Topic 6:

John Dewey on Education

Upon completion of this Topic, you should be able to:

1. Trace the life of John Dewey
2. Identify his works
3. Explain his view on education
4. Describe his experimental school

• Who is John Dewey?

• His Works
• Aims and Goals of Education
• On Learning
• Progressivism
• The Dewey School

REFERENCES
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WHO IS JOHN DEWEY?

Dewey was born in 1859 in Burlington, Vermont in the United

States of modest family origins. He graduated from the
University of Vermont and became a high school teacher in Oil
City, Pennsylvania and one year as a primary school teacher in
a small town in Vermont. Later he received his PhD from John
Hopkins University and in 1884 accepted an academic position
at the University of Michigan which he served until 1894 and
joined the University of Chicago until 1904.

Here he developed his philosophy of education and initiated the

University of Chicago Laboratory School where he was able to
experiment with beliefs about education and teaching. Dewey
married twice, first with Alice Chipman. They had six childre n.
His second wife was Roberta Lowitz Grant. John Dewey
(1859 – 1952)

In 1899, John Dewey was elected president of the American Psychological Association. From
1904 until his retirement in 1930 he was professor of philosophy at both Columbia Univers ity
and Columbia University's Teachers College. In 1905 he became president of the American
Philosophical Association. Dewey continued to write and speak about intellectual and social
issues until shortly before his death on June 1, 1952.

HIS WORKS

John Dewey wrote hundreds of articles and dozens of books in his lifetime. The following are
some examples:

In this book (written in 1916), Dewey wrote about his

philosophy of education. He argued that learning was active
and unfortunately schooling was restrictive. His idea was that
children came to school to do things and live in a community
which gave them real, guided experiences which fostered their
capacity to contribute to society.

For example, Dewey believed that students should be involved

in real-life tasks and challenges: mathematics could be learnt
via learning proportions in cooking or figuring out how long it
would take to get from one place to another by mule history
could be learnt by experiencing how people lived, geography,
what the climate was like, and how plants and animals grew,
were important subjects
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In this book (written in 1933), Dewey explains the general

process of human thinking. It compares deductive reasoning
with inductive reasoning. The two forms of reasoning are
essential to all humans, but few have ever taken the time to
understand these two types of thinking. Both deductive and
inductive reasoning are important, and they are both opposite
approaches for humans to draw conclusions. Deductive
reasoning starts with a theory to push us to look for facts, while
inductive reasoning starts with observations and pushes us to
form a theory.

Experience and Education is a small book by Dewey that gives a

clear and quick overview of his ideal approach to teaching and
education. In it he compares traditional and progressive education,
discusses the relationship of experience and learning, and theories
on ways to implement effective experiences in educationa l
environments.

LEARNING ACTIVITY
a) Trace the life of John Dewey
b) What were some of the books he? What were
they about?
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AIMS AND GOALS OF EDUCATON

• Dewey argues that there are two major conflicting schools of thought on school
curriculum and teaching:

o The first school of thought focuses almost solely on the subject matter and
content to be taught. He argued that the major flaw with this school of thought
is that the student is inactive. The “child is simply the immature being who is to
be matured; he is the superficial being who is to be deepened” (Dewey, 1902,
p. 13).

o The second school of thought content is presented in a way that allows the
student to relate the information to prior experiences, thus deepening the
connection with this new knowledge. Dewey strongly advocated the second
school of thought if education is to be most effective.

• Children must not be treated as miniature adults and education seeking to lead them
to become adults. They have their own rights and they should enjoy their childhood and
not to robbed of their childhood.

• Students should participate in meaningful projects, learning by doing, and solve

problems. This not only facilitates the acquisition and retention of knowledge but fosters
the right character traits such as unselfishness, helpfulness, critical intellige nce,
individual initiative, etc.

• Dewey saw it important to integrate the school with society. Students should be
exposed to actual problems of life. For example, the school could be a miniature version
of society where equality and consideration for all would prevail.

