Spain's greatest modern philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), wrote about many aspects of education including its aims; the education of children, nations, and elites; types of pedagogy; the reform of the university; and the challenges facing educators in an era of "triumphant plebeianism." The article examines all aspects of…

Andrew Monroe [pseud.] (b. 1894) was a Colorado street kid whose acts of truancy and theft landed him before the state's early juvenile courts, and his youth was marked by attempts at escape from reform school. His childhood and youth provide insights into the mechanics of how systems of juvenile corrections operated in the early twentieth…

Fear for the future of democracy in the 1930s and 1940s led university educators to redefine the purpose of general education as preparation for democratic citizenship. This mobilized social scientists to engage in curricular reform and experiment with progressive pedagogical practices in new general education courses. These courses have been…

Around 1940, the Southern Association Study in Secondary Schools and Colleges and the Secondary School Study of the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes implemented cooperative educational experimentation in the American South. This was a progressive education method for improving schools exemplified in the national Eight-Year…

Fannie Fern Andrews, a Boston educator and reformer, started the American School Peace League (ASPL) in 1908 in order to educate schoolchildren in the principles of what she called "world citizenship." Through its curriculum, "A Course in Citizenship," the ASPL taught students about cooperation, tolerance, and the peaceful…

Progressive education swept across Canada in the early to mid-twentieth century, restructuring schools, introducing new courses, and urging teachers to reorient the classroom to the interests and needs of the learner. The women religious who taught in Vancouver's Catholic schools negotiated the revised public school curriculum, determined to…

Progressive Era advocates of spelling reform argued that adopting "simplified" word forms would increase the efficiency of American schools. National education leaders and administrators sustained the movement as they discussed simplified spelling extensively in meetings of the National Education Association and state teachers'…

This article explores how education reformers in California pioneered forms of centralized educational governance between 1850 and 1879. Challenging previous scholarship that has attributed the success of this early educational state to reformer John Swett and New England migrants, this article situates the creation of common schools in California…

This article explores the influence of evolutionary ideas, especially Social Darwinism, on G. Stanley Hall's (1844-1924) educational ideas and major writings on gender and race. Hall formed these progressive ideas as he developed an American Social Darwinist pedagogy, embedded in his efforts to create the discipline of psychology, the science of…

In this paper, the author first cites passages that highlight the key developments and dilemmas of teacher education in Ghana in the 1960s, when the new nation resolved to prepare its largely untrained teaching force in "progressive" methods. Across the decade--and across subject areas--Ghana conducted in-service teacher training to…

In 1927, nursery school educator Lucy Sprague Mitchell heralded Jean Piaget's psychology as of "outstanding interest" and wrote in "Progressive Education" that it should be of "immense service" to psychologists, teachers, and parents. In 1929, psychologist Lois Meek praised Piaget's research in the National Society for the Study of Education's…

They sat in the Cubberley Education Lecture Hall to hear visiting experts. More often they could be found meeting in reduced-size classes, or working on small-group activities. They usually took notes; sometimes they took field trips. They memorized lists and sat for exams, but they also watched films and acted out scenarios. Rather than take…

Responded to a series of criticisms which appeared in the Spring issue of this journal and which claimed that the author had distorted John Dewey's position in educational history. Suggestions for further areas of exploration of the Dewey legacy are made and many quotations from Dewey's works are included. (Author/DB)

The progressive stance of Soviet education in the 1920's, reflecting the writings of Dewey, Parkhurst, and Montessori, is related to the political and economic expediencies dictated by Bolshevism. (JH)

Responded to four articles in a recent issue of the journal which defended John Dewey against some of the criticisms of revisionist historians. Claiming to be neither an historian not a revisionist as these articles suggested, the author praised Dewey's spirit of open inquiry and recommended this same spirit to liberal scholars in their research.…