ABSTRACT
Progressive education experiment was an integral part of the University of Chicago during the years 1896 to 1904, and was an undertaking which aimed to work out, through the University, a school system which should be an organic whole from the kindergarten to the university. Conducted under the management and supervision of the University's Department of Philosophy, Psychology, and Education, it bore the same relation to the work of that department that a laboratory bears to biology, physics, or chemistry. Like any such laboratory it had two main purposes: to exhibit, test, verify, and criticize theoretical statements and principles; and to add to the sum of facts and principles in its special line. The practical difficulties of creating a new school as compared with the formulation of theoretical principles were recognized from the start. The idea of education as growth was new.
