Influence on Educational Practices Today

FOCUS Why did Freire construct his theory of liberation pedagogy? Why is it called liberation pedagogy? Do you think the schools you attended and in which you are doing your clinical experience or teaching liberate or marginalize students and teachers? In your educational experience, were there teachers who used Freire’s principles? Are there elements of Freire’s liberation pedagogy that you plan to incorporate in your teaching? transmitted, approved information, rather than students’ lived experience. Test results, which reflect statistics rather than people, become sorting devices that separate students into elite academic achievers destined for prestigious universities/positions in the corporate structure and others who will be pushed to the margins in society and the economy.

4-11c Influence on Educational Practices Today

Freire is esteemed as a genuine educational pioneer by contemporary critical theorists. (See Chapter 6, Philosophical Roots of Education, for more on critical theory.) Freire worked to transform teaching and learning from the limited concept of transmitting information to engaging in the project of completing one’s identity and meaning in a world that needs to be made more equitable, humane, and just. According to Freire, preservice preparation should involve future teachers in dialogues in which they critically assess the social, economic, and political conditions that have an impact on schools and their students. In their classroom practice, teachers should help students work for social justice by creating a true consciousness which exposes the conditions that marginalize them and their communities.

SummIng uP

1. Comenius’s pansophism sought to reform schools from places where children were often physically and psychologically coerced by teachers into child-friendly and humane places where they learned to trust their peers and others. 2. Rousseau’s Emile, which presented his ideas on education according to nature, challenged traditional concepts about schools and other institutions. 3. Pestalozzi’s emphasis on educating the whole child, mentally, physically, and emotionally, challenged the traditional concept that teachers should transmit knowledge to students. His method of object teaching encouraged children to use their senses in interpreting their environment. 4. Herbart structured a sequence-based method of instruction that was widely used in the upper grades and in high schools. 5. Froebel created the kindergarten as a new early childhood school which featured children’s growth through play, songs, stores, and activities using “gifts” and “occupations.” 6. Spencer, who applied Darwin’s theory of evolution society, saw schools as places where individuals competed to achieve. His curriculum design applied science to life. 7. Dewey, using his pragmatic experimentalist philosophy, designed the scientifically based method of problem solving, in which students learn from their experiences. 8. Based on her work with immigrants at Hull House, Addams constructed socialized education, a prototype of multicultural, peace, and women’s education. 9. Montessori, a medical doctor, used her clinical observation of children to create a structured learning environment in which children were free to choose the apparatus on which they worked. 10. Piaget’s theory of stage-based human development made instruction more informal so that the gap between learning inside and outside of schools was lessened. 11. Freire constructed liberation pedagogy as an educational weapon to free marginalized people from exploitation from dominant classes and groups.

SuggESTEd RESouRcES

Internet resources

For Comenius’s methods on language instruction, access the

Comenius Foundation website. For an extensive collection of books and articles by and about

Comenius, access The Online Books Library. To view

Comenius’s Orbis Pictus, access the HathiTrust Digital

Library. For Rousseau’s Emile, access the Emile Project at the Institute for Learning Technologies. For the lives and philosophies of Rousseau, Dewey, and Addams, access the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy website. For biographies and a slide show on Pestalozzi, access the

Pestalozzi World website.

For archives, links, and other resources about Froebel, access the

International Froebel Society website. For the philosophy, history, and projects related to Froebel, access the Froebel Foundation USA website. For a biography of Dewey, access the Center for Dewey Studies page at the Southern Illinois University website. For Jane Addams’s life and philosophy, access the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website. For a chronology and images of Jane Addams and her papers, access the Jane Addams Paper Project website. For information on Maria Montessori, consult the International

Montessori Index, Montessori Online, and the American

Montessori Association websites. For a biography and bibliography of Piaget, access the Jean

Piaget Society website. For a biography, resources, and videos about Freire, access the

Freire Project website. For an interpretation of Herbert Spencer’s influence on economics, society, and education in late nineteenth-century

America, access “The Richest Man in the World” at the WGBH

American Experience website.

PuBLiCATions

Brown, Victoria Bissell. The Education of Jane Addams. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. A biography of Jane Addams that explores the origin and sources of her concepts of social reform, education, women’s rights, and world peace. Cochran, Molly, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Dewey. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Contains essays by scholars on Dewey’s life, work, and philosophy. Damrosch, Leo. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Damrosch’s highly acclaimed biography provides a definitive account of the French philosopher’s life and works. Darder, Antonia. Freire and Education. new York and London:

Routledge, 2014. Argues that Freire’s educational ideas are especially relevant to today’s teachers and their students. Dewey, John. Democracy and Education, introduction by Gerald

L. Gutek. new York: Barnes and noble, 2005. An edition of Dewey’s important book on philosophy of education, published originally in 1916, with an introductory essay that places the book in its historical and educational contexts. Dewey, John. How We Think, introduction by Gerald L. Gutek. new York: Barnes and noble, 2005. An edition of Dewey’s important work on thinking as inquiry, published originally in 1910, with an introductory essay that places the book in its historical and educational contexts. Francis, Mark. Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life.

