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In praise of Dewey
- spodek 10y agoOne of my favorite observations from John Dewey is that children constantly ask questions... except in the classroom. It's worth thinking about for a while and what it says about our goals in education. What are we doing that where we want people to learn we create an environment to make active and curious people passive and non-curious? I expected I would like teaching when I started. Since learning about Dewey and his legacy and concluding that I would not lecture or give tests, I love teaching. Most of my students say they've never taken a course like mine and want to know how they can take more.
- maxlybbert 10y agoWe should politicize education. That will end well.
- chris_st 10y agoHow about we educate politicians?
- maxlybbert 10y agoI just found it surprising that the article immediately had to draw political lines. As if nobody could enjoy learning about Dewey unless they first knew who was good and who was evil, and why they're evil.
- icebraining 10y agoAll education is political. What and how you choose to educate the young will shape the next political body.
- mark_edward 10y agoPretending education can be apolitical is just self deception. You can either be aware of and involved in that process or shut out and have someone else do it. Once you get out of like pure maths there's all kinds of decisions to make. How much and what history to gloss over, or go in depth on. What if anything to teach about civics. Evolution, climate change, sexualities, drug information or fear mongering. It's never ending. If it ends and seems static, that's because one tendency has come to utterly dominate this process.
- maitredusoi 10y agoIn France Dewey influenced Freinet : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9lestin_Freinet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9lestin_Freinet
- cafard 10y agoDiane Ravitch's book The Uncertain Crusade has an interesting chapter on the rise and decline of "progressive education." Dewey himself was not happy with all that went under that name. Based on the little I have read of Dewey, his model of a school demanded better and better-trained teachers than what it aimed to replace. However, given how vaguely he wrote, he could hardly blame others for misunderstanding.