JOHN DEWEY,

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JOHN DEWEY, AMERICAS PHILOSOPHER

• 1859-1952

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Introducing John Dewey

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v6MlHSgC_SnU

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Introducing dewey

• Known as Americas philosopher.
• He was an innovator in the school of pragmatist
  thought, where theory and practice are
  necessarilly interrelated.
• His pragmatic approach to philosophy and life is
  highlighted by his consistent social engagement,
  which was always guided by philosophical
  principles.
• He was the prime mover behind progressive
  educational change in America.
• He was influenced by educators such as Rousseau
  and Froebel.
• His in influence also translated to the U.K.,
  particularly in the 60s, where it had (as one
  example you will know) an influence on the
  Plowden report.
• His collected works is made up of 37 volumes, so
  we will not attempt a complete overview today but
  rather look at one of his texts which lays out
  his principles.
• These principles will allow to discuss how his
  thinking takes into account the relationship
  between the individual and community.

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My pedagogic creed

• The text we are going to look at is the one in
  your reading pack, My Pedagogic Creed, which
  was published in 1897 in the School Journal.
• It is a short but powerful text, which lays the
  educational principles with which he was to
  develop his later work.
• Although he changed and developed his
  philosophical and pedagogical thought throughout
  his career, My Pedagogic Creed allows an
  insight into what originally fueled his lifelong
  engagement.
• One of his biographers, Alan Ryan, describes the
  text as shooting from the hip. (Ryan,
  1995133)

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Teacher-centred or child-centred?

• Another of Deweys biographers, Robert B.
  Westbrook, introduces the text well
• Deweys educational theory was far less
  child-centred and more teacher-centred than is
  often supposed. His confidence that children
  would develop a democratic character in the
  schools he envisioned was rooted less in a faith
  in the spontaneous and crude capacities of the
  child than in the ability of teachers to create
  an environment in the classroom in which they
  possessed the means to mediate these capcities
  over into habits of social intelligence and
  responsiveness. Dewey was calling upon teachers
  to artfully arrange things in the classroom so
  that the right social growth could be
  assured, (Westbrook, 1991 108-109)
• This is why it is not so easy to define Dewey as
  an experiential or even progressive educator,
  as opposed to a didactic educator, as his
  teaching philosophy aimed to incorporate whatever
  necessary to provide the best education possible
  for the individual and the community. It is the
  philosophical and pedagogical combination of
  these two goals which is the goal of My
  Pedagogic Creed.

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What Education Is

• I believe that all education proceeds by the
  participation of the individual in the social
• consciousness of the race. This process begins
  unconsciously almost at birth, and is
• continually shaping the individual's powers,
  saturating his consciousness, forming his
• habits, training his ideas, and arousing his
  feelings and emotions. Through this
• unconscious education the individual gradually
  comes to share in the intellectual and
• moral resources which humanity has succeeded in
  getting together.

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What Education Is

• I believe that the only true education comes
  through the stimulation of the child's powers
• by the demands of the social situations in which
  he finds himself. Through these demands
• he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity,
  to emerge from his original narrowness of
• action and feeling, and to conceive of himself
  from the standpoint of the welfare of the
• group to which he belongs. Through the responses
  which others make to his own
• activities he comes to know what these mean in
  social terms. The value which they have
• is reflected back into them. For instance,
  through the response which is made to the
• child's instinctive babblings the child comes to
  know what those babblings mean they are
• transformed into articulate language and thus the
  child is introduced into the consolidated
• wealth of ideas and emotions which are now summed
  up in language.
• Why is language such a good example of a
  connection between the individual and society?
  Perhaps because language is such a subtle means
  of self-expression but is, by its nature,
  collective?

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What Education Is

• The child has his own instincts and tendencies,
  but we do not know what these mean until we can
  translate them into their social equivalents. We
  must be able to carry them back into a social
  past and see them as the inheritance of previous
  race activities.
• Does this sound
• anti-traditional?
• Experiential?
• Progressive?

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What the School Is

• I believe that the school is primarily a social
  institution. Education being a social process,
  the school is simply that form of community life
  in which all those agencies areconcentrated that
  will be most effective in bringing the child to
  share in the inherited resources of the race, and
  to use his own powers for social ends.

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What the School Is

• I believe that much of present education fails
  because it neglects this fundamental
• principle of the school as a form of community
  life. It conceives the school as a place
• where certain information is to be given, where
  certain lessons are to be earned, or
• where certain habits are to be formed. The value
  of these is conceived as lying largely in
• the remote future the child must do these things
  for the sake of something else he is to
• do they are mere preparation. As a result they
  do not become a part of the life experience
• of the child and so are not truly educative.
• What do you think Dewey would have thought of our
  current system of education in England?
• Does it seek to educate or does it simply direct
  itself towards the future?
• But isnt education always for the future in one
  way or another?

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The School and Social Progress - For discussion

• I believe that education is a regulation of the
  process of coming to share in the social
• consciousness and that the adjustment of
  individual activity on the basis of this social
• consciousness is the only sure method of social
  reconstruction.
• I believe that this conception has due regard for
  both the individualistic and socialistic
• ideals. It is duly individual because it
  recognizes the formation of a certain character
  as
• the only genuine basis of right living. It is
  socialistic because it recognizes that this right
  
• character is not to be formed by merely
  individual precept, example, or exhortation, but
• rather by the influence of a certain form of
  institutional or community life upon the
• individual, and that the social organism through
  the school, as its organ, may determine
• ethical results.

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The School and Social Progress for discussion

• I believe, finally, that the teacher is
  engaged, not simply in the training of
  individuals, but in the formation of the proper
  social life. I believe that every teacher should
  realize the dignity of his calling that he is a
  social servant set apart for the maintenance of
  proper social order and the securing of the right
  social growth.