Summary: Why Did George Counts Criticize Progressivism

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1. Why did George Counts criticize progressivism? Critique Counts' views by identifying and analyzing a major strength and a major weakness of the reconstructionist point of view.
Counts criticized progressive education arguing out that it had identified itself with the liberal-minded upper middle class. According to him if education is to be considered as indisputably progressive it has to stand above the influence of this class, face squarely and courageously every social issue, come to terms with life in its entire stark reality, come up with an organic relationship with the community, develop a realistic and comprehensive theory of welfare, fashion a compelling and challenging vision of human destiny, and become less frightened than it is currently at bogies of imposition and indoctrination (Howard 2012). He criticized the fact that progressivism had taken in its life- adjustment phase and its failure to act on critical issues of the day. Counts …show more content…

It however has some similarities to classical realism. Aristotle was of the opinion that human reached form or essence through the study of particulars while on the other hand behaviorists are of the opinion that people can understand the behavior of humans by a meticulous study of human behavior (Baird 2010). The approach is expanded to the effect that the nature of humans can be explained by what is traditionally considered as a particular component of human nature which is behavior (Howard 2012). One realist element of behaviorism includes going from particular, observable facts to forms are the laws of behavior. Behaviorists assert that human traits of personality, integrity, character among others result from behaving in particular way. Such traits are developed from environmental conditioning which indicates a realist leaning towards the importance of the discernible, factual, observable aspects of the

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