American Education: Its Decline and Hope for Restoration

The crisis of education in The United States has been much debated by pundits, academics, and policy makers, but its historical and philosophical roots are often ignored. The dramatic rise of classical and liberal approaches to education is indicative of the discontent and great loss many feel about the state of education today. However, few understand exactly why modern theories and philosophies of education failed necessarily, on their own principles. It is vital that we know this history, because without understanding the assumptions that have shaped modern education, the task of reconstruction and recovery risks perpetuating the same errors that have led to today’s crisis.

Two Visions

My aim in this brief article is to sketch the history of this crisis, which is a story of two competing worldviews. One worldview is rooted in the classical and Christian understanding of the human person as a rational being capable of knowing truth and acting virtuously. In the traditional view, man is at home in an intelligible cosmos and he is ordered to wisdom and contemplation of a higher end. Education is for the formation of the whole person, body, mind, and soul, through the cultivation of intellectual and moral virtue and the transmission of a moral, cultural, philosophical, and theological tradition. The disciplined (and difficult) ascent toward truth, goodness, and beauty is at the heart of the project. The curriculum is grounded in the liberal arts and the great works of Western civilization which have an enduring pedagogical value in shaping intellects, refining character, and turning souls toward permanent things. The teacher is not just a repository of facts, but a trusted guide and font of wisdom.

A second worldview sees humans as functional with a fluid rather than fixed nature. Human development, always directed by “the experts,” is driven by social utility, economic productivity, scientific measurement, and ideological conformity. This modern view of education is geared toward social engineering and societal management. The experts relentlessly strive to create a “New Man” and new society on the principles of progress, discarding tradition and the soul, and viewing truth as a mere social construct.

Thus, the classroom is always “student centered” (with the absence of objective truth, individual experience becomes central). In place of the teacher, now reduced to a mere technician, experts of all sorts take charge—psychological, sociological, technocratic, and philosophical—to determine ideological needs. Armed with a tranche of the latest social science research, they engineer curriculum with data-driven projections, cutting edge theory, and political agendas. Education in this vision is a tool of social engineering aimed at managing society more efficiently to encourage progress and strengthen “Democracy” (now a mere collective idea or experience rather than a particular concrete social contract). The teacher is tasked—and burdened—with outcome achievement (measured by standardized metrics), data interpretation, curricular implementation (of pre-approved materials), behavior management, and policy implementation—all set by experts and bureaucrats.

The remainder of this article will quickly sketch, in four historical phases, the struggle between these visions of education.

Phase I: Building a New Man (1890–1920)

The educational crisis has its roots in the Progressive Era (1890–1920), a time of industrial growth, boundless optimism, and energetic belief in human perfectibility. This period saw the rise of the first American generation of post-Christian intellectual elites who rejected the founding vision of man as fallen and limited, instead imagining a “New Man” and new society—scientific, progressive, unbound by tradition, and fueled by the decline of Christian belief. They sought to replace churches with modern schools as the pillars of their new society. By the late 19th century, German historical-critical theology had reshaped American seminaries, and the Social Gospel had redefined much of Protestant Christianity as moral activism and social reform rather than doctrine and salvation.

From this cultural upheaval emerged the intellectual foundations of progressive education—philosophical, psychological, technocratic, and political. The key currents of the movement, often converging but often in tension, were marked by fatal contradictions and a persistent failure to articulate coherent and consistent visions of the human person, the purpose for education itself, or the role of authority and tradition in education.

A. Philosophical Man

Pragmatism lies at the heart of progressive education’s philosophical project, and John Dewey (1859–1952) was its chief architect. Pragmatism redefines truth as what works, subordinates knowledge to experience, and recasts education as continual adaptation rather than the pursuit of objective reality. His materialism left no room for the soul, contemplation, or a wisdom that sees higher things—all were seen as obstacles to progress and democracy.

Dewey was a revolutionary, not a reformer. The search for truth had been central to virtually all educational endeavors before him, but he dismissed traditional education with a litany of epithets: medieval, rigid, authoritarian, mechanical, and imposed. In contrast, he praised his own modern vision as creative, democratic, experiential, and liberating. His pragmatism—an unstable fusion of post-Civil War philosophical fragments—was shaped by romanticism, scientism, and optimism. By emphasizing growth over intellectual acquisition, he argued that children learn by doing, primarily in group settings, through a flexible curriculum shaped by their interests and experiences. This created the school-as-community model, centered on active thinking and personal growth—but at the expense of disciplined study, structured knowledge, and the transmission of a rich and treasured cultural heritage. 

B. Psychological Man 

Simultaneously in the late 1800s, Edward Thorndike helped establish the psychological dimension of progressive education: developmental psychology. His Educational Psychology (1903) marked the birth of educational social science. Known for the maxim, “Whatever exists, exists in some amount and can be measured,” Thorndike insisted that all learning—skills, abilities, and knowledge—must be quantifiable. Though he and Dewey often disagreed, they shared an anti-spiritual materialism and a common desire to dismantle traditional education.

