EDUCATIONAL THEORY

Educational Theory of Booker T. Washington

Abstract

This study concludes that Booker T. Washington s educational practices and stated philosophy were fully consistent with the broad movement of progressive education. Specifically, he introduced progressive-experimentalist practices that fostered the method of intelligence and social awareness by uniting scientific education, industrial and agricultural production and make lifelong learning. In addition, this study refutes the historical criticism of Booker T. Washington.

John Dewey orchestrated American pragmatism into a philosophy experimentalist problem solving using the method of intelligence and scientific research. Many philosophers and educators have been appropriately recognized for their contributions to the transformation experimenter in education, while others have been massively ignored. One of the foremost activists in the experimentalist transformation was Booker T. Washington.Educational Theory

Introduction

What might be called Washington's philosophy of education was essentially an extension of his political and economic thought. In fact, although much has been made of Washington's emphasis on vocational training and industrial education, records show that both Hampton, where Washington went to school, and Tuskegee Institute, where he was president, produced more black teachers at the turn of the 20th century than manual or skilled laborers. One reason for this was the covert ideological character of Washington's educational program, which promised manual laborers but delivered college-educated blacks. Washington's educational theory is commonly contrasted with the social and political philosophy of other turn of the 20th-century African American leaders and intellectuals. After the Civil War Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute and the ideological father of African-American vocational education, tried to address the racial aspects of the social and economic relations between the former slaves and the white South. His vocational education programs emphasized the need for African Americans to be good, subservient laborers. (Washington, 1932 25)

Discussion

The first land-grant college provisions, known as the First Morrill Act, were enacted by the U.S. Congress on July 2, 1862. The statute articulated the appointment of public lands to the states based on their representation in Congress in 1860. The Morrill Act was one of the first congressional actions to benefit from the post-Civil War constitutional amendments. By the late 1860s Morrill Act funds were being distributed to the states, with the intention that they would foster educational opportunity for all students. Following the Civil War, the expansion of the land-grant college system continued, with its implied focus on educational opportunities. However, with the close of the army's occupation to the old South, funds from the Morrill Act began to flow systemically to schools offering only all-white education. Congress attempted by various legislation to force racial equality, including equality of educational pportunity. However, the U.S. Supreme Court initiated a series of interpretations of the post—Civil War constitutional amendments that ultimately defeated these various legislative efforts. Culminating with its 1882 decision finding the first Civil Rights Act unconstitutional, the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth amendment only protected against direct discriminatory action by a state government. What followed was a period of nearly seventy-five years when only modest gains ...