The progressive vision of general education and the American common school ideal: implications for curriculum policy, practice, and theory

Around the middle years of this century, American progressive educators formulated a vision of general education for the secondary school that would afford all youth common opportunities to integrate and apply knowledge toward the resolution of personal-social problems. This progressive vision of general education was consistent with principles of the US common school ideal and predated the heyday of general education at the college level. This progressive vision of general education can serve today both as a conceptual tool to analyse and as a practical alternative to the national standards movement in the US. This vision of general education also provides common ground for deliberation among reconceptualist-social reconstructionist and progressive-experimentalist curriculum theorists.