Social Efficiency and the New Nationalism

Extract

C. A. Bower's recent article “The Ideologies of Progresive Education” (H.E.Q., Winter 1967) was a much needed effort to clarify some of the muddied waters flowing from various interpretations of Cremin's The Transformation of the School. Bowers was quite right in distinguishing the social reconstructionists from the other educators Cremin lumped together as progressives. Ironically the one possible flaw in Bowers's argument might have been caused by his reliance upon Cremin's interpretation of the early phases of progressive education. Bowers's basic thesis was that the social reconstructionist educators of the nineteen-thirties represented a new breed of progressive educators. Bowers argued that previous to the nineteen-thirties progressive politicans and educators set as their goal the emancipation of the individual. During the nineteen-thirties social reconstructions rejected this objective for an education that would train the individual to work harmoniously in a collective society. Now the one possible error in this argument lies in calling this a new form of progressivism and progressive education.