Theschool must be "a genuine form of active community life, instead of aplace set apart in which to learn lessons". ------The School and Society
Play is not to be identified with anythingwhich the child externally does. It ratherdesignates his mental attitude in its entirety and in its unity.
------Elementary School Record, February 1900
Informationsevered from thoughtful action is dead, a mind-crushing load.
No one has ever explained why children areso full of questions outside of the school... (yet there is a )conspicuousabsence of display of curiosity about the subject matter of school lessons.
------Democracy and Education
新课讲授：
Asone of the outstanding Western thinkers of the late 19th and 20thcenturies, Dewey influenced ideas infields as diverse as psychology, logic, aesthetics, religion and social andpolitical thought and education.
Hewas one of the main proponents of progressive education(进步主义教育）Keycomponents of this movement included:
thechild's physical well being
focuson the whole child
curriculumdeveloped from the interests and needs of children
teacheras guide or facilitator
co-operativelearning and inquiry among children
closehome/school connections
educationfor current life situations; effective living rather than accumulation ofknowledge
scientificstudy of child development
theschool as contributor to educational progress
adaptabilityto change
integratedcurriculum
Thesetenets were in stark contrast to those followed in schools of the time withtheir lack of individualized curriculum and their focus on subject matter, rotelearning and harsh punishments.
Anextensive description and explanation of the origins of the progressiveeducation movement( also sometimes called experimental education) is by EduardLindeman, philosopher and past director of the New York School for SocialService:
"In the first place,experimental education represented a negative response to the deadly,stereotyped, ritualistic and doctrinaire form of education which prevailedeverywhere in America where middle-class literature became dominant. In the second place, experimental educationcontributed positive response to ...liberalism and expressionism, especiallyself-expressionism... Experimental education was, then, a...revolt againstcultural mediocrity. Naturally itsinfluence was cast on the side of the individual. Like all movements involving the notion offreedom, its purpose was to allow the learner to expand, to discover his latentcapacities, to break through the artificial barriers of conformity andformalism, and to reveal fresh, creative possibilities in his relationship tohis environment."
------from Schools Grow edited by MarjorieSchauffler and quoted in "Progressive Education and AmericanProgressivism: Caroline Pratt" by Robert Beck
1. Early Life
Deweywas born in 1859 into a climate of contrasting and stimulating new ideas. Charles Darwin's Origin of Species《物种起源》, Karl Marx's Critique of Political Economy 《政治经济学批判》andJohn Stuart Mill's On Liberty《论自由》wereall published in that year. It was theyear John Brown, the American abolitionist, captured the U.S. arsenal atHarpers Ferry. America was also at the brinkof the Civil War.
Inhis boyhood and youth John Dewey saw his friends assuming a share in householdchores and gaining exposure to both agricultural and industrial jobs. School did not equal the interesting worldaround him. He knew early that the mostimportant learnings were outside the classroom and in stark contrast to theschool emphasis on memorization and recitation.
1.1 Early Teaching Career
Aftergraduating with high grades and Phi Beta academic honours, Dewey taught highschool at Central Avenue High School for two years(1879-1881) in South OilCity, Pennsylvania. His cousin ClaraWilson was the principal of the school. There were only three faculty members, and Dewey taught Latin, algebraand natural sciences, also acting asassistant principal. A fellow boarder inhis rooming house described him as serious, studious and reserved.
Deweythen taught one term(1881-1882) in the Lake View Seminary, a local districtschool in Charlotte, Vermont. He had notraining in teaching and did not intend to follow a career in education. During this period Dewey embarked onindependent studies in philosophy with one of the professors H.A.P. Torrey, whoencouraged him to pursue graduate studies and even offered him a loan to studyin Germany. He refused the offer anddecided to apply to Johns Hopkins University(约翰霍普金斯大学).
1.2 Graduate Study
Atthe newly founded Johns Hopkins University, Dewey majored in philosophy andminored in history and political science, maintaining his interest in socialproblems and current issues. He tookevery course G. Stanley Hall taught and worked in his experimental lab. When Dewey graduated from university,President Gilman advised him to get out and see people and not to live such asecluded life.
