| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 教育學系 === 105 === Through the philosophical analysis, this study aims to investigate the contexts and developments of Progressive Education during the first half of the 20th century. Besides, it also attempts to analyze the criticism from Bestor toward Progressive Education and tries to inquire into his liberal education theory. This study has four main purposes: （1） to delve into Bestor’s life experiences and the formation of his educational theories. （2） to analyze the viewpoints of Bestor’s criticism toward progressive education.（3） to explore Betor’s thoughts of liberal education and its proposals.（4） to inquire into Bestor’s clarification of teacher profession and teacher training policy. （5） to reflect Bestor’s ideas of Essentialism and make several suggestions for primary, secondary, and higher education in Taiwan.
PEA based on “child-centered” theory, made immense innovations and took measures in teaching and curriculum. However, in the meantime, especially after 1950s when Perennialism and Essentialism arose, responding to the deficiencies resulted from PEA which overemphasized student’s interests and immediate needs.
The following are the main findings of this study:（1）Bestor’s thoughts were affected by his learning backgrounds which emphasized accumulating thinking view, against immediate needs as the purpose of education.（2）Progressive education resulted in few educational inadequacies and that were the reasons why Bestor invoked the need of liberal education beyond time and space.（3）The essence of liberal education is to cultivate intellectual virtues in order to equip clear thinking for students to be a truly free man.（4）Teaching is tightly related with teacher education. Consequently, teacher training should be collaboratively planned and practiced by teacher education college colleges of liberal arts, aims to ascertain the concept of profession so that the quality of education can be maintained and enhanced.（5）to cherish the values of individual differences, firm base of basic abilities should be built on. Therefore, the breadth and depth of curriculum can’t be ignored or imbalanced. Furthermore, all those solid foundations would be the nurtures to learn how to learn.
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