What do you think?
Rate this book
Getting It Wrong from the Beginning: Our Progressivist Inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget
The ideas upon which public education was founded in the last half of the nineteenth century were wrong. And despite their continued dominance in educational thinking for a century and a half, these ideas are no more right today. So argues one of the most original and highly regarded educational theorists of our time in Getting It Wrong from the Beginning. Kieran Egan explains how we have come to take mistaken concepts about education for granted and why this dooms our attempts at educational reform. Egan traces the nineteenth-century sources of Progressive thinking about education and their persistence even now. He diagnoses the problem with our schools in a radically different way, and likewise prescribes novel alternatives to present educational practice. His book is both persuasive and full of promise – a book that belongs on the must-read list for anyone who cares about the success of our schools.
- GenresEducationNonfiction
204 pages, Hardcover
First published August 11, 2002
4 people are currently reading
254 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 24, 2022
While I found the subject matter very interesting, and probably agree with a lot of what he said, his writing style didn’t work for me very well. I say I probably agree because some of it wasn’t very readable for me.
What I got from it:
Herbert Spencer was an evolutionist who believed that in a person’s growth, starting from conception, all the stages of evolution are recapitulated in a person’s development, both physically and mentally, therefore a child’s mind is not as complex as an adult’s. So in teaching a child, we must not start with something a child doesn’t know anything about. We must move from the known to the unknown, otherwise the child will have a bunch of random stuff in his head that doesn’t have any bearing on his life as it is today. Piaget and Dewey also were proponents of Spencer’s ideas.
Spencer hated rote learning and had no use for the classics or humanities. He thought history was useless.
(He also thought that “uncivilized” people were lower in the evolutionary process.)
Maybe if he had had a teacher using Mr. Eagan’s storying teaching methods, Mr.Spencer would have liked them better?
I haven’t had a lot of experience in Mr. Egan’s methods, but I’m pretty sure it would catch the imagination of most kids.
What I got from it:
Herbert Spencer was an evolutionist who believed that in a person’s growth, starting from conception, all the stages of evolution are recapitulated in a person’s development, both physically and mentally, therefore a child’s mind is not as complex as an adult’s. So in teaching a child, we must not start with something a child doesn’t know anything about. We must move from the known to the unknown, otherwise the child will have a bunch of random stuff in his head that doesn’t have any bearing on his life as it is today. Piaget and Dewey also were proponents of Spencer’s ideas.
Spencer hated rote learning and had no use for the classics or humanities. He thought history was useless.
(He also thought that “uncivilized” people were lower in the evolutionary process.)
Maybe if he had had a teacher using Mr. Eagan’s storying teaching methods, Mr.Spencer would have liked them better?
I haven’t had a lot of experience in Mr. Egan’s methods, but I’m pretty sure it would catch the imagination of most kids.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 6, 2019
Not as grand or sweeping as “The Educated Mind,” but also a somewhat quicker read.
Egan is here at his most convincing when dunking on Spencer and the educational literature. He stumbles when he tries to make a positive case for a model for education.
In particular, having wasted four years studying Latin, his case for learning it felt particularly weak. Everyone knows learning Latin will let you read Horace; the rational bar is a reason to read Horace instead of Gabriel García Márquez.
Egan accepts a priori certain aspects of curriculum that have a standardizing effect on the minds of their subjects, and the notion that education should tend towards a single model, rather than having a divergentizing effect. As a result, the brief remarks around deschooling only address the most Spencerian elements, and leave unaddressed many of the more interesting aspects.
Egan is here at his most convincing when dunking on Spencer and the educational literature. He stumbles when he tries to make a positive case for a model for education.
In particular, having wasted four years studying Latin, his case for learning it felt particularly weak. Everyone knows learning Latin will let you read Horace; the rational bar is a reason to read Horace instead of Gabriel García Márquez.
Egan accepts a priori certain aspects of curriculum that have a standardizing effect on the minds of their subjects, and the notion that education should tend towards a single model, rather than having a divergentizing effect. As a result, the brief remarks around deschooling only address the most Spencerian elements, and leave unaddressed many of the more interesting aspects.
February 5, 2022
In this insightful (and incisive) book, Kieran Egan shows that certain practices which are often taken for granted in education today are based on progressivist ideas―first formulated by Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth century, then filtered through John Dewey and Jean Piaget in the twentieth. These ideas have become part of our 'mental atmosphere' and most people today would not know where they came from, but believe that this is simply how things are.
Egan does more than just show the origins of these ideas. In an elegant and convincing way, he argues that they are all false.
