Article 1: Naumburg, Margaret. 1928. "Progressive - - PDF document

Article 1: Naumburg, Margaret. 1928. "Progressive Education." Nation 126, no. 3273: 344. MAS Ultra - School Edition, EBSCOhost (accessed November 24, 2017). Abstract: In this article, Margaret Naumburg, a progressive education leader, explores the ideas discussed during the Eighth Conference on Progressive Education, held in 1928. Although this falls outside of what Historians consider the progressive era, it speaks to what was accomplished during the era, and the effects those accomplishments further down the road. Naumburg first explains how the ideals of progressive education are still being challenged by some, allowing the conference to teach the more conservative minded attendees how progressive education is useful. Then, she goes on to analyzes John Dewey’s speech at the conference. This is what the excerpt below focuses on. After exploring Dewey's ideas on furthering progressive education, Naumburg explores the discussion that took place focusing

• n The Foreign Movement in new education, and discusses progressive changes in both the Russian and

German education system. Finally, she ends the article discussing the closing dinner which focused on college education, and the strides being taken to grant students involved in higher education with more freedom in developing their education. Excerpt: The new schools, he said, had already more than justified themselves as to results when their pupils went to college or out into life. But the moment had come to “raise the intellectual, the theoretical problem of the relation of the progressive movement to the art and philosophy of education.” Very significant was Professor Dewey’s direct attack on the modern obsession with the so-called science

• f measurement and the abuse of I.Q.’s and achievement tests in recent school procedure. For, said

Dewey: It is natural and proper that the theory of the practices found in traditional schools should set great store by tests and measurements. But that has all this to do with schools where individuality is a primary

• bject of consideration, and wherein the so-called “class” becomes a grouping made for social purposes

and wherein diversity of ability and experience rather than uniformity is prized? Quality of activity and

• f consequence is more important the teacher than any quantitative element...The place of

measurement of achievements as a theory of education is very different in a static educational system from what it is in one which is dynamic, or in which the ongoing process of growing is the important thing. If you want schools to perpetuate the present order, with at most an elimination of waste and with such additions as enable it to do better than it is already doing, then one type of intellectual method or “science” is indicated. But it conceives that a social order different in quality and direction from the present is desirable and that schools should strive to educate with social change in view by producing individuals not complacent about what already exists, and equipped with desires and abilities to assist in transforming it, quite a different method and content is indicated educational science.

Article 2: Gaffield, Chad. 2001. “Children, Schooling, and Family Reproduction in Nineteenth-Century Ontario.” Abstract: In this secondary source, Chad Gaffield examines the social, demographic, and economic changes that shaped mass public schooling in Canada. In this source, he discusses several historical perspectives on the causes and effects of mass public schooling during the progressive era. In response to these perspectives, he shapes his own claims as to why mass public schooling occurred in Ontario. His first claim is that land availability in places surrounding Ontario became more attractive to rural families due to the development of the lumber industries, causing more children to be sent to schools in the city

• r nearby. Next, he claims the growing demand for wage labour emphasized the need for children of

families to be educated in trades in growing fields such as mixed farming, dairying, mechanization, and sawmilling and gristmilling while still continuing their formal education when they were not needed for

• production. Furthermore, the author writes that immigration paved the way for public schooling due to

the fact that many Irish immigrants in particular carried over the cultural heritage of public schooling themselves, building institutions as a natural result of cultural transfer. Finally, Gaffield emphasizes the polarization of tradition and ethics within rural communities that called for school officials to create inclusive curriculums of both anglophone children and francophone children, leading to the complete transformation of traditional schooling to public institutions. Excerpt: In the 1970’s, many scholars (notably Houston and Prentice) interpreted the actions of public school promoters in terms of social control nourished by fear dislocated (and thus potentially dangerous) ‘traditional’ mentalities in an emerging modern world of cities and factories. Children and youth were seen to be particularly at risk, and thus schools were designed for the purpose of moral, social, and economic order. In this view, the definition of children as pupils was intimately related to the importance of urban industrialization. The implication was the rural society, and its assumed lack of interest in education, was rapidly declining in the face of increasing metropolitanism, with its enthusiasm for educational reform. The school systems reflected the new social organization of cities, the new demands for industrial workers, and the need to integrate the numerous immigrants into their new society. In other words, traditional educational forms became outmoded by the dawn of modern society as engendered by the Industrial Revolution; the result was massive institution building, beginning with schools. This assumption was the rationale for the urban social history projects that were undertaken by certain educational historians to examine the type of new industrial city dictation ideas and behaviour by 1850.

