“Traditional” vs. “Progressive” Education: Time for New Labels?

It’s not politics. The question is how people really learn.

The hot debates in education are not a simple question of “what works.” After all, what are we working towards? Most disagreement stems from a fundamental difference in ideology.

It’s the difference between what’s known as traditional education:

• There is an important set of core knowledge to be taught. You can’t very well think critically or be creative in a discipline without the right discipline-specific knowledge. So this needs to stick in learners’ long-term memory, as shown by recall performance on tests.
• This knowledge helps learners gain cultural capital, lays foundations for more advanced learning, shows them the great intellectual accomplishments of humanity, and passes down a great tradition.
• The way to teach them is through explicit instruction from a knowledgeable instructor in a quiet, controlled learning environment.
• Individuals are not dramatically different in how they learn. The far ends of the ability bell curve have different needs, but for typical learners, there is such a thing as “best” knowledge and “best” methods for the greatest benefit.

…and progressive education:

• There is little need for “facts” in long-term memory; these days, you can look things up in the moment. So we need to build transferable skills: creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving.
• These skills help learners thrive in an ever-changing world of information, equip them for a variety of jobs that may not exist yet, and empower them to build new things and explore their passions.
• The way to teach these skills is through student-centered activities involving active discovery and creation. The traditional lecture method encourages passive learning and stifles independent thought.
• Individuals learn best when they are personally engaged, which looks different for everyone. So they should get opportunities to focus on content and methods they prefer.

Neither approach is limited to any subject, age range, or type of school. This debate shapes everything from homeschooling young children to designing a university course. And it’s hard to take a middle ground here. If you hold one belief from either of these camps, it’s hard not to hold all the others, in bold contradiction of what the other camp believes.

So what divides supporters of “traditional education” from supporters of “progressive education”? Is this a political split?

Education sure does seem polarized these days, with all those sensational news stories of children being taught racism and gender theory, met with conservative backlash. But teaching progressive sociopolitical ideology is not what we mean when we refer to progressive educational ideology.

In fact, people support the same educational views for different political reasons!

To political progressives, progressive education rejects old prejudices about what deserves to be learned; no longer is the canon of “dead white men” held up as the standard. Conservatives, on the other hand, support it as a protective measure against indoctrination; rather than teaching “what to think” (i.e. the liberal narrative of the day), a proper education teaches “how to think.”

And traditional education can promote conservative values. That’s the aim of Michaela Community School, with its emphasis on classic knowledge and national identity. But it can also be a modern tool against inequality — giving everyone a similar playing field, offering disadvantaged learners the cultural literacy that otherwise would’ve been inaccessible to them — hence why this self-proclaimed Marxist educator puts it into practice.

Just hearing the progressive and traditional, it can be hard to look past the divisive political connotations. With this in mind, perhaps it’s time for new labels that express the real divide.

I propose renaming “traditional education” to knowledge-centered education and “progressive education” to activity-centered education.

In activity-centered education, what matters is what kinds of cognitive tasks learners are doing (planning, exploring, thinking critically, exercising creativity), because these valuable skills supposedly transfer to different domains of knowledge.

In knowledge-centered education, what matters is what information learners are remembering, because this valuable knowledge supposedly enables higher skills.

(And yes, procedural knowledge counts as knowledge. In a “hands-on” subject, the knowledge-centered approach is to pass on “how to do it” and solidify this through repetition. With the activity-driven approach, getting to try it, figure it out, and practice independence throughout the learning process is the greater goal.)

This disagreement can’t just be a matter of personal taste — what are the results? Which approach is more realistic, actually working in practice and not just in theory? Which approach can be more reliably expected to bring benefits that last? These questions must have an answer in the real world.

Check out my other articles, and you’ll see what I believe it is.