John Dewey 1859-1952 Experience And Education 1938 Preface: Social conflicts Intellectual controversies.

. Conflicts only set the problem. Theory must determine the causes, find a deeper and more inclusive viewpoint, and develop a plan of operation. This does not mean compromise, or a middle way. It means a new way of thinking leading to new modes of practice. [thinking leads practice..] We cant be guided by isms that are reactionary and is ultimately controlled by what it reacts against. Ch. 1. Traditional vs. Progressive Education. We tend to think in terms of opposites. We think in logical extremes, even though such extremes cant be acted upon. So in education: traditional vs progressive

Subject-matter

Traditional Bodies of information and of skills worked out in the past. Also, standards, rules of conduct, moral training

Criticism Imposition from outside and above; external discipline vs free creativity; Skill by drill vs vital appeal; Prep for remote future vs use opportunities of the present Static aims and materials vs. changing world.

Progressive

Organization:

Education: Aim = prepare for future

Sharply distinct from all others in society (e.g., family) :. Education = transmission of information; acquisition of skill. Student = docile, receptive, obedient. Text book embodies past.

Education: Method

Teacher = organ to connect to text and to past.

Going to the opposite extreme solves nothing. What is needed is a correct idea of experience. What is the place and meaning of the subject-matter within experience? [this is the deeper view that will give a more adequate account of education.] The problem is now set. What does freedom mean and what are the conditions under which it is capapble of realization? p.22.

Ch. 2. The Need for a Theory of Experience: [Begins with Theory] Not all experiences are educative. Mis-educative: arrest or distort growth of further experience. Produces callousness, and lack of sensitivity. Put one in a groove or rut. Slack and careless, dissipated, inability to control the future Traditional schools do give sstudents experiences, but of the wrong kind. Traditional could just rely on tradition. New view needs a theory of experience.

Ch. 3 Criteria of Experience I. II. Continuity. Interaction (Situation).

Objection: growth is not enough; we must also specify the direction in which growth takes place., the end toward which it tends. Theif. Spoilt child all human experience is ultimately social p. 38. What attitudes are conducive to continued growth? Sympathy, Experience is not just inside. It is a moving force and includes objective conditions. Educator must use the environment.

Situation problem. in a situation is not a spatial in; it means interaction.

Latitude and longitude.

Ch. 4 Social Control Games rules. In the game / game is not exeternal to them. Fair is determined by rules not outside of all rules. Convention, tradition, establish Even in competitive games there is participation Control is social. Referee, parent, etc. are not imposing external will. It is for the interest of the group. But traditional school is not a cooperative project, so teacher does feel like external force. education is essentially a social process.

Ch. 5. The Concept of Freedom Freedom = freedom of intelligence; of observation and judgment on behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. Not just freedom of movement. But movement might be necessary for students of a certain age and disposition. For freedom from restriction, the negative side, 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 chose ends into operation. P. 63-4. the alternative to externally impose inhibition is inhibition through an individuals own reflection and judgment. P. 64. The ideal aim of education is creation of power of self-control. But the mere removal of external control is not guarantee for the production of self-control. Impluses and desires that are not ordered by intelligence are under the control of accidental circumstances. It may be a loss rather than a gain to escape from the control of another person only to find ones conduct dictated by immediate whim and caprice p. 64-5.

Ch. 6. The Meaning of Purpose: Freedom is the power to frame purposes and to execute or carry into effect purposes so framed. It is self-control. It is the organization of means to carry out the purpose. Purpose is not just impulse or desire. It is the stifling of immediate action so as to consider the goal and the means. It is the development of a plan. (a solution to the problem presented in the situation.)

Ch. 7: Progressive Organization of Subject-Matter

Allusion has been made in passing a number of times to objective conditions involved in experience and to their function in promoting or failing to promote the enriched growth of further experience.

I have alluded to the ways objective conditions can promote and enrich further experience.

We should derive the subject matter from experiences, rather than teach things that our outside of experience and then struggle to connect them to experience. Then we must lead the student through more organized forms until they reach the level of a skilled, mature person. Now we require the student to do this on their own, and often they do. New experiences are not enough. We must relate them to prior experiences and to future experiences. By encountering new problems, they learn to see things differently. We cannot cut ourselves off from the past, because the past provides the only means for understanding the present. Unless a given experience leads out into a field previously unfamiliar no problems arise, while problems are the stimulus to thinking. growth depends upon the presence of difficulty to be overcome by the exercise of intelligence. 1) the problem grows out of the conditions of experience being had in the present. 2) it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. 3) The nee facts and the new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented. The process is a continuous spiral. In Science: Ideas are hypotheses and are more important, not less. They are tested by their consequences Those consequences must be tracked and Reflectd upon. no experience is educative that does not tend both to knowledge of more facts and entertaining of more ideas aand to a better, a more orderly, arrangement of them. teaching and learning [are] a continuous process of reconstruction of experience.

scientific method is the only authentic means at our command for getting a the significance of our everyday experience of the world in which we live.

Ch. 8. Experience the Means and the Goal of Education.

Dewey: The educational system must move forward to ever greater utilization of the scientific method in the development of the possibilities of growing, expanding experience.

Rewrite: Get rid of needless words; Put the emphasis on the verbs rather than the nouns. Our society must move forward. Teachers should use the scientific method to expand experience.

Education should be treated as intelligently directed development of the possibilities inherent in ordinary experience There is only one danger (he lists two): 1) experience and the experimental method will not be adequately conceived. And 2) the failure of educators who professedly adopt them [the standards, aims, and methods of the newer education] to be faithful to them in practice.