Word: kilpatrick
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...word 'life' is given any content. Or we are told [by John S. Brubacher] that the 'general aim' of education 'is only that of pupil growth.' But what kind of 'growth'? . . . Or we are told [by William Heard Kilpatrick] that education must assume 'increasing responsibility for participation in projecting ideas of social change.' But again we must ask: What kind of change and in what direction...
Edward Thorndike, the era of the modern pedagogue had begun. The traditional classroom was being attacked from all sides. Like Dewey, Kilpatrick held that there are no philosophical absolutes, that "criticized experience is the final test of all things." That being the case, education had to be designed anew...
Action to Action. The important thing about learning, Experimentalist Kilpatrick insisted, was not the subject but the child. He saw no point in mere textbook education which, fed to passive students, "reduced man to mind, and mind largely to memory." A child learns by living, said he; and therefore education must be based on action, every action leading to better action: "Thinking, unless it works, isn't worth anything...
Over the years, educators began to listen closely to the live & learn philosophy. And so many students' fees poured into Teachers College because of Kilpatrick that he came to be known as the "Million Dollar Professor." In school after school, teachers began to turn away from traditional subject matter, adopting in its stead the Kilpatrick "project method." His books were translated into seven languages; "activity programs" began cropping up in classrooms all over the world, stressing creation over memory, interest over coercion, how to think over what to think...
...spite of such widespread acceptance of his theories, William Kilpatrick soon found the pendulum swinging the other way. At 80 he remains an incorrigible rebel, but in revolt against a counterrevolution, started by men like the late William C. Bagley and Robert M. ("The Great Books") Hutchins. His critics in education have long sought to repeal him, insisting that in trying to breathe life into the schools, he has merely blown away their substance...