Schaeffer 1

Silas Schaeffer
Dr. Mahlios
C&T 709
18 December 2014
Educational Revolution
Education revolution. The moving towards a new social order. Rejection of the insane
principles of the past that contradict modern scientific reason. These were some of the ideas
that made John Dewey one of the most important and controversial figures of the twentieth
century. He emerged on the scaffold which was prepared by Thorndike and Tyler in the Eight
Years Study, a comprehensive study which provided research showing that no particular body
of knowledge increases the intelligence of the learner. This opened up the floodgates of
educational philosophy and curriculum development to create alternative routes to the timehonored classical model. It was in this context that Dewey became the champion of Progressive
education, suggesting that content in and of itself is not enough, but that there must be a focus
on the individual experience of the learner. Dewey wrote a series of books in which he tried to
show the unity of concepts that traditionalism had tended to keep separate. In this paper, two
of these books will be discussed: The Child and the Curriculum, and Experience in Education.
Both of these books have the same general thesis, though the latter develops it much more
completely. In both of these works, the author concludes that successful education necessitates
the synthesis of the students individual experiences and the subject matter.
The Child and the Curriculum

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The beginning of a discussion of The Child and the Curriculum must start with an
understanding of the title itself and the key themes within the book. In this work, when he
refers to the child Dewey is specifically thinking about the individual experience of the child
which he describes as psychological experiences. When he speaks of curriculum, he is
particularly thinking about that organized body of content knowledge that makes up the heart
of any curriculum, this he terms the logical. The conjunction and indicates a necessary
interplay between these two factors or forces. And so Dewey is seeking to show the
connectedness of the child and the curriculum, the logical, and the psychological, the immature
and the mature. In his book, he clearly states his own thesis when we says, The need of getting
theory and practical common-sense into closer connection suggest a return to our original
thesis: that we have here conditions which are necessarily related to each other in the
educative process, since this is precisely one of interaction and adjustment (Page 188). To
support this thesis, Dewey discusses the two major schools of thought on education in his day.
He goes on to explain the folly of taking an extreme position in either one of those two camps
and proposes a synthesis of their main ideas. Finally, he discusses the proper role of the
educator under his proposed model of education.
The two major schools of thought on education in the early twentieth century were
traditionalism and progressivism. Traditionalism is as old as education itself and holds that
there are certain timeless truths that are essential for the learner to grasp. In order for the
learner to gain a full appreciation of these truths, the teacher is charged to break down the
content into small, digestible pieces of information to make the systematic learning of these
time-honored truths possible. The background and experience of the learner is largely

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irrelevant because the goals of the curriculum purposefully lie outside of the learner in order to
expand them and draw them closer to the ideal of humanity.
Progressivism is the foil to traditionalism. This new school of thought said that the
child is the starting-point, the center, and the end. His development, his growth, is the ideal (p.
187). In contrast to the idea of there being timeless truths, progressivism would suggest that
the very idea of truth is relative to the individuals experiencing and contextualizing of that
material into a meaningful whole. Content knowledge must be taught in the context of the
student and according to the students interests. This knowledge is not a means to draw the
student away from themselves but help them reach self-actualization in their personal
construction of reality.
Dewey, in the way he defined each of these camps, said that he would place himself in
neither of them. Rather he cautioned against the folly of the separation of the child and the
curriculum, which was the inevitable result of picking either side. He understood that individual
experience of the child was not an end in itself, and that it represented an immature and
incomplete knowledge. If the childs experience is never expanded outside of his own narrow
world, Dewey said It is as if the child were forever tasting and never eating. The content
knowledge then was an accurate representation of the accumulated experiences of others, set
out in a logical order, which a student could easily access. This knowledge, if studied in the
context of the students immediate experiences would provide the direction needed for growth
to occur.

