conections among theorists

These several theorists agree and complement each other's work in many ways. Dewey, Montessori, and Piaget all emphasize that children learn from doing, and that education should involve "real life" experiences and materials. Dewey, Montessori, and Vygotsky emphasize careful observation as the key to the teacher's effectiveness in setting up a child-centered curriculum and environment. Piaget and Erikson gave us the idea that children's development occurs in predictable stages linked to physical growth and age (Piaget defined several stages of cognitive development, and Erikson of social-emotional development); Vygotsky built on these ideas but gave them more flexibility when he introduced the concept of the "zone of proximal development." Whereas Piaget's picture of the child's construction of knowledge appears mainly personal or internal, he and the other theorists are clear that the teacher plays a role in guiding this work via the curriculum; both Dewey and Vygtosky understood also that there are important social components to learning.

It is interesting that these theorists all came up with such groundbreaking and far-reaching work during approximately the same time period. I wonder why that was. It's really helpful to get a sense of the foundational progressive ideas behind so many preschools, parenting guides, and so on in America today. I wonder also why early childhood education, for the most part, really has embraced these progressive ideas about how kids learn but once they hit elementary school it seems like the tendency is to go back to more traditional methods. Oh, you're 6 now? No more circle time and sensory tables, kids, now it's time to sit still at your desk and do worksheets! I wonder if this has to do with the historical conflict about the purpose of schooling that we have seen in Schooled to Order, or other reasons.