The gendered boundaries of child-centred education: Elsie Ripley Clapp and the history of US progressive education

This paper analyses how historical narratives of the 1930s conflict between child-centred and social reconstructionist factions of US progressive education reinforce gendered constructions of education. The split between these two groups has been drawn along lines of gender with child-centred education associated with female educators focused on individual development and social reconstructionists comprised of university male faculty working for social justice. The work of Elsie Ripley Clapp, an active proponent of rural progressive education in the 1920s and 1930s, is used to illustrate the limitations of accepted categorisations of progressive education. The focus on Clapp points to new ways of framing the ideological tensions within the progressive education movement and highlights how the politics of gender influence which educators are remembered as leaders and activists. The paper argues that the recent renewal of interest in social reconstructionism should include a critique of its oppositional and hierarchical relation to female progressive educators.