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Dewey saw the danger was not in the content itself, but in making it the arbitrary end
goal for all students. He argued that the content was like a map, but a map was never meant to
replace experience but to supplement it. Thus in focusing in on the logical without due
connection to the psychological three fundamental follies are made. First, the student lacks
organic connection, meaning that the content knowledge is nothing more than a symbol or a
word in a foreign language to him until he can relate to and experience it. Second, there is no
intrinsic motivation to learn. Third, in order to allow students to understand certain complex
and abstract concepts, they are simplified, and often lose their logical value to the students.
Dewey suggested that traditionalists attempts to solve these problems were very feeble
indeed. He declared that the only positive motivation that a student had to learn under the
traditional model, was that it learning was more interesting than to take a scolding (p. 207).
Thus, Dewey says that one should not view the curriculum and the child as being at war
with one another, for that is to hold that the nature and the destiny of the child war with each
other. His proposed solution was to make a way in which the student could meaningfully
interact with content as it related to his own present experiences. He wanted a broadening of
the students experience through rigorous content knowledge, but adamantly insisted that
facts should not be torn away from their original place or pigeon-holed. He saw the highest
form of learning to be that of the impartial classified study of content, but that must not be
imposed on the learner, but rather, when they are both logically and psychologically ready to
handle this pure form of learning, then they will be able to enjoy it to its fullest.

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Finally, Dewey had much to say about the educators role in the learning process. Dewey
suggested that the role of the teacher is actually additive, for he now designated the teacher
the task of interpreting a childs present life and experiences and guiding them into everexpanding and broadening ones. It is not suggested that all experiences are equally valuable or
should be equally encouraged, rather the teacher is trying to encourage experiences that lead
the student to maturity and the freeing the life-process for its own most adequate fulfilment.
The teacher is then called to use their observations of the childs interests in order to present
them with relevant, experience-based content knowledge that the student would be able to
use in the process of self-actualization.
Experience and Education
This book by John Dewey expands on the arguments encapsulated in The Child and the
Curriculum. The major focus of Experience and Education is to explain what he would define as
ideal experiences in education. In order to do this, he discusses the definition of experience
itself, and explains that there are some experiences that, contrary to culturing the growth of a
student, actually contribute to his stagnation. He once again stresses the differences between
traditionalism and progressivism and in no uncertain language expresses his absolute repulsion
for the former. He also explains that to be a successful progressive educator is more difficult
than succeeding in terms of the old school of thought. Finally, Dewey touches on the role of the
teacher as the facilitator of a social order instead of the sovereign institutional head of a
classroom.

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In this book, Dewey has an expands his argument concerning the comparative virtues
and vices of the traditional and progressive schools of education. He remarks that the
traditional school setting is unlike any other social organization, and made its aims:
classification, examination and promotion, and the rules of order. In a family, Dewey would
argue, there is often no single, domineering figure imposing their will and regulations on
others. Rather, all may do more or less as they please as long as they are within the boundaries
of certain well-established explicit and implicit norms. In contrast to many other social
environments, in the schoolhouse, the child was to passively obey, and Dewey even mockingly
paraphrases Tennysons poem The Charge of the Light Brigade in order to compare the
mindless submission of students to learn content to the soldiers who obeyed orders unto
death. Because the traditional system became standardized and formalized in the ancient and
medieval world, Dewey claims that it is a regression in social order, harkening back to the
coercion and repression of autocrats. Furthermore, traditional education prepares to give
students a preparation for the undefined and abstract future but never actually teaches them
to live in the present, leaving them without defense to make their way in the real world.
Dewey explained that it is not enough to simply reject traditionalism. Change for
changes sake is not good, but it must be purposeful and meaningful. He argued because
progressivism is based on democratic principles, and the very reason that those principles are
generally accepted in this country is because they are humane and promote a higher quality of
life. Thus the teacher is not a sovereign autocrat, but is a member of the micro society of the
classroom, accountable to his students to make decisions with their best interest in mind.
Progressivism argues that the future is never present, that is one will never arrive at the future

