Why do progressive educators deny being progressive?

Progressive educators face regular attacks on social media. Comments are often aggressive and malicious, with traditionalists playing to the mob mentality of their followers by jeering at progressive ideas. This blog has documented the caricatures with which traditionalists hope to score cheap points in on-line ‘debate’. We expect nothing less. Traditionalists can only be defensive about regurgitating their sterile, discredited and moribund prescriptions for education.

What is more puzzling is the way progressives respond to the attacks by denying they are progressive. In an exchange on twitter, a seeming progressive (who uses the handle @imagineinquiry) rejected the term. He was answering a traditionalist’s question that contained, we note, a typical personal provocation.

The argument runs as follows: The traditionalists have taken over and defined the term ‘progressive’. They construct a straw man out of it for their own purposes. Consequently, the term has been debased and serves now only as a term of abuse. If we associate ourselves with the term, we are accepting, and even condoning, their definition.

In the current educational climate in the UK, it is true that there are risks to calling yourself ‘progressive’. This blog continues to remain anonymous because standing against the reactionary government and, in particular, the arch-traditionalist Schools Minister can be dangerous. A former Secretary of State for Education, for example, criticised the resources a history teacher had posted on-line. Progressive teachers, as state employees, might come under pressure to moderate their views (at least in the classroom and on public blogs) and educational consultants face losing contracts with state schools. In such circumstances, the easiest approach is to fold and deny being progressive.

However, denial means accepting defeat in the long-running debate about educational ideas. That the debate has endured for over 120 years – since Dewey began to define modern progressivism in the 1890s – is testament to the ground-breaking work of progressive educationalists (such as those to which this blog is dedicated). Just because there is currently a noisy minority of traditionalists emboldened by government patronage does not mean we should deny our heritage.

Rather than dissociate ourselves from the rich tradition of progressivism, we should be studying our roots and re-evaluating our mission. We should appraise what ‘progressive’ has meant in different times and build upon that understanding to develop a conception of the term relevant for our context. Strengthened by our knowledge of the genesis of progressive ideas in education, we can enter contemporary discussions by proudly declaring ourselves to be PROGRESSIVE.