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Progressively Worse: The burden of bad ideas in British schools
Since 1953, education spending in Britain has increased by nine times in real terms but levels of numeracy and literacy among school leavers have hardly changed. Today, Britain is the only country in the developed world where 16–24 year olds have lower literacy levels than 55–65 year olds.
This abject record in educating our children cannot be detached from a movement which took hold in British state schools from the 1960s onwards and has been called, with deep inappropriateness, ‘progressive education’. This movement is based upon a romantic view of the child. It believes that children are both innately good and natural learners, who should be freed from the guidance and direct instruction of the teacher.
Teacher training, local authorities and schools inspectors all signed up to this idealistic, but damaging, belief. Relevance, freedom, active learning, skills and self-esteem became the unquestionable pillars of this education orthodoxy. Rigour, hard work, knowledge, discipline and competition were deemed pejorative terms.
Half-a-century on from its arrival, progressive education is under attack on multiple fronts. Empirical data is laying bare its lack of success and cognitive science is demonstrating its fundamental misconception about how children learn. At long last, government reforms are freeing schools to break away from the thoughtworld of the education establishment.
Progressive education has plunged British schools into a decades long crisis, leaving generations of pupils illiterate and under-educated. If Britain is to have a world class education system in the twenty-first century, abandoning the burden of bad ideas it has inherited from the twentieth is the surest route to success.
This abject record in educating our children cannot be detached from a movement which took hold in British state schools from the 1960s onwards and has been called, with deep inappropriateness, ‘progressive education’. This movement is based upon a romantic view of the child. It believes that children are both innately good and natural learners, who should be freed from the guidance and direct instruction of the teacher.
Teacher training, local authorities and schools inspectors all signed up to this idealistic, but damaging, belief. Relevance, freedom, active learning, skills and self-esteem became the unquestionable pillars of this education orthodoxy. Rigour, hard work, knowledge, discipline and competition were deemed pejorative terms.
Half-a-century on from its arrival, progressive education is under attack on multiple fronts. Empirical data is laying bare its lack of success and cognitive science is demonstrating its fundamental misconception about how children learn. At long last, government reforms are freeing schools to break away from the thoughtworld of the education establishment.
Progressive education has plunged British schools into a decades long crisis, leaving generations of pupils illiterate and under-educated. If Britain is to have a world class education system in the twenty-first century, abandoning the burden of bad ideas it has inherited from the twentieth is the surest route to success.
- GenresEducation
298 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 23, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 17, 2023
Als je dit boek hebt gelezen wil je nooit meer leerlinggestuurd, gepersonaliseerd lesgeven of coachen en begrijp je dat goed gegeven klassikale lessen waarin kennis centraal staat het fundament vormt van goed onderwijs. Uitermate interessant en heel goed onderbouwd! Aanrader!
May 25, 2015
A truly eye opening account of British education from 1960 to the present day. Peal demonstrates conclusively how an ideological commitment to "progressive" education took hold of the educational establishment with virtually no evidence of its efficacy. He also shows how evidence that other educational philosophies could produce better outcomes for students was systematically ignored by the majority of the profession until recently.
A fascinating study which is all the more engaging for being unashamedly polemical. As a teacher reading this one is left both appalled by the abuses of the past and empowered by a renewed conviction in the possibility of making a difference.
A fascinating study which is all the more engaging for being unashamedly polemical. As a teacher reading this one is left both appalled by the abuses of the past and empowered by a renewed conviction in the possibility of making a difference.
May 19, 2017
Enlightening study of England's education system
I had hesitated from reading this thinking it would be some right wing polemic about liberal education but I could not have been more wrong. This is a thoughtful and evidence based comparison between the competing schools of thought and, although you have no doubts as to the author's preference, it is laid out in practical and grounded language which makes the case the more compelling. I would strongly recommend this to anyone with an interest in the school system whether professional or parent.
I had hesitated from reading this thinking it would be some right wing polemic about liberal education but I could not have been more wrong. This is a thoughtful and evidence based comparison between the competing schools of thought and, although you have no doubts as to the author's preference, it is laid out in practical and grounded language which makes the case the more compelling. I would strongly recommend this to anyone with an interest in the school system whether professional or parent.