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because it is relative to the here and now. Thus, it proposes to prepare students for the future
by teaching them to grow and live in the present, which is a skill that will do them actual good
in the real world.
As the title of the book suggests, one of the central themes throughout is how to
properly construct experience in such a way as will promote student growth. Dewey points out
that not all experiences are genuinely or equally educative and thus the teacher must be able
to correctly identify a positive learning experience and use that to nurture further intellectual
growth. A negative intellectual experience is simply one that will stifle further growth, whereas
a positive experience is one that provides opportunity to expand. Traditionalism was full of
experience, but much of it made children dislike learning in general and thus was noneducative. In disconnecting content from the tangible experience of the child, traditionalism
acts similarly to the man that is insane, who also has lost the ability to contextualize
information. Dewey goes so far as to equate this loss of appreciation for learning to the loss of
ones own soul.
There are two qualities which Dewey saw essential to forming positive experiences, and
those are continuity and interaction. By continuity he meant that experiences had to relate to
and build on one another. It was not enough to have a random smattering of enjoyable
experiences if the child was intellectually as immature as he was before. And so the teacher is
charged to consider worthwhile experiences as those that are more than immediately
enjoyable but are useful in the way of formation of enduring attitudes.. Thus the teacher is

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free to deny the immediate impulse of the student for that impulse creates desire, which leads
to investigation, which ultimately leads to self-directed purpose.
It is admitted throughout the book that progressivism is not an easy way out. On the
contrary, because of its opposition to thousands of years of tradition and habit, the burden of
proof would necessarily fall on the Progressives. Thus, Dewey, cautioned the formulating of a
philosophy of education by means of a knee jerk reaction to the current institution. Rather, he
reasoned that it was necessary to examine assumptions of a philosophy and rationally decide
on the best course, which may in fact include vestiges of the former institution. Because of the
importance of understanding student backgrounds, it also adds a greater burden on secondary
teachers, who will have to exert extra effort in order to learn about their students families and
histories. Finally, he acknowledges that, far from a whimsical, impulsive style of teaching that
many progressive teachers had adopted, for the method to truly succeed it would require extra
planning. The planning would have to carefully construct learning environments and social
situations which would stretch each student without it being too difficult. In Deweys words,
the planning must be flexible enough to permit free play for individuality of experience and yet
firm enough to give direction towards continuous development of power (P. 25).
As mentioned above, the role of the teacher is to be seen as a leader in a democratic
society. Another analogy that might be used is a spokesperson for a committee. Certain powers
are necessarily committed to the spokesperson for the sake of order and organization, but that
person is still just another member of the committee. The teachers job is to provide direction
for the experience of the child and not to impose a merely external control. The goal of

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education is not for the student to submit, but for students to engage, and in voluntary
engagement with others in cooperative social projects, to grow intellectually. The teacher is
cautioned, that if these cooperative experiences are not rightly structured, they may very well
create non-educative experiences, thus accomplishing the very opposite of their original intent.
In creating an open learning environment that accounts for and allows for the fluidity and
flexibility of the psychological state of the child, this will in turn provide an opportunity for the
intellect of that child to grow.
Synthesis
In both books, Dewey urges his readers for a balance to what he sees as undesirably and
ultimately harmful extreme positions in education. If one focuses entirely on content, the
education will largely lose its meaning because it is outside the students experience. But,
shifting the focus entirely on the child, stifles the development of his intellectual capacities
because he needs information to aid in his development. Dewey argues that it is not a matter of
either or but of both and, thus the reason for the titles of his books.
The Child and the Curriculum and Experience In Education remain two of the most
important and influential works on education in the twentieth century. Dewey was living in a
time of unprecedented freedom of curriculum, thanks to the work of Thorndike. He saw
student boredom and disengagement justified by lazy teachers in the traditional schools, and
sought to come up with a viable and superior alternative. In his writings, he significantly
contributed to the understanding of experience, and supporters and critics alike must applaud
his attempt to find a balance of ideas in an age of extremism.

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Works Cited
Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum, and the School and Society. Chicago: U of
Chicago, 1956. Print.
Dewey, John. Experience and Education. New York: Macmillan, 1938. Print.