B Y NOAH PAPPANO
The brochure to the Progressive Program (PP) states: “People are better learners when they’re passionate about what they learn. Students in the program bring forth the inquisitiveness to discover their truest passions, and the motivation to follow those pursuits intensively.” With only 32 students enrolled in the program at any one given time, one wonders just what kind of a program this is, and what students it attracts.
“You can be a self-designed major. You can do a traditional major. You could be a Rec major. Most do self-designed,” said director of the program Heather Keith. “One of the benefits is you don’t have to do any of the ELA’s, though you still have to complete the four ELA core classes.” There is a whole list of captivating projects students in the PP have done. A student a couple of years ago built a homestead project in Maine, comprising a greenhouse which is his business, and a house that he and his wife and daughter live in still. Another student wrote his own Socratic dialogues and read them to other students; one student, as part of her senior study, was interested in animal rights and built on campus a structure you crawled through, which provided observers with the physical feeling of being cows on a factory farm.
How did this great program start? It started in 2002 at Goddard College in North Central Vermont when the school closed down its undergraduate residential program. Apart from a traditional degree, it was a program in which you could self-design your major. After it closed down, students on their way to Goddard, or freshmen already enrolled, were accepted by GMC and given a Goddard degree upon graduation. “We liked the program and the students so much we kept it and renamed it the Progressive Program,” said Keith. “We changed it slightly and so it is uniquely GMC.”
“I was led to the PP because I want to study political science and journalism,” said junior Wai Phyo Myint. “My country doesn’t have opportunities to study political science. I’m interested in women’s studies, public policy, history, pre-law—many subjects. Why do I have to take Health and Well Being? I didn’t get anything out of it.” An ambitious student, Myint did an internship with Amnesty International in Washington, DC last summer. Her next project will be working on a documentary on 100 Burmese refugees who live in Burlington after arriving last year. “I’m glad I’m in the Progressive Program. But if you don’t think ahead and design your classes, you can get confused easily. You have to be devoted,” Myint said.
After her junior year, Wai will go home to her native Myanmar, which will be holding elections for the first time in two decades. “I will be looking for an internship related with covering the election and the transition process of the government system and the effect on the people,” Myint noted. As Wai readies for this milestone undertaking, her thoughts are already in the future by leaps and bounds. Believing graduate school to be in her near future, she ultimately wants to go back to her country, though the self-designed Political Science/Journalism major admits she’s keeping her options open. “I want to be a journalist focusing on human rights advocacy. I’m interested in going to developing countries and also the non-profit sector at the grass roots level.”
Myint’s wide interests and ambitious goals are not uncommon to the Program. Indeed, her abhorrence for taking classes just to “get them out of the way” and desiring an education that “is a process of living and not a preparation for future living,” to borrow from the John Dewey quote in the brochure, is shared by another PP student, Tyler Daly. “I find myself having varied interests and if I went for a traditional degree, I could not pursue some of my interests. The Progressive Program allows me to do that,” he said. “I feel that’s the most fulfilling use of a college experience. To be able to follow your own abstract, sometimes varied, sometimes weird [laughs], I don’t know, whatever interests you.”
Primarily interested in the natural sciences, but also in everything from ecology to nature poetry, Tyler wanted a self-designed major that allowed him to study within that field philosophy, religion, poetry, and English. This is his third semester at GMC after transferring from Richmond American University in London, England where he became interested in Environmental Studies. That initial bud has flowered in the Progressive Program.
“My next direction is more interdisciplinary studies. I’ve become interested in how oral, indigenous cultures orient themselves in the more-than-human world. Poetry, shamanism, storytelling,” said Daly. “Western literate society has been progressing toward a further abstraction and the loss of reciprocity between our world and the more-than-human world. We have economy, language, and living spaces no longer connected to that world.”
“In my view, the Progressive Program is great,” said Heather Keith. “It capitalizes on progressive education because students are able to marry together theory and practice while offering flexibility, so students who don’t need a lot of structure can take it all at their own pace. They can own their educational experience.”
Two points she stressed was the program is also an opportunity for faculty to work closely with some of the brightest students on campus and build a close relationship. The other was that the way GMC does education is already progressive. This ideal of combining theory and practice can be closely seen on our farm. “The Progressive Program just takes the best part of GMC and makes a place where students can flourish,” Keith said. The opportunity to incorporate this ideal into their studies is just too irresistible for some students and with more awareness of the program, it is hoped that more students will take advantage of it. “We incorporate that really well. Wisdom is public,” Keith noted.
