John Dewey was an American sociologist and philosopher specialising in pedagogy. He taught at the universities of Michigan, Chicago and Columbia, founding the Dewey School (1896) where he put into practice the theories that he outline in his books “My Pedagogic Creed (1897), The School and Society (1900), The Child and the Curriculum (1902), Democracy and Education (1916) and Experience and Education (1938).
He argued that education and learning are interactive social processes and school is a social institution through which social reform can and should take place. He believed that students thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum. All students should have the opportunity of participating in their own learning.
Learning by doing
Dewey argued that school had to depend on democracy in the classroom and his school initiated the pupils in “the practice of freedom”, favouring “doing” to saying and activity to passivity.
In order to fulfil its role, school must inculcate the pupils with a sense of liberty and democracy, their initiation into the practice of freedom must start at school.
Which school? This was a question that always interested him. He thought that traditional teaching methods were detestable; he was convinced that their programmes conflicted with his view regarding the spirit and process of normal development, as well as the values and activities of a democratic society. Radical change was needed.
His school in Chicago accepted children from 4 to 16 years, the teaching was based on his views as a psychologist. He never relied on pre-determined principles, the school looked for solutions to problems, this enabled him to control and verify his hypotheses.
He recounted an incident that revealed the weakness of the traditional school as it existed in the 1890s. “I visited the warehouse where the town’s educational material and equipment was stored, looking for desks and chairs that were suitable for children from an artistic, hygienic and educational point of view. We had great difficulty in finding what we wanted. Finally, a more comprehensive supplier remarked “I’m afraid that we don’t have what you want. You want equipment that will allow the children to do things for themselves, everything that we have is for listening. That summarises the story of traditional education, it is all about listening. Simply learning lessons from a book is also listening. This indicates that there are materials prepared for the teacher and the pupil has to learn them as quickly as possible”.
From his numerous observations and experiences he was able to develop a new pedagogy. His starting point was “education should reflect the industrial revolution and the development of democracy”. It was appropriate to combat the authoritarian methods that reflected aristocratic discrimination consisting of talking about things, rather than learning to do them.
One of his bases was “learning by doing”. Manual work was not considered as preparation for a particular occupation. It’s real virtue was that it habituated the children to working as a group, they searched together, helping each other.
He responded to the children’s prime need to make something. He added a practical value to the theoretical knowledge that they already possessed and he helped them to understand the conditions and institutions of their environment.
It wasn’t that they had to serve the needs of industry, it was the industry that had to contribute to the reorganisation of schools. However, there is a danger; industry monopolises professional training to the detriment of democracy and Education.
Whilst we witness considerable social transformations, traditional teaching remains unchanged, not caring about being up to date. If we want school to reflect today’s society, three things must change.
- The subjects taught.
- The way that they are taught.
- The manner in which pupils learn.
Education must be socialised; School must be integrated into everyday life and become a social centre.
This preoccupation with integrating school into its surrounding society regularly appears in Dewey’s quest for democracy. “For an educator who is actually aware of the problems that concern a democracy, it is essential to establish an intelligent and complete connection between the child and its environment for the good of the child as much as for the community.
Analysis – Marcel Gauchet
The philosopher, historian and author Marcel Gauchet is the director of EHESS, the School of Higher Studies in the Social Sciences.
Democracy does not stop at the school doors. School is now gripped by a widening of democracy that questions its authority. Now that society mixes a culture of tolerance with a prevailing indifference, a humanistic school would help the child to put itself in the position of the “other”.
Dewey is indisputably the founding father of current “American school”, he belonged to the American progressive movement. At the time when the US became the world’s greatest economic power, that school tried to renew American democracy in order to block the effects of this new context which was marked by unprecedented urbanisation and immigration.
In the education sphere, these ideas developed active methods and involved the pupils in concrete activities that allowed the pupils to “learn by doing”.
In Europe, a new school emerged about the same time following Ovide Decroly (1871-1932) or Maria Montessori (1870-1952). It developed differently for two reasons, firstly because of World War 1 which prevented the development of European society on many fronts, whilst the US was able to make educational reforms much earlier. The second reason is intellectual, in Europe and particularly in France, the new approach which took over after 1945 claimed to be scientific, with support from the child psychology that had developed early in the 20th Century. The idea is that education should correspond with the intellectual and psychological stages of development. This concept was developed by Jean Piaget (1896-1980) and furthered by Edouard Claparede (1813-1940), who was a translator and corespondent of Dewey.
It is this historical and philosophical difference that explains the impact of Dewey’s work, which was not seen in Europe for twenty or thirty years, even though he is the 20th Century’s greatest thinker regarding the school and democracy.
Dewey grasped democracy as a total phenomenon that produced a particular vision of knowledge amongst its participants. Whilst Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) describes the man of equality in “Democracy in America”, he talks surprisingly little about education. Democracy does not stop when you enter school, because you are going to encounter the aristocratic ideal of transmission by tradition. Dewey repudiated that traditional authority by introducing the idea of experience. In that, democracy found a pedagogical language. He built great hope upon its possibilities; an education that bypassed the tensions of education in a modern democracy.
Well before Ivan Illich, he identified the problem posed by the separation of school and social life in industrial societies. Formerly, learning by tradition was accepted by children because it conformed to the realities of society and one never questioned it.
In this democratic era, traditional teaching is no longer tenable, largely because of the increasing equality that is found in all spheres, but also because of its distance from normal life.
All new pedagogies attack the problem of preparing the child to enter into a society where the factory and office are closed worlds. Dewey equally so, but in a more speculative way; the child constantly learning from his or her own experiences will fare better than one just prepared for this or that job. They will learn about the role that they generally have to play in a democratic society. Thanks to that anchorage in “experience”, the school reaches out to overcome its separation. It is open to society through its mode of instruction.
Is Dewey’s conception of education effective? One may wish that Dewey was right, but it is infinitely more complex than that. His attitudes are rather too optimistic. The idea of “experience” does not allow us to avoid all the conflicts. If Illich responds in a radical manner, it is because the separation between school and society still exists. In the end, school aligned with the demands of a democratic society tends to distance the child and young adolescent from participation in society.
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