Afterattaining his Ph.D from Johns Hopkins in 1884, Dewey went to the University ofMichigan at the invitation of Morris and taught philosophy and psychology. At this point in his academic career, Deweycame into direct contact with progressivism, which was the desire to apply theAmerican dream to the new scientific, urban and industrialized society(城市和工业化社会). Dewey and others wondered how democracy couldfunction in this new frontier. Theprogressive movement of the time supported the use of human intelligence tomake progress in social justice, education and other issues facing society andto address the problem of poverty.
Deweyalso became interested in the obvious fact that schools were not adjusting tothe latest findings in child development or to the needs of the rapidly changingsociety of the time. While at theUniversity of Michigan, he was part of teams assessing the quality ofinstruction in secondary school programs. Through this involvement he was introduced to some of the practicalproblems of education. Dewey also helpedfound a Schoolmaster's club that sponsored lectures for high school teachers onsubjects such as attention and imagination. The Club explored issues relevant to both high schools and universities. He began to envision an experimental schoolto correct the disparity he saw between educational theory and practice.
Inthis university, Dewey met a third-year student Alice, who was finishing herdegree after teaching school for several years. Alice and John married in 1886, and his first textbook, Psychology, alsopublished in the same year.
1.3 Chicago at the Turn of theCentury
In1894 Dewey accepted a new post at the University of Chicago as head of theDepartment of Philosophy and Psychology. The University of Chicago was primarily a research institution at the time, and Dewey made astrong argument that a School of Pedagogy should be part of this. The School ofPedagogy would not only prepare teachers and administrators for schools butwould contribute to the development of education as a science. Norma schools also had demonstration schoolsto train teachers, but this laboratory school was to be a site for thescientific study of learning, curriculum, teaching and child development.
Duringthis experimental period, Dewey developed what was called the instrumental theory of knowledge. He saw ideas as tools, or instruments, forthe solution of immediate problems in the environment. He believed knowledge was not a static bodyof information to acquire. TheLaboratory School would become the testing ground for his theories.
Atthe turn of the century, Chicago was a city of outstanding urban growth and ofcontrasts. Manufacturing companies grewand profited without regard for human consequences, and individual businessmenmade huge fortunes. Half of the schoolchildren left school before grade six, and only five percent attended highschool. The disparity between rich andpoor was dramatic; while some children worked in factories to help supporttheir families, Marshall Field( of department store fame) spent ＄75,000on his son's birthday celebration.
Deweybecame a trustee of Hull House, a settlement house( were typically urban socialservice agencies that functioned to improve social conditions in a communitycontext). Today this might be called acommunity centre, family centre or neighborhood centre. Hull House teemed with activity andprograms--day care centre, college extension courses, public baths , concerts,gym, coffee house, science clubs, debating society, public library branch, women'sclub as well as numerous community action projects. Hull House worked to address the effects ofthe exploitation of minority and immigrant groups in Chicago. Hull House and the many thinkers andactivists attracted to it affected Dewey's developing ideas. Dewey and Addamsworked together and each benefitted from the reciprocity of their thinking.
2. The Dewey School------ALearning Community
Johnand Alice Dewey sought out a group of interested parents and started theuniversity lab school in a house in 1896 with financial support from parents,friends and patrons. The only monetarycontribution the University made consisted of tuition grants for children ofgraduate students. The schoolimmediately attracted the attention of interested educators from around theworld.
Thereis an amusing story of Dewey's search for portable, non-fixed desks for his newschool. A school supply dealer bluntly told Dewey that he did not have the kindof desks Dewey wanted as he had desks that were only for listening, not forworking.
Theschool was originally called The Dewey School though in 1901 its name waschanged to the Laboratory School. It wasestablished not only to test ideas and to train teachers but also to developnew ideas through practice: "Ithas two main purpose, first, to exhibit, test, verify, and criticizetheoretical statements and principles; second, to add to the sum of facts andprinciples in its special line." ------The University School
Inaddition, both Deweys wanted their own children to benefit from a new kind ofschooling. The spirit of experimentalismand the role of teachers at the school are also obvious from the followingquotation: "It is sometimes thought that the schoolstarted out with a number of ready made principles and ideas which were putinto practice at once... The teachers started out with question marks and ifany answers have been reached, it is the teachers in the school who havesupplied them." ------The School and Society
Deweypromoted the multiple values of demonstration/laboratory schools to aid in thedissemination of new ideas and methods: " We do not expect to have otherschools literally imitate what we do. Aworking model is not something to be copied; it is to afford a demonstration ofthe feasibility of the principle, and of the methods which make itfeasible."