For example, he challenges a common assumption about which forms of learning are active, and which passive: 'Is that child sitting and reading active or passive? Is the child imaginatively transported by a story the teacher is telling active or passive? ... In good practices, children are "active," and so we are inclined to prefer practices in which children are patently engaged―and because we can see physical engagement better than intellectual, there is a tendency to move increasingly in that direction. So we get all that "hands-on" activity that, along with the strange belief that young children are "concrete" thinkers, has done so much to trivialize early education' (pp. 66-67).
I believe this assumption (that activity must be observable and therefore physical) in particular shows that one of the false foundations of progressivism in education is the belief in materialism, according to which the mind is a physical organ just like any other―and the child is like a primitive animal, which only gradually 'develops' into a full human being. Egan does not make too much of this belief, but I shall come back to it shortly.
Underlying all these ideas is the theory, held in different forms by Spencer, Dewey, and Piaget alike, that children's minds go through different stages of mental or cognitive development which mirror the physical development of their bodies. According to this theory, the mind is like an organism that requires 'food' (knowledge) in order to 'grow' into maturity. As long as the mind is led (by a teacher) to enough food, it will progress through the stages according to some 'law' of development. Since the end result (a mature mind) is assumed to be the same in all cases, it does not matter so much exactly what knowledge is learned as whether it is 'developmentally appropriate' or not.
This is based on the previously mentioned belief in materialism, which Egan gently questions when he writes that 'the human mind is ... odd in the natural world' (p. 99) and 'mind-stuff does have features that are somewhat distinct from body-stuff' (p. 113). Since ideas have consequences, it should not be surprising to anyone that a false anthropology, building on a false cosmology, should lead to practices in education that actually hinder rather than promote the true flourishing of children as human beings.
There is a lot more to be gotten from this book, like Egan's challenging of the idea that all education must be 'useful' or his scepticism toward 'pseudoempirical' research which only confirms theories that people already hold―but I want to stop here and make a final observation.
The progressivist assumption that the development of children mirrors the evolution of the human species as a whole, and that it begins (in both cases) with 'concrete' and 'hands-on' knowledge―only later becoming more abstract―reminds me of G.K. Chesterton's critique of certain thinkers in The Everlasting Man (1925).
In that work, Chesterton points out that prehistoric man is often described as a savage brute (a 'cave-man') without much evidence. The idea seems to be that since our species is so advanced today, it must have been much less advanced in the past. But this is based on a progressivist assumption that development only goes in one direction over time, from worse to better―so that the present will always be preferable to the way things were before.
This ignores both the actual evidence we do have―the cave paintings, of which Chesterton writes that they are 'quite intelligent' (Ch. II)―and the fact that modern man also has a capacity for savagery: 'It is said that the Russians in their great retreat were so short of armament that they fought with clubs cut in the wood. But a professor of the future would err in supposing that the Russian Army of 1916 was a naked Scythian tribe that had never been out of the wood' (Ch. III).
In other words, it is possible for humanity not only to progress but to regress or become worse than we used to be. It must be remembered that the thing keeping us from savagery is not our present location in time, but the quality of our civilisation and education. This flies in the face of progressivism, as I have tried to show.
I find a similar critique in Egan's book, when he writes that children start early with abstract thinking and have a lot of potential for learning―which is often not actualised by their progressivist education, with the result that some things are lost along the way. He writes of schools today that 'children are commonly sentimentalized but basically treated as though they can't really think; they can only do―so we have all these "hands-on" activities while their huge intellectual energy is hardly engaged with anything significant in the wider cultural world' (p. 110).
At the very least, this book should make people think about which ideas our educational practices are based on and stop taking them all for granted.
Egan does more than just show the origins of these ideas. In an elegant and convincing way, he argues that they are all false.
For example, he challenges a common assumption about which forms of learning are active, and which passive: 'Is that child sitting and reading active or passive? Is the child imaginatively transported by a story the teacher is telling active or passive? ... In good practices, children are "active," and so we are inclined to prefer practices in which children are patently engaged―and because we can see physical engagement better than intellectual, there is a tendency to move increasingly in that direction. So we get all that "hands-on" activity that, along with the strange belief that young children are "concrete" thinkers, has done so much to trivialize early education' (pp. 66-67).
I believe this assumption (that activity must be observable and therefore physical) in particular shows that one of the false foundations of progressivism in education is the belief in materialism, according to which the mind is a physical organ just like any other―and the child is like a primitive animal, which only gradually 'develops' into a full human being. Egan does not make too much of this belief, but I shall come back to it shortly.
