Resources and Links Related to Traditional School
Our current education system dates back to the Industrial Revolution. At the time, our country needed to prepare its agricultural workers for factory jobs. So we built a school system that catered to the mass production mentality. This education system was efficient and measurable, and it churned out students who were ready to face the demands of our nation's new economy.
In today's age of instant information, the Industrial Revolution is a distant memory. So why is it that we still educate our students as if preparing them for a life of machine and assembly line work? Teaching by rote and following rigid academic agendas doesn't cut it anymore. To say our scholastic curriculum is outmoded is putting it nicely.
What follows are links to resources and additional information about Traditional School and Pedagogy.
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Origins of Compulsory School
The Development of Compulsory Education: Perhaps some people might feel that identification of compulsory education with tyranny could not be applicable to a free country such as the United States. On the contrary, the spirit and record of compulsory education in America point to very similar dangers.
Compulsory Education Laws - the dialog reopens: Even as the right to educate one’s children at home has become more established over the past 20 years, the right of parents to determine when their children are ready begin or finish formal education has steadily eroded. Minimum compulsory education ages have been falling and maximum compulsory ages have been rising.
The Principle and Practice of Compulsion in Education: The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides the political and moral support for the use of compulsion in education. Article 26 states that: 'Elementary education shall be compulsory.' Furthermore in April 2000, 1,100 delegates from 164 countries, reaffirmed their commitment to Education For All at the World Education Forum in Dakar, by adopting the Dakar Framework for Action – including the ambitious goal of: ‘free and compulsory education of good quality for all by 2015.’
Education Theory
John Dewey
Arguably the most influential thinker on education in the twentieth century, Dewey's contribution lies along several fronts. His attention to experience and reflection, democracy and community, and to environments for learning have been seminal.
500 Word Summary of Dewey’s “Experience & Education”
According to Dewey good education should have both a societal purpose and purpose for the individual student. For Dewey, the long-term matters, but so does the short-term quality of an educational experience. Educators are responsible, therefore, for providing students with experiences that are immediately valuable and which better enable the students to contribute to society.
Pedagogy
Pedagogy (IPA: /ˈpɛdəgoʊdʒi/), or paedagogy: the art or science of being a teacher. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction.[1] The word comes from the Ancient Greek παιδαγωγέω (paidagōgeō; from παίς:child and άγω:lead; literally, "to lead the child”). In Ancient Greece, παιδαγωγός was (usually) a slave who supervised the education of his master’s son (girls were not publicly educated). This involved taking him to school (διδασκαλείον) or a gym (γυμνάσιον), looking after him and carrying his equipment (e.g. musical instruments).[2]
