The progressive curriculum consists of life experiences and not only teacher’s lectures on prescribed subjects. “Learning takes place when any part or phase of experience, once it has been lived, stays on to affect pertinently further experience; we learn what we live and in the degree that we live it.”
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The progressives are against bookish curriculum which is fixed in advance. They are against the arrangement of subject-matters into water-tight compartments. In fact, they want a curriculum which has experiences of actual living.
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There will be no ready-made curriculum to be given to the teacher and pupils. The curriculum will “over all the aspects of daily living—practical, social, moral, vocational, aesthetic, and intellectual.” Thus it will be made up of the sum total of the child’s experiences.
Its purpose is to integrate the experiences of the child in such a way as to turn him into a significant personality which has developed such modes of behavior which are individually satisfying and socially desirable.
The progressives believe that children are expanding, differentiating individuals, i.e., the children expand their experiences, they are able to differentiate between their varying experiences and pick up the desirable ones from here and there, and then, they try to integrate the same towards a meaningful goal.
According to the progressives this kind of integration of experiences is the only true learning. They hold that the older curriculum disintegrates the individual, because it insists mainly on subject-matter-learning. Therefore, the progressive education would like to have a curriculum which consists of experiences of actual living in various circumstances.