Underlying all these ideas is the theory, held in different forms by Spencer, Dewey, and Piaget alike, that children's minds go through different stages of mental or cognitive development which mirror the physical development of their bodies. According to this theory, the mind is like an organism that requires 'food' (knowledge) in order to 'grow' into maturity. As long as the mind is led (by a teacher) to enough food, it will progress through the stages according to some 'law' of development. Since the end result (a mature mind) is assumed to be the same in all cases, it does not matter so much exactly what knowledge is learned as whether it is 'developmentally appropriate' or not.
This is based on the previously mentioned belief in materialism, which Egan gently questions when he writes that 'the human mind is ... odd in the natural world' (p. 99) and 'mind-stuff does have features that are somewhat distinct from body-stuff' (p. 113). Since ideas have consequences, it should not be surprising to anyone that a false anthropology, building on a false cosmology, should lead to practices in education that actually hinder rather than promote the true flourishing of children as human beings.
There is a lot more to be gotten from this book, like Egan's challenging of the idea that all education must be 'useful' or his scepticism toward 'pseudoempirical' research which only confirms theories that people already hold―but I want to stop here and make a final observation.
The progressivist assumption that the development of children mirrors the evolution of the human species as a whole, and that it begins (in both cases) with 'concrete' and 'hands-on' knowledge―only later becoming more abstract―reminds me of G.K. Chesterton's critique of certain thinkers in The Everlasting Man (1925).
In that work, Chesterton points out that prehistoric man is often described as a savage brute (a 'cave-man') without much evidence. The idea seems to be that since our species is so advanced today, it must have been much less advanced in the past. But this is based on a progressivist assumption that development only goes in one direction over time, from worse to better―so that the present will always be preferable to the way things were before.
This ignores both the actual evidence we do have―the cave paintings, of which Chesterton writes that they are 'quite intelligent' (Ch. II)―and the fact that modern man also has a capacity for savagery: 'It is said that the Russians in their great retreat were so short of armament that they fought with clubs cut in the wood. But a professor of the future would err in supposing that the Russian Army of 1916 was a naked Scythian tribe that had never been out of the wood' (Ch. III).
In other words, it is possible for humanity not only to progress but to regress or become worse than we used to be. It must be remembered that the thing keeping us from savagery is not our present location in time, but the quality of our civilisation and education. This flies in the face of progressivism, as I have tried to show.
I find a similar critique in Egan's book, when he writes that children start early with abstract thinking and have a lot of potential for learning―which is often not actualised by their progressivist education, with the result that some things are lost along the way. He writes of schools today that 'children are commonly sentimentalized but basically treated as though they can't really think; they can only do―so we have all these "hands-on" activities while their huge intellectual energy is hardly engaged with anything significant in the wider cultural world' (p. 110).
At the very least, this book should make people think about which ideas our educational practices are based on and stop taking them all for granted.
April 21, 2010
An incredibly thought provoking, discussion worthy read that will shake up your assumptions about learning. Educators, this is a perfect staff read for engaging conversations.
May 20, 2024
see nüüd mingi lihtne ja sujuv lugemine küll ei olnud. ma arvan, siin oli häid mõtteid, aga jube raske oli seda teksti jälgida ja kuigi paksu raamatuga tegu polnud, oleks minu meelest saanud veel vähemate lehekülgedega selle jutu ära rääkida. või no ausalt öeldes mulle oleks meeldinud, kui see oleks olnud TED-talk :)
mu enda jaoks kõige käegakatsutavam avastus siit oli ilmselgelt see, et lõpuks loksus kuhugi paika üks oluline teema mu ühest lapsest-saadik-lemmikraamatust "Tappa laulurästast" - teate küll, Nirksilma esimene koolipäev, kus Jem seletab talle, et nüüd õpetatakse "Dewey kümnendsüsteemi" järgi. vaatasin alustuseks järele, Jemil muidugi päris õigus ei ole, see kümnendsüsteemi-Dewey (Melvil) oli üks hoopis teine mees kui hariduse-Dewey (John), kellest siin Egani raamatus juttu on. aga samas on üsna tabav Jemi seletus süsteemile endale: "kui sa näiteks tahad lehmast midagi teada, siis lähed ja lüpsad teda, saad aru?" (ja kui Nirksilm protesteerib, et ta ei tahagi lehmast midagi teada, siis "Tahad küll. Lehmadest just peab teadma, vaata kui tähtis osa neil Maycombi maakonna elus on.")
