John Dewey, Experience and Education (1938)
Chapter 1 – Traditional vs. Progressive Education
Summary: Traditional education is imposed on students
from the outside and from above. Students’ limited experiences make the
adult nature of the imposed material irrelevant and hard to understand.
Progressive education is a natural development, growth from within experience.
It offers freedom from the static nature of traditional education and growth
through students’ present experience.
Details and Deweyisms:
Traditional education relies for its aims, methods of instruction, and
discipline on things "handed down from the past." "The chief business of
the school is to transmit them to the new generation. It prevents active
participation by pupils in development of what is taught -- which is static,
taught as a finished product, and is the cultural product of a society
that assumed the future would be much like the past. Students’ attitude
is supposed to be one of "docility, receptivity and obedience." "It imposes
adult standards, subject-matter, and methods upon those who are only growing
slowly toward maturity."
By contrast, the new progressive education offers "the expression and
cultivation of individuality"; "free activity"; "learning through experience";
acquisition of skills as a means of attaining ends which are vital and
appealing to students; making the most of the opportunities of present-day
life; and becoming acquainted "with a changing world". Progressive education
offers an "intimate and necessary" relationship between the "processes
of actual experience and education."
"The general principles of the new education do not, by themselves,
solve any of the problems of the actual or practical conduct and management
of progressive schools. Rather, they set forth new problems that have to
be worked out on the basis of a new philosophy of experience."
Summary: All experience is not educative. Experience,
as in the traditional schools, can be mis-educative if they are static,
don’t contribute to students’ growth, or don’t lead students to understand
or appreciate later experience. The primary justification of progressive
schools is that, by providing better experience, they provide students
with better preparation for lifetime appreciation, independence, and development.
However, progressive education, when it is done right, is not simple.
Details and Deweyisms:
Not all experience is educative. "Some experiences are mis-educative"
– they halt or distort the growth of further experience; "engender callousness";
or reduce "the possibilities of having richer experience in the future."
The traditional classroom may give students experiences, but they are "largely
of a wrong kind." Students may thus lose "the impetus to learn."
Justification of the new education "depends on the quality of
the experience," which is both "agreeable" and a positive "influence on
later experiences." Experience should be "so conceived that the result
is a plan for deciding upon subject matter, upon methods of instruction
and discipline, and upon material equipment and social organization of
the school." The new form of education – while looking simple – will not
be easier. "To discover what is really simple and to act upon that discovery
is an exceedingly difficult task." "It is a matter of growth, and there
are many obstacles."
We should not "think of organizations in terms of the kind of
organization … that mark traditional education." It becomes too easy, then,
to go back to the familiar traditions rather than face the difficult, but
necessary, task of developing an empirical and experimental concept of
organization. Summary: If we believe in the democratic ideal, why wouldn’t
we want children to have experience with democratic social arrangements
and positive interactions, as in progressive schools? The manner in which
students learn is as important as what subject-matter they learn; they
should be taught in a manner consistent with their becoming positively
interactive, democratic, and dynamic learners.
Details and Deweyisms:
"The principle of continuity of experience means that every experience
both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies
in some way the quality of those which come after." " ‘Growth’ is not enough;
we must also specify the direction in which growth takes place, the end
toward which it tends." "A primary responsibility of educators" is fostering
experiences that encourage good habits, growth (physical, intellectual,
and moral), positive interaction, and knowledge or skills that become instruments
of understanding in dealing effectively with situations to come.
Traditional education does not work because "education is not abstract;
learning is dynamic." A learner’s experiences and reactions to knowledge
may be as important as the knowledge itself. "The two principles of continuity
and interaction are not separate from one another." The argument used by
traditionalists that learning today will provide meaning for the future
is not reasonable because "we can only live at the time we are living."
Only by "exacting the experience from the present can we be prepared for
doing the same thing in the future." Summary: Everyone experiences social control in life,
but this does not have to represent autocratic rule. Social control of
individual actions, by agreement and by the members of a group for the
benefit of the members of the group, are common and accepted. Teachers
should act or speaking firm, when (rarely) needed, in behalf of the group.
Students should be participants in group planning as well as activities.
