Sunday, September 24, 2006

John Dewey

I have recently been reading some of the work of John Dewey, specifically The School and Society & The Child and the Curriculum. It’s a very quick read, but chock full of good thought!

In The Child and the Curriculum, Dewey makes the case that there is error in seeing education as either the child or the curriculum. Instead he posits, “Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child’s experience; cease thinking of the child’s experience as also something hard and fast; see it as something fluent, embryonic, vital and we realize that the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process.” Both are necessary. Later, I think he references the fact that great teaching is an art, because it is the teacher that has to “psychologize” the curriculum to induce, “a vital and personal experiencing.” Are teachers today being trained to do this? How do teachers do this without technology? How can technology help us psychologize the curriculum?  Or will it just, “arouse interest, to make it interesting; to cover it with sugar-coating; to conceal its barrenness by intermediate and unrelated material; and finally , as it were , to get the child to swallow and digest the unpalatable morsel while he is enjoying tasting something quite different.” How do schools use technology in this way? What is the difference between using the technology to do what Dewey suggests and using it to do what he warns against? How do thinking and problem-solving factor in?

So much of Dewey could refer to the present state of our educational system. This was thinking back in 1899…over a century ago. How is the world different today? How are our schools different today? I keep asking myself the question – For what reasons have we not changed while the rest of the world has changed? What can we do to change that? Does Dewey suggest anything? How have schools stayed so disconnected with the real life of the child? “..the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school in any complete and free way within the school itself.” Can this be elaborated on as a case for the use of technology in schools for problem solving and other learning?

Posted by Randy on 09/24 at 08:00 PM
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