ABSTRACT
Dewey argued that the individual could not be realized outside of social commitments and that society could not possibly overcome its class-based repressions without individuals being free and able to develop themselves fully. Consistent with the Expressionist movement in the arts and newly popular Freudian psychology, child-centered educators sought to create environments to free students' minds, bodies, and spirits from the constraints of traditions and modern puritanism. The Bureau of Educational Experiments began a program of measuring the very young in the nursery school at regular intervals. Teachers were to provide opportunities for children to represent themselves in multiple contexts without necessarily specifying a course of study. In order to help progressive educators make these changes, advocates of social reconstruction argued that traditionalist, scientific managers and child-centered progressives promoted capitalist dispositions among students – protestant ethics, competitiveness, and individualism – that would do little to disrupt the unequal status quo.