February 16, 2025
A real wake up call
This book continues the journey that I started, years ago, when I first read 7 Myths of education. A bracing wake up call, exposing the facade of so-called progressive education, and showing that what children deserve is a real education: an education that teaches the things, that helps them learn, that shows them, both by demonstration and by rules, how to be both good and clever. This book is well written, well researched and well paced. An excellent and highly recommended read!
This book continues the journey that I started, years ago, when I first read 7 Myths of education. A bracing wake up call, exposing the facade of so-called progressive education, and showing that what children deserve is a real education: an education that teaches the things, that helps them learn, that shows them, both by demonstration and by rules, how to be both good and clever. This book is well written, well researched and well paced. An excellent and highly recommended read!
November 4, 2015
A must-read for anyone fresh out of, or undergoing, initial teacher training. Peal, a UK history teacher with a flair for rather polemical writing, examines the origins, history and results of the movement towards 'child-centred' education in the UK. It's an eye-opening account of how a plausible sounding but empirically dubious set of ideas captured the education community, and (in the author's view) impoverished the education of British school-children.
While best taken with a grain of salt - it's hardly a dispassionate evaluation of empirical evidence - I found it to be a good read nonetheless.
Having trained as a teacher only a few years ago the book had a lot of personal resonance. A trainee teacher in Australia cannot make it through university without developing a view that every moment spent 'lecturing' to the class is essentially a failure to achieve a higher form of teaching practice. Every essay completed requires references to Piaget and Vygotsky's theories, which together form the intellectual basis of child-centred learning. While teaching I slowly realised that the traditional approach - actually instructing the students in content, then drilling them and checking to ensure understanding - worked far better than having them 'discover' information on their own through the course of projects (which in many classrooms seem to culminate in the creation of posters, even beyond year 10).
The book is a useful counter to the idea that project-based, child-centred learning is the ideal or only way to teach children. Even if Peal's argument doesn't naturally appeal to you, it's well worth the read if only to see the other side to the prevailing education narrative.
My chief gripe is at times Peal seems to overextend his argument, on occasion makes a rather bold claim without a reference, and seems to be engaged in a fair bit of cherry-picking (though this is hard to tell give I'm not an expert in the subject matter). Overall the rather uncompromising tone did not bother me given this book comes as a challenge to an orthodoxy that is deeply embedded.
While best taken with a grain of salt - it's hardly a dispassionate evaluation of empirical evidence - I found it to be a good read nonetheless.
Having trained as a teacher only a few years ago the book had a lot of personal resonance. A trainee teacher in Australia cannot make it through university without developing a view that every moment spent 'lecturing' to the class is essentially a failure to achieve a higher form of teaching practice. Every essay completed requires references to Piaget and Vygotsky's theories, which together form the intellectual basis of child-centred learning. While teaching I slowly realised that the traditional approach - actually instructing the students in content, then drilling them and checking to ensure understanding - worked far better than having them 'discover' information on their own through the course of projects (which in many classrooms seem to culminate in the creation of posters, even beyond year 10).
The book is a useful counter to the idea that project-based, child-centred learning is the ideal or only way to teach children. Even if Peal's argument doesn't naturally appeal to you, it's well worth the read if only to see the other side to the prevailing education narrative.
My chief gripe is at times Peal seems to overextend his argument, on occasion makes a rather bold claim without a reference, and seems to be engaged in a fair bit of cherry-picking (though this is hard to tell give I'm not an expert in the subject matter). Overall the rather uncompromising tone did not bother me given this book comes as a challenge to an orthodoxy that is deeply embedded.
March 31, 2017
Written about the UK, but could very well be describing the US's failed ed reforms and the whys behind them. Though the concepts were very familiar to me overall (a review of my book in the British 'Schools Week' publication called me an American counterpart to this book's author, after all--see http://schoolsweek.co.uk/reviews/educ...), it was great to get a better sense of the UK's specific actors and progressions of events. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews