One of the many problems currently plaguing our nation’s school system (and indeed, educational systems across the globe) is a debate over teaching methodology. Many people believe (and governments have largely supported this stance) that standardized testing, and the rote dissemination of facts that feeds it, is the only way to ensure that our children are learning what they’re supposed to. It is a philosophy of teaching that relegates both students and teachers to a status of mindless automatons, respectively reciting and absorbing data like robots. Unfortunately, this mentality does nothing to prepare children for the real world, in which they will have to be able to take the information they have garnered and put it to good use (a task for which they are woefully unprepared, thanks to the emphasis on test-taking and quantifiable results at the expense of critical thinking). And this is where progressive teaching enters the picture.