Progressive Theories and Creativity

Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975)

Chapter 5 – Progressive Theories and Creativity

This chapter describes how European and American ideas about child development influenced teaching in Britain and the position of the child at the centre of the classroom. By 1921 English as a school subject had moved beyond the view of great literature as a civilising agency to include the oral and written creativity of children.

• This chapter describes how European and American ideas about child development influenced teaching in Britain and the position of the child at the centre of the classroom. By 1921 English as a school subject had moved beyond the view of great literature as a civilising agency to include the oral and written creativity of children.
• Towards the end. of the nineteenth century proposals for English in schools broadened to include pupils’ own composition. An emphasis gradually changed from copying and memorising to creativity. Convictions about the importance of an individual’s emotional life, ideas of growth through activity and romantic views about children as artists brought creativity into discussion.
• Mathieson: “After the First World War, particularly, English took on new possibilities, because it was then that more widespread interest was aroused in the relationship between individual growth and self-expression. Many educators who were affected by the mood of disillusionment, and suspected that the classical curriculum and traditional teaching methods were personally destructive, gave strong support to what they believed to be the emotionally liberating experiences of literature and creativity.”
• In 1870s – after the foundation of the Froebel Society – the ideas about fostering the growth of the child developed in Britain. ▾ Mathieson contrasts British educational attitudes with Europeans through the work of the Edgeworths and Froebel’s Darstellung:
  • Edgeworth‘s On Practical Education “shows the preoccupation of the Edgeworths with the techniques for transmitting knowledge and the competing claims of science and the classics for primacy in the cur­riculum”.
  • Froebel’s “view of the child as a developing organism whose growth demands careful nurture”.
• Codes of 1862 and 1871 made it clear that writing in school was limited to dictation and linked with skills of copying, transcribing and spelling.
• The Cross Commission 1886-8 pointed out that English ought to consist of more than exercises in grammar, advising teachers to devise schemes of work related to pupils’ interests.
• The Education Department’s Circular 322 (1893) “accepts Froebel’s notion of development” and recognised the importance of children’s spontaneous activity and the need to involve themselves in the learning process.
• The Instructions to Inspectors (1895 and 1896) draws on the “interest” theories of European and American educators.
• In 1895 the British Association of Child Study was established through which J.J. Findlay introduced John Dewey‘s ideas into Britain.
• Mathieson: “It is useful to notice the difference between the statement made by the Committee of the Council on Education in 1875 on the value of learning by heart generally as a means of storing children’s memories with noble and elevating thoughts’ and the view expressed in the Handbook of Suggestions issued by the Board in 1905, which criticised excessive burdening of children’s memories.”
• By 1905 it was proposed that composition was to have its origin in children’s experiences.
• Philip Hartog in The Writing of English (1908) criticised the methods used in classics teaching and argued that spelling and grammar were best taught incidentally and that any continuous writing by pupils should be about subjects related to their experiences and interests.
• The 1909 Report of a Conference on the Teaching in Elementary Schools stated that composition should be considered as a systematic practice in self-expression.
• Concidence of new theories in science and education plus wide-spread dissatisfaction with traditional teaching methods brought increased interest in the notion of children’s involvement in the learning process:
  • Darwin‘s theories accelerated the acceptance of developmental ideas about physical and mental differences between pupils.
  • Froebel‘s ideas about the value of sensory experiences and spontaneity in the learning process undermined support for memorising and copying.
  • Dewey’s theories of motivation, and his stress on the importance of direct experience and interest turned teachers’ attention to children’s lives as the material for their compositions.
• Mathieson: “As the idea of the child as a developing per­ sonality displaced the view of him as a passive receptacle for useful information, greater emphasis was placed upon the role of English in schools. Through composition particularly, it offered opportunities for self-expression, inviting the child to participate in the learning process as an active, responsible being.”
• Policy changes regarding composition were confined to elementary schools. Little impact on grammar schools.
• G.S. Hall’s Adolescence (1905) had “One of the strongest influences upon official thinking”. It attacked traditional drill methods designed to produce uniform accuracy in pupils. Also condemned detrimental effect on English of studying other languages.
• Edward Holmes’ What is and What Might Be (1911) insisted that the “business of the teacher is to foster the growth of the child’s soul” and referred to children as victims of traditional teaching methods. Holmes interested in the separateness and uniqueness of each child, believing that self-expression aided the growth of individuality.
• Holmes: “I mean by composition the sincere expression in language of the child’s genuine thoughts and feelings. The effort to express himself [in language] tends, in proportion as it is sincere and strong, to give breadth, depth and complexity to the child’s thoughts and feelings and through the development of these to weave his experiences into the tissue of his life.”
• Caldwell Cook, an unconventional, progressive teacher: desirability of play and the value of self-expression in the development of the whole child. Affirmed the “special qualities of childhood”. Attacked the “everlasting slavery to books” and asked teachers to rid themselves of the “tyranny of print” focusing instead on the lives of the children. He deplored treatment of English as a foreign language in schools and, instead, wanted to bring English to the centre of the classroom experience: encouraging poetry reading and writing and using native language in talks and debates.
• Caldwell Cook’s The Play Way presented progressive theories about “delight”, “joy” and “pleasure” in the “natural free activity of children”.
• Caldwell Cook enthusiastically referenced in 1921 Newbolt Report.
• Mathieson: “Whereas Arnold had insisted upon the spiritually educative role of literature, Cook stressed the need for creative participation in the development of each individual boy. Drawing upon Continental and American theories of interest, play and self-expression, Cook concentrated upon the variety of richness of work in English in his reaction against the remoteness of classical studies. His methods, moreover, appeared to the Report’s contributors to be helpfully relevant to the contemporary situation since they illustrated the way in which progressive ideas could be adapted to the education of young adolescents. Thus, his approaches were recommended to all teachers of English to children from every part of society.”
• Caldwell Cook: “Let us have outline schemes by all means, but leave the details to the hour in which it will be told us what we shall do. Let us remember that without interest there is no learning, and since the child’s interest is all in play it is necessary whatever the method in hand, that the method be a play method.”
• Stanley Hall, American psychologist, insisted on value of child’s native language and literature.
• Sir Percy Nunn’s Education: Its Data and First Principles (1920?) concerned the need for education to encourage the development of individuality, of personal uniqueness and of a child’s potential for creativity. Argued that even speech was a daily act of creation.
• E.A. Greening Lamborn in preface to W.S. Tomkinson’s The Teaching of English: A New Approach (1921): “What Greek literature did for the few of the past, English literature must do for the many of the future… What is really new is the revelation of the importance of the emotional life and of the need to cultivate and enrich it by humanistic treatment of all our studies.”
• Tomkinson suggested the “possibilities of reading as a creative art” (anticipating educators of the 1940s and 1950s) when he likened the child’s creative potential to the poet’s.
• Post-War mood seemed sympathetic to educational theories responsible for bringing literature and children’s creative work to the centre of the curriculum.
• Ideas of educators like Edmund Holmes (What Is and What Might Be – 1917), Norman MacMunn (The Child’s Path to Freedom – 1914) and Caldwell Cook (The Play Way – 1917) developed a willingness to experiment.
• The New Education Fellowship founded in 1921 (formed to promote world peace through education) and the themes of its conferences in early 1920s were creative self-expression and individual salvation. The organisation drew attention to the work of Freud and Adler. Insisted that the arts contributed uniquely to the personality and its development.
• By 1927 – The Report of the Consultative Committee – “Literature is still considered to be of vital importance because of its humanising content, but to it have been added oral work, drama and creative writing in order that, through active participation in the learning process, children should achieve fuller individuality.“