------TheSchool and Society
The following basic principleswere established:
Thechild's early school experiences should reflect the home life(cooking, sewing,construction); academic skills would be an outgrowth of theseactivities/occupations.
Childrenwould be part of human community in school that would focus on co-operation.
Learningwould be focused on problems that children would solve(e.g. numbers would belearned through understanding relationships rather than memorizingmultiplication tables.)
Motivationwould be internal to the experiences and the child.
Theteacher's role would be to know the children and to choose stimulating problemsfor the children.
Deweysaw four natural and interconnected impulses( sometimes called nativetendencies or instincts ) in children that would motivate their learning: social(communicating with others ), constructive(making things ), investigative andexperimental( finding out about things ), and expressive( creating things ).
Inthe first year, Dewey invited parents to meet to discuss issues and to learnmore about the theory and practice in the school. In the second year, the parents formed aParents' Association. Dewey's book The School and Society (1899)consists of lectures he gave at the Parents' Association and was originallypublished as a fundraiser for the school. It was an immediate sell out, and there have been countless reprints. The co-education of teachers, children andparents by one another, not just with one another, reflected the activeparticipation of all three groups. TheParents' Association was primarily a group with an educational focus. The teachers became the honorary but invitedguests. Nellie O' Conner, a parent atthe school, wrote an article describing the values from a parent's perspective:" The main value, then, of theeducational work of this Parents' Association was that of educating the parentis the principles of the school, thus bringing him necessarily into closertouch with the school, and above all, by a greater sympathy between parents andteachers, making it possible to bring the school life of the child into thehome, and the home life into school, that the two might be welded into acompact and unified whole."
------TheEducational Side of the Parents' Association of the Laboratory School
Theschool began with 12 children but grew quickly, eventually having 23 faculty,20 graduate teaching assistants and 140 children. Finding adequate space and financialresources were constant problems. In1898, one of Dewey's original aims was realized when children of ages four andfive were added to the program. Theweekly University newsletter, The University Record, kept parents, otherteachers and University faculty aware of the school and its activities.
Playwas basic to the program, and young children were the starting points forproject-based programming: "An expedition to a hardware store to seewhat tools a carpenter might use to build a house made one child want to buildhis own house to take home. Large boxeswere used. The older children measuredand cut all the paper for the walls. Thelittle children tacked down the matting on the floors, made a table for thedining-room by fastening legs on a block. For chairs, they nailed a back to a cube and tacked on a leatherseat. The older children made tables andchairs from uncut wood, which they measured and sawed by themselves. When finished, these were shellacked and theseats upholstered with leatherette and cotton. Some of the children painted the outside of the house so that its wallsshould be 'protected from the weather'. One of the results of this phase of the project was a gain in eachchild's ability to carry out his own ideas." ------Mayhew and Edward, The Dewey School
Therewas a sense of development in the occupations children engaged in as they movedthrough the school. Beginning in theearly years with home and household occupations, occupations expanded toinclude immediate sources of such things as food and textiles. Children traced the sources of agriculturaland manufacturing processed. Dewey sawoccupations, the fundamental means of producing basic supplies and requirementsof life, as key focal points for inquiry in the curriculum.
Olderelementary-aged children looked at early cultures and re-created tradepractices, and this often expended into discussions of and research intoexplorers. The next older group mightstudy local history, settlers of Chicago and the American colonies.
TheWomen who Influenced Him
JaneAddams had an enduring influence on John Dewey's ideas about equality anddemocracy and continued to emphasize the importance of an educator's role as anadvocate for the needs and rights of children and families. She encouraged Dewey to be more pragmatic anddescend from the ivory academic tower.
Dewey'swife, Alice Dewey, formulated curriculum, taught at and was the principal ofthe School and was actively involved in all of the Dewey School'sprograms. She was equally instrumentalin the School's original establishment, as Dewey often was more philosophicalthan practical in his approaches: "Mrs. Dewey would grab Dewey'sideas---and grab him---and insist that something be done....She was on fire toreform people as well as ideas."