Ithaca, nY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Provides an interpretation of Spencer’s relevance to contemporary society. Garrison, Jim; Larry Hickman, and Ikeda Daisaku. Living as Learning: John Dewey in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Ikeda

Center, 2014. Examines Dewey’s continuing relevance to contemporary global society. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra

Bergman Ramos. new York: Continuum, 2000. Freire establishes the educational and ideological rationale for his liberation pedagogy. Gutek, Gerald L. Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education: A Biographical Introduction. Columbus, OH: Pearson, 2011. Placing each educator in historical and cultural context,

Gutek examines the educational ideas of Plato, Quintilian,

Aquinas, Calvin, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Spencer, Montessori, Addams, Dewey, Du Bois, Gandhi, and Mao. Gutek, Gerald L. The Montessori Method: The Origins of an Educational Innovation: Including an Abridged and Annotated Edition of Maria Montessori’s The Montessori Method. Lanham,

MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004. Provides an introductory biography of Maria Montessori and an analysis of her educational method. Johnston, James S. Inquiry and Education: John Dewey and the

Quest for Democracy. Albany: State University of new York

Press, 2006. Examines Dewey’s epistemology in relation to education. Knight, Louise W. Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for

Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Provides an engaging narrative of Jane Addams’s intellectual journal to become an international social, educational, and political theorist and activist. Lilley, Irene M. Friedrich Froebel: A Selection from His Writings. new

York and London: Cambridge University Press, 2010. This reissuing of Lilley’s book provides an excellent introduction and selections to Froebel’s educational philosophy and method. Martin, Jay. The Education of John Dewey. new York: Columbia

University Press, 2002. A thorough discussion of John Dewey’s life and education, with emphasis on how Dewey’s emotional life influenced his philosophy. Monroe, Will S. Comenius: And the Beginning of Educational

Reform. London: Forgotten Books, 2012. A reissuing of

Monroe’s classic work on Comenius. Piaget, Jean. The Child’s Conception of the World: A 20th-Century

Classic of Child Psychology. Translated by Joan and Andrew

Tomlinson. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2007. Piaget’s analysis of how children develop their reasoning powers. Povell, Phyllis. Montessori Comes to America: The Leadership of

Maria Montessori and Nancy McCormick Rambusch. new

York: University Press of America, 2009. Povell’s insightful narrative provides the history of Montessori education in the

United States and analyzes the leadership styles of Montessori and Rambush. Rossatto, Cesar Augusto. Engaging Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Possibility: From Blind to Transformative Optimism. Lanham, MD:

Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005. A teacher-educator provides a cross-cultural analysis of Freire’s theory in light of contemporary trends and issues such as globalization.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile, introduction by Gerald L. Gutek. new York: Barnes and noble, 2005. An edition of Rousseau’s classic work, Emile, published originally in 1762, with an introduction that identifies and examines the book’s key concepts. Tovey, Helen. Bringing the Froebel Approach to Your Early Years

Practice. new York and London: Routledge, 2011. Tovey considers Froebel’s principles and applies them to contemporary early childhood education. Tröhler, Daniel. Pestalozzi and the Educationalization of the

World. new York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Examines how

Pestalozzi’s ideas and methods brought worldwide change to education, schooling, and teaching. Zimmerman, Barry J., and Dale H. Schunk, eds. Educational

Psychology: A Century of Contributions. Mahwah, nJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003. This book, a project of the Educational

Psychology division of the American Psychological Association, contains essays on Piaget and other leading educational psychologists of the twentieth century.

chapter5

INTASC STANdArdS AddreSSed IN ThIS ChApTer

4 Content Knowledge 5 Application of Content 7 Planning for Instruction 8 Instructional Strategies 9 Professional Learning and

Ethical Practice

Historical Development of american eDucation

LeArNING OBJeCTIVeS

5-1 Describe how European ideas about culture, education, and schools shaped education in North America during the colonial period and how these ideas are relevant for contemporary education. 5-2 Assess how the ideas of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, and Noah

Webster shaped American education in the early national period and their relevancy for contemporary education. 5-3 Clarify the ways in which the common school had an impact on the movement toward public education and teacher education. 5-4 Explain how the high school’s rise as the major institution for secondary education completed the American educational ladder. 5-5 Indicate how political, religious, social, and economic developments shaped the

American college and university. 5-6 Assess the policies public schools used to educate a racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse population of students. 5-7 Summarize the history of the controversy over Common Core

Standards.

This chapter was revised by Gerald L. Gutek.

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