New Schools for Old

Series

Series Name

The March of Time 3rd Year

Issue

Issue No.

8

Date Released

1938

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1New Schools for Old
2. 2USA: Alaska’s Salmon War
3. 3England: Tips and Waiters

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 3

Summary

March fo Time synopsis: This year, with 29,000,000 yungsters in school, the American Public School System celebrates its centennial, honours the man who founded and promoted universal free schools - Massachusett’s Horace Mann. Strange even to as progressive an educator as Horace Mann would be many of the teaching innovations which to-day threaten to change the entire method of U.S. public school education - innovations unwelcome to many an educator, bewildering to many a parent. For generations, public schools followed a rigid pattern. Through endless classroom drill, Johnny learned his multiplication tables and impossible-to-spell words. By contrast to-day’s youngesters, in schools where Progressive Education is in frce, learn to cope with practical everyday problems.

Important in Progressive Education is the "project" or collective enterprise. Pictured is the development of a lunch project where the primary youngsters must read to select their menu - find reason for arithmetic as they purchase food at the grocers - learn to co-operate with one another as they prepare and serve their own lunch. The next day, from this actual handling of food, may spring another project, perhaps on the subject of the farm. In the higher classes, managing the school stores is an exercise in practical business and in some schools, for the 12 to 14-year-lds, daily trips are taken to inspect the everyday world outside. Back in school, after a trip to an airport, the study of airplanes, their routes and their operations, involves every subject from manual training to advanced geography.

Progressive Education schools, from the kindergarten to high school, hold that seeing is beieving - that knowledge gained during an actual experience is best understood and longest retained. Chief critic to-day of the new teaching philosophy is Columbia University’s Dr. William C. Bagley, who claims that similar education practices 2,500 years ago helped caused the decadence of Greek civilization. Prime advocate and America’s No. 1 educator and phiosopher, John Dewey says: "We must prepare our children not for the world of the past, or our world, but for the world ahead - their world".

Researcher Comments

This story was included in Vol.3 No.3 of the US edition.

Keywords

Education and training; Children

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
British Film Institute Sources

Credits:

Production Co.

Time Inc.