------Max Eastman,Great Companions
Deweyhimself felt she put 'guts and stuffing' into his intellectualconclusions. They made an imposing andeffective couple. She forced Dewey tofocus on the practical values and application of philosophical speculation.
InSchool and Society, Dewey also stated his recognition of Alice:"The clear and experienced intelligence of my wife is wrought everywherein its texture."
AliceDewey later collected and preserved many of the records of the Dewey School andstarted a written history of the project, an article in 1903 called "The Place of the Kindergarten" inwhich she critiqued the Froebel kindergartens of the early 1900's. The material was originally prepared for anintroduction to the topic of how kindergarten work fit in with the wholeeducation of the child. The articlefocused on the strengths a child brings to school and the critical role of theteacher in planning curriculum while discovering what children already know: " We place the child in the school todevelop, not to isolate him socially. His intelligence is by no means a hothouse plant to be forced to aprofusion of bloom too delicate for the winds of every day. His intelligence is experience, and we canenlarge it, give better means of enriching it, nothing more."
AliceDewey was also active in many committees at the University of Chicago. When Dewey first moved to Chicago, he becamefamiliar with the work of Anna Bryan, a pioneer in kindergarten education. He worked with her in developing new types ofkindergartens in Chicago and included a kindergarten in the Dewey School. He saw her as a "co-worker". In a conversation with Patty Smith Hill,Dewey said, "Had she lived ten years longer, the education of youngchildren would have progressed much more rapidly."
Anotherkey person who helped shape his ideas was Ella Flagg Young, and Dewey creditedthe strong influence of both his wife and Young: " It is due to these two that thelaboratory school fan so much more systematically and definitely---free from acertain looseness of ends and edges."
Younghad been a student of Dewey when she was 50 years old and brought years ofteaching and administrative experience to her graduate studies at theUniversity of Chicago. Young becamesupervisor of instruction at the Laboratory School at a period when the Schooldid not yet have a secure place within the University, especially in terms offinancial support. Her expertise createdan effective forum for investigating theory and practice. Young also worked with the Parents'Association, reporting to parents about the School's activities and the impacton children.
"Itwas from her that I learned that freedom and respect for freedom mean regardfor the inquiring or reflective processes of individuals and that whatordinarily passes for freedom--freedom from external restraint, spontaneitythinking operations.""She was the wisest person about actual schoolsI ever saw. I would come over to herwith these abstract ideas of mine and she would tell me what they meant."
Itwas Young's idea to re-name the Dewey School the Laboratory School. Youngsupported an environment for teachers identified by thinking, experimentation,exchange of ideas and respect. Shebelieved in democracy in education. HerPh.D. dissertation, Isolation in the School, looked at the conditions necessaryfor improvements in education. Sheadvocated social equality for all involved in educational systems and was awareof the impact of gender, class, age and status on the educational process. Young focused on the importance of schoolsthemselves being democratic while Dewey had a broader perspective. He came tobelieve that good education for citizens was necessary in order to ensure thecontinuation and strength of democracy.
2.1 New York and ColumbiaUniversity
Deweyhad become well known in academic circles and had been named President of theAmerican Psychological Association. In1905, he moved to New York City to begin work at Columbia University where heremained for the next 47 years, including 25 years of active teaching.
Afterleaving Chicago, Dewey never again was directly involved in educationalexperimentation, and the essential aspects of his educational ideas did notchange significantly. He no longer had apractical connection or testing ground for his theories. This points to the key importance ofcontinuing contact with children and programs for children in order for theoryto develop.
Deweywas always a man of action, not just of philosophical thought. He wanted to affect the current events of histime and to see ideas put into action. Dewey supported a variety of social causes and helped found the NewSchool for Social Research in New York City, established to support academicfreedom and expression of thought.
JohnDewey was invited to Japan, China, Turkey, Mexico, Russia and South Africa tolecture and consult on the educational systems in these countries. Many educators who were to have an influenceon early childhood learned from his and his writings on education and socialreform. While in Japan in 1919, he anAlice stayed at the Imperial Hotel designed by Frank Lloyd Wright after aFroebel block design. Alice described itas an: "...old barn of a placewhere we are paying as much as a Fifth Avenue hotel and get clear soup fordinner."
