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Educational Psychology and Social Reform in the Progressive Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Robert L. Church
Robert L. Church*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

This paper seeks to determine, in effect, why educational psychology as it professionalized and assumed the mantle of “science” after 1905 rejected the social point of view that characterized the thought of so many of the period's educational reformers and practicing educators. The principal components of this social point of view were the efforts to broaden the concept of education from training in academic disciplines to education for life in the community; to see education as a part of a larger social process and to shape educational policy accordingly; and to see education in general and schooling in particular as engines for reforming American society. This cluster of attitudes —which I will group under the term socialized education, following Jane Addams, emerged in the progressive era as the foundation underlying both Dewey's efforts to ally the school and society and, to take a single example from the other side of the coin, David Snedden's commitment to using education to promote social efficiency. But the leading educational psychologists of our period did not share this expanded educational point of view; indeed they can be said to have reverted to the view that education was predominantly the teaching of academic disciplines in schools. The questions that occur to me are “why?” and “so what?” I have no sure answers to either question, but I do have some suggestions that I hope will be provocative.

Type
Works in Progress I
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , Winter 1971 , pp. 390 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 History of Education Quarterly 

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References

Notes

1. The two sides of the coin are described, respectively, in Cremin, Lawrence A., The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (New York, 1962), chs. 1–6, and Krug, Edward, The Shaping of the American High School (New York, 1964). Little work has been published on the history of educational psychology in this period. Most helpful are Geraldine Joncich, The Sane Positivist: A Biography of Edward L. Thorndike (Middletown, Conn., 1968); Watson, Robert I., “A Brief History of Educational Psychology,” Psychological Record 11 (July 1961) : 209–42; and McDonald, Frederick J., “The Influence of Learning Theories on Education (1900–1950)” in Theories of Learning and Instruction, The Sixty-third Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, ed. Hilgard, Ernest R., Part I (Chicago, 1964), pp. 1–26.Google Scholar

2. Dewey, John, “Psychology and Social Practice” (Address of the President before the American Psychological Association, New Haven, 1899), Psychological Review 7 (March 1900): 105–24. The quotations come from pp. 114, 120–21.Google Scholar

3. Ibid., p. 105.Google Scholar

4. See, e.g., besides Krug, Shaping of the American High School: Drost, Walter H., David Snedden and Education for Social Efficiency (Madison, Wisc., 1967); Tyack, David B., “Ellwood P. Cubberley,” DAB, Supplement III, forthcoming; Joel Spring, “Education and Progressivism,” HISTORY OF EDUCATION QUARTERLY 10 (Spring 1970) : 53–71.Google Scholar

5. Seashore, C. E., “Editorial: The Educational Efficiency Engineer,” Journal of Educational Psychology 4 (April 1913) : 244. For other examples, see Wallace Wallin, J. E., review of How to Study and Teaching How to Study, by McMurry, F. M., Journal of Educational Psychology 1 (June 1910) : 351; Wallin, , review of Teaching Children to Study by Jones, Olive M., Leary, Eleanor G., and Quish, Agnes E., Journal of Educational Psychology 1 (May 1910) : 299.Google Scholar

6. Thorndike, Edward L., “The Contribution of Psychology to Education,” Journal of Educational Psychology 1 (January 1910) : 8.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 8–12.Google Scholar

8. Thorndike, Edward L., Educational Psychology 2d ed. (New York, 1910), pp. 1–2. These words were taken without change from the first edition (New York, 1903), pp. 1–2, although Thorndike otherwise revised the introduction substantially.Google Scholar

9. Thorndike, Edward L., Selected Writings from a Connectionist's Psychology (New York, 1949), pp. v, 10–11.Google Scholar

10. Wundt, Wilhelm, “Ueber reine und angewandte Psychologie,” Psychologische Studien (Leipzig) 5 (June 1909) : 1–47.Google Scholar

11. Judd, Charles H., “Charles H. Judd,” in The History of Psychology in Autobiography, ed. Murchison, Carl, 2 (Worcester, Mass., 1932): 221–22, 225–26, 234.Google Scholar

12. On the use of “experimental pedagogy,” see, e.g., Hall-Quest, Alfred L., “Present Tendencies in Educational Psychology,” Journal of Educational Psychology 6 (December 1915) : 602; for the use that Hall's followers made of the term, see Sanford, Edmund C., “Experimental Pedagogy and Experimental Psychology,” Journal of Educational Psychology 1 (December 1910) : 590–95.Google Scholar

13. Ross, Dorothy, “The ‘Zeitgeist’ and American Psychology,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 5 (July 1969) : 260; Strickland, Charles and Burgess, Charles, “Introduction,” in Health, Growth, and Heredity: G. Stanley Hall on Natural Education, ed. Strickland, and Burgess, (New York, 1965), pp. 1–3, 22–26; Bradbury, Dorothy E., “The Contribution of the Child Study Movement to Child Psychology,” Psychological Bulletin 34 (January 1937) : 34–35.Google Scholar

14. Hofstadter, Richard, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York, 1963), Part III; O'Neill, William L., “Divorce and the Professionalization of the Social Scientist,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 2 (October 1966) : 291, 296, 301–2. I am completing a book on the professionalization of the policy sciences and their relation to social reform in the Progressive Era.3.0.CO;2-Q>CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Cubberley, Ellwood P., The History of Education: Educational Practice and Progress Considered As a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization (Boston, 1920), p. 755.Google Scholar

16. Judd, , “Judd,” in History of Psychology in Autobiography, ed. Murchison, , pp. 218–20, 227–35. The quotation comes from p. 234.Google Scholar

17. See Bakan, David, “Behaviorism and American Urbanization,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 2 (January 1966) : 5–28.Google Scholar