The Educational Philosophy of William Heard Kilpatrick: With Special Reference to the Life-Centered Curricula in Secondary Education

For many years there has been a difference of opinion concerning the relative effectiveness of progressive education and the educational standards used in the past in the schools of the United States. Two rival educational philosophies have vied for dominance: essentialism, on the one side, representing centuries of European pedagogical tradition; and pragmatism and the scientific method, also European in origin, but of more recent date, on the other.