First, the fundamental problem of the polarity. One can locate it in John Dewey's Democracy and Education, which is, of course, the classic statement of the progressive theory. Recall Dewey's argument in the early sections of the work. The most notable distinction between living beings and inanimate things, he tells us, is that living beings maintain themselves by renewal. Among human beings, that renewal takes place through a process of cultural transmission, which Dewey refers to as "education in its broadest sense." Education in its broadest sense is a process that is continuous, ubiquitous, pervasive, and all-powerful—indeed, so powerful that Dewey draws the moral that the only way in which adults can consciously control the kind of education children get is by controlling the environment in which they act, think, and feel. 

Then, in a crucial leap, Dewey goes on to tell us that there is a marked difference between the education everyone gets simply from living with others and the deliberate education offered by the school. In the ordinary course of living, education is incidental; in schooling, education is intentional. In developing the argument, Dewey takes the familiar early twentieth-century tack of going back to the origins of institutions in some primordial state of society. The family, he tells us, began in the desire to gratify appetites and secure the perpetuity of a line. Religious associations, he continues, began in the desire to ward off evil influences and obtain the favor of supreme powers. And work began in the simple enslavement of one human being to another. Any education that might have derived from participation in these institutions, he points out, was at best incidental. And, indeed, he tells us by way of illustration that savage groups have no special devices or materials or institutions for teaching the young, with the exception of initiation ceremonies. For the most part, they depend on the kind of incidental learning that derives from shared activity. 

As civilization advances, however, life becomes more complicated, and much of what adults do is so complex that simple participation no longer suffices for the transmission of culture. At this point, Dewey suggests, intentional agencies, called schools, and explicit materials, called studies, come into being. And the task of transmitting particular aspects of life is delegated to a special group of people called teachers. Dewey is careful to point out that schools are an important means for transmitting culture, but only one means among many, and when compared with other agencies, a relatively superficial means. Nevertheless, schools are the only means adults really have at their disposal for going systematically and deliberately about the education of the young. 

Once this leap is made, it is decisive in Dewey's argument. Though Dewey returns at a number of places to what he calls the "social environment," the remainder of the book is not about families or churches or work, but rather about schools. Dewey's theory of education is ultimately a theory of school and society. And while Dewey was primarily concerned with reconciling the dualism between school and society, I would stress the fact that he may have created the theoretical polarity in order to effect the reconciliation. To say this is in no way to deny that the schools of Dewey's time were abstruse, formalistic, and in need of reconciliation with society. It is rather to suggest that Dewey may ultimately have been victimized by the very polarity he set out to reconcile. 

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Permit me to move on to my second point, the proposal of a revised version of the progressive theory that I believe gives us a more effective approach to the educational situation. The crucial point at which Dewey went awry, it seems to me, is the point in his discussion of incidental versus intentional education where he dwelled on the origins of institutions rather than their functions. What matter that the family may have begun in the desire to gratify appetites and secure the perpetuation of a line? What matter that religious associations may have begun in the desire to ward off evil influences and secure the favor of supreme powers? What matter that work may have begun in enslavement to others? For one thing, we can't really know how they began; for another, the question of origins may not be central to the argument. The important fact is that family life does educate, religious life does educate, and work does educate; and, what is more, the education of all three realms is as intentional as the education of the school, though in different ways and in different measures.

Curriculum outside of schools

Every family has a curriculum, which it teaches quite deliberately and systematically over time. Every church and synagogue has a curriculum, which it teaches deliberately and systematically over time—the Old and New Testaments, after all, are among our oldest curricula, and so are the Missal and the Mass, and so is the Book of Common Prayer. And every employer has a curriculum, which he teaches deliberately and systematically over time; and the curriculum includes not only the technical skills of typing or welding or reaping or teaching but also the social skills of carrying out those activities in concert with others on given time schedules and according to established ex­pectations and routines. One can go on to point out that libraries have curricula, museums have curricula, boyscout troops have curricula, and day-care centers have curricula, and most important, perhaps, radio and television stations have curricula—and by these curricula I refer not only to programs labeled educational but also to news broadcasts and documentaries (which presumably inform), to commercials (which teach people to want), and to soap operas (which reinforce common myths and values).

This is very much where things get interesting both from a the point of view of theory and research practice: What is a curriculum? How does one specify that which is curricular in the various conversations and texts that constitute these various institutions?

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