Alex Bloom was headteacher at St George’s-in-the-East school (Stepney, London) for 10 years in the immediate aftermath of World War II. In that time, he created a beacon of progressive education in the state sector, insisting that “a child can’t grow up in an atmosphere of fear.” As the Daily Mirror reported in 1951, the school did not have “formal lessons in the accepted sense, tests or competitions, prizes for achievement, penalties for failure, imposed punishment, division of children into ‘bright’ or ‘dull’ classes.” Continue reading “Alex Bloom’s progressive school community”
Category: Educators
Donalda Dickie and the Enterprise
Dr Donalda Dickie was involved in devising and implementing a progressive model of education for state schools in Alberta (Canada) in the 1930s and 1940s. She led system-wide change around the concept of the enterprise, which she defined as “a series of purposeful activities arising out of the pupils’ needs and interests and revolving about one central theme.” The Enterprise emphasised social learning that underpinned the development of a sound mental health, an understanding of knowledge linked to community life, and an ability to reason through the scientific method. Continue reading “Donalda Dickie and the Enterprise”
Dare the School Build a New Social Order?
In 1932, George Counts took on the leaders of the Progressive Movement of his day in a pamphlet called Dare the School Build a New Social Order? He counter-poses the individualistic aims of US progressives to the collective solutions required in economic crisis. In a vision of the ‘American dream’ that might jar for its overt nationalism, Counts resolutely places the agency of teachers and students at the heart of building a new social order in which the citizens control ‘the machine’ of industrialism. Continue reading “Dare the School Build a New Social Order?”
Part 3 – Shatsky (1922) ‘Which comes first: the children or the school?’
Extracts from Stanislav Shatsky, A Teacher’s Experience (Progress Publishers, 1981) Continue reading “Part 3 – Shatsky (1922) ‘Which comes first: the children or the school?’”
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