The essentialist rejects the progressive theory of growth with nothing-fixed-in-advance, a planless education based upon the unselected experiences and needs of the child or even selected by cooperative, shared discussions of pupils and teachers. Growth cannot be self-directed; it needs direction through a carefully chosen environment to an end or ends in the minds of […]
I came across a book in our public library titled The Meaning of a Liberal Education by Everett Dean Martin published in 1926, a seminal period for progressive education. The following is a quote from the chapter “Liberal Education vs. Book Learning.” The last sentence is golden. People persist in thinking that education comes to
How did testing and accountability become the main levers of school reform? How did our elected officials become convinced that measurement and data would fix the schools? Somehow our nation got off track in its efforts to improve education. What once was the standards movement was replaced by the accountability movement. What once was an
Michael Polanyi (Personal Knowledge) outlined the stages one goes through to solve a problem. One begins with Preparation leading to Illumination, and concludes with Verification. The original study of H. Poincare he is pulling from listed four stages: Preparation – Incubation – Illumination – Verification. Coleridge begins his essay, The Education of Children, by stating,
The following five points are relatively undeveloped thoughts on the imagination, and may seem slightly cryptic and abstract. I attempt to relate these thoughts to the teacher’s task in the classroom at the end. 1. The imagination is awakened by admiration. 2. Two powers associated with the imagination are the perceptive and the formative. Once
Approximately 200 years ago Coleridge argued, The common modern novel, in which there is no imagination, but a miserable struggle to excite and gratify mere curiosity, ought, in my judgment, to be wholly forbidden to children. Novel-reading of this sort is especially injurious to the growth of the imagination, the judgment, and the morals, especially
I hope not to spoil this Father Brown story, but it has made a recent impression on me. A man is retelling to Father Brown the details of an unsolved murder that took place several hundred miles away. Those who were there believed the murderer to be a man that the victim’s dog barked at
Isaiah Berlin argued in his Inaugural Lecture on liberty in 1958 that human freedom takes two particular forms when the individual moves toward the self: self-abnegation, and self-realization. Self-abnegation has historically taken the form of the monastic, the ascetic. Many interpret asceticism as a form of escapism from the corruptions of the world, or rather,
Again, you simply can’t think efficiency with people. You think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things. –Steven Covey, 7 Habits A little bit later Covey notes how common management systems are out of harmony with the principle that people are more important than things. At the heart of education is the human soul. At
In The One, the Three, and the Many the late Colin E. Gunton works through the lectures of Sir Isaiah Berlin on the title Two Concepts of Liberty . Berlin arrives at a point that defines human beings not as individuals, but as social beings. All humanity is related. This concept reminds me of a
Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home: Is this a holiday? What! know you not, Being mechanical, you ought not walk Upon a labouring day without the sign Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou? –Julius Caesar Sometimes I tell my middle school students they must learn how to tell time. I draw
There are few pleasures in life greater than watching someone you mentor grow. Buck Holler joined the CiRCE apprenticeship far beyond any need for me to mentor him, and yet he has embraced my instruction with an eagerness that shows why he hardly needed it. It is my great pleasure to introduce Buck to you
