I LEARN FROM CHILDREN

A persuasive presentation of progressive education, by a foremost pioneer and practitioner in the field, who now at eighty, reviews her experience as the prime mover in the City and Country School in New York. From a one-room school in Fayetteville, Caroline Pratt came to New York to train and eventually to learn from very small children in her play group. Looking for the ""child's lost desire to learn"", she soon formulated the basic principles of the then new type of education which related the schoolroom to the world, the play impulse, the work impulse. Beginning with six children in an apartment, the school grew to the point of having Zorach and Lucy Sprague Mitchell on the staff, and additional age groups were brought in. The program of the '7's and the validity of postponing reading until then is argued; the 8's, who have a job to do- and various group programs; creative work; behavior concepts; the apprehensive parents; and the end result- the learning is there, though the approach is different.... The marketability of this is not simple. Those who cling to the traditional will not be interested; others are already convinced. But the progressive parent and pedagogue with an open mind should provide a substantial and fertile field.