JOHN DEWEY

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JOHN DEWEY

• AGED 3203
• Life and Times

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John Dewey

• 1859 Birth date
• Grammar school 3, Burlington, VT
• 1875, High School Grad
• 1879, A.B. degree - University of Vermont,
  delivers commencement address

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John Dewey

• 1879 - High school teacher, Oil City, PA,
  teaches science and algebra
• 1880-1881 - assistant principal
• 1881-1882 - Principal, Lake View Seminary,
  Charlotte, VT
• 1882-1884 - Graduate Student in
  Philosophy, John Hopkins University
• 1884 - Ph.D

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John Dewey

• 1884 - Teaches philosophy University of
  Michigan
• 1888 - University of Minnesota
• 1894 - University of Chicago
• 1904 - Columbia University (New York)

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John Dewey

• Advocated practical learning
• Students should solve problems
• Schools should work to solve social problems
• Thought learning was like evolution
• First dues paying member of American Federation
  of Teachers

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Experience and Education Traditional vs.
Progressive Education

• The subject matter of today is bodies of
  information and skills worked out in the past --
  the purpose of school is to transmit this
  information and skills to a new generation.
• Moral training in the schools is of forming
  habits by conforming to rules and standards.

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Experience and Education Traditional vs.
Progressive Education

• School is different from all other social
  institutions - School is like no other social
  institution.
• schemes of classifications
• its time schedule
• its rules of order
• examinations

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Experience and Education Traditional vs.
Progressive Education

• The traditional scheme is to impose information
  and rules from above, from outside. It imposes
  adult standards, subject matter and methods upon
  those who are only growing only slowly towards
  maturity.

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Experience and EducationThe Need of a Theory of
Experience

• All genuine education comes about through
  experience.
• some experiences can be mis-educative
• may be immediately enjoyable, yet form slack and
  careless attitude
• It is not that young people do not have
  experiences, but that these experiences are
  defective and of the wrong character.

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Experience and Education Social Control

• School is like a game - the teacher is the
  referee or umpire as long as all know the rules
  and the consequences of the rules, all is well.
  Students (athletes) become disenchanted and
  argumentative when they feel as though they have
  been unfairly treated (penalized).

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Experience and Education The Nature of Freedom

• There cannot be complete quietude in a laboratory
  or workshop. But . . . there should be brief
  intervals of time for quiet reflection. They are
  periods of genuine reflection only when they
  follow after times of action and are used to
  organize what has been gained in periods of
  activity.

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Experience and Education The Nature of Freedom

• 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.