March 28, 2024

A Progressive Education Reader

Educators, citizens, and policy-makers would benefit from remembering two salient truths.

  • We stand on the shoulders of giants.
  • “Every problem in education has been solved somewhere.” (Bill Clinton)

For those reasons, I have finally finished curating a seminal collection of progressive education texts for an anthology entitled, “Dreams of Democratic Education: An Anthology for Educators Wishing to Stand Between Children and the Madness.” The eBook contains full texts by Ferrer, Dewey, Patri, The School of Barbiana, Malaguzzi, Papert, Lakoff, and a guy named Stager. (The sources are admittedly by male authors, but I was constrained by the materials available in the public domain. In a perfect world, Lillian Weber, Deborah Meier, and others would be included.)

This 785 page eBook (in PDF format) is now available for free download via this web page.

We hope to be able to help organize book clubs, discussions, and courses built upon the eBook’s contents in the future.

Several of the books included in the eBook anthology are available from Amazon.com via this link.


Veteran educator Dr. Gary Stager is co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. Learn more about Gary here.