Introduction: the rise and fall of progressive education?
Introduction: the rise and fall of progressive education?
The introduction argues that ideas about both childhood and adolescence were transformed in English and Welsh schools after WWII. Covering the period 1918 to 1979, this book will show that by putting childhood at the centre of the history of education, we can challenge the stories we tell about how and why schooling itself changed. It has been suggested that the dominance of ‘progressive’ education after 1945 led to a backlash against permissive attitudes to pupils in both Western Europe and the United States. But British child-centred education, in alliance with developmental psychology, actually shaped a more restrictive and pessimistic image of childhood. By considering the faultlines within the movement that has been called ‘progressive’ or ‘child-centred’ education, we can more clearly assess its impact on concepts of childhood and youth.
Keywords: Childhood, Adolescence, Education, Progressive, Psychology
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