Contributed Commentary on
Volume 4 Number 8: Stone Developmentalism: An Obscure but Pervasive Restriction on Educational Improvement

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30 April 1996

Aimee Howley

howley@MARSHALL.EDU

On April 30, 1996 Benjamin Levin wrote:

Sherman Dorn's comments on Stone's paper are very appropriate. We've heard a great deal about the baneful influence of progressivism on educational outcomes, but all the studies of classrooms continue to show the vast prevalence of traditional teaching techniques - teachers talk, kids sit and listen or write notes or do seat work. I wish Dewey had had as much impact as his critics say he did!

The prevalence of traditional methods may suggest that developmentalism doesn't have an important effect on resilient practices, but it doesn't adequately counter the claim that developmentalism serves as a rhetorical impediment to certain other practices. Acceleration of bright students provides a case in point. Despite rather convincing evidence of the benefit of this practice, teachers and administrators routinely disallow it. The most typical reason given is that acceleration will interfere with the healthy social and emotional development of bright students. Educators invoke the "whole child" argument as a way to keep from engaging in an educational practice that they find unacceptable. Having dealt with this argument again and again, I am convinced that, no matter how misdirected the argument may be, educators usually are committed to it out of an earnest regard for students' well-being. Here, an ethos of developmentalism restricts educators' consideration of reasonable alternatives. I do not think that in most cases the argument is offered cynically or in a calculative manner.