The last sentence sounds like what the kids got when the liberals were in charge, so I guess this guy must be in favor of the conservative changes. ;-)
The teacher-centered approach [the one that most of us experienced if we were educated in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and distinctively non-Deweyian] means that the teacher gives the students lessons with specific objectives. Kids don't get to pick what they learn from the lesson.
As in most things, each approach has advantages and disadvantages. I teach fisrt-year Spanish at the middle school level, and I use the teacher-centered approach. That's because my students better learn what I tell them to in order to be ready for 2nd-year Spanish. I find myself teaching them things about English that we all used to learn in elementary school--both vocabularywise and grammarwise [for instance, the difference between "infinitive" and "infinity," what a direct object is, etc.]