FromMay 1919 to July 1921, the couples gave lectures in China. While in China,Alice Dewey inaugurated the position of Dean of Women at the NationalUniversity of Nanking(南京国立大学),emphasizing the possibilities of education for woman in any part of the world.
2.2 Dewey's Teaching Style
MaxEastman, Dewey's student and assistant for four years at Columbia, describedhis mentor:
"I remember how he usedfrequently to come into class with his necktie out of contact with his collar,or a pants leg caught up to his garter. He would come in through a side door, very promptly and with a briskstep. The briskness would last until hereached his chair, and then he would sag. With an elbow on the desk he would rub his hand over his face, push backhis hair, and begin to purse his mouth and look vaguely off over the heads ofthe class, as through he might and idea up there along the crack between thewall and the ceiling. He would alwaysfind one." ------Eastman, " America's Philosopher"
AlthoughDewey was popular with students, his lectures were described as"boring" and "rambling（长篇大论）", a philosophercontemplating ideas. He was unable tocreate in his lectures the focus on "interest" that dominated hiswritings. One of his students rememberedhis classroom: "Seats were assigned by number, according to the alphabet. Since my name began with a B, I had to sit ina seat in the very first row. Then hisassistants would walk up and down the aisle and take attendance which wascompulsory. My problems was that he wasso dull as a lecturer, and so dry, it was hard to keep awake. And there I was sitting right in front.
------quotedin Dropkin and Tobier(Eds.) Roots ofOpen Education in America
IrwinEdman, a philosopher, recounts in Philosopher's Holiday that he wasentranced by reading Dewey's books and looked forward to intellectualexcitement from his lectures. However,he found that Dewey had "none of the usual tricks or gifts of theeffective lecturer. He hardly seemedaware of the presence of a class." What Edman discovered was that he " had been listening to a manactually thinking in the presence of a class. Not every day or in every teacher does one overhear the palpableprocessed of thought."
Deweyinitiated inquiry, he did not disseminate information. This approach was revealed most in seminargroups. Edman remembers Dewey's uncannyability to see exactly what a student was trying to say and to express candidlyhis own ideas or prejudices:" Hisinstinctive deference, and unqualified giving-of-attention to whatever anybody,no matter how humble, might have to say, was one of the rarest gifts ofgenius. He would conduct longcorrespondences with obscure people--carpenters, plumbers, cigar-storekeepers--from all over the world, discussing the problems of life with them asthough they were heads of universities. Pecking away with two fingers on a worn old portable typewriter, heseemed to me to embody the very essence of democracy." ------Eastman, " America's Philosopher"
埃德曼记得杜威有一种不可思议的能力，他能准确地看到一个学生想说什么，能坦诚地表达自己的想法或偏见：“他本能的尊重，对任何人都毫无保留地给予关注，不管有多么谦虚，都是天才最罕见的天赋之一。他将与来自世界各地的不知名人士（木匠、水管工、雪茄店老板）进行长期通信，讨论生活问题，就好像他们是大学校长一样。他用两个手指在一台破旧的便携式打字机上啄来啄去，在我看来，他体现了民主的精髓。”
In1927, Dewey suffered a personal and professional blow when his wife Alice diedat the age of 68. Dewey retired fromactive teaching in 1930 but continued to speak and write. Among his "retirement" books areLogic: the Theory of Inquiry(1938), Freedom and Culture(1939) , and Knowing andknown(1949). The last was co-authoredwith Arthur Bentley and was an attempt at major revisions of philosophical terminology哲学术语的修订.
Deweywas a voluminous writer. To list themore than 38 books and 815 articles and pamphlets he wrote would take over 153pages of type. The titles of many of hisbooks reflect his concern with balance and interaction between ideas, conceptsand institutions: The School and Society, How We Think, The Child and Curriculum, MyPedagogic Creed, Experience andNature, Art as Experience, Democracy and Education, Experience and Education.
