Post date: Sep 7, 2014 11:25:36 PM
These three words go very well together. They happen to me every day!
I have commenced the task of reading John Dewey's Democracy in Education. Before I began reading, I looked to see when this book was originally published. To my surprise, it was published in 1916 with an additional title, "An Introduction to Philosophy and Education". My copy of the book does not mention this part of the title. As of today, I have read seven chapters. The reading of this book has challenged me to look for additional resources to help me read it. I found LibriVox which is a website where you'll find, as they state on their page, " an acoustical liberation of books in the public domain". People can volunteer to read the books which are available for free. This is a great resources for books within the public domain such as Dewey's book which has been published for almost a century! Interestingly, I came across a chapter read by Bill Mosely! However, it doesn't sound like our current professor.
Chapter 1 includes a detailed description of the importance of social learning. As written on page 8, " ....all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative. And on page 9, " Not only does social life demand teaching and learning for its own permanence, but the very process of living together educates." Dewey discusses how a person can be forced to do something but that may not result in them learning something from that act. He discusses how it is better to enlist the person's own participating disposition to get desired results which develops more intrinsic reactions and direction (p32). I see this idea as telling us not to demand students learn by a strict "I teach and you must follow this exact routine to learn it" methodology. He is advocating learning by a more social element. The chapters that follow discuss how education "today" is in conflict with this natural social element. I get the feeling from his writings that he believes the means in which people are educated is not efficient and needs to be changed. I was very shocked to see Dewey's 1916 question, " Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in, learning by a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they are still so entrenched in practice?"(pg44) So many people are asking the same question today. Why are these practices to prevalent and so hard to change? He also mentions the "undue emphasis upon drill and kill ..." (p56).
His discussion of the early forms of formal education helped me understand where our formal education system came from. He discussed the Prussian influence on the educational system as does Smith in The Book of Learning and Forgetting. Interestingly, the current form of education has only been in existence for a hundred years or so. Before this, people learned in the social groups to which they belonged. They apprenticed and followed what others around them did. This changed into a system of specific topics to be covered in a specific school with levels and groupings by ages. Much of the social aspect of learning was removed.
The connection of the Dewey and Smith books is interesting. I look forward to reading more of both to see if they continue to agree with each other.