"Traditional: Educators who emphasize that the purpose of education is to teach the basics so as to increase student knowledge and intellectual powers
Progressive: Educators who emphasize that the purpose of education is to prepare pupils for life by teaching citizenship, home and family living, a vocation, physical health, gratifying use of leisure time, and effective personality growth."
Traditional is considered more as the basics of teaching. This means teaching the students how to add 2 and 2, where to put a comma in a sentence, how plants grow, and much more. Progressive education teaches students the value of life and how they should behave in real world contexts. Is that it to these forms of education? Surprisingly not. As every main topic in life, there is a hidden meaning. Look closely. Think of your times in high school. Any ideas? How about bullies? How about kids who are not comfortable with their sexuality? These are just examples of progressive education. Teachers need to know how to react in these situations. They should understand how to behave when a student is bullied or has issues with their sexuality. Let's look at the text titled "Hip Deep." Hip Deep is a text that has a collection of essays and opinions from adolescents dealing with everyday situations as they are going through middle and high school. One essay that really stuck out was titled "A Coach's World."A young boy was called a "faggot" in front of his peers by his coach, a teacher that should have stood up for it. If the boy in this essay had more support from his school administration and officials in regards to the PE coach degrading him, he could have changed his outlook on life in a much quicker way than waiting until after high school. Had the student continued along with his family attorney and taking action in the school, he could have identified who he was and been proud of himself from the start rather than trying to convince himself that he was not gay. In his story, it showed that the administration tended to focus more on the Traditional approach to education.
In Chapter 10 of Dolgin's text, Dolgin refers to Adolescent Culture and Society. “Adolescent Society refers to the organized network of relationships among adolescents. Adolescent Culture is the sum of the ways that adolescents behave...”(Dolgin, p.242) Adolescent culture clearly states that this is how adolescents should behave. This is how they should act. From an adult perspective, and possibly a parental view point, this states that all adolescents should be this, this, and that. They are all troublemakers. They are all confused. They keep things to themselves. This is why these students are quiet about who they truly are. They grow up in a society, whether its parents, friends, teachers, administrators, etc. that tells them this is how they should act and anything else is wrong. The young boy in “Forget the Corsage," from this "Hip Deep" text. Society tells him that being gay is wrong. He cannot open to the public, cannot open to his family, his friends, teachers, because society tells him he should be straight.
“The belief that one is competent to master a task,”(Dolgin, p. 337) is known as self efficacy. This is great in the sense that it gives students hope and leads them towards careers that they can be proud of. However, it also leads students to careers that they know they are good at. A student who is academically strong in math might have a career in finance but might truly enjoy acting, or singing, but his parents might not accept him for his choices. In “Will the Tortoise Win the Race,” his teachers towards the end tell him that he is smart and should believe in himself. He is good at writing and drawing. Unfortunately, at the start he was shot down by his foster mother and never supported with his drawing and writing but his later teachers believed in him to succeed.
In any of these cases, progressive education is the way to go. There is a saying, "out with the old and in with the new." Now that does not necessarily mean to get rid of the teachers of 10,15,20 plus years but it means to get rid of the old ways of thinking. The old ways of thinking will not support all topics in school. Progressive is the way to go.
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