The Progressive nursery schools start a child’s education at the age of three. Their view of a child’s needs is militantly anti-cognitive and anti-conceptual. A child of that age, they claim, is too young for cognitive training; his natural desire is not to learn, but to play. The development of his conceptual faculty, they claim, is an unnatural burden that should not be imposed on him; he should be free to act on his spontaneous urges and feelings in order to express his subconscious desires, hostilities and fears. The primary goal of a Progressive nursery school is “social adjustment”; this is to be achieved by means of group activities, in which a child is expected to develop both “self-expression’ (in the form of anything he might feel like doing) and conformity to the group.--The Comprachicos by Ayn Rand (pdf)(For a presentation of the essentials of the Progressive nursery schools’ theories and practice—as contrasted to the rationality of the Montessori nursery schools—I refer you to “The Montessori Method” by Beatrice Hessen in The Objectivist, May-July 1970.)
RE your quote about the progressive school...
You know what’s really fascinating? The intellectual incoherence revealed.
On the one hand, let the kids loose to experience their feelings and impulses. ON THE OTHER HAND, train them to be docile and conformist. It’s a perfect recipe for making crazy people.
And no matter which side of the paradox the kids are operating on, academic attainment is not part of the craziness. So they end up confused AND ignorant.