ühesõnaga, jah, selgub, et selle nimi on progressiivne/progressivistlik haridus ja et juba sada viiskümmend aastat on leidunud inimesi, kes ütlevad, et lapsi tuleb õpetada teatud viisidel (tuttavalt tundmatule, üksikult üldisele, aktiivne ja avastuspõhine õpe, praktilised eluoskused jne). ja selgub ka, et kogu selle jutu aluseks on mingi teooria, millel omakorda eriti mingit alust pole - et lapsed pole oma arengufaaside tõttu suutelised teistmoodi õppima. Egan siis vaidleb vastu, et on ikka küll ja et kogu selle progressivismi käigus alahinnatakse lapsi ja sunnitakse neid - eriti algklassides - tegelema tobedustega, kui nad võiksid samal ajal täitsa edukalt... päriselt õppida.
mulle jääb üpris segaseks, mida Egan siis alternatiivina pakub, sellest räägib ta vist rohkem oma mingis teises raamatus... aga igal juhul on tal siin veenvaid pointe. nt kõnetas mind see küsimus, et kas laps, kes loeb süvenenult raamatut, õpib aktiivselt või passiivselt. ja see mõttekäik, et kuna lapse peas toimuvat me ei saa jälgida, siis kipub kogu see aktiivõpe muutumagi puhtfüüsilisteks tegevusteks, lihtsalt et oleks kõrvalt kena vaadata, et töö käib.
ja no lõppeks, kui progressivistlik haridus oleks tõesti nii hea ja efektiivne, siis peaks ju tulemusi näha olema, aga ei tundu, et sellega saavutataks tingimata rohkem edu kui... noh, tavalise haridusega. Egani väitel see "social studies", millega enamus USA algkoolilapsi enamuse oma aega veedab, ei meeldi neile kellelegi eriti, igav olevat. ainus alternatiivne allikas, mis mul siia kõrvale võtta on - "Tappa laulurästast" - kinnitab seda seisukohta, ja ma nüüd tahangi hoopis selle uuesti üle lugeda kogu selle haridusajaloolise kuiviku närimise peale.
mu enda jaoks kõige käegakatsutavam avastus siit oli ilmselgelt see, et lõpuks loksus kuhugi paika üks oluline teema mu ühest lapsest-saadik-lemmikraamatust "Tappa laulurästast" - teate küll, Nirksilma esimene koolipäev, kus Jem seletab talle, et nüüd õpetatakse "Dewey kümnendsüsteemi" järgi. vaatasin alustuseks järele, Jemil muidugi päris õigus ei ole, see kümnendsüsteemi-Dewey (Melvil) oli üks hoopis teine mees kui hariduse-Dewey (John), kellest siin Egani raamatus juttu on. aga samas on üsna tabav Jemi seletus süsteemile endale: "kui sa näiteks tahad lehmast midagi teada, siis lähed ja lüpsad teda, saad aru?" (ja kui Nirksilm protesteerib, et ta ei tahagi lehmast midagi teada, siis "Tahad küll. Lehmadest just peab teadma, vaata kui tähtis osa neil Maycombi maakonna elus on.")
ühesõnaga, jah, selgub, et selle nimi on progressiivne/progressivistlik haridus ja et juba sada viiskümmend aastat on leidunud inimesi, kes ütlevad, et lapsi tuleb õpetada teatud viisidel (tuttavalt tundmatule, üksikult üldisele, aktiivne ja avastuspõhine õpe, praktilised eluoskused jne). ja selgub ka, et kogu selle jutu aluseks on mingi teooria, millel omakorda eriti mingit alust pole - et lapsed pole oma arengufaaside tõttu suutelised teistmoodi õppima. Egan siis vaidleb vastu, et on ikka küll ja et kogu selle progressivismi käigus alahinnatakse lapsi ja sunnitakse neid - eriti algklassides - tegelema tobedustega, kui nad võiksid samal ajal täitsa edukalt... päriselt õppida.
mulle jääb üpris segaseks, mida Egan siis alternatiivina pakub, sellest räägib ta vist rohkem oma mingis teises raamatus... aga igal juhul on tal siin veenvaid pointe. nt kõnetas mind see küsimus, et kas laps, kes loeb süvenenult raamatut, õpib aktiivselt või passiivselt. ja see mõttekäik, et kuna lapse peas toimuvat me ei saa jälgida, siis kipub kogu see aktiivõpe muutumagi puhtfüüsilisteks tegevusteks, lihtsalt et oleks kõrvalt kena vaadata, et töö käib.
ja no lõppeks, kui progressivistlik haridus oleks tõesti nii hea ja efektiivne, siis peaks ju tulemusi näha olema, aga ei tundu, et sellega saavutataks tingimata rohkem edu kui... noh, tavalise haridusega. Egani väitel see "social studies", millega enamus USA algkoolilapsi enamuse oma aega veedab, ei meeldi neile kellelegi eriti, igav olevat. ainus alternatiivne allikas, mis mul siia kõrvale võtta on - "Tappa laulurästast" - kinnitab seda seisukohta, ja ma nüüd tahangi hoopis selle uuesti üle lugeda kogu selle haridusajaloolise kuiviku närimise peale.
August 7, 2023
[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]
I noted some enthusiasm for this book in an anonymous review post at the Astral Codex Ten substack. And it turned out to be actually available on the shelves of Dimond Library at the University Near Here. (This is a very rare occurrence!)
The author, Keiran Egan, passed away last year. This 2002 book is one of many. The link above will take you to a detailed (and very long) review of his "magnum opus", The Educated Mind.
There has been a lot of research over the decades into cognitive psychology, including piles of exciting recent insights. This ought to be reflected in the way we teach the youngsters, right? But instead, we seem to be doing the same old stuff, in the same ways, year after year. Spending a lot of money, and the results are awful. What's going on?
Egan argues that the dominant philosophy in modern education is badly flawed, and he points his shaky finger of blame at an unlikely suspect: Herbert Spencer. Today Spencer is widely despised as a forefather of "social Darwinism". But in his own time, he was seen as a progressive, albeit one with a fondness for laissez-faire economics. And he was really a fan of evolution, even coming up with the term "survival of the fittest".
Spencer's view of evolution was flawed, in a Lamarckian way. Understandable, given the state of biological knowledge back then. But he applied that evolutionary view to just about everything he thought about, including education. And his conclusions about the "best" way to foster the development of human minds were widely promulgated, somewhat modified but not fundamentally altered by Dewey and Piaget. And (Egan argues) we're still operating under that fundamentally incorrect paradigm today. (In an amusing aside, he notes that Aristotle carelessly "observed" that flies have four legs; this observation was uncritically "repeated in natural history texts for more than a thousand years".)
What to do instead? Egan has suggestions, involving firing up childrens' power of imagination by telling timeless stories, encouraging their enthusiasms. I have no idea, because I don't even come close to dilettante-level in the area of educational philosophy. Again, the above link has much more detail, see what you think.
Egan's discussion is laced with humor, and a distinctive personal tone. It's not an easy read, but I found it accessible.
Read
June 2, 2021An impressive critique of the mindset behind the founders of modern public education, and the flawed assumptions they had about human nature and learning. But Egan is not railing against factory education; indeed, that's what his subjects complained about. Refreshingly, Egan does not advocate a black-and-white approach; rather, he points out the problems in his subjects' approaches and offers alternatives that provide a middle road.
January 28, 2023
I’ve got a helluva lot more cogitation and follow up reading and discussion to have as a result of reading this book. I always acknowledge everything I know *could* be wrong but it’s rare for me to encounter arguments that cause me to consider foundational beliefs I hold are erroneous. What makes this particularly true here is Eagan’s key arguments represent and articulate observations and experiences from my life as a learner and educator.
September 16, 2021
This was a thought-provoking critique of progressivism’s hold over education. I’m not sure I agree with everything Egan argues, but he makes good points. There should be more of a conversation about them rather than simply deifying utilitarianism, Dewey, and constructivism.
Advocates for history education should particularly read it.
Advocates for history education should particularly read it.
September 13, 2018
I bought this book thinking it was a slam on the school system Dewey has created. I wanted to learn more about what his goals of setting up the structure of our public schools was. Well, turns out this is not that book at all. The book hardly talks about Dewey really. But, I plodded through the book and found it very eye opening and caused me to question things I’d never even considered to question. I found it entertaining that the author himself seems to come from an evolutionary background of belief, yet is slamming these men for their theories also based in evolution. As a Christian homeschooler I actually found this book to be very enlightening in seeing how these theories have slipped in to homeschooling methods of teaching even. I gave it three stars because he writing can feel a little bit like wading through a swamp up to your middle. It was heavy and I had to reread many sentences to make sure I was clear what the argument truly was. I did finish it though! Anyways it’s worth the read.
August 20, 2014
I agree with most of this... Spencer, however, was an individualist who argued many times for education to be free of the state... I hardly link him to debacle we call Statist "education", really schooling, today.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews