Skinner’s classic article is reinterpreted in light of contemporary events. Skinner principally blamed cognitive psychology for the shameful state of American education. This paper asserts it is the philosophy of progressive education and its dominant influence over how teachers are trained are largely the cause of American educational ineffectiveness. The authors analyze progressive education and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) using organizational, metacontingency, and macrocontingency analysis. The authors support NCLB’s and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s (IDEA) emphasis on science-based pedagogy as a step in the right direction.

This was interesting for me to read. I'm not an expert in the field, but it's of great interest to me.

I found myself disagreeing with, at least, the tone of this article, as it is extremely combative. I'm likewise uncomfortable with the application of the term "progressive" with negative connotations. This may be a well understood usage in this discipline, so I won't get hung up on it, but certainly many of the derision of "progressives" issued herein do not fit well with my notions of modern *political* progressivism.

I should also note that my experiences as a student don't bear out their claims. There's a segment in which the authors state that by 1990 the US was virtually overrun by the kind of terrible education they excoriate (e.g. experience learning and so forth). I was 12 in 1990 and do not recall this being the mode in which I was instructed, in general. I had good teachers and bad teachers and subjects I liked and others that I didn't, but I absolutely had standards to achieve. Perhaps NY was one of the "good" states back then.

My overall reaction is that I'm disinclined to support the kind of hyper standardized and impersonal provisions of NCLB, but certainly don't support education that's largely divorced from notions of measurement. I also sympathize with the potential for NCLB to eviscerate public education in favor of privatization (a line of thinking the authors essentially dismiss as paranoiac and absurd), which isn't really something I support.

I think a hybrid must be achieved that makes use of foundational education combined with a more free-form application / experiential component. This is briefly mentioned, but not exactly championed by these authors. I also see a problematic trend in proponents of highly structured systems like NCLB to treat all subject areas the same way. There are ways to measure competency in English, just as there are for Mathematics and the sciences, but they're not the same ways.

Finally, I think it's quite simplistic -- in fact, it's dishonest in the extreme -- to lay all of the problems of modern education at the feet of "progressive education," even if such methods were contributory. One cannot have a serious discussion on the matter without including some analysis of the political and social culture during the same time frames. The political right has led a systematic attack on the scientific method for years, even as these authors try to claim that some stripe of progressivism has been responsible for the death of experimentalism and scientific, results oriented pedagogy.

This is a topic I wish to learn a great deal more about. I think it's among the most crucial issues we can put our minds and hands to.

“The Shame of American Education” Redux