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FREEDOMWAYS FIRST QUARTER 1973 ment for the individual (Cremin, 1961). Progressive schools, presumably, were interested in producing artists, musicians, free thinkers, and the like, not punctual and obedient laborers. Eventually, the progressive effort was ridiculed out of existence and in the eyes of the dominant culture it became a meaningless exercise in "play." Parents who wanted their children to learn "skills," business interests who wanted future employees to learn order and industriousness, and political interests who wanted patriotic and rule abiding citizens, found little solace in "progressive education." Progressive educators of the 1930's challenged educators at large to use their potentially awe-some strength to convert American society to a "new social order," built along socialist lines (Bowers, 1969) . FDR's New Deal, with the support of the dominant economic, social, and political value structures, was the more moderate method of reform. It proved more successful than the educators' plan. Liberal educators of the 1950's and early 1960's, in most northern cities, tried to reform society along non-racist lines by desegregating the schools (Rogers, 1968). Reformers argued that schools act as selecting agents which select out the poor and the black and act as barriers to subsequent economic success (Sexton, 1961). The politically powerful, the racially bigoted, and the unresponsive institutions of the society have subverted nearly all such efforts at integration, suggesting, in effect, that in most northern cities the dominant economic, political, and social value orientation sanctions the use of schools as selective and discriminatory devices. Some inroads have been made in this regard, but they have been made by the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Federal Executive, not by educational reformers. One present movement for educational reform is underpinned by the third force psychology of Abraham Maslow and the behavioral psychology of Kurt Lew-in which hold, in essence, that human beings are possessed of an instinctive need, best nurtured in a non-authoritarian environment, to improve their condition and be "fulfilled" (Rogers, 1969). Some educators have taken this as a call to mold a society of fulfilled individuals, intrinsically motivated toward "self-actualization." The results of these efforts are not in, but it appears that the gulf between humanistic educators, who would produce fulfilled individuals, and urban community interests, especially parents, who view education as a means to economic rewards, is at least as wide as it was during the 64
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Reopened for Editing 2024-02-21 16:45:49
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Reopened for Editing 2024-02-21 23:49:14