• The school should be open and completely free through application of the principle s
and practices of democracy where all are equal without any restrictions or segregatio n
on account of colour, race, creed, national origin, sex or social status.

• Education should seek to erase unjust distinctions and prejudices. It should aim to
equip children with the qualities and capacities required to cope with the problems of
a fast-changing world.

• Education should produce alert, balanced, critical-minded individuals who would

continue to grow in intellectual and moral stature after graduation.
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ON LEARNING

According to Dewey, there are two meanings learning:

o First, learning is the sum total of what is known, as that is handed down by books
and learned men,
o Second, learning is something which the individual does when he or she studies,
i.e. thinking and feeling about the content

LEARNING ACTIVITY
a) Discuss the aims of education according to Dewey.
b) What is his conception of learning?

PROGRESSIVISM

What is Progressivism?
Progressivism is a philosophical belief that argues that education must be based on the fact that
humans are by nature social and learn best in real-life activities with other people. The person
most responsible for progressivism was John Dewey (1859-1952). The progressive movement
stimulated American schools to broaden their curriculum, making education more relevant to
the needs and interests of students. Dewey wrote extensively on psychology, epistemology (the
origin of knowledge), ethics and democracy. But, his philosophy of education laid the
foundation for progressivism. In 1896, while a professor at the University of Chicago, Dewey
founded the famous Laboratory School to test his educational ideas. His writings and work with
the Laboratory School set the stage for the progressive education movement.

According to Dewey, the role of education is to transmit society’s identity by preparing young
people for adult life. He was a keen advocate of democracy and for it to flourish, he felt that
education should allow learners to realise their interests and potential. Learners should learn to
work with others because learning in isolation separates the mind from action. According to
him certain abilities and skills can only be learned in a group. Social and intellectual interactio n
dissolves the artificial barriers of race and class by encouraging communication between
various social groups (Dewey, 1920). He described education as a process of growth and
experimentation in which thought and reason are applied to the solution of problems. Children
should learn as if they were scientists using the scientific method proposed by Dewey (1920):
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1. To be aware of the problem (eg. plants need sunlight to grow)

2. Define the problem (eg. can plants grow without sunlight)
3. Propose hypotheses to solve it
4. Test the hypotheses
5. Evaluate the best solution to the problem

Students should be constantly experimenting and solving problems; reconstructing their

experiences and creating new knowledge using the proposed five steps. Teachers should not
only emphasise drill and practice, but should expose learners to activities that relate to he real
life situations of students, emphasising ‘Learning by doing’.

The Progressive Curriculum

• Progressivists emphasise the study of the natural and social sciences. Teacher should
introduce students to new scientific, technological, and social developments. To expand the
personal experience of learners, learning should be related to present community life.
Believing that people learn best from what they consider most relevant to their lives, the
curriculum should centre on the experiences, interests, and abilities of students.

• Teachers should plan lessons that arouse curiosity and push students towards higher order
thinking and knowledge construction. For example, in addition to reading textbooks,
students must learn by doing such as fieldtrips where they can interact with nature and
society.

• Students are encouraged to interact with one another and develop social virtues such as
cooperation and tolerance for different points of view.

• Teachers should not be confined to focusing on one discrete discipline at a time but should
introduce lessons that combine several different subjects.

• Students are to be exposed to a more democratic curriculum that recognises

accomplishments of all citizens regardless of race, cultural background or gender. addition,

• By including instruction in industrial arts and home economics, progressivists strive to

make schooling both interesting and useful. Ideally, the home, workplace, and schoolhouse
blend together to generate a continuous, fulfilling learning experience in life. It is the
progressivist dream that the dreary, seemingly irrelevant classroom exercises that so many
adults recall from childhood will someday become a thing of the past. Students solve
problems in the classroom similar to those they will encounter outside school.

