EL’s principles one and two, ‘The Primacy of Self Discovery’ and ‘The Having of Wonderful Ideas’ respectively, are two ideas that were central to a specific class in my high school career. ‘The Primacy of Self Discover’ is the idea that ‘learning happens best with emotion, challenge, and the requisite support’ (EL VI). ‘The Having of Wonderful Ideas’ is an idea that creative and critical thinking are crucial to an effective learning environment. Both of these concepts were demonstrated effectively in my high school ‘service learning’ class. This class was very similar to Field Work here at VMI in the sense that we were out engaging with the community. Our teacher fostered an environment that encouraged being creative and provided practical learning situations. She also provided us with ‘real-life’ problems to think through. Overall, this was a very important class for the development of my learning ability.

However, engaging and putting into practice a progressive learning style will foreseeably be met with challenges. In an article about Dewey, who pioneered new learning styles, it is shown that not all agreed with him and many saw him in opposites ways. The article says Dewey was called “…a communist dupe and a hopeless anti-communist…” (Reed Johnson). The sentence continues to read that some saw him on one side of the spectrum and others on the opposite. This line suggests that many will have varying ideas on education and what styles of teaching are most effective. Additionally, this remark implies that there may not be a perfect learning method and that many will see varying success with varying methods.

In regards to Dewey and Greene’s progressive approaches to EL learning, I believe that Rockbridge county schools may face issues with the variety of individuals residing within the county. Rockbridge has a wide mix of economic backgrounds and there is no large majority grouping of students, in regards to background. This may lead to issues in implementing a progressive EL learning plan as the wide variety of student types will also lead to a variety of learning methods.

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