With the start of a new academic semester, it seems a lot of education students are reading, talking, and blogging about Dewey. Here’s a sampling of some comments:
- Senorita Teacher wonders whether the Deweyan idea of “starting where the child is” can be effective at higher grade levels.
- Shannon at My Life Becoming a Teacher reflects on Dewey’s thoughts on education as social and calls Dewey’s words empowering.
- DancnTeach responds to a line from “Pedagogic Creed:”
I believe that education, therfore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.
- Kristin at Cute as a Button wonders if Dewey’s ideas are still relevant today, and whether implementing them is in any way realistic.
- Tirade25 at Tirade Parade reflects on her unpleasant experience within an education program, where she feels that Deweyan ideology replaced the actual teaching of techniques and skills. Ironically enough, she notes in the comments, a Deweyan learn-by-doing approach was not actually implemented in these programs. (I admit I have struggled myself from time to time with the notion of lecturing on Dewey. It seems somehow counterproductive, and yet at the moment that’s the system we work with.)
I also came across two posts that conflate Dewey with the idea of completely unstructured or child-dominated education. One cites the possibility of a negative progressive-ed influence on home schooling. This may or may not be a valid critique of certain forms of progressive-ed in home schooling, but as I’ve said before, Dewey’s concept of education was not devoid of structure. The other post , and another blames the Laboratory School at Chicago for ushering in an age of lower literacy. I just have a hard time reconciling that last claim with Dewey’s idea that art and literature were so important to education. It’s not the first time I’ve seen the charge though, so I think I’m going to need to hunt down some reliable statistics on literacy in Western societies.