically organized lessons that
usually test hypothetical claims or “if/then” speculations. And the resulting learning does not rely on
being told what to know, but on a process in which they take part and derive
their answers to those various inquiries.
While this might sound somewhat modern, progressive education has a
history stretching back to the mid-1920s.
The
leadership of John Dewey, until the mid-1950s, aimed efforts at improving the
ways people lived their lives as citizens of a meaningful democracy not just as
a political polity. And that meant
democratizing the nation’s institutions such as education. “Shared decision making, planning of teachers
with students, student-selected topics are all aspects [of this approach]. Books are tools, rather than authority.”[3]
Reconstructionism/Critical
Theory. The aims of
this last philosophy have to do with social realities and how they relate to
accomplishing a better society within a worldwide democracy. The focus to attain those aims is to
institute a curriculum that promotes social reforms. Initially, the approach was spurred forward by
the realities of World War II.
At
that time, under the leadership of Theodore Brameld, a new awareness evolved,
that being a realization that humans could annihilate themselves through
technology motivated by cruelty. But
there was another side to this realization in that humans could also bring
about beneficial societal arrangements using those same technological
capabilities.
Another leader of this shift was George Counts. He saw that education could be the vehicle by
which society could create a new social order.
The path by which to accomplish such a lofty goal – to overcome
oppressive practices – was by preparing people, beginning with young ones, to
address and discover those practices and policies that set social efforts
toward that just order. For example –
and citing another leader of this approach,
Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was a
Brazilian whose experiences living in poverty led him to champion education and
literacy as the vehicle for social change. In his view, humans must learn to
resist oppression and not become its victims, nor oppress others. To do so
requires dialog and critical consciousness, the development of awareness to
overcome domination and oppression. Rather than "teaching as
banking," in which the educator deposits information into students' heads,
Freire saw teaching and learning as a process of inquiry in which the child
must invent and reinvent the world. For social reconstructionists and critical
theorists, curriculum focuses on student experience and taking social action on
real problems, such as violence, hunger, international terrorism, inflation,
and inequality.[4]
To
seek out these varied ambitions, each dealing with those aspects of life that
are controversial – especially as the approach is applied to social studies and
literature – teachers are to utilize inquiry into various perspectives and
concentrate on the dialogue – the language – that, first recognizes it as a
language, and second, defines or realistically reflects the assumptions and
contexts of that which is under study.
Where possible, the curriculum should be, according to this approach, in
students’ “backyards,” their communities – i.e., implement a “first person”
education.
One
last point should be made. This is not
part of Augsberg’s chart, but it
is the experience of this blogger that proponents of critical theory do seem to
share a positive disposition toward Marxian philosophy. For example, given the central role Paulo
Freire played in promoting critical theory, one can definitely consider that
influence to be well-categorized as Marxist.
Patrick O’Connor writes,
The academic consensus
is that Freire advanced a radical and even Marxist educational theory and
practice. Pedagogy of the Oppressed [Freire’s most noted book]
is promoted as one of the founding texts of so-called “critical pedagogy.” This
has been bolstered by the promotion of Freire by various pseudo-left figures
internationally from the 1970s to the present day. This includes, in the US,
linguist Noam Chomsky (“Freire is a radical revolutionary”) and educationalist
Peter McLaren (Freire, he recently wrote in Jacobin, “continues to
be a lodestar for teachers working in poverty-stricken communities across the
globe, and for just about anyone who’s searching for a sense of justice in an
unjust world”).[5]
This connection is not
offered as a criticism, but hopefully as an attempt to be complete in this
presentation.
In
the spirit of being upfront, this blogger considers himself a progressive. His reservation with that approach is its
bias toward scientific research as a sole mode of investigation, to the
exclusion of other modes such as historical approaches. With the New Social Studies movement from the
1960s, the social studies national effort has favored inquiry as the favored
instructional strategy.
Despite
this, that form of instruction has had little success in being adopted in
America’s schools. Teachers for the most
part have not adopted inquiry as their go-to instructional practice. Instead, they mostly rely on didactic methods. On the other hand, a defender of
parochial/traditional federalism would be apt to advocate perennialism.
That
school of thought and its siding with the Western civilization’s great ideas and
great books fit neatly with parochial federalism’s origins and its reliance on
religious and other philosophical traditions.
And with that rundown, one is better equipped to consider Mortimer
Adler’s contribution to the description of the “milieu” commonplace of
curriculum.
[1] “Educational Philosophical Definitions and Comparison
Chart,” Augsburg (n.d.), accessed June 15, 2022, https://web.augsburg.edu/~erickson/edc490/downloads/comparison_edu_philo.pdf .
[2] Ibid., n.p.
[3] Ibid., n.p.
[4] Ibid., n.p.
[5] Patrick O’Connor, “Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of
the Pseudo-Left,” World Socialist Web Site, October 15, 2021, accessed June 19,
2022, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/16/frei-o16.html .
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