Thougha philosopher in his academic background, Dewey's main concern was education,schools, children and, above all, learning. These key concepts are reflected in most of his writing. One of the problems he saw was the lack ofapplication of knowledge about children into the educational process: "Incompetency is general not becausepeople are not instructed enough as children, but because they cannot and donot make any use of what they learn."
------Schools of Tomorrow
2.3 Instrumental Theory of Knowledge
Acentral forces of Dewey's work was on the " theory ofknowledge". Though most oftencalled "epistemology", Deweypreferred the phrases "theory of inquiry" or " experimentallogic".
Withhis instrumental theory of knowledge, Dewey saw both the mind and knowledge asinstruments, or tools, for dealing with the situations of life. The organism(person) constantly interactswith the environment. This interaction was central to all ofDewey's educational thought. He sawknowledge as a direct by-product of action, inseparable from the activity thatproduced it. Acting upon the environmentresults in experience; therefore, theperson learns the effect of the actions on the environment. This knowledge directs the course of furtheraction. The person may or may not repeatthe action depending on what has happened. Dewey saw this as a process of action and reaction. In this way the person learns aboutcontrolling(in a positive sense) the environment.
Deweyregarded environment as both physical and social in nature and believed thatinteractions with both were educative: "The environment consists of thoseconditions that promote or hinder, stimulate or inhibit, the characteristicactivities of a living being. The socialenvironment consists of all the activities of fellow beings that are bound upin the carrying on of the activities of any one of its members." ------Democracy and Education
2.4 Definition of Education
Deweydefined education as the " reconstruction or reorganization of experiencewhich adds to the meaning of experience and which increases the ability todirect the course of subsequent experience." Education is notautomatic. For learning to occur,something has to change.
Dewey'ssense of education was not necessarily formal education. It was any experience (short or long,informal or formal) that fit his definition. Education was therefore not divorced from living. A growing friendship with another personcould be as rich in learning as a course in school. It was not the accumulation of knowledge forits own sake. Education began at birthand ended upon a person's death. Deweysaw education as living and learning in the moment, not as preparation forlater life: " education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation forfuture living." ------My Pedagogic Creed
Learningshould not be "factionalized", as children do not see subjects asseparate elements. Subject matter wouldbecome meaningful as it connected to life's activities: " If number is taught not as number, but as a means through which someactivity undertaken on its own account may be rendered more orderly andeffective有序和有效,it assumes a different aspect, and affords insight into the ways in which manactually employs numerical relations in social life." "Nature---study, geography, and historyare to be treated as extensions of the child's own activity孩子自身活动的延伸;e.g., there is no sense(psychologically) in studying any geographical factexcept as the child sees that fact entering into and modifying his own acts andrelationships."
2.5 Process of Learning
Deweymaintained that traditional education as preparation for examinations alsofostered competitiveness竞争性 and individual achievement 个人成就withoutregard for others. He described theprevalent approach as " a comparisonof results in the recitation or in the examination to see which child hassucceeded in getting ahead of others in storing up... the maximum ofinformation. So thoroughly is this theprevalent atmosphere that for one child to help another in his task has becomea school crime". ------The School and Society
Tocounter this competitiveness, Dewey felt children must learn to work togetheron projects; children would learn that others could contribute to individualachievement as well as group goals. Onceoutside the school, success would depend on working with others, not incompetition. Schools therefore needed toreflect this reality.
Motivationmust always be internal, not focused on grade attainment or fear or desire tomake an impression on a teacher动机必须是内在的，而不是集中在成绩、恐惧或对老师留下印象的愿望上. Along with the sense that education wasintegral to the living process, Dewey felt that the aim of education must bewithin the process itself. He saw thegoal of education as the solution of an immediate problem that is significantto the learner. As such there were nofinal goals. Education met its goal ifthe person could solve the next problem better than the last. Problems demanded inquires, which in turnwould reconstruct the problematic situation into resolved ones: "Educationhas all the time an immediate end, and so far as activity is educative, itreaches that end---the direct transformation of the quality ofexperience...What is really learned at any and every stage of experienceconstitutes the value of that experience."
