History Repeats Itself

I am frightened. Before progressive education in the 1940s, students were being drilled to memorize facts. The teacher was front and center, and the students were content consumers, silently listening and absorbing knowledge. It was more about memory than understanding. Then in the 1940s due to progressive education, school became enjoyable. The goal was to give children practical experiences to learn by doing, such as buying ingredients at the store and making lunch, then discussing those experiences. It was for “equipping the child to face his future by learning to face intelligently his immediate present” because “knowledge gained during an actual experience is best understood and longest retained” (danieljbmitchell, 2007). Now, the frightening part. We are repeating history.

The drilling of facts before the 1940s is very similar to the traditional, teacher-centered, factory model of education that exists today. Although it does not look exactly the same and may involve differentiation and some application, the teacher provides knowledge, and the students are expected to learn the information. The progressive education of the 1940s is strikingly similar to the student-centered project based learning that is making waves in education today. What happened between 1940 and 2017 that this approach was put on the back-burner and then started boiling again? Why wasn’t it cooking this entire time? Why does the American education system repeat history and go through these cycles? Why haven’t we seen more significant change in education?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, and I am not sure that anybody does. Within the answer to these questions lies the success of the American education system. However, as an educator, I can speculate as to what is happening. To put it simply, change is hard. People don’t like to fix what they believe isn’t broken. Success today is measured by the performance on standardized assessments, so if students are performing well, administrators and teachers believe that what they are doing is working. The problem is with how success is viewed. Before progressive education, success was viewed as reciting your multiplication tables and important historical dates. In the 1940s era of progressive education, success was viewed as the student developing important skills. Today, we are at this challenging combination of both - where students are tested on their knowledge but expected to acquire 21st century skills to help them be successful. Then, we tie in instructional technology, standards, new curriculums, STREAM, etc. and are quickly overwhelmed with change, processing as much as we can.

So, why is this happening? People like what they like and don’t want to reinvent the wheel. They stick with what they believe works and with what they are comfortable. Dr. Harapnuik (2014) asks a deep-rooted question, “How then do we get people who like this stuff (traditional education) to like new stuff (digital learning environments)?” I am seeing this issue right now in my educational setting. People that like digital learning and new methods are the ones that gravitate toward those options, and people that like traditional methods gravitate towards those. If we don’t want to see history repeat itself again, if we don’t want students 75 years from now looking back on digital learning as a progressive movement that didn’t last long, we need a change, and we need it yesterday. As John Dewey stated last century, “We must prepare our children…for their world, the world of the future” (danieljbmitchell, 2007). Our students, both current and of the future, deserve it.