.4 Progressivism

Now, in marked contrast to the perennialists, we have the Progressivists. Progressivism is at the other end of the scale from Perennialists. The Progressivists say that nature is ever changing. Just when you think you understand nature, nature is going to turn around and play a trick on you and change. Now, can you imagine two people in the same world, one believes that nature never changes and the other believes nature always changes, so obviously they are going to go about life in a very different way. Progressivists say we learn from problem solving and that we put ourselves in a context of problem solving which is what makes the world go around. We learn how to learn. The Perennialists would say the really important thing is what we learn. The Progressivist would say the most important thing is learning how to learn. And I (Dwight Allen) would say that what we learn and how we learn are both important.

So we learn from problem solving. Education begins with the student. In the world of the perennialist, education begins with the mind. Progressivists would say that learning begins and education begins with the student. The perennialist would say that the school is the way it is and the Progressivist says the schools should be democratic. If we learn that schools should be democratic, if we believe that students should have input in the way schools are organized, that is a very different teacher than the teacher who believes that it is their responsibility to know it all and to get it all organized and just to give it to you - the student. One of the things that is very interesting about distance education, about having this on line format, this looks like it is all set in stone. We have all the lectures organized, they're on line. So it is really hard in this format to give you the impression - which is what I believe - that everything is open, that everything is subject to change. Think of these on line lectures as the markers as we go along, these are the guideposts. We, teachers and students remain free to develop them and change them as we see fit.

	How would a perenialist approach the teaching of multiplication tables to a child?
			Answer Here