Thegoal of education was growth教育的目的是成长. The end of growth was more growth成长的终点是更好的成长. Children's learning today would allow them to learn more and grow moretomorrow. Growth became the ideal ofeducation and not preparation for some future life成长成为教育的理想，而不是为将来的生活做准备. Truth and knowledge were neither fixed norexisted on their own but were a set of beliefs and ideas to affect goals inlife真理和知识既不是固定的，也不是独立存在的，而是一套影响人生目标的信念和思想.
2.6 Method---"something to do, not somethingto learn"
Whatwas the method that Dewey saw for learning? How were children to learn? Iflearning was a by-product of action, then the method of learning must beconstructed out of actions, experience and doing. He saw the key teacher's role as providingchildren with something to do, not something to learn: " To realize what an experience... means we have to call to mindthe sort of situation that presents itself outside of school; the sort ofoccupations that interest and engage activity in ordinary life. And careful inspection of methods which arepermanently successful in formal education... will reveal that they depend fortheir efficiency upon the fact that they go back to the type of situation whichcauses reflection out of school in ordinary life. They give the pupils something to do, notsomething to learn; and the doing作为is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting ofconnections; learning naturally results." ------ Democracy and Education
Thelife occupations provided the method for children to explore the moretraditional academic subjects in the humanities, the arts and thesciences. This simple method hadprofound implications. If the teacherwanted a child to measure, the teacher would give the child some real projectthat required measuring, not a worksheet or drill on measuring. Dewey went further to insist that the doingbe of a nature that required children to think. Worksheets or drills rarely necessitated real thinking. Projects such as sewing a quilt or making awooden boat demanded that the child think and wonder and inquire. Through this process of doing and thinking,learning would naturally and inevitably occur: "Experienceis trying...undergoing施为. When we experience something we act upon it, wedo something with it; then we suffer or undergo the consequences. We do something to the thing and then it doessomething to us in return... Mere activity does not constituteexperience." ------ Democracy and Education
Learningfrom experience. Learning through activeengagement. This meant doing realactivities with real meaning. Incontrast, rote learning was like learning to swim without going near the water. Play was central to the process: "The educational value of this play is obvious. It teaches the children about the world they live in. The more they play the more elaborate becomestheir paraphernalia, the whole game being a fairly accurate picture of thedaily life of their parents in its setting, clothes, in the language andbearing of the children. Through theirgames they learn about the work and play of the grown-up world. Besides noticing the elements which make upthis world, they find out a good deal about the actions and processes that arenecessary to keep it going." ------Schools of Tomorrow
3. AboutChildren
3.1 Children's Interests
Programmingneeded to be built upon children's interests ,but Dewey's sense of children'sinterests was complex: " Interest... are but attitudes towardspossible experiences; they are not achievements; their worth is in the leveragethey afford."
------The Child andthe Curriculum
Children'sactivities did not need to be induced, drawn out or developed. The teacher's role was to ascertain theactivities the children were interested in pursuing and furnish children withappropriate opportunities and conditions. Interests of the child were not ends but clues to the child's startingpoints and what Dewey called "universal capital". Ignoring children's interests wound result inmissed opportunities for growth: " these native existing interests,impulses, and experiences are all the leverage that the teacher has to workwith. He must connect with them or failutterly." "Interest is a namefor the fact that a course of action, an occupation, or pursuit absorbs thepowers of an individual in a thorough-going way."
------The Child and Curriculum
Absorbsis a key word in Dewey's conception of interests. If teachers understood the value of a child'sbeing absorbed in a task, the teachers could then build on children's intereststo ensure coverage of the more traditional subject areas. The skills of the teacher were critical inbeing able to build projects with children that required in-depth study andthinking about a topic. The experiencesneeded to provide opportunities for growth of the individual. At the same time the child needed to be awareof the interdependence of all people in a society.
3.2 Investigations in Action
Deweydescribed his vision of project work: " What is needed, in a word, is to affordoccasion by which the child is moved to educe and exchange with others hisstore of experiences, his range of information, to make new observationscorrecting and extending them in order to keep his images moving, in order tofind mental rest and satisfaction in definite and vivid realization of what isnew and enlarging."
" The problem of instructionis thus that of finding material which will engage a person in specificactivities having an aim or purpose of moment or interest to him."
