Progressive education is a pedagogical movement that began in the late nineteenth century and has persisted in various forms to the present. In Europe, progressive education took the form of the New Education Movement. The term progressive was engaged to distinguish this education from the traditional curricula of the 19th century, which was rooted in classical preparation for the university and strongly differentiated by social class. By contrast, progressive education finds its roots in modern experience. Most progressive education programs have these qualities in common:
Educational perennialism also infrequently referred to as Universal Curriculum is a normative educational philosophy. Perennialists believe that one should teach the things that are of everlasting pertinence to all people everywhere, and that the emphasis should be on principles, not facts. Since people are human, one should teach first about humans, rather than machines or techniques, and about liberal, rather than vocational, topics.
Education in the United States is provided in public, private, and home schools. State governments set overall educational standards, often mandate standardized tests for K–12 public school systems and supervise, usually through a board of regents, state colleges, and universities. The bulk of the $1.3 trillion in funding comes from state and local governments, with federal funding accounting for only about $200 billion. Private schools are free to determine their own curriculum and staffing policies, with voluntary accreditation available through independent regional accreditation authorities, although some state regulation can apply.
Science education is the teaching and learning of science to non-scientists, such as school children, college students, or adults within the general public. The field of science education includes work in science content, science process, some social science, and some teaching pedagogy. The standards for science education provide expectations for the development of understanding for students through the entire course of their K-12 education and beyond. The traditional subjects included in the standards are physical, life, earth, space, and human sciences.
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to form a judgment. The subject is complex; several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, and unbiased analysis or evaluation of factual evidence. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities as well as a commitment to overcome native egocentrism and sociocentrism.
In contemporary education, mathematics education is the practice of teaching and learning mathematics, along with the associated scholarly research.
In education, a curriculum is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experiences in terms of the educator's or school's instructional goals. A curriculum may incorporate the planned interaction of pupils with instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the attainment of educational objectives. Curricula are split into several categories: the explicit, the implicit, the excluded, and the extracurricular.
Indoctrination is the process of inculcating a person with ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or professional methodologies.
Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary intellectual and social movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race and law in the United States and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice. For example, the CRT conceptual framework is one way to study how and why US courts give more lenient punishments to drug dealers from some races than to drug dealers of other races.
Medical education is education related to the practice of being a medical practitioner, including the initial training to become a physician and additional training thereafter.
A liberal education is a system or course of education suitable for the cultivation of a free human being. It is based on the medieval concept of the liberal arts or, more commonly now, the liberalism of the Age of Enlightenment. It has been described as "a philosophy of education that empowers individuals with broad knowledge and transferable skills, and a stronger sense of values, ethics, and civic engagement ... characterized by challenging encounters with important issues, and more a way of studying than a specific course or field of study" by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Usually global and pluralistic in scope, it can include a general education curriculum which provides broad exposure to multiple disciplines and learning strategies in addition to in-depth study in at least one academic area.
Education sciences or education theory seek to describe, understand, and prescribe education policy and practice. Education sciences include many topics, such as pedagogy, andragogy, curriculum, learning, and education policy, organization and leadership. Educational thought is informed by many disciplines, such as history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology.
Multicultural education is a set of educational strategies developed to provide students with knowledge about the histories, cultures, and contributions of diverse groups. It draws on insights from multiple fields, including ethnic studies and women studies, and reinterprets content from related academic disciplines. It is a way of teaching that promotes the principles of inclusion, diversity, democracy, skill acquisition, inquiry, critical thought, multiple perspectives, and self-reflection. One study found these strategies to be effective in promoting educational achievements among immigrant students.
The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is an American non-profit politically conservative advocacy group, with a particular interest in education. It opposes a perceived political correctness on college campuses and supports a return to mid-20th-century curricular and scholarship norms, and an increase in conservative representation in faculty.
Feminist pedagogy is a pedagogical framework grounded in feminist theory. It embraces a set of epistemological theories, teaching strategies, approaches to content, classroom practices, and teacher-student relationships. Feminist pedagogy, along with other kinds of progressive and critical pedagogy, considers knowledge to be socially constructed.
The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907-1981 is a 1993 nonfiction book by Jeffrey Mirel, published by the University of Michigan Press. It discusses the rise and decline of Detroit Public Schools (DPS) in the 20th century, with the book's discussion focusing on the 1920s, the zenith of DPS, through the 1980s. Mirel argued that the Great Depression, various trends related to racial tensions stemming from the Civil Rights Movement, the development of new suburbia, and other factors were primarily responsible for the decline of DPS; the conflicts between blacks and whites and between labor and management eroded the consensus reached during the Progressive Era that schools should receive ample financing. They were forces that a school superintendent or a school board would not be able to overcome.
The Ferrer school was an early 20th century libertarian school inspired by the anarchist pedagogy of Francisco Ferrer. He was a proponent of rationalist, secular education that emphasized reason, dignity, self-reliance, and scientific observation, as opposed to the ecclesiastical and dogmatic standard Spanish curriculum of the period. Ferrer's teachings followed in a tradition of rationalist and romantic education philosophy, and 19th century extragovernment, secular Spanish schools. He was particularly influenced by Paul Robin's orphanage at Cempuis.
Charter Schools and Their Enemies is a 2020 book by American economist, social theorist and author Thomas Sowell, in which he compares the educational outcomes of school children educated at charter schools with those at conventional public schools. He argues that charter schools on the whole do significantly better in terms of educational outcomes than conventional schools.
Throughout the history of the United States, various topics have been censored and banned in education, including teaching about evolution, racism, sexism, sex education, and LGBTQ+ topics. Due to the federal system of the country delegating states much of the responsibility to administer public education, it is often state governments that have enacted such policies.
