could one classify E. L. Thorndike as a progressive educator?

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In her book Left Back Diane Ravitch classifies E. L. Throndike as a leader in progressive education. Is there any basis for this classification?

-- Vernon C. Hall (vchall@pinehurst.net), March 17, 2001

Answers

If you haven't seen it already, you might be interested in reading the chapter on E.L. Thorndike by his son, Robert, in _Portraits of Pioneers of Psychology_ (vol. 1, G.A. Kimble, M. Wertheimer, C.L. White, Eds., APA Press, 1991).

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), March 17, 2001.

Hi Vernon, yes there is. You'll find in your research he was chair of Teacher's College, Columbia University which was a big center for the progressive movement, that is in education, and their business was to train teachers which they did a very good job at. The progressive movement is a broad and kind of vague topic that you may have to approach obliquely. The folks associated with this movement were real big on social research, don't overlook that. Best, David

-- david clark (doclark@yorku.ca), March 17, 2001.

In reply to what are the defining features of progressive ed. Hi Vernon, I guess the defining features of pro. ed. as a subset of the progressive movement is social reform/engineering through empirical research. I don't know why but I've never seen the word progressive movement in a psych history book. Go figure. Most early child psych clinics (read developmental psych) are direct products of the people driving the progressive movement though their civic donations via time and money. Progressives are really focused on forming and reforming kids (think Dickens and Tiny Tim). Dewey remember ends up at Columbia, and he is championing the experimental method for social reform and using schools towards this end. Thorndike is carring it out. His students from Teacher's College will be the van gaurd. Thorndike is one of those responsible for killing the classical education (don't forget he is working hand in hand with Woodworth who is head of psych at Columbia, and they are both working with Cattel who runs the whole show). There was that research carried out throughout the NY school system proving experimentally that the study of Latin did little except to make a person better at Latin. So not to long before thesee folks a college class would have been standing up in front of your cohorts reciting from a Greek text, and this would make you more virtuous. Not long after these progressive folks people are listening to lectures, writing term papers and hearing professors give their original thoughts on subjects. I don't know what the definitive list of progressive features are in ed. but it is going to include social change through the education system, and (very important) folks like teachers and psychologists and social workers are going to be in data collecting mode and writing all kinds of reports and this information they are collecting will be then used to persuade goverment to change this or that or spend money here or there.

Now, as far as specifics of Thorndike's specific theory of learning and how it was applied in the classroom I don't know. I think one of his books in How People Learn, there you'll find his assult on frequency and recentcy. I imagine he is going to be arguing for feedback, something which many teachers still don't understand enough about.

Hope this helps and doesn't confuse too much. Best, David

-- david clark (doclark@yorku.ca), March 18, 2001.


I don't think psychology can be qualified as 'progressive' notwithstanding some radical variants. Psychology and the art of 'knowing' populations (in the Foucauldian sense) is a modernist project that is borne out of the need to control dangerous populations; to classify; panopticize and discipline. Risk assessment and actuarial projects are not the exclusive domain of the discipline, as these techniques of social engineering are part of the social sciences in general, but psychology renders these prudential, statistical methods into the purposive project of regulating deviance (or more contemporaneously, statistical deviation). Psychologists are, by definition, the perfect example of the 'capitalist technocrat' by reducing all social relations to individual propensities - even though these risk ratings are themselves culled from aggregate statistics. There is nothing 'progressive' in this project. Progressive intellectualism has historically been linked to critical and leftist politics, not perfecting capitalist regulatory regimes. We shouldn't consider 'progressive' the production of the quintessential student or worker - those centrally important cogs of our current mode of production.

-- (grigakos@hfx.eastlink.ca), March 20, 2001.

To reply to the anonymous "grigakos," you have fully established your Foucauldian credentials. There is even some truth to the critique, though I think that Foucault would have been just as suspicious of your fairly insitutionalized notions of "progressive" and "the left" as he was of "capitalism" and "the bourgeois" -- recall that he left the French Communist Party and distanced himself from the "gay liberation movement" for similar reasons. But in any case I don't think your reply answers the question that was put. What was considered "progressive" in Thorndike's day is not the same as what is considered "progressive" now. Thorndike's participation in educational research and in the testing movement put him close to the cutting edge *for his time*. For all the problems psychological "science" and "testing" may have, before Thorndike's time, educational and occupational decisions were made on even *more* classicst, sexist, and other prejudcial bases. Having put the old regime far behind us, we can now focus on the problems of the one-time "solutions" -- research and tests. That is as it should be, but it doesn't render past developments somehow "non-developments." If it did, you run the risk of dismissing the entire history of the world as "bad" and only us as (on the path to) "good" -- and that's the most prejudicial position of all. All that is needed is a little historical perspective.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), March 30, 2001.


Green: I'm losing historical perspective? Geez. Your assumption about the 'progress' of history is the most ant-Foucauldian assertion one can make. To believe that historical developments in psychological discourse are somehow 'progressive' is to place yourself squarely within the modernist project because you are assuming that we knew not better then. This runs contrary to any Foucauldian genealogical project. But we are quibbling about labels. Perhaps the more people that think themselves progressive the more likely they may read critical works, the more likely they are to be reflexive about what they're doing. By the way, there *was* a 'radical psychology' school in the seventies which was clearly progressive because it was also subversive. The authors placed themselves within the 'big picture' and attempted to deconstruct the discipline - especially clinical practice (perhaps a Foucauldian 'heterology'?). In any case, I think Thorndike might better be considered a reformist.

-- (grigakos@hfx.eastlink.ca), April 22, 2001.

grigakos@hfx.eastlink.ca wrote:

"Your assumption about the 'progress' of history is the most ant-Foucauldian assertion one can make. To believe that historical developments in psychological discourse are somehow 'progressive' is to place yourself squarely within the modernist project because you are assuming that we knew not better then."

Well, I'm not so concerned about being "pro-" or "anti-" Foucauldian. My point was that what you call "the modernist project" was progressive (using the term as a *description* not a *name*) in Thorondike's time.

"This runs contrary to any Foucauldian genealogical project."

Perhaps, but I suggest you take a look (again?) at Foucault's late article, "What is Enlightenment?" in which he positions *himself* with respect to the "modernist project" (much to Habermas' surprise, if you read H's reply). (BTW, isn't it ironic that post-modernists consider *themselves* alone to be "progressive," while simultaneously attempting to undermine the very idea of "progress"?)

"By the way, there *was* a 'radical psychology' school in the seventies which was clearly progressive because it was also subversive. The authors placed themselves within the 'big picture' and attempted to deconstruct the discipline - especially clinical practice (perhaps a Foucauldian 'heterology'?)."

There was indeed (at least in psychotherapy, which is but one aspect of psychology as a whole). Unfortunately it failed to help much of anyone in the long run, and so it collapsed. Apparently, ideology isn't enough. (As well, its apparent associtation with Foucault was not of Foucault's making -- it was the based largely on the misapprehension of Foucault's work by his English publshers. See, e.g., David Macey's biography of F.)

"In any case, I think Thorndike might better be considered a reformist."

A reasonable description as well.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), April 22, 2001.


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