------ Democracyand Education
Deweylaid out four criteria for projects(called occupations), which are as relevanttoday as they were 100 years ago. Projects must:
beof interest to the children,
involvethought,
evokecuriosity and lead children to new areas,
entailan extended period of time for investigation.
4. Schools ofTomorrow
Deweyand his eldest daughter, Evelyn, wrote Schools of Tomorrow in 1915. The book refers extensively to Rousseau,Pestalozzi and Froebel. In the prefaceJohn Dewey said: "We have tried to show what actually happens when schools startout to put into practice, each in its own way, some of the theories that havebeen pointed to as the soundest and best ever since Plato."
Thebook highlighted many progressive schools of the day, including the Play Schoolof Caroline Pratt and the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education. Those school's programming was a respect forthe dignity of the children. Childrenwere given responsibilities within the school. Teachers were seen as "students of teaching", needing to beopen to continual learning about their profession.
BurgesJohnson describes an amusing incident when he worked at Dutton's Publishingcompany and received a manuscript of Schools of Tomorrow. He went to see Dewey at Columbia Universitywith his concerns about the abtuse and dry style in the first chapter ascompared to the well-expressed and clear second chapter. He asked Dewey if those two chapters could bereversed. Dewey listened quietly and thesaid, " What you say interests megreatly. I wrote the first chapter, andmy daughter Evelyn wrote the second."
5. DualGrounded Curriculum
Deweybelieved in building learning from the child's experience but did notadvocate" child centred education" or "child centredschools"---children were not left to their own devices. Teachers and their knowledge of curriculumplayed a central role. Dewey was oftenassociated with child centred education, but connecting his ideas with a solefocus on child centred practice and permissiveness is a misinterpretation ofhis theory. Just because schools calledthemselves "progressive" did not mean they understood or followed thecritical components he had articulated.
Dewey'sview of curriculum had two equally important pillars---the children's base ofactivities and the teacher's base in subject matter. Both needed to be considered as curriculumemerged. Dewey felt that activities andsubject matter needed to be considered equally; without a real connection between the mental operations of the child andintellectual content from the teachers would destroy learning: "It is not a question of how to teach thechild geography but first of all the question of what geography is for thechild." "But when this adultmaterial is handed over ready-made to the child, the perspective is ignored,the subject is forced into false and arbitrary relations the intrinsic interestis not appealed to, and the experience which the child already has, which mightbe made a vital instrument of learning, is left unutilized and todegenerate." ------ The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum
Subjectmatter was not a static entity: "Abandonthe notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself,outside the child's experience; cease thinking of the child's experience asalso something hard and fast; see it as something fluent, embryonic, vital; andwe realize that the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which definea single process"
------The Child and TheCurriculum
6. Role of theTeacher
Therole of a teacher was as an active guide and organizer一个积极的引导者和组织者，in integrating subject matter with the child's life experiences将主题与儿童的生活经验相结合: "Itis the business of the school to set up an environment in which play and workshall be conducted with reference to facilitating desirable mental and moralgrowth." ------ Democracy and Education
Theeducator's job was to :
"survey the capacities andneeds of the particular set of individuals with whom he is dealing and ...atthe same time arrange the conditions which provide the subject-matter orcontent for experiences that satisfy these needs and develop these capacities. The planning must be flexible enough topermit free play for individuality and yet firm enough to give directiontowards continuous development of power."
------Experienceand Education
Learningneeded to be grounded in real life experiences:
"If language is abstractedfrom social activity, and made an end in itself, it will not give its wholevalue as a means of development." ------The University School
"There is no ground forholding that the teacher should not suggest anything to the child until he consciouslyexpressed a want in that direction... the suggestion must fit in with thedominant mode of growth in the child." ------The School and the Child
Theteacher's challenge would be finding ways to integrate traditional curriculuminto topics of interest to the children. Teachers at the Dewey School met weekly to refine and process the workthey did, and Dewey's theory developed along with the practice. He saw his principles and ideas as workinghypotheses: " The teacher's business is to see that the occasion is takenadvantage of. Since freedom resides inthe operations of intelligent observation and judgment by which a purpose isdeveloped, guidance given by the teacher to the exercise of the pupils'intelligence is an aid to freedom, not a restriction upon it."
------Experience and Education
