A progressive adheres to the importance of improving self and society. Helping others is the key element both in bringing individuals happiness and furthering society. Progressives strive to base their personal, humanistic beliefs on scientific evidence. By using the scientific method to arrive at conclusions (not Truths, but answers one can act upon) problems associated with other methods for interpreting the environment can be avoided. .
Progressivism is the orientation that believes that improvement and reform in the human condition and society are both possible and desirable. Progressives identify with John Dewey's Pragmatism that schools were part of a larger framework on institutional and social reform. The Progressive Movement was diverse; its members held varied and sometimes even contradictory beliefs. The thread that held it together was a unifying concern for the problems caused by the growth of industrialization and the expansion of the cities in America. The movement affected the way Americans viewed the nature of society, the role of government, and the goals of the education system.
The progressive movement grew out of the populist movement of the 1890s, a political movement that united farmers and laborers in opposing the power of large corporations. Progressives supported reforms in many areas. They envisioned a role for government as a mediating power against the power of wealth. Important progressives were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Robert LaFollette. Reformers themselves were a diverse group, frequently with different views, but always the same general purpose-- to reform America. Among them were politicians, labor leaders, religious leaders, and teachers, men and women who believed the federal government needed to address the ills of a modern industrialized society. Progressivism in U.S. education started as a reaction against formalism, verbalism, and authoritarianism of traditional schooling.