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I Learn from Children: An Adventure in Progressive Education
�A lucid presentation of what progressive education can accomplish.”�The New York Times
How should schools prepare students for the Information Age? The successful worker of the future � a creative, independent thinker who works well in teams�would seem to be too self-contradictory to be the deliberate product of a school.
A century ago, the American educator Caroline Pratt created an innovative school that she hoped would produce such independent thinkers, but she asked herself a different question: �Was it unreasonable to try to fit the school to the child, rather than . . . the child to the school?” A strong-willed, small-town schoolteacher who ran a one-room schoolhouse by the time she was seventeen, Pratt came to viscerally reject the teaching methods of her day, which often featured a long-winded teacher at the front of the room and rows of miserable children, on benches nailed to the floor, stretching to the back.
In this classic 1948 memoir, now in its fourth edition, Pratt recounts, in a wry authorial voice much closer to Will Rogers than John Dewey, how she founded what is now the dynamic City and Country School in New York City; invented the maple �unit blocks” that have become a staple in classrooms and children’s homes around the globe; and came to play an important role in reimagining preschool and primary-school education in ways that resound in the tumultuously creative age before us. This edition features a new introduction by Ian Frazier, as well as additional commentary, and an afterword.
How should schools prepare students for the Information Age? The successful worker of the future � a creative, independent thinker who works well in teams�would seem to be too self-contradictory to be the deliberate product of a school.
A century ago, the American educator Caroline Pratt created an innovative school that she hoped would produce such independent thinkers, but she asked herself a different question: �Was it unreasonable to try to fit the school to the child, rather than . . . the child to the school?” A strong-willed, small-town schoolteacher who ran a one-room schoolhouse by the time she was seventeen, Pratt came to viscerally reject the teaching methods of her day, which often featured a long-winded teacher at the front of the room and rows of miserable children, on benches nailed to the floor, stretching to the back.
In this classic 1948 memoir, now in its fourth edition, Pratt recounts, in a wry authorial voice much closer to Will Rogers than John Dewey, how she founded what is now the dynamic City and Country School in New York City; invented the maple �unit blocks” that have become a staple in classrooms and children’s homes around the globe; and came to play an important role in reimagining preschool and primary-school education in ways that resound in the tumultuously creative age before us. This edition features a new introduction by Ian Frazier, as well as additional commentary, and an afterword.
330 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 27, 2012
You would be hard pressed to find another book that so eloquently and easily outlines the mechanics & purpose of human learning. The school Caroline Pratt founded in 1914, based on the principles in this book, exists today, as City & Country School on 13th Street, NYC. A quote: "At the moment that we interpose second-hand knowledge - from the teacher instead of from the world itself, from books rather than from life - (again) we have begun to waste the child." Once difficult to find, many used copies are now available for as low as $12.
March 31, 2012
Okay, I only read Chapter One of this memoir by Caroline Pratt My former administrator (and now friend) recently gave me a photocopy of this chapter, which she assigned to her education students. Written in 1948, it still feels fresh and true.
"A desire to learn in children [is] as natural and inevitable in children as the desire to walk in babies. ...But something happens, alas, to this great driving force." To children the word "play" does not carry the idea of idleness, purposelessness, relaxation from work.
"A desire to learn in children [is] as natural and inevitable in children as the desire to walk in babies. ...But something happens, alas, to this great driving force." To children the word "play" does not carry the idea of idleness, purposelessness, relaxation from work.
August 28, 2013
I go to City and Country, and I will be graduating in its hundredth anniversary year (this year). I loved learning about my school's history, and how it has changed. I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in progressive education.
February 7, 2022
I Learn from Children, first published by Caroline Pratt in 1948 at the age of 80, looks back at her work as an early twentieth century progressive educator and founder of the City and Country School in New York. The 2014 edition also contains a handful of supplemental essays that push the page count over 300 but are thoughtful supplements: journalist Ian Frazier gives a gloss interspersed with gentle criticism, then-current head of City and Country Kate Turley offers an centennial update, and educational scholar Susan Semel presents helpful context on how Pratt and her school fit into the progressive education. Together, the additional material work to confirm my sense that many—if not all—of Pratt’s ideas on primary education hold up well to the last half-century of educational research and attest to the active relevance of her ideas.
While I was never subjected to bolted-down desks growing up, I relate to her rejection of traditional education norms and her pursuit of a meaningful and immersive alternative. Tight regimentation, Pratt argues, allows for efficient use of school resources and may be effective on its own terms, but it is also terribly “wasteful of children.” She recounts with sadness a mother whose two children ventured into their first years of schooling active and curious only to be entirely dulled and alienated from school by the age of nine.
For Pratt, the school, instead ought to be place with a special mission. From her own youth to adulthood, she saw an industrializing America transform “from a world in which children could learn as they grew in it, to a world so far beyond the grasp of children that only the school could present it to them in terms they could understand.” Students as young as kindergarten can best gain that understanding not from forced obedience and “carrying on in a kind of intellectual clowning for the amusement of misguided grown-ups,” but through genuine work. By giving her students jobs—real responsibilities like purchase and distribution of supplies or running the school’s post office—she finds that students work earnestly to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to complete their jobs, not to mention important lessons of how to collaborate with peers.
