The History of Education

The initial popularity of Maria Montessori’s educational philosophy in the US resonated with the Emersonian philosophy of education and intersected, albeit only for a few years, with the societal views of the Progressive elites of the day.

When Maria Montessori's works first arrived in the US, interpretations varied significantly, and evaluations ranged from adulation to skepticism. Here we look at a representative sample.

In Part I of this series, we discussed the sudden resurgence of Montessori education in Massachusetts between 1950 and the early 1980s, and the nature of its appeal. In this piece, we explore the reasons for renewed American interest in Montessori during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The appeal of Montessori’s philosophy in America among both many “child-centered” progressives and those attached to the northern educational tradition unleashed diverse individual potential in the face of alternative philosophies perceived as impersonal or dehumanizing.

Montessori transcends the categories of the American education debate. An examination of how American progressive educators interfaced with her pedagogy reveals much about the wider conversations surrounding progressive education itself.

Montessori's glass classroom at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition: the story, and its significance for progress in education.

Presenting at the Discovering the Child Global Conference in June 2021, Dr. Matt Bateman discusses the historical nature of work in education and the dichotomy between the approaches taken in Classical and Progressive education, including Maria Montessori's unique contribution in this field: the recognition of the inextricable link between these two elements.

The emergence of a more codified education is coeval with the emergence of skepticism about the value of education. These passages are early indicators of this skepticism, stretching back into the 6th century BCE.

The emergence of education in Ancient Greece occurred against the backdrop of a tutelage culture: one-on-one instruction delivered by an expert. These passages and analyses indicate some key features of this tutelage.

"Since all from the beginning have learned from Homer", wrote Xenophanes. Homer and Hesiod were constants in Greece, and every iota of educational value was eked out of them—even as they were criticized.

Sparta's education system was unlike that of any other city in Ancient Greece: it was public, organized around military virtue, and totalitarian. The first in a series, looking specifically at passages from Tyrtaeus and Xenophon.

In part two of our Sparta series, we continue to explore Spartan education, this time looking at the evidence from Plutarch and the concerns and arguments of Sparta’s critics including the excesses that even its defenders could not approve of or ignore completely.

In these passages, we examine excerpts from several of Plato’s most important early dialogues, which concern the topic of whether and by whom virtue can be taught.

Plato is the most influential philosopher in the entire Western tradition, or else he shares this distinction with his own student, Aristotle. Plato was the first Greek thinker we know of to have a systematic philosophy of education. In this series, we will explore Plato's educational philosophy as presented in the Republic, beginning with his account of the ideal education of the military class.

In part two of our exploration of education in Plato’s Republic, we continue to see Plato's Socrates develop the educational regimen of the guardians, the military-police class of his ideal city, the “Kallipolis”. In this part of our series on Plato’s Republic, I will discuss Socrates’ approach to the musical education of the Kallipolis’ Guardian class.

As we’ve seen in the preceding parts of this series on education in Plato’s Republic, Greek education at this time largely consisted of three elements: grammatikē (grammar), musikē (music), and gymnastikē (gymnastics). After covering musikē extensively in Part 2, and we now move on to gymnastikē, the education of the body. Although given fairly short shrift when compared to the large amount of material dedicated to music, the proposed physical education of the Kallipolis' Guardian class is nonetheless extensive and planned out in detail.

Dr. Jason Rheins explores a section of the Hermeneumata, and what it tells us about the structure of the first and second stages of Hellenistic and Roman education: basic literacy and language arts or “grammar”, respectively.

For both The Founding Fathers and Maria Montessori, the conception of the human being inspired hope for the future.

This piece provides evidence for a dynamic to which I have alluded in other pieces: the hostility many white southerners felt towards the New England tradition, the only well-developed educational tradition in American education at the time, and the problems this posed for the reformers who built the modern public school system.

In the post-Civil War North, education was first and foremost, a matter of community security, in that it made sure every citizen knew the moral and political principles under which the community operated—and that he or she was able to intelligently defend them.

Over the course of his career, the way Lincoln talked about education changed from an emphasis on understanding the values of one’s community to an emphasis on securing one’s autonomy, in both judgment and action, which he seemed to think would result in individuals rising to a defense of community values.

Over time, Abraham Lincoln's view of education developed from an emphasis on understanding the values of one’s community to an emphasis on securing one’s autonomy, in both judgment and action, which he seemed to think would result in individuals rising to a defense of community values.

A quintessential American autodidact and devoted follower of the "Yankee" educational model, Frederick Douglass had strong convictions about the unique value of formal education.

Educating the Citizens of the World’s Only Democratic Republic: An examination of a number of overlapping currents in the evolution of education in 19th century America: Emerson, Jacksonian Democracy, the emergence of secondary education, progressive education, and more.

The baffling lack of substantive content in Dewey’s writings about education is often remarked upon. “What did he want?” people wonder. “No wonder his followers lost the plot.”

This series aims to explore whether progressive education, as envisioned by most American educators, implies a moral foundation, and, if so, what it would look like in practice. We begin with an explanation of American progressive education's philosophical origins, starting with a focus on Dewey's writings and how they have been interpreted.

This series will explore the intellectual environment of John Dewey, and show that there have been many more than two “warring factions” at play in the history of American education. In this first installment, I explain that Dewey played a similar role in the early 20th century to what Emerson played in the mid-19th century: a philosopher of American democracy.

The media had become an entirely different animal by the end of World War I—one we’re all too familiar with today. The success of centralized media manipulation during the war, despite the more benign and promising aspects of mass media technology, had shaken Dewey up. It wasn’t just that the people at the top could be up to no good, or that the complexity and curation of the information environment made a mockery of self-government, but that they’d noticed it was destroying character and social interaction in unexpected, largely unnoticed ways.

Dewey gave a hostile and intentionally misleading portrait of traditional/classical education, seemingly determined to bury it for good. A closer look reveals that this bad faith engagement with the history of American education stemmed from more than arrogance, utopianism, or a grand plan of ideological indoctrination. While Dewey’s political and social wisdom is dubious on many points, he had given serious thought to intellectual history, and, at least in his later life, this dismissive attitude towards the past was connected to insightful and prescient fears about the future of humanity.

This series aims to explore whether progressive education, as envisioned by most American educators, implies a moral foundation, and, if so, what it would look like in practice. We begin with an explanation of American progressive education's philosophical origins, starting with a focus on Dewey's writings and how they have been interpreted.

Many of Dewey's educational concerns and theories centered on how to maintain what he understood to be the best and defining contributions of American life thus far: (democracy and debate), and the way they promoted creativity, tolerance, collaboration, intellectual development, and other drivers of human progress and fulfillment.

Known as a teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer, Alcott, who went by his middle name Bronson, was brilliant and charismatic. He was also chronically prone to utopian schemes, as satirized by one of his daughters, the novelist Louisa May Alcott. From young adulthood until his death in 1888, Alcott made his influence felt in the American intellectual and education reform scene.

Between 1830 and 1860, the philosophy underlying Massachusetts' educational system underwent a noticeable change. This piece explores three examples that illustrate how the educational tradition in Massachusetts developed a greater focus on democracy and the full expression of individuals' potential.

A key enabler of any public education system is a standardized, scalable method for training teachers. Teacher training colleges, originally called "normal schools", were introduced in America in the mid 19th century.

The initial popularity of Maria Montessori’s educational philosophy in the US resonated with the Emersonian philosophy of education and intersected, albeit only for a few years, with the societal views of the Progressive elites of the day.

Montessori transcends the categories of the American education debate. An examination of how American progressive educators interfaced with her pedagogy reveals much about the wider conversations surrounding progressive education itself.

When Maria Montessori's works first arrived in the US, interpretations varied significantly, and evaluations ranged from adulation to skepticism. Here we look at a representative sample.

The lack of an entrenched and coherent educational tradition in the post-Civil War south, and southerners’ hostility to the Yankee tradition, was a boon to those interested in experimenting with various forms of progressive education. In some cases, these experiments retained the basic form of a classical republican education, but mixed it with progressivism rather than the Yankee’s moralistic literary culture.

Progressive-Era education reformers tended to be insensitive to the fact that most Americans viewed formal education and societal advancement primarily in connection with political equality and the ability of all individuals to reach their potential. A good illustration of this problem can be seen in Booker T. Washington’s remarks on the education of African-Americans in the first years of the twentieth century, a period which marked the mid-point of the Progressive-Era reforms and related debates.

The appeal of Montessori’s philosophy in America among both many “child-centered” progressives and those attached to the northern educational tradition unleashed diverse individual potential in the face of alternative philosophies perceived as impersonal or dehumanizing.

As famous as the 1983 report, A Nation At Risk has become, Ronald Reagan’s personal vision of education seems to have had little room for federal education policy or innovation of any kind.

In Part I of this series, we discussed the sudden resurgence of Montessori education in Massachusetts between 1950 and the early 1980s, and the nature of its appeal. In this piece, we explore the reasons for renewed American interest in Montessori during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Americans are often accused of having excessively high expectations about what education can accomplish. While the nature of their expectations has varied widely, this has been a consistent complaint from both parents and would-be reformers since at least the early 20th century. Why?