About

I am a teacher in an inner-city comprehensive school.

Progressive (definition): Making progress towards better conditions; employing or advocating more enlightened or liberal ideas, new or experimental methods.

The Progressive Teacher Blog is about progressive education in state schools. It takes 1896 – the year John Dewey opened the Laboratory School in Chicago – as the start of progressive education in the modern age.

It celebrates the great pioneers of progressive education, such as:

Rosa Bassett who as headteacher of the County Secondary School in Streatham (London) introduced the Dalton Laboratory Plan during the 1920s;

Stanislav Shatsky who set up the First Experimental Station in the Soviet Union, facing personal danger as Stalin’s reaction set in;

Alex Bloom who, as headteacher of St George’s-in-the-East (a post-war secondary modern in the East End of London), pioneered ‘school study’ in which students debated what they would learn and had learned; and

Deborah Meier who, in 1974, was a founder teacher of Central Park East Elementary School (New York City) – a small school that promoted democratic procedures and used a project-based curriculum.

This blog is not about de-schooling, nor is it about the progressive education provided by independent schools for the wealthy elite.