Classical versus Progressive Education

Classical education seems to be a topic of interest to many people in the last decade or so. Try as I might, I cannot get a handle on what it is, though. Some say classical education is about the content of the curriculum. Some say it's about the methodology of teaching. Some say it's about teaching subjects such as Latin and logic and rhetoric. The one evaluation I heard consistently was that classical education is NOT progressive education.

Even this, though, I am beginning to wonder about. The self-proclaimed goals and methods of progressive educators seem to me to have a lot of similarities to the self-proclaimed goals and methods of classical educators.

Both camps say they value

• critical thinking and problem solving,
• de-emphasizing textbooks and instead using other resources,
• educating children who will grow up to be of service to the neighbor,
• life-long learning,
• seeing the interconnectedness of academic subjects, and
• evaluation methods that do not depend on standard testing procedures.

Even in some of the areas of greater difference, I still see similarities.

• Progressive educators greatly value learning by doing, hands-on projects, and experience. Most classical educators recognize that much book-learning is cemented in the mind by projects or experiments or experiences.
• Progressive educators value understanding over rote memory. Classical educators see great value in rote learning, but not for its own sake. Classical educators want children to use their rote learning to grow in understanding, to be able to reason with the information they have memorized.
• Some classical educators see great value in doing unit studies and learning-through-literature, connecting different academic subjects in the one project or one book. Progressive educators often present information in integrated ways such as unit studies.

There are differences. Progressive education puts more value on group work than does classical education. Progressive education will often set aside rote work altogether instead of ensuring that rote work is explained and understood and used later. Progressive education is more concerned with figuring out what skills and information will be necessary and practical in the future, and concentrates on imparting those, whereas classical education spends more time on reading the great books from ages past.

What's hard to take seriously is when each side accuses the other of the same things. Some say that we should all do classical education so that our children will learn to think critically; progressive educators accuse classical educators of failing to teach critical thinking. Progressive educators throw stones at classical educators for teaching separate academic subjects so that the children never learn the interconnectedness of it all; classical educators promote their view by insisting that children need to see how the subjects interrelate instead of studying many disjointed topics. Sometimes the two sides sound more alike than different. But there is a difference. What I can't figure out is just those differences are.

If the same thing is done in two classrooms, but done for different reasons, arising out of different philosophies, will one way be right and the other wrong? Will those philosophies show through in hard-to-pin-down ways?

What I can't take seriously is "Listen to my side because we value thus-and-such" while the opposing philosophy is saying the exact same thing. Surely there must be a way to get down to what the real differences are, and how they play out, and how the different aspects mesh or conflict with Christian doctrine. (The unfortunate thing is that when I ask these questions, the conversation usually resorts to name-calling, guilt by association, or knocking down straw men. This is not attractive amongst those who say they value teaching logic.)