Pre-K teacher Vera Csizmadia teaches 3- and 4-year-old students in her classroom at the Dr. Charles Smith Early Childhood Center, Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021, in Palisades Park, N.J. Mary Altaffer/AP Photo.

The bad metaphysics of progressive education

A generation of teachers has been steeped in the progressive educational theories of John Dewey and his more radical successors, who viewed education as a vehicle for delegitimizing a society’s cultural inheritance and dismantling its customs and institutions.