Group 5 John Dewey’s Educational Reform as Social Activism

“Education is Life itself”

– John Dewey
John Dewey (1859- 1952)
(Dewey, 1892, p. 8)
 Father of Educational Philosophy
 An Academic Philosopher
 The school and society (1899)
 How we think (1910)
 Democracy and education (1916)
 Experience and education (1938)
 Art as Experience (1935)
 Known as an Educational Reformer
 Proponent of Educational Reform
 ‘child-centred’ reformer
 21st-century education
 advocacy of Learning by Doing
 1894 started an Experimental Elementary
School
 1919 The New School for Social Research
 developed The Unity of Theory and Practice
 as an Intellectual Political Activist
 believes that ‘democracy is freedom’
 ‘back-to-basics’ conservative

BELIEFS and CONCEPTS

 Learning was active and Schooling was unnecessarily long and restrictive
(Neill, 2005)
 Students should be actively involved in real-life tasks and challenges
 Art and Technology are tools for the solution of social and intellectual problems
 Problems as organism/environment disequilibria, where there are active disruptions of
the relationships between people, communities, and their ecological and social
environments
 Progressive Education Movement
 “Dewey's education philosophy helped forward the progressive education
movement, and spawned the development of experiential education programs and
experiments” (Neill, 2005)
 Dewey: interaction + reflection and experience + interest in community and
democracy= a highly suggestive educative form- Informal education
(Smith, 1997)
 Education is based on the idea that humans learn best in real-life activities
with people (wikipedia.org)
 “A model that rejects methods involving memorization and recitation and
provides more active and engaging experiences for learners” (Brewer, 513)

1 Cano, Joy D.; De Leon, Claudia C; Villarama, Joseph A.

 Group 5 John Dewey’s Educational Reform as Social Activism

 Pragmatism and pedagogy

(Mayhew & Edwards, 1966, p. 464)
 developed a Theory of Knowledge that contested the Dualisms of Mind and
World, and Thought and Action
 emphasized the ‘necessity of testing thought by action if thought was to
pass over into knowledge’
 His work in education was intended in part to explore the implications of his
functional pedagogy and to test it by experiment
 The Dewey school
(Dewey, 1896a, p. 244)
 ‘The School’, ‘is the one form of social life which is abstracted and under
control— which is directly experimental, and if philosophy is ever to be an
experimental science, the construction of a school is its starting point’
 arrived at Chicago with good idea of the sort of ‘Laboratory School’
 told his wife in 1894 that: ‘There is an image of a school growing up in my mind
all the time’
 School
---where some actual and literal constructive activity shall be the centre and
source of the whole thing, and from which the work should be always growing
out in two directions:
 one the social bearings of that constructive industry
 the other the contact with nature which supplies it with its materials
 Social Activism Theory
(Robyler, 2006, p.39)
 He saw Learning as a Social Experience and the Growth of an Individual
attained through that experience.
 “Growth is fostered through ‘Hands-on Activities’ connected to Real-
World Issues and Problems.”
 His significance to Formal Education can be found in:
 belief that education must engage with and enlarge experience has
continued to be a significant discovery in education
 and linked to this, Dewey's exploration of thinking and reflection - and the
associated role of teachers - has continued to be an inspiration
 concern with student interaction to their environments to provide a
continuing framework for learning
 passion for democracy, for educating so that all may share in a common
life, provides a strong rationale for practice in the associational settings in
which informal educators work.
TECHNOLOGY AND DEWEY’S CONCEPTION OF LEARNING
(Halliday & Martin,1996) (Dewey, 1935b, p. 75) (Norman Fairclough’s, 1992)
(Dewey & Bentley’s, 1949)
 Learning by doing
 references to books are implicitly negative
 For example, in a discussion of subject matter (1956), which may be taken as a
proxy for books, says, “The map is not a substitute for personal experience. The
map does not take the place of the actual journey” (p. 20).

2 Cano, Joy D.; De Leon, Claudia C; Villarama, Joseph A.

 Group 5 John Dewey’s Educational Reform as Social Activism

 Personal Experience is at the Center of Education, not subject matter. There is

a role for Subject Matter: It is to aid in the development of experience and to
aid the learner in extracting deeper meaning from future experiences.
 propose models for learning based on immersion in practices of the larger society
EXAMPLE/S
 Laboratory school students learned about raising sheep, shearing them, spinning wool,
making cloth and clothes, students today might learn about the many ways that
technologies enter into the work and life of society at large.
 value learning technology, if it means that students become more capable of participating
in society and it enlarges the scope of their abilities to communicate.
 Learning technology if that were conceived merely as preparatory to later life
 In his Art of Experience, this was a cornerstone of his approach to teaching and
learning, and it matches well the approach of Paulo Freire (1970) and others working
on critical literacy: ‘that teaching and learning need to be problem based; that it requires
an analysis of one’s social, cultural, and economic environments; and that it is goal
directed toward change and transformation.’

REFERENCES:
John Dewey, The School and Society, p. 22. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1915.
John Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 386. New York: Macmillan Co., 1916.
Franz E. De Hovre, Philosophy and Education, trans. Edward B. Jordan, p. 108. New York: Benziger
Brothers, 1931.
John Dewey, Experience and Education, pp. 12-13. New York: Macmillan Co. l938.
John Dewey, Schools of Tomorrow, pp. 1-2. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1915.
John Dewey, Moral Principles in Education, p. 7. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909.
John A. Hardon, S.J., "John Dewey — Prophet of American Naturalism," The Catholic Educational
Review, L (September, 1952), 433-445.
John S. Brubacher, A History of the Problems of Education, p. 237. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.,
1947.
"Educational Philosophies Held by Faculty Members in Schools for the Professional Education of
Teachers," National Survey of the Education of Teachers, III, Part VII, pp. 459-507. Bulletin 1933, No.
10. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Office of Education, 1935.
Ernest C. Moore, John Dewey, the Man and His Philosophy, p. 7. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1930.
Brewer, J. A, (2007). Introduction to Early Childhood Education. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson.
Field, R. (2007). John Dewey. In The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Web]. from
http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/dewey.htm
Neill, J. (2005). John Dewey, Philosophy of Education. Retrieved April 19, 2009, from Wilderdom Web
site: http://wilderdom.com/experiential/JohnDeweyPhilosophyEducation.html
Novack, G. (2005). John Dewey’s Theories of Education. from
http://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/works/1960/x03.htm
Olson, S. (2005). Books by John Dewey. Retrieved April 19, 2009, Web site:
http://johndewey.shawnolson.net/johndewey/books_by_john_dewey/
Progressive Education. Retrieved April 19, 2009, from Wikipedia Web site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_education
Smith, M. K. (1997). John Dewey. Retrieved April 20, 2009, from http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-
dewey.htm
Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-dewey.htm.
Retrieved form http://www.biography.com/people/john-dewey-9273497

3 Cano, Joy D.; De Leon, Claudia C; Villarama, Joseph A.