Progressive education, movement in American education. Between the late-19th and mid-20th cent. many educational programs grew out of the American reform effort called the progressive movement and its sources in the philosophies of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Johann PESTALOZZI, and Friedrich FROEBEL. A pluralistic phenomenon, it embraced industrial training, agricultural and social education, and educational theorists' new instructional techniques. The progressives insisted that education be a continuous reconstruction of living experience, with the child the center of concern. John Dewey maintained that schools should reflect society. His Laboratory School in Chicago (1896-1904), the public schools of Gary, Ind., and Winnetka, Ill., and such independent schools as the Dalton School and the Lincoln School of Teachers College, Columbia, were notable progressive institutions. Progressive education gained wide acceptance in American schools in the first half of the 20th cent., and by the 1950s, after its alleged collapse, the progressive movement had effected a permanent transformation in the character of the American school. Other reform movements in education similar to, or affected by, progressive education include the OPEN CLASSROOM and the reforms of Maria MONTESSORI.
From the Concise Columbia Encyclopedia. Copyright © 1991 by Columbia University Press.