In her sturdiness of conviction, Pratt also exposes some of her own weaknesses as well. Even as I was enthralled by much of what I read I did stumble occasionally on claims borne more of conviction than evidence. Like Frazier and Turley I was left scratching my head at the vitriol she directs toward fantasy novels and baseball; to that list I might add confusion about her aversion to the circus as well. Yet, more frequently, Pratt is the one highlighting her own shortcomings as a school leader. Self-aware and candid, she admits, for example, that she had resisted articulating a fully-developed educational model only to turn around and criticize colleagues when they had failed to guess what she had in mind all along. Similarly, she offers what may be the most amusing anecdote in the book: when she started “walking clear around the block to avoid” a parent that might ask her questions she would have been unprepared for.
For those interested in progressive education generally and in early twentieth-century U.S. education in particular, I Learn from Children is an engaging read, one with a clear, down-to-earth voice and a vision every bit as compelling as those of contemporaries John Dewey and Helen Parkhurst.
While I was never subjected to bolted-down desks growing up, I relate to her rejection of traditional education norms and her pursuit of a meaningful and immersive alternative. Tight regimentation, Pratt argues, allows for efficient use of school resources and may be effective on its own terms, but it is also terribly “wasteful of children.” She recounts with sadness a mother whose two children ventured into their first years of schooling active and curious only to be entirely dulled and alienated from school by the age of nine.
For Pratt, the school, instead ought to be place with a special mission. From her own youth to adulthood, she saw an industrializing America transform “from a world in which children could learn as they grew in it, to a world so far beyond the grasp of children that only the school could present it to them in terms they could understand.” Students as young as kindergarten can best gain that understanding not from forced obedience and “carrying on in a kind of intellectual clowning for the amusement of misguided grown-ups,” but through genuine work. By giving her students jobs—real responsibilities like purchase and distribution of supplies or running the school’s post office—she finds that students work earnestly to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to complete their jobs, not to mention important lessons of how to collaborate with peers.
In her sturdiness of conviction, Pratt also exposes some of her own weaknesses as well. Even as I was enthralled by much of what I read I did stumble occasionally on claims borne more of conviction than evidence. Like Frazier and Turley I was left scratching my head at the vitriol she directs toward fantasy novels and baseball; to that list I might add confusion about her aversion to the circus as well. Yet, more frequently, Pratt is the one highlighting her own shortcomings as a school leader. Self-aware and candid, she admits, for example, that she had resisted articulating a fully-developed educational model only to turn around and criticize colleagues when they had failed to guess what she had in mind all along. Similarly, she offers what may be the most amusing anecdote in the book: when she started “walking clear around the block to avoid” a parent that might ask her questions she would have been unprepared for.
For those interested in progressive education generally and in early twentieth-century U.S. education in particular, I Learn from Children is an engaging read, one with a clear, down-to-earth voice and a vision every bit as compelling as those of contemporaries John Dewey and Helen Parkhurst.
August 20, 2019
Way too much detail and way too much credit given to her subjective findings with small sample sizes. Interesting take though on what to expect from kids at different ages
May 13, 2020
Children are taught through plays and perceived as teachers' teachers. With that, experience-based learning and least adult interference were implemented for developing independent thinkers. If only all children were taught this way, learning would be so fun. It would be great seeing "they" instead of "him" as the third person reference in the book but given the publish year, I would not be too sad about that.
January 24, 2023
This educator was decades ahead of her time, a progressive visionary. While the references are dated, the philosophies are astonishingly relevant to public education. In particular, the focus on concrete experiences, authentic learning, and relevant work, places a teacher into the role of facilitator of experiences that provide authentic opportunities for learning, standing in opposition to a model for schools whereby students are filled with information and rote procedures that require little reasoning, and where success is measured by endless test scores. There are many passages and insights in this book that can stand up even today, verbatim! That is remarkably visionary given the time it was written. If a reader can get beyond some of the dated cultural and period specific references (i.e. gender roles and language of the era) and focus on the roles of schools, teachers, and children in public education, the ideas are often just as progressive and relevant now as they were then, illustrating perhaps in some ways, that public education has been headed down a "wrong path" for decades.
February 18, 2022
I think the first 5 chapters are eye opening and well- written and as many have said it’s fresh and it’s from 1914! The rest of the book becomes a little too detailed/ loses focus and a lot of credit is given to a relatively small sample size. Recommend for the premise and concepts covered in the beginning, though!
October 19, 2024
Very inspiring for me as a teacher! A great inspiration for keeping an open mind to less traditional teaching ideas. I couldn’t give five stars as there was a fair amount of suggestions based on outdated gender roles, as well as terminology which is now understood to be offensive. Otherwise, good content!
October 26, 2021
This was an enjoyable book. Essentially, what I can gather from progressive education is that we should be looking at what a child needs in order to educate them, rather than forcing them into a particular system. I’m interested to read it some more on classical education in comparison to this.
December 9, 2022
An in-depth, intentional, and student-centered perspective on alternative learning and child psychology. Very insightful, informative, organized, well-articulated, and unconventional. I really enjoyed learning through this piece!
March 31, 2020
The way teaching and learning should be.
August 9, 2020
crazy how this woman’s ideas/warning signs from 1914 are still so needed in our education system today. shoutout to my teacher friends out there doin’ the dang thing!
August 14, 2020
Timely re-read.
August 24, 2023
I think every educator should read this. It’s interesting how much this woman has influenced education today. Her insights and observations made me appreciate being an educator myself. We are constantly observing, analyzing, and interpreting information all day, everyday and learning about how she uses that information into action was enjoyable for me.
February 21, 2016
An excellent read about one of the "founding mothers" of progressive, play-based early childhood education. A must read for all teachers of young children.
October 15, 2016
A primer for progressive education! Pratt does a beautiful job of illustrating what it means to focus on child-centered learning.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews