ABSTRACT
CURRICULARISTS HAVE LONG PLAYED A SIGNIFICANT ROLE in the historical struggle to give coherence and identity to the American school experience. Historically speaking, their methods have usually been practical and institutional in orientation, dedicated to offering curriculum development frameworks centered on using the school for the maintenance and improvement of the public interest. Progressive curricularists, especially those working out of experimentalist views of Dewey, provided unique insight into the process of curriculum development by insisting that school practice make itself accountable to three fundamental factors: the nature of the learner, the values and aims of the society, and the wider organization of knowledge or subject matter. Not surprisingly, practical proposals for school improvement flowed freely from these progressive curricularists. William Kilpatrick, for instance, articulated the Project Method, Jesse Newlon tested “life situations” curricula in the Denver schools, Ralph Tyler formulated his famous Rationale in the context of the Eight Year Study, Harold Rugg wrote a series of provocative social studies texts, and laboratory schools across the nation, often led by directors schooled in curriculum development, tested the practical vigor of various new ideas.
