MartinCothran

Author: Traditional Logic, Classical Rhetoric. Editor: Classical Teacher magazine. Provost: Memoria College. Podcast: Classical, Et Cetera. Memoria Press

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

@MemoriaCollege I'll be speaking at this conference.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Progressivist Influence on American Education Book #2: Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools (1953), by Arthur Bestor. Pulitzer Prize-winning Columbia University educational historian Lawrence Cremin called Bestor the progressives worst enemy.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Here are the books you need to read to be informed on what is and has gone on in American schools, under Progressivism: #1: Transformation of the School, by Lawrence Cremin. Cremin was considered the dean of educational historians. A Columbia U. Professor who won the Pulitzer.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

And reason for this misconception, and you see it over and over again, is that are simply unfamiliar with the easy-to-access literature on this. They just don't know it, and are not interested in knowing it because it would explode all of their comfortable progressivist myths.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

To say opponents of educational progressivism are guilty of employing binaries is quite laughable. "traditional vs. modern", "verbal vs. hands-on", "premature vs. developmentally appropriate", "fragmentary vs integrated", "boring vs. interesting", "lockstep vs. individualized". Progressives invented the educational binary.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

To say opponents of educational progressivism are guilty of employing binaries is quite laughable. "traditional vs. modern", "verbal vs. hands-on", "premature vs. developmentally appropriate", "fragmentary vs integrated", "boring vs. interesting", "lockstep vs. individualized". Progressives invented the educational binary.

[Dana Palubiak @DanaPalubiak]

@LJ198767 @mathillustrated @MartinCothran They need the binary. Without it, there's no villain, no crusade, no podcast episodes or no book deals. 'It's complicated' doesn't sell. 'Malpractice' does. But the veterans know the truth. Teaching isn't a war. It's a thousand small decisions. And they've never made a single one

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Progressivism certainly existed before the 20s. But that has little to do with the fact that it wasn't widely implemented until the 20s. And since then it has certainly it has existed across decades: in the teacher's colleges, where ideology thrives and intellectual standards are in the toilet.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Progressive ed first came out in the 1920s, then again in the mid-40s and early 50s ("Life Adjustment Education"), then again in late-60s, early-70s (open classrooms, New Math), then again in the early-90s ("Outcomes-based Education), then again in 2010 with Common Core.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

@FlashToso So we're just supposed to think that bad ideas don't have consequences? We know the bad ideas; we know where they came from. The locals (public schools officials) just followed like sheep.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

@FlashToso No.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

When I went for my walk in our neighborhood yesterday, there was a great surprise, one I never had when I was growing up in southern California, but which my children and grandchildren have been graced with here in Kentucky every year about this time: the fireflies were out.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

"Remarkably, the disappointments of reform to date have not led education experts to question the Romantic principles on which their proposals are based, but rather, to attack the messenger that is bringing the bad news—standardized tests."—E. D. Hirsch, Jr., The Schools We Need

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

@mathillustrated It's documented in that book on your shelf in the picture you posted that you haven't read yet.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

That's a general analogy. I'm not implying that some author I disagree with is engaging in caricatures with no actual examples.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Athletics is a great metaphor for education. Unfortunately, it's often not taken far enough. The fact is that no coach (at least not one who wants to be successful) would dare run a sports program the way many romanticist educational theorists try to run a school.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Each time the Progressive Education monster returns, it is eventually driven back to its lair by and parents and teachers with torches and pitchforks, then, like the monster in the movie It, it goes into hibernation, and comes out again every 25 years.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Progressive ed first came out in the 1920s, then again in the mid-40s and early 50s ("Life Adjustment Education"), then again in late-60s, early-70s (open classrooms, New Math), then again in the early-90s ("Outcomes-based Education), then again in 2010 with Common Core.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

@mathillustrated You realize this was issued after the first round of progressive reforms in the 1920s, right? You would know this if you had cracked open that Hirsch book on your shelf you haven't read yet.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Looks unread to me.

[Ralph Pantozzi @mathillustrated]

@MartinCothran I’ll take your insincere bait. 😇

I think my copy of “What Your Fifth grader Needs to Know” is in a box in the attic.

Next you’ll accuse me of doctoring the photo?

Thanks, it’s been fun! 🤩

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

@mathillustrated I don't think you actually have the book.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Here are the books you need to read to be informed on what is and has gone on in American schools, under Progressivism: #1: Transformation of the School, by Lawrence Cremin. Cremin was considered the dean of educational historians. A Columbia U. Professor who won the Pulitzer.

[Ralph Pantozzi @mathillustrated]

@MartinCothran @JayKloppenberg vague innuendo:

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

"Most current reforms are repetitions or rephrasings of long failed Romantic, anti-knowledge proposals that emanated from Teachers College, Columbia University in the teens, twenties, and thirties of this (the 20th centuries)."—E. D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need, p. 2

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

@mathillustrated I just used an analogy which is intentionally and necessarily general. You implied that there were specific factual caricatures Hirsch engaged in, but you couldn't name any.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

@mathillustrated @JayKloppenberg I would suggest actually reading Hirsch and the other authors who have chronicled the progressivist nonsense before you engage in vague innuendo.