Article 3 Theodore Roosevelt and the Golden Age of Children’s Literature Abstract: Theodore Roosevelt has been marked in history for his involvement in children’s education and

• literature. He even had a toy, the “Teddy Bear” named after a story of when he saved a bear while
• hunting. Roosevelt read literature from an early age. His parents provided him with books through his

schooling and his childhood. One of his favorite authors was Mayne Reid, the author of adventure books such as, The Boy Hunters: Adventures in Search of a White Buffalo. Roosevelt’s later interest in nature and the outdoors may have stemmed from his love of Reid’s books. He also enjoyed children’s magazines, such as Our Young Folks, a subscription his parents provided for him as a child. This love of literature, and especially children’s literature continued into his adulthood. He provided books, and children’s magazines for his six children as a parent. He also had interest in poetry for his children, with poets such as Laura E. Richards, and Joel Chandler Harris. When he took office, he continued to admire children’s literature authors, even inviting them to the White House. Excerpt: Roosevelt’s involvement in children’s literature occurred during a period often known as the ‘‘Golden Age’’ of children’s literature, which began around 1860 and ended by 1930. Roger Lancelyn Green coined this term in an essay published in 1962, and Humphrey Carpenter popularized it in his book Secret Gardens: The Golden Age of Children’s Literature, which came out in 1985. Both Green and Carpenter applied this term mostly to British children’s literature, but it has since been applied to American children’s literature from the same period (Chaston 2–3). One of the points that Greene, Carpenter, and others 124 The Journal of American Culture Volume 33, Number 2 June 2010 have made about children’s literature from this period is that some of the most prominent authors of the time wrote for children as well as adults. Examples include Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Kenneth Grahame, Rudyard Kipling, A. A. Milne, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and Mark

• Twain. Because these authors were so highly regarded, the overall stature of children’s literature was

enhanced by the fact that these authors wrote children’s books. There was, however, another factor that enhanced the stature of children’s literature during this ‘‘Golden Age,’’ and that was the fact that many adults openly read and promoted children’s literature. Perhaps the most prominent example of such an adult promoter of children’s literature was President Theodore Roosevelt.

Article 4: Precondition Responses to the 19th Century Youth Crises Abstract: Pre-School Responses to the 19th Century Youth Crisis by Ruskin Teeter discusses the misbehaved and

• ften dangerous groups of children that roamed the street after the loss/abandonment of their parents
• r after running away from home. Teeter explains how it was the dangerous mobs of street children

“and the better-publicized predicament of child laborers” that triggered the 19th century education

• reform. Religious efforts were made by distributing bibles throughout the slums, street preaching, and

well-illustrated free tracts that encouraged children to follow a morally right path. Well known tracts include titles like Knocking at the Door: An Appeal to Youth and A Dying Mother’s Counsel to Her Only

• Son. Organizations like the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) got more creative with the problem and began
• ffering free transportation for urban youth to go to foster homes on the Western Frontier. Junior

Republics were yet another effort that created little self-sustaining and well-managed towns that encouraged “the fundamentals of democratic capitalism.” Junior Republics were supported by Theodore Roosevelt and most of the conservative American press. “Scientific” attempts were utilized too, centered around the recapitulation theory which claimed that “the development of individuals repeated approximately the evolutionary development of the species from savage to civilized human being,” essentially that adolescent behavior was merely instinctual and should be given a healthy outlet. The scouting movement felt that the youthful need for outdoor life should not be suppressed but rather used to teach socially useful values. Finally, the “morality in reading” movement heavily censored the reading material of youth in an attempt to moralize them and stop their “criminal reading” habits that exposed them to “lewd and libinious thought.” Excerpt: “The travails of 19th century urban youth were a precondition to the invention of modern adolescence and the rise of the modern secondary school. These travails led to a child-saving movement during the last century aimed at taking youth off the streets, putting them in schools, stretching out the normal home-leaving age from 14 to 18 and, in general, prolonging developmental period. While the ultimate solution to the youth crisis would be the creation of the modern school, other solutions--less expensive, less innovative, and much less effective--were tried first. As unproductive as these attempts were, they nevertheless underscore an increased readiness on the part of the American people to solve the youth problem, not out of egalitarianism or increased moral acuity, but out of social necessity. (...) The crisis began in the 1830s and 1840s with the development of America's first urban slums and continued through the early years of the 20th century. From these slums had issued an entirely new class of American youth--the so-called "street arabs," named for their Bedouin-like wanderings throughout the cities. Increasingly over the 19th century, swarms of these homeless, crime-prone street waifs populated the streets, dodging the police, acknowledging no authority, gambling, fighting, stealing, and in general living entirely by their wits.”