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Getting it wrong from the beginning: our progressivist inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget
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Egan, Kieran (2002). New Haven: Yale University Press (hardcover), 204 pages.
Emery J. Hyslop-Margison, Ball State University
On Kieran Egan's view, contemporary education pursues flawed progressivist practices that harm student academic development. Many of these misguided ideas originate with the pseudo-scientific theories and fallacious presuppositions of 19th-century British philosopher Herbert Spencer. Rather than simply parroting faulty progressivist practices that undermine learning, Egan argues that contemporary education should cultivate student mastery over various cognitive tools such as oral language, literacy, and theoretic abstractions: "Understanding how these tools shape our learning can give us a better set of principles for improving the effectiveness of students' learning than anything progressivism can provide" (p. 75). Getting It Wrong from the Beginning convincingly discredits many progressivist pedagogical practices, but unfortunately overlooks the crucial democratic dispositions also fostered by this approach to schooling.
There is no disputing that Herbert Spencer constitutes a major intellectual figure in the philosophical lifeblood of the Victorian era. A leading proponent of Lamarckian evolutionary theory in the mid-19th century, Spencer's reputation briefly rivalled that of Charles Darwin. Spencer was most recognized during the period for applying survival-of-the-fittest principles to philosophy, psychology, and the general investigation of society. Although he is typically remembered in contemporary academic circles for his controversial support of social Darwinian assumptions, he devoted significant philosophical energy to improving education based on "scientific" principles.
Egan claims that many of the education principles Spencer developed had considerable impact on the subsequent progressivist theories of both John Dewey and Jean Piaget. Although Egan admits that establishing direct connections between related ideas is always causally problematic, he provides plenty of circumstantial evidence to support his thesis. Egan speculates that progressivist scholars such as Dewey and Piaget refused to acknowledge their indebtedness to Spencer because of his morally offensive positions on race and...