Thorndike envisioned schools as laboratories of measurement. He pioneered standardized testing, advocating for clear objectives and measurable outcomes. His large-scale intelligence testing sorted students into vocational or academic tracks—a practice later widely criticized. This fixation on data acquisition and interpretation created a mechanistic pedagogy that neglected creativity, virtue, and wisdom—qualities resistant to quantification and rooted in the philosophical tradition.

Like Dewey, Thorndike sought to construct a “New Man” and redefined human nature through “behavioral responses,” “connections,” and “bonds.” However, his reductive account only diminished the
richness of reality by ignoring the spiritual, moral, and intellectual dimensions that constitute authentic human flourishing.

C. Managerial Man 

The third major current that shaped progressive education was the social efficiency movement, which applied scientific management to schooling. The goal was to optimize instruction and align education with the needs of modern industrial society. However, mechanized learning only emptied the intellectual journey of its drama and richness. Through the application of intelligence testing, students were sorted into roles and trained to serve workforce needs. The liberal arts were dismissed as irrelevant to “real life,” and personal formation was deemed unnecessary in a democratic society, as education aimed not at forming free citizens, but producing vocational, technical, domestic, or civic functionaries.

Franklin Bobbitt developed this vision, drawing from Frederick Winslow Taylor’s influential “scientific management” theory in his seminal 1913 General Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Bobbitt treated students as units to be shaped for maximum efficiency. His five-step model—experience analysis, job analysis, objective derivation, objective selection, and detailed planning—recast education as a bureaucratic, mechanized process.

By 1920, the foundations of progressive education—pragmatism, developmental psychology, and social efficiency—stood in sharp contrast to the traditional model. Liberal education sought to order the mind and character toward the good, drawing on a tradition that united faith, reason, and the moral imagination. The teacher was seen as a moral and intellectual guide forming citizens capable of self-rule. Progressivism, by contrast, replaced subject mastery with technical training. Educators became
pedagogical technicians, adapting students to social utility through measurable behaviors and skills. Education became a tool of social planning and economic productivity.

Phase II: The Long March Through the Institutions (1920–1955) 

From 1920 to 1955, progressive ideas hardened into institutional structures, ushering in the “age of the expert.” Credentialed authorities, fluent in a language alien to the common man, set out to construct a new civilization with redefined notions of truth, humanity, teaching, and learning. The movement built a vast network of education schools, journals, conferences, training programs, and publishers. The three foundational currents—pragmatism, developmental psychology, and social efficiency—remained distinct but increasingly interdependent. During this phase, a fourth current, political radicalism, was added.

William Kilpatrick, Dewey’s disciple, developed the Project Method, which replaced subject-based curricula with child-centered, interdisciplinary “projects” tied to real-world tasks. It further displaced the liberal arts by subordinating content to student interests. Unlike Dewey’s abstractions, Kilpatrick’s method was concrete and easily applied to teacher training and school design, remaining firmly grounded in utilitarian aims. Not surprisingly, it drew criticism for its lack of rigor and weak classroom discipline. While modestly effective in elite schools, it proved unworkable in typical settings. 

Also during the 1920s, the IQ test, recently developed and used by the military during World War I, was utilized in schools to sort students by perceived ability. In line with their utilitarian vision—and influenced by Darwinian evolution and eugenicist assumptions—progressives saw no reason to offer women, minorities, the poor, or low scorers a liberal education, instead directing them toward industrial, agricultural, or domestic training.  Conservatives like William Bagley argued tirelessly that everyone had a right to a liberal education, because learning was its own end and was essential to the formation of free and virtuous
citizens. Curricular reforms followed. History was replaced by social studies, and grammar and literature by language arts, which had the disastrous effect of fragmenting knowledge. The curricular transformation caused widespread historical and civic ignorance, weakening students’ command of language and logical reasoning. Anything that remained in the curriculum had to prove its social or economic utility. Classic texts—poetry, fables, and myths—were largely discarded. Ralph Tyler formalized this shift in the 1940s, emphasizing measurable objectives and subordinating content to method and function. Moreover, Thorndike’s school of social science, still in its infancy, churned out a number of equally influential and faulty “studies” purporting to show the uselessness of Latin and the traditional liberal arts curriculum, arguing that they had no benefit that transferred to “real life.”

By the end of this phase, the long march had largely succeeded. Subject mastery gave way to methodological credentialing from schools of education, and certification no longer required intellectual excellence but conformity to the progressive method.

Phase III: Consolidation, Radicalization, and Decline (1955–1990)

This third phase marked the collapse of institutional resistance. As traditional teachers retired, progressive currents—pragmatism, developmental psychology, social efficiency, and political radicalism—consolidated their dominance. Authority became increasingly centralized, shifting from parents, teachers, and local schools to districts, states, and ultimately to the federal government, culminating with the creation of the Department of Education in 1979.

Though complex, key developments that extended and radicalized early progressive victories exemplify this phase and also explain the movement’s unraveling. Each development aligned with an earlier current—philosophical, psychological, technocratic, or political—yet also diverged from and radicalized it. This internal instability, where each generation built on as well contradicted what came before, is an inherent defining weakness of progressive education.