LEARNING ACTIVITY
a) What is progressivism?
b) Discuss the characteristics of the progressive
curriculum? How relevant is it to the Malaysian
curriculum?
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THE DEWEY SCHOOL

Dewey proposed a school to university officials that would keep ‘theoretical work in touch with
the demands of practice’. In January 1896, the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago
opened its doors. The school began with sixteen children and two teachers, but by 1903 it was
providing instruction to 140 students and was staffed by twenty-three teachers and ten graduate
assistants. Most of the students were from professional families, many of them the children of
Dewey’s colleagues. The institution soon became known as the ‘Dewey School’.

At the centre of the curriculum of the Dewey School was what Dewey termed the ‘occupation’,
that is, ‘a mode of activity on the part of the child which reproduces, or runs parallel to, some
of work carried on in social life’. Divided into eleven age groups, the students pursued a variety
of projects centred on particular historical or contemporary occupations.

• The youngest children in the school, who were 4 and 5 years old, engaged in
activities familiar to them from their homes and neighbourhoods: cooking,
sewing and carpentry.
• The 6-year-olds built a farm out of blocks, planted wheat and cotton, and
processed and transported their crop to market.
• The 7-year-olds studied prehistoric life in caves of their own devising while
their 8-year-old neighbours focused their attention on the work of the sea-
faring Phoenicians, on Robinson Crusoe and adventurers, like Marco Polo,
Magellan and Columbus.
• Local history and geography occupied the attention of the 9-yearolds.
• While those who were 10 years old studied colonial history, constructing a
replica of a room in an early American house.

The Textile Room in

Dewey’s School

The work of the older groups of children was less strictly focused on particular historica l
periods (though history remained an important part of their studies) and centred more on
scientific experiments in anatomy, electro-magnetism, political
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economy, and photography. The 13-year-olds built a substantial clubhouse when they could not
find another suitable place for their debate club to meet. Building the clubhouse was a group
effort that enlisted children of all ages in a co-operative project that was, for many, the
emblematic moment in the school’s history.

The occupational activities pointed on the one hand toward the scientific study of the materia ls
and processes involved in their practice and on the other toward their role in society and manual
training and historical inquiry but also for work in mathematics, geology, physics, biology,
chemistry, reading, art, music and languages.

In the Laboratory School, Dewey reported, ‘the child comes to school to do; to cook, to sew, to
work with wood and tools in simple constructive acts; within and about these acts cluster the
studies—writing, reading, arithmetic, etc’. Skills such as reading were developed when children
came to recognise their usefulness in solving the problems that confronted them in their
occupational activities. ‘If a child realizes the motive for acquiring skill’, Dewey argued, ‘he is
helped in large measure to secure the skill. Books and the ability to read are, therefore, regarded
strictly as tools’.

For example, the 6-year-old students in the school, building on the experiences with home
activities they had had in kindergarten, concentrated their work on ‘occupations serving the
home’. They built a model farm in the sand-table in their classroom and in the schoolyard they
planted a crop of winter wheat. As was the case with most constructive activities in the school,
the building of the model farm provided an occasion for learning some mathematics:

In instances such as this, one can see how the child’s interest in a particular activity of his/her
own, such as building a model farm, served as the foundation for instruction in a body of
subject-matter, the skills in measurement and the mathematics of fractions. Moreover, this
method introduced children to the methods of experimental problem-solving in which mistakes
were an important part of learning.

Providing children with ‘first-hand experience,’ the problematic situations largely of

their own making, was the key to Dewey’s pedagogy. He believed that ‘until the emphasis
changes to the conditions which make it necessary for the child to take an active share in the
personal building up of his own problems and to participate in methods of solving them the
mind is not really freed’.

LEARNING ACTIVITY
a) Discuss the characteristics of the Dewey School.
b) Comment on it.
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REFERENCES

Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey. Prospects: the quarterly review of comparative education
(Paris, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education), vol. XXIII, no. 1\2, 1993,p. 277-91.

The Philosophy of John Dewey. Two volumes in one. Edited by John J. McDermott. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Campbell, J. (1995) Understanding John Dewey. Nature and co-operative intellige nce,
Chicago: Open Court..

Ryan, A. (1995) John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism, New York: W. W.
Norton. Clear and fair-minded evaluation of Deweyian liberalism.