The teacher should be a member of the group – the most mature and experienced
member. Children should learn manners and should use them when by participating,
planning, and interacting with others.
Details and Deweyisms:
Every citizen experiences social control in life. Children routinely
"at recess or after school play games … [which’] involve rules, and these
rules order their conduct." "The rules … are fairly standardized." Playing-field
disagreements usually arise not because there are rules, but because someone
violates a rule. Thus, there can be "social control of individuals without
the violation of freedom."
A teacher, then, can take the role of a coach, "in behalf of the interest
of the group, not as an exhibition of personal power," but being "just
and fair." The educator is also responsible for a "knowledge of subject-matter."
"Activities should be selected which lend themselves to social organization
in which all individuals have an opportunity to contribute something, and
in which the activities in which all participate are the chief carriers
of control."
"It is absurd to exclude the teacher from membership in the group. As
the most mature member … he has a peculiar responsibility for the conduct
of the interactions and intercommunications which are the very life of
the group as a community." Students should learn that manners are "the
oil that reduces friction." Lack of manners "represents a failure in education,
a failure to learn one of the most important lessons in life, that of mutual
accommodation and adaptation." Summary: The most important freedom is freedom of intelligence.
Freedom of movement does not automatically create
freedom of intelligence, but it can be a means to that end, it can allow
the teacher to know the child better and the child to know himself better.
Freedom should be of a type that helps students learn to control their
impulses and desires. The ideal aim of education is to create intelligent
self-control.
Details and Deweyisms:
Freedom of movement (as in a less rigid classroom) does not automatically
create freedom of intelligence – it’s a means, not an end.
There are advantages which reside potentially in increase of outward
freedom. In the first place, without its existence it is practically impossible
for a teacher to gain knowledge of the individuals with which he is concerned….The
other important advantage … is found in the very nature of learning processes."
"Older methods set a premium on passivity and receptivity….The traditional
school … erected silence as one of its prime virtues." "Freedom of movement
is also important as a means of maintaining normal physical and mental
health."
A most important consideration is that "freedom of outward action is
a means to freedom of judgment and of power to carry deliberately chosen
ends into execution." "There can be no greater mistake, however, than to
treat such freedom as an end in itself. It then tends to be destructive
of the shared cooperative activities which are the normal source of order."
"Freedom from restriction … is to be prized only as a means to a freedom
which is power: power to frame purposes, to judge wisely, to evaluate desires
by the consequences which will result from acting upon them’ power to select
and order means to carry chosen ends into operation."
"Natural impulses and desires constitute the starting point. But there
is no intellectual growth without some reconstruction, some remaking, of
impulses and desires in the form in which they first show themselves."
"The old phrase ‘stop and think’ is sound psychology. For thinking is stoppage
of the immediate manifestation of impulse until that impulse has been brought
into connection with other possible tendencies to action so that a more
comprehensive and coherent plan of activity is formed." "the ideal aim
of education is creation of power of self-control." A person whose conduct
is dictated by immediate whim and caprice.… is directed by forces over
which he has no command." Impulses and desires need to be ordered by intelligence.
Summary: Individual freedom is achieved with the ability
to identify desires and create a plan that makes those desires or ideas
into realities. It is a teacher’s obligation to provide students with the
opportunity to participate actively in the process of creating such a plan
of action.
Freedom is "the power to frame purposes and to execute or carry into
effect purposes so framed." This kind of freedom is "identical with self-control."
One of the soundest tenets of progressive education is "the importance
of the participation of the learner in the formation of purposes which
direct his activities in the learning process."
"A purpose is an end-view," achieved by observing surrounding conditions
and understanding the "significance of what we seen, hear, or touch."
Thus, a student develops foresight by judging the consequences of the goal
or purpose. "We have to stop, look, listen." Consequences are only understood
based on previous experiences. "The crucial educational problem is to procure
the postponement of immediate action upon desire until observation and
judgment have intervened." If mere activity -- rather than intelligent
activity – is stressed, then freedom is associated with the achievement
of impulses (instant gratification).
Desire does give impetus and movement to ideas. Ideas then are developed
into plans of activity. Traditional education ignores personal impulses
and desires, but progressive education should help students identify those
impulses, observe the circumstances, and apply past experiences to formulate
a plan of action and thus make that impulse an idea with a future.