The psychological current primarily emerged in the rise of constructivism, which was developed by two educational psychologists, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, and introduced to American schools by Jerome Bruner in the 1960s, becoming widespread in the 1970s. Building on child-centered methods, constructivism taught that children construct knowledge internally through developmental stages. Truth becomes secondary, and the teacher’s role shifted from instructor to facilitator. Critics argued that the “discovery” method it championed was slow, inefficient, and unrealistic—especially for young children. As
with earlier progressivism, constructivism marginalized truth and intellect, as well as the general historical and cultural formation essential for good citizenship and left little room for wisdom and virtue.

Likewise, during the 1970s and 1980s, the critical philosophy of the Frankfurt School gained ground in education schools. In response to Marxism’s failure to produce global revolution, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin recast Marxism as a cultural critique, claiming that not only economics, but also psychology and culture sustained oppressive systems. Theory, they argued, must serve political and cultural emancipation. Critical theory soon permeated American education, framing schooling in terms of either liberation or oppression. Truth and knowledge were redefined as socially constructed, and, under the influence of Michel Foucault, curriculum was seen merely as a power narrative with educators reimagined as critics of systemic injustice. Likewise, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed excoriated traditional education as the “banking method” in which useless information was deposited into passive minds. Instead, Freire advocated for a Marxist-inspired dialogue between students and teachers. In this dynamic, both  parties would collaboratively discover social and political oppression and work to develop solutions.

Phase IV: Fragmentation and the Unexpected Revival (1990–2025)

The period after 1990, which should have been a golden age for progressive education, was instead marked by fragmentation, criticism, and public distrust. Despite its triumph over educational traditionalism, unresolved contradictions, vague aims, and philosophical shallowness led to internal fractures and growing disillusionment.

In recent decades, progressive principles—especially the political radicalism of Dewey, Kilpatrick, and influential theorist George Counts—were institutionalized through the framework of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), which views all of reality, including truth, through the lens of power. Drawing on the theory of the Frankfurt School, it operates as a form of social control, embedding ideology into administrative structures, curriculum initiatives, HR protocols, compliance offices, and consultant-driven enforcement.

Progressive education’s failure to articulate clear aims, combined with decades of unmet promises, fueled growing public skepticism, and during these decades a steady stream of critiques—from Allan Bloom, E.D. Hirsch, Diane Ravitch, Charles Murray, Christopher Lasch, and Neil Postman—deepened
that distrust.

Amid this disarray, the classical school movement emerged in the early 1990s to recover liberal education, seeking a return to the great texts, ideas, and methods of the Western—and Catholic—tradition. In the last decade, the movement has surged. Hundreds of new schools have opened, charter networks have expanded, and Catholic programs have grown to reclaim liberal learning and formation in virtue. Enrollment has soared, homeschooling families increasingly use classical curricula, and graduate programs have multiplied. Dioceses and state legislatures now embrace classical models as rigorous, culturally restorative alternatives to progressive education. This renaissance is not merely educational—it is a cultural and philosophical return to truth, beauty, and goodness in the formation of the human person.

The Conclusion: A New Aachen for Catholic Liberal Arts Education 

In the last decade, classical education has grown not only in size but in depth. What began as a modest effort to recover lost traditions has become a national movement—spanning schools, curricula, graduate programs, conferences, and advocacy groups. Yet such growth now calls for deeper roots: a vision grounded not in nostalgia but in philosophical rigor and ecclesial fidelity. The Christendom College Center for Educational Philosophy and Leadership emerges as a vital institution for this next phase
of renewal.

The Center aspires to be a New Aachen—a spiritual and intellectual capital for renewing Catholic education, recalling Charlemagne’s court where faith and learning rebuilt civilization through a robust emphasis on education and the intellectual life. Drawing from the riches of the Catholic tradition, it will form teachers, philosophers, and leaders for today’s educational and cultural challenges. Its mission is both restorative and uncompromising: to defend truth, beauty, and goodness against the currents of modern pedagogical decay.

In the spirit of disputatio, the Center will challenge the philosophical foundations of progressive education: to Dewey’s relativism, it offers the perennial philosophy of being and reason; to Thorndike’s technocratic obsession with measurement, it affirms the student as a person to be formed, not a behavior to be managed; to Bobbitt’s social efficiency, it opposes an education aimed at utility with one grounded in contemplation, moral formation, and the dignity of the human soul; to Counts’ political radicalism, it reasserts the true end of education: the cultivation of wisdom and the formation of free persons ordered to God.

In reclaiming an authentically Catholic philosophy of education, the Center continues the mission of Christendom College and the vision of its founder, Dr. Warren Carroll, who earnestly sought educational renewal. As the classical school movement offers an alternative to the modern educational crisis, the Center will provide a new model for graduate formation—uncompromising and committed to a renaissance in Catholic thought, leadership, and teaching.

This is not a retreat but an advance: a new chapter in the history of Catholic education that seeks to build Christendom again, not in name only, but in philosophical depth, pedagogical integrity, and spiritual courage.