Here are some further thoughts and questions to add to Amy & Meredith's good stuff below:
This short piece touches upon a significant Deweyan theme we have seen before -- continuity. This time, Dewey's complaint is against the artificial separation between the moral life of the community and the moral life of schools. One should determine the other :"Apart from participation in social life, the school has no moral end or aim." (247) What happens in the school should mirror and prepare students for what happens outside the school, helping them form their social identities and the obligations such identities entail. These identities (parent, voter, worker, community member) constitute our social identity as adults; schools should inculcate the associated sense of identity with students. Note, however, that such inculcation ought to be liberating, not restricting. Such moral training should allow the student to eventually take charge of himself and give him the ability to change his environment (see end of 1st paragraph, 2nd column, page 247).
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3 comments:
I am not sure if I am on target here but I am going to give it a shot...I believe that school does have a moral end or aim, in that it is preparing students for the "real world." I agree that it is mirroring society outside of school. In schools there are jobs, elections through student government and despite the fact that these "student governments" cannot truly change much of the school they do impact the population. Students learn moral aims through class, teachers, peers, administrators, coaches and take what they learn in school and apply it to the outside world.
I have come to find that Dewey seems to contradict himself rather frequently and much of what he writes, to me at least, is a bit confusing. From what I gather from this post, and the reading I did, schools are like a microcosm of society and much of what we deal with as adults can be found in a school setting, so I do believe that schools are not just about participation in social life, despite the fact that much is social related.
I hope this makes sense.
I know Dewey can be confusing, but I don't think he's contradictory:
"From what I gather from this post, and the reading I did, schools are like a microcosm of society and much of what we deal with as adults can be found in a school setting"
Dewey thinks the above is how they ought to be, but they aren't really like that. Much of the content/curriculum/expectations of school are merely for short term, school only aims and not connected to anything beyond the school.
I think that Dewey hit the nai on the head when he thinks that schools should prepare the child for the "real world". Sitting in last weeks class I was counting or rather calculating the number of years we are students spend in the classroom and in the workforce. I came up with this: on average a child spends about 22 years of their life in school. Life expectancy is around 75-80. With this you are spending give or take 40-50 years of your life in the real world. With this being said I think it is a moral obligation for the school to prepare a child for the outside world. If a child can not function in society then how can they function at all? It is through the social interactions that the child can take what they have learned in the classroom and apply to the outside. I find it very important to give students examples that pertain to his or her age group so they can see how it is used in society. Whether we want to believe it or not, everyone counts and without everyone, society as a whole can not function 100%. Schools SHOULD teach according to a curriculum but also according to society because society is where they will spend the majority of their life.
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