Our classrooms are the silent battlefields between two philosophies of education - traditional and progressive. With traditional education teachers taught the disciplines of English, history, math, science, and foreign language through lectures, drills, note-taking, memorization, and homework. Traditional education does develop analytical skills and does emphasize the arts and sports.
Progressive education regards lectures, drills, rules, and homework as unimportant.
It holds that socializing children, through volunteer work and mental health lessons for example, is more important than teaching knowledge. It encourages students to learn what they want when they want from each other, and not from teachers. Today, progressive education dominates mainstream educational thought. Accordingly the Fairfax County Public Schools' administration has removed phonics from reading, drill from arithmetic, spelling and grammar from English, proofs from geometry, algebra from physics, geography from social studies, and research papers from history. It has added peer counseling, peer mediation, elementary guidance counselors, substance abuse lessons, mental health lessons, sex education, and promotes group learning.