John Dewey -- ideal system of education

I am writing this in regard to our class discussion on Tuesday. As we discussed, John Dewey is neither a proponent of traditionalism or progressivism. He is against total dichotomies; he doesn't believe in a "black or white" system of education, so to speak. He doesn't see it as one extreme or another. I have found that the system of education he sees as ideal is one in which certain traits of traditionalism are upheld as well as certain traits of progressivism. From what we discussed in class, Dewey thinks that there should be a harmonious coexistence between certain differing traits in which neither is in conflict. I am referring to those such as maturity/ immaturity of teachers and students; lessons of the past being taught in order to prevent the same mistakes being made in the future; being static with some rules while more flexible with others, and the list goes on. In short, he doesn't believe in one concrete "either/or" method in which to run an educational system.

Whereas traditionalists may view change from what they previously had thought was fair or sufficient as going against their values and ideals, Dewey views changing the environment to suit our needs as a good thing. However, he does not believe in changing so much that there is no structure to the classroom. Dewey goes against the students having information forced upon them; he believes the learning environment should be conducive to enhancing learning as well as personal growth. If it is forced upon them, the students will be less likely to accept it rather than if they are encouraged to think and express themselves. One thing we mentioned is how we maturity vs. immaturity works. We have programmed to think strictly that maturity is good and immaturity is bad. Dewey says not necessarily. If a student is immature, they may have a way of looking at something in a way that a mature student or teacher may not have thought of before. For example we might be looking at one way to solve a problem from a mature perspective and tell the immature student to solve the problem in that particular way. The immature student may question that and say "why that way? Why can't I solve it this way?" which also enables the student to solve the problem. This proves that teachers can learn a lot from their students if we let them open up and develop without us forcing them to learn it our way all the time. That would be finding a healthy medium between traditionalism and progressivism, which according to Dewey is the ideal way of constructing an environment conducive to growth.