The Paradox of Progressivism in Education
We’re all familiar with some paradoxes in education like: What’s good for performance often isn’t good for learning, or Teachers need to make learning harder (in a good way) to make it stick, or even that Good teacher-led instruction can be highly student-centred. One of the most toxic paradoxes that I’ve come across is what I call the Paradox of Progressivism. In short, while progressive education and educators (like all education and educators) aim to increase learning, reduce learning gaps, and increase equity, they often does the opposite—it unintentionally widens those gaps.
What is Progressivism in Education?
Progressive education1 as we know it has its roots in the ideas of Jean-Jacque Rousseau (1712-1778), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), John Dewey (1859-1952), and Paulo Freire (1921-1997), amongst others. Its goal is to transform what it sees as a traditional, rigid, factory-like educational system into a flexible learner-centred system emphasising the holistic development of students so as to prepare them for active participation in democratic society. It seeks to make education experiential, student-centred, relevant, and socially responsible, prioritising critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and real-world application.
Though progressivism comes in many flavours and colours, most progressive approaches to education share most, if not all, of the following core principles:
- Learning should be child-centred, focusing on their individual needs, interests, and developmental stages rather than standardised curricula.
- Children should learn by doing via hands-on, experiential learning through carrying out relevant projects, doing fieldwork, and solving relevant problems so as to deepen understanding and engagement.
- The curriculum should be integrated across disciplines to provide a holistic understanding of knowledge.
- Education should emphasise and foster social responsibility and democracy where students are encouraged/required to become active participants in their communities, fostering social justice, empathy, and civic engagement[1].
- Critical thinking and inquiry are prioritised above the learning of facts, concepts, procedures, etc. Questioning, analysing, and being critical of knowledge is prioritised over memorisation and application.
- Working with others via cooperative and collaborative learning and developing social skills through group projects and teamwork is often seen as the holy grail.
- The idea that true, meaningful learning can only be achieved when the child/learner is intrinsically motivated. Progressive education is focused on nurturing students’ ‘natural curiosity and passion for learning’ rather than external rewards like grades or tests.
Progressive education aims to educate the “whole child” – intellectually, emotionally, socially, and physically – while equipping them with advanced skills to thrive in a democratic society and contribute to the greater public good.
Sounds great. Sign me up! But…
The Paradox
Progressive educational approaches, despite their equity-focused intentions, often end up undermining equity and widening the achievement gap through a number of mechanisms rooted in cognitive science and systemic inequality. Here are a few reasons why the approach chosen by progressivists miss the mark and even aggravate the problem that they want to solve.
First, the progressive methods propagated, like discovery learning and collaborative learning place high demands on working memory and assume significant prior knowledge. But disadvantaged students often lack foundational understanding and external academic support. This leads to cognitive overload, while their peers—those with enriched backgrounds—are better able to navigate these environments. For example, OECD data show that low-income students in progressive systems but not in better schools score 78 points lower in science than peers in structured environments—a gap equivalent to three years of schooling[2].
Second, if we want progressive education to even approach being effective, it requires small class sizes, skilled teachers, and material resources (e.g., technology, field trips), all of which aren’t available. Underfunded schools serving marginalized communities often lack these, creating a progressive divide as budget constraints force cuts to extracurriculars and teacher training, and high-poverty schools are 50% more likely to staff inexperienced teachers ill-equipped to scaffold inquiry-based learning.
Also, the system is such that wealthier districts often outcompete poorer ones for skilled teachers, negating any extra funding advantages that may be created.
Third, progressive education also assumes or, possibly better said, requires a high level of home engagement to help learners do project-based work, reading, exploration, discussion, etc.. However, students from under-resourced homes may face barriers such as limited time, space, or caregiver availability, often due to economic demands or longstanding structural societal inequalities. These circumstances can make it more difficult for families to provide the kind of academic support that progressive models often implicitly rely on.
So-called progressive methods implicitly favour students with academic cultural capital (e.g., parents who model inquiry, debate) and/or who have acquired the necessary metacognitive skills needed to self-regulate learning. These abilities are disproportionately developed in high-SES households.
Fourth, while experts thrive in self-directed environments, novices—especially those without academic support networks—require explicit instruction (i.e., the expertise reversal effect in action). Progressive educational models/pedagogies (1) often fail to correct acquired learner misconceptions, leading to entrenched errors, and (2) rely on trial-and-error and other weak problem-solving approaches which consume time and mental effort without building coherent cognitive schemas.
Fifth, there’s also an assessment mismatch in that progressive models often de-emphasise standardised testing and traditional assessments. While that may be philosophically defensible, the reality is that gatekeeping systems (university admissions, scholarships, job applications) still rely heavily on such metrics. Disadvantaged students end up underprepared for the very tests that determine access to opportunities. In other words, progressive environments often fail to prepare students for a world that still values traditional markers of achievement.
Sixth, progressive education’s preferred open-endedness as opposed to explicit goals often lacks clarity and structure which can produce anxiety and confusion, particularly for students who crave structure (which is often the case for trauma-affected or high-adversity children). Structure isn’t just a pedagogical preference—it’s a form of psychological safety.
Seventh, we have to deal with what George Bush (not my favourite person or politician) called the soft bigotry of low expectations which describes a patronising and dangerous attitude, cloaked as kindness, that assumes certain people are capable of less because of their race or background. To help disadvantaged students get ‘better grades’ the bar is lowered for them leading, thus to poorer learning.
And finally, progressive pedagogy is prone to fads. Because of its ideological foundation, progressive education often embraces untested or weakly evidenced practices (learning styles, brain gym, etc.) under the banner of innovation. Disadvantaged students cannot afford this “experimentalism.” Children aren’t lab rats to be experimented on! See my blog on this.
How do we, then, resolve this paradox?
Progressive education can reduce gaps only when paired with:
- explicit instruction to build foundational knowledge,
- structured scaffolding (e.g., guidance, worked examples),
- removing implicit bias in student-teacher interactions and expectations, and
- resource parity (funding, teacher training, materials).
Without these safeguards, progressive approaches are more what you might call luxury pedagogy which benefits already-privileged students while leaving others behind.
In other words, what is needed to increase equity and equality is good traditional explicit instruction!! Or, as I once wrote in a blog: Traditional Is the New Progressive
OECD (2012). Equity and quality in education: Supporting disadvantaged students and schools. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264130852-en
OECD (2018). Equity in education: Breaking down barriers to social mobility. PISA, OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264073234-en
[1] Progressive approaches aim to amplify student voice. The problem is that in under-resourced contexts (finances, teachers, apparatus…), many students often don’t have the vocabulary, confidence, or conceptual framework needed to express complex ideas or ask critical questions. Without deliberate/explicit scaffolding, this often leads to surface-level participation that’s mistaken for genuine participation and autonomy.
[2] Disadvantaged students attending advantaged schools score 78 points higher than those attending disadvantaged schools, on average across OECD countries; disadvantaged students attending schools with an average socio-economic profile (schools that are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged) score 36 points higher in science than those attending disadvantaged schools
- Sometimes referred to as romantic constructivism ↩︎
