About IDE | Activities | Database | Schools | IDEC | Links | Forums Links Educational Innovation Thinkers Abraham Maslow Alfie Kohn Kohn was recently described by Time magazine as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores." His criticisms of competition and rewards have helped to shape the thinking of educators -- as well as parents and managers -- across the country and abroad. Carl Rogers Collection Carl Ransom Rogers (1902-1987) was a psychologist and psychotherapist who initiated what Abraham Maslow later called the "third force" of psychology, following the behaviorism of Pavlov (and later B. F. Skinner) and Freudian psychoanalysis. This "third force" of humanistic psychology has been so closely identified with Rogers that it is often called Rogerian, a term its namesake objected to. His innovation was to treat clients as if they were essentially healthy, and he felt that growth would occur when a non-judgmental, non-directive (later, "client-centered") therapist created a warm, accepting environment to nurture the client and allow self-knowledge and self-acceptance to occur. Rogers is considered by many to be the most influential psychologist after Freud. Erich Fromm Francisco Ferrer and the Escuela Moderna Ivan Illich writing on the web Ivan Illich became well known in 1970, when he published Deschooling Society which argued that the top-down management of schools makes students powerless - and that the same top-down management is typical of the modern, technological economy that prevents people from learning. Tools for Conviviality made the same criticism of technology generally. Along with Energy and Equity, this book made Ivan Illich one of the most important theorists of the radical ecology movement of the 1970s. Janusz Korczak From 1911 Korczak guided the orphan-house `Dom Sierot´ which was created by his plans. Here he developed as result of the reflected practice the idea of a peaceful and classless society. This was caused by the recognition of Korczak that the society split in two parties : the adult and the children of which the children where the weaker party. Between both there was a permanent fight of unequal because the children had no chance in this fight. Though both parties had same social fate of childhood, the adults neglected their childhood and Korczak tried to make this conscious to the adult and the children. Professor John Briggs John Dewey Dewey made major contributions to nearly every aspect of philosophy. Besides his role as a primary originator of both functionalist and behaviorist psychology, Dewey was a top-rank contributor to the empiricist, naturalist, contextualist, and process traditions of philosophy. Dewey ranks with the greatest philosophers of this or any age on the subjects of pedagogy, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, and social and political theory. His pragmatic approaches to ethics, aesthetics, and religion will also long survive his active career. At the close of the 20th Century, his stature is assured as one of this century's premier philosophers, standing with Russell, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Sartre, and Quine. John Taylor Gatto - Challenging the Myths of Modern Schooling John Taylor Gatto, film director Roland Legiardi-Laura, and The Odysseus Group welcome you to our Web site, which will offer you a new way to look at institutional schooling. Lev Vygotsky Archive Soviet psychologist who developed Genetic approach to the development of concepts in early childhood and youth, tracing the transition through a series of stages of human development, based on the development of the child's social practice. His works were published after his death in 1934 and suppressed in 1936 and were not known in the West until 1958. Shikshantar - issue of swapathgami magazine Shikshantar is an applied research institute dedicated to catalyzing radical systematic transformation of education in order to facilitate swaraj-development throughout India. Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster Links | Home