One of my favorites

One of my favorite Dewey lines from anywhere comes at the end of this essay. It's right at the end. After he makes the point that the curriculum is for the teacher, not the child, he then says:

It says to the teacher: Such and such are the capacities, the fulfillments, in truth and beauty and behavior, open to these children. Now see to it that day by day the conditions are such that their own activities move in this direction, toward such culmination of themselves.

Dewey is sort of throwing down the gauntlet, in his very Deweyan way.

Outline for "Logical Method and the Law"

This week's essay is, I think, one of the more difficult (sorry George!). So here's a brief outline of what I intend to talk about during class tomorrow. I'll work it in and around our discussion and come back to it at the end; hold me to this if something doesn't get covered to your satisfaction.

Dewey's Dichotomy: Logic vs. "Common Sense"

1. Logic (Standard View)

• Universals/Principals/Major Premises
• Particulars/Facts/Minor Premises
• Conclusion
  

2. Experimental Logic (Dewey's View)

• Universals
• Particulars
  
• Conclusion
• Inquiry
• Judgment & Justification
  

3. Relevance for Teachers

• Are teachers technicians? Judges? Experts?
  

Dewey -- "The Moral Training Given by the School Community"

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).

Nice reflections on My Pedagogic Creed

Saturday was the anniversary of the initial publication of My Pedagogic Creed.

Here's a nice look at it from the Education Policy Blog. (I'm a big fan of the blog in general).

The Live Creature

At first glance, this piece from Art as Experience may not have much bearing on education, especially for early childhood teachers. Why did I ask you to read it?

I'll confess. This is my favorite piece by Dewey -- EVAR (as the kids say). I'm personally and professionally interested in aesthetics, particularly aesthetics and popular culture, but that's not why it's my favorite nor is it why I asked you to read this piece. In fact, all the stuff about art up until about halfway through page 395 is sort of extraneous to my major point in assigning The Live Creature. I find that stuff intensely interesting and am more than willing to talk about it, but it's not our focus.

Our focus, instead, is what Dewey says must be the origin of an aesthetic theory -- an understanding of ordinary experience. That's what the rest of the essay is about. He approaches it from a naturalistic point of view, in trying to understand what the experience of a human being has in common with that, say, of a dog. If we can nail that down, I think we'll get at not just the heart of the piece, but at a vital point for understanding Dewey's overall project.

To help, here are two key concepts -- equilibrium, consummation.

Once we get that down, here's a question: What is the role of aesthetic experience in schooling?

Thoughts on The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy

When you read this, you may wