The Savage Origins of Child-Centered Pedagogy, 1871–1913

Abstract

Child-centered pedagogy is at the ideological core of progressive education. The simple idea that the child rather than the teacher or textbook should be the major focus of the classroom is, perhaps, the single most enduring educational idea of the era. In this historical study, the author argues that child-centered education emerged directly from the theory of recapitulation, the idea that the development of the White child retraced the history of the human race. The theory of recapitulation was pervasive in the fields of anthropology, sociology, and psychology at the turn of the 20th century, and so early progressive educators uncritically adopted the basic tenets of the theory, which served as a major rationale for child-centered instruction. The theory was inherently ethnocentric and racist because it pointed to the West as the developmental endpoint of history, thereby depicting people of color as ontologically less developed than their White counterparts.

Decolonizing youth development: re-imagining youthwork for indigenous youth futures

“…Luther Gulick, a colleague of Hall’s wrote that the cooperative play of 12-year-old White boys was comparable to what adult savages achieved “fighting in organized groups under a chief” (1899, p. 142). Like its predecessors, Hall’s theory positioned “the Western world [man and culture] as the culmination of all of human progress” (Fallace, 2015, p. 97).…”

“…during its various stages of development” Dolber, 1900 (cited in Armitage, 2007). Adults must not only play active and supervisory roles for children, but they must “sequence” (Dopp, 1902) or use corresponding sociological stages as a guide to develop their programming (Armitage, 2007, p. 57; Fallace, 2015, p. 94).…”

“…In a nationwide study of history curriculum, Shear et al (2015) found that Indigenous people largely disappear from state standards by the year 1900, and when they are represented it is often in relation to white settlers and frequently negative: backwards, archaic, violent, and lazy. Science, technologies, and governance of man is presented as the curriculum of modern man encouraging students to arrive at the conclusion that “civilized society ha[s] surpassed the primitive Indian and African ones in a process of linear cultural development” (Fallace, 2015). Upward of 2,000 schools in the United States still utilize Native American mascots despite empirical findings that they have harmful psychosocial effects on Native youth and reinforce stereotypes among non-Native youth (Davis-Delano et al, 2020).…”

True Grit? Making a Scientific Object and Pedagogical Tool

“…For Hall, the key to unlocking the full potential of the individual lay in correctly steering the child's interiority. The child's growth was explained through theories of biology and racial evolution and could be verified through naturalist Making a Scientific Object and Pedagogical Tool observational practices (Baker, 1999;Fallace, 2015). Hall's ( /1924a child was one whose growth followed the development of its species-''ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny''-and whose potential varied by the quality of its ''racial stock'' (p. viii).…”

“…Hall's theories were foundational to the child-study movement of early 20th-century schooling; knowledge of the child would come from close examination of its supposed nature and needs (see e.g., Felmley, 1896). Brought into questions of pedagogy, Hall suggested that young children should learn Native American arts and crafts as they aligned best to their interests and instincts at that age (Fallace, 2015). Hall ( /1924a claimed that the science of child study was essential to avoid ''not only arrest, but perversion, at every stage, and hoodlumism, juvenile crime, and secret vice'' that he claimed accompanied ''urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli'' (pp.…”