"The teacher’s business is to see that the occasion is taken advantage
of." While the teacher should not dominate the students’ actions, he should
offer guidance and suggestions. The teacher should be aware of the "capabilities,
needs, and past experiences" of pupils and allow their suggestions to help
develop a plan. "The plan, in other words, is a cooperative enterprise,
not a dictation." Summary: Traditional education fails to teach critical
discrimination and the ability to reason. However, progressive education
should use, as its subject-matter, the scope of ordinary life and should
use, as its method, the discipline of scientific methods to help students
derive the significance of everyday experience.
Details and Deweyisms:
In the traditional school, "the material to be learned was settled upon
outside the present life-experience of the learner" and having only to
do with the past. Some have mis-interpreted this as a call for progressive
schools to ignore the past; however, "the sound principle that the objectives
of learning are in the future and its immediate materials are in present
experience can be carried into effect only in the degree that present experience
can be stretched backward. It can expand into the future only as it is
enlarged to take in the past." "Make acquaintance with the past a means
of understanding the present."
"Up to the present time the weakest point in progressive schools is
in the matter of selection and organization of intellectual subject-matter."
"It is part of the educator’s experience to see equally to two things:
First, that the problem [set for the student to study] grows out of the
conditions of the … present, and that it is within the range of the capacity
of students; and, secondly, that it … arouses in the learner an active
quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and
new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which
new problems are presented. The process is a continuous spiral."
Unlike the practice of the traditional school, "the educator cannot
start with knowledge already organized and proceed to ladle it out in doses
…. [because] the active process of organizing facts and ideas is an ever-present
educational process. No experience is educative that does not tend both
to knowledge of more facts and entertaining of more ideas and to a better,
a more orderly, arrangement of them." The method that should be used "is
systematic utilization of scientific method as the pattern and ideal of
intelligent exploration and exploitation of the potentialities inherent
in experience."
The scientific method "attaches more importance, not less, to ideas
as ideas"; it tests these "ideas or hypotheses by the consequences which
they produce when they are acted upon"; and "demands keeping track of ideas,
activities, and observed consequences … a matter of reflective review and
summarizing … to extract the net meanings which are the capital stock for
intelligent dealing with further experiences. It is the heart of intellectual
organization and of the disciplined mind." Of course, the teacher must
adapt use of this method to the maturity level of the student. "But at
every level there is an expanding development of experience if experience
is educative in effect." Otherwise, as in using traditional, autocratic
methods, we "neglect the place of intelligence in the development and control
of a living and moving experience." Summary: Progressive education, to accomplish its goals,
must be based on intelligently directed development of the possibilities
inherent in ordinary experience. Those who think progressive education
is not successful or valuable are doing it wrong. Progressive education
can only succeed when certain conditions apply: Primarily, this involves
use of sound standards and methods to achieving its goals, which are based
on providing the best educational experience possible to create confident,
self-controlled, and capable citizens. Experience is the means as well
as the goal.
Details and Deweyisms:
The only grounds that would lead to a rejection of the standards, aims,
and methods of progressive education is "the failure of educators who professedly
adopt them to be faithful to them in practice." The road of the new education
is actually "a more strenuous and difficult one" than the traditional road.
"Its course may not be improvised … in an impromptu fashion." There are
certain conditions that must be fulfilled for it to succeed: goals, discipline,
and effective methods.
"The fundamental issue is not of new versus old nor of progressive versus
traditional education, but a question of what … is worthy of the name education."
To discover this, we must "devote ourselves to finding out just what education
is and what conditions have to be satisfied in order" to achieve it. We
will need "a sound philosophy of experience."
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Progressive education is "more in accord with the democratic
ideal" and its methods are "more humane" (traditional schools are autocratic,
with harsh methods). "Can we find any reason [to prefer progressive education]
that does not ultimately come down to the belief that democratic social
arrangements promote a better quality of human experience, one which is
more widely accessible and enjoyed, than do non-democratic and anti-democratic
forms of social life?" If so, then we should support progressive education
with the principle of continuity as a criterion.
Chapter 4 – Social Control