John Dewey on Education

Final paper

Traditional schools, grounds where Students were required to memorize massive amounts of information formulas, dictate by a precise academic curriculum and very remote from each individual students' personal experience or interest. Most teachers defined good pedagogy as practice and testing, their task was to hear the students recite and give appropriate punishment for breach of academic rule. In this essay I will look at the vision of two philosophers on the subject of education, in the first part I will summarize john Dewey's approach, challenges, goals and methods. In a second part I will look at the approach of Krishnamurti in "Krishnamurti on education". In a 3rd part I will compare and contrast both approaches by responding to the following questions what overall pattern is operating in the similarities and why does it matter? How does the comparison enhance our understanding of the separate approaches? What is the cause of the differences if any and why does it matter? And finally, what unique and new insight comes from these two theories?

John Dewey saw in the traditional education system, some important issues he felts needed reform; here we will look at two of them. His main theory denounced in the first place a cut-and dry curriculum that promoted the cramming of knowledge, the systematic memorization of facts that was used to rank the students, a student's "worth" was reduced to his ability in memorizing and reproducing the content. He felt hat this approach to learning was not fulfilling the main purpose of education. The other challenge he saw in the traditional system was the place of the educator, the authoritarian teacher that always had the last word and was regarded as the sole source of knowledge, the uniform progression from one grade to the next and the traditional fixed seats and desks laid out in rows within secluded and self-contained classroom. To understand the vision Dewey had about the goals of education, it is important to see how he defined education. For john Dewey, education has to be social and interactive processes, He felt the traditional system didn't see education and school for what it was. The school," he wrote, "must be made into a social center capable of participating in the daily life of the community . . . And make up in part to the child for the decay of dogmatic and fixed methods of social discipline and for the loss of reverence and the influence of authority." He discussed several aspects and I will be explaining four of the goals he felt education should achieve. Education should take a holistic approach and give every child the chance to grow up spontaneously, harmoniously in other words it should be "child centered" rather than dictated by textbook or strict teachers. He believed children are to be educated to become better citizens, the component of community and general welfare was prominent in his approach, better citizens form better communities and therefore better a better government, Children are to get from the public school whatever was missing in their lives elsewhere that was essential for their balanced development as members of a democratic society. He believes strongly in schools being important players in the "well-being" of society through the students they have the duty to educate. When it can to the curriculum, Dewey believes each subject must fulfill present needs of growing children; education has to deal with present needs and not presume future ones. Teaching kids, subject that was going to presumably be useful to them was to rob them of the innate joy of childhood. The aspect to freedom is important for Jon Dewey, he believes that education cannot take place if the child is not free, in "free" he means, if the child is not free to learn what is of interest to him, that ties in with the idea of abolition of the authoritarian figure of teacher, dicussed above. To achieve those goals stated above, John Dewey lays a method that covers the his objections, he states that since children soak up knowledge and retain it for use when they are spontaneously induced to look into matters of compelling interest to themselves. They tend to progress fastest in learning, not through being forced to memorize prefabricated material, but by doing work, experimenting with things. This is the idea of learning by doing he believes that learning occurs when experience occurs, but not any type of experience, only when the experience is unique and individual and leads to positive growth as opposed to negative growth. To Dewey, Learning is more than the process of assimilation; it is the development of habits that helps a person to better deal with his surrounding or environment. Since Dewey regards school as being the place to form well rounded citizens, he believes that, to create socially desirable qualities in the individual, the school should guide align the curriculum to the greater interest of the child By Activities that are flexible enough to permit them to express their individuality and yet firm enough to give direction towards development. Dewey continues by redefining the role of the instructors, as he believes, educators should be regard themselves as "midwives", they must be monitors, inspire a desire for knowledge, serve as guides, rather than as task-masters. In other words, the child become an active part of the education "board" and should not be treated as miniature adults or as means to catering to adult needs.

John Dewey progressive approach on education takes issue that have been discussed by of Jiddu Krishnamurti in "Krishnamurti on education", we will be looking at his approach on the subject matter in the following paragraph

For Krishnamurti there is a growing realization that the existing educative models have failed and that there is a total lack of relevance between the human being and the complex society as traditional teaching is comprised of memorizing loads, he believes that if learning as we understand it, as being merely the storing information in the first place, then acting