Dalton Plan Essay ⋆ Education Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The Dalton Plan was the progressive pedagogical model used by Helen Parkhurst, who founded the Dalton School in New York City in 1919. Her book, Education on the Dalton Plan, was published in 1922, and within six months of publication it was translated into fourteen languages.

The plan’s principles were freedom and cooperation. Freedom meant the ability for individuals to function independently and autonomously. Cooperation meant the interaction of group life. Concerned with preparing students to live in a democracy, Parkhurst created an environment to balance cooperation and freedom.

The components of the Dalton Plan were House, Laboratory, and Assignment. House was the arrangement of students into advisory groups, which met four times per week for a total of ninety minutes with a teacher-advisor. Its purpose was to foster cooperation among students and to develop the qualities of independence and social awareness. Blocks of time were set aside each morning from nine to twelve o’clock and called lab time or Laboratory. Each teacher had a lab and students were expected to utilize the resources of their teachers in order to help them fulfill their assignment. Assignment was an outline of each student’s coursework for the year. Students were required to discuss their plans with their teachers; they also might have discussed their plans with other students.

The plans might have been modified, or students might even have abandoned their plans and started over. Students participated in planning their studies with both faculty and peers, interacting with the community in a spirit of cooperation.

Flexibility was the keystone of the Dalton Plan. The school during Helen Parkhurst’s time exuded informality, spur-of-the-moment decision making, enormous energy, high-level engagement, and the element of surprise. Parkhurst’s greatest contribution to education was her emphasis on process rather than product. She saw the Dalton Plan as a vehicle for teaching the curriculum. It was far from perfect. Former students complained of lack of structure. Teachers had to be reeducated in Dalton ways. Often, because of the emphasis on process, they were insecure with regard to the curriculum. How the student was to realize his or her potential as an individual and to be a contributing member of a community remained a problem largely unsolved. The Dalton Plan’s House system, however, has been rediscovered by the contemporary small-school movement and called Advisory Groups, although contemporary reformers do not acknowledge Parkhurst’s influence.

Bibliography:

Cremin, L. A. (1961). The transformation of the school. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Dewey, E. (1922). The Dalton laboratory plan. New York: E. P. Dutton.
Parkhurst, H. (1922). Education on the Dalton plan. London: G. Bell.
Sadovnik, A. R., & Semel, S. F. (Eds.). (2002). Founding mothers and others: Women educational leaders during the Progressive era. New York: Palgrave.
Semel, S. F. (1992). The Dalton School: The transformation of a progressive school. New York: Peter Lang.
Semel, S. F., & Sadovnik, A. R. (Eds.). (1999). “Schools of tomorrow,” schools of today: What happened to progressive education. New York: Peter Lang.

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