Progressive Education Rooted in Tradition

We invite you to visit Bank Street to witness how education develops thoughtful and productive citizens for tomorrow. At a time when new knowledge and new skills are required at an ever-increasing pace, children need to be lifelong learners. As our world seems to shrink, it is increasingly important for children to have an appreciation of and empathy for, people of different cultures, in order to work collaboratively and effectively toward common goals. These qualities are essential characteristics of a progressive approach to education.

The aim of progressive education, as stated in the Bank Street mission, is to nurture the creative, independent, problem-solving talents inherent in children by "applying to the educational process all available knowledge about learning and growth." The Bank Street School for Children traces its beginning to 1916 when Lucy Sprague Mitchell, whose words these are, founded the Bureau of Educational Experiments as part of an interdisciplinary collaboration among teachers and researchers. Mitchell and her colleagues set out to discover what kinds of environments were optimal for children's growth and development. They believed there was a close relationship between childhood development and learning, and they understood that children's emotional lives are inseparable from their learning, interests, and motivation. Out of that small, early experimental effort, the School for Children, as it is known today, developed, and in 1954 expanded the ages it served, until, in1967, the first class of "thirteens" graduated. In 1970, when the College moved to 112th Street on the upper West Side from Greenwich Village, the School for Children grew from 250 to 350 students. Today it enrolls approximately 430 students between the ages of three and fourteen.

Many of the underlying principles that inform the School's practice today have their origins in the progressive movement of the early twentieth century. Influenced by the ideas of educational theorist John Dewey, the founders of Bank Street wanted to study how children learn, and how to create classrooms and a school that would become a microcosm of the ideals and practices of a democratic community. In opposition to rote learning practices prevalent in schools at that time, the founders of Bank Street established classrooms in which children were active: venturing out and inquiring about the world around them.

Mitchell and her colleagues saw children as unique and complex human beings, blessed at birth with an avid desire to learn, which, if nurtured, would fuel a lifetime of learning. They believed children learn best in environments especially suited to their ages and stages of development. In such school settings, children learn more naturally, happily, and well. Their study of children led to the articulation of the developmental interaction approach to learning, which stresses the different developmental stages of children's growth; the inseparability of the social, emotional, and intellectual components of children's minds; and the importance of children's active, experiential engagement with society. These ideas are the basis for our thought and practice. As part of the nation's leading graduate teacher's college for progressive education, the Bank Street School for Children is continually refining and applying the highest standards in the field of progressive education.

The Bank Street approach uses every opportunity to foster intellectual mastery and promote cognitive power by creating a pervasive climate of inquiry. We nurture the intuitive process and the capacity for feeling and emotion to achieve reflective, as well as goal-directed thinking. We build a social environment in which children are known and respected as individuals, and where interaction between adult and child is supportive of learning.

As you read our materials and visit our classrooms, we hope that you experience the vibrancy, energy, and enthusiasm that make up the Bank Street learning community. It is our goal to clarify and inform our guests, so that they have a clear and complete picture of our school's community and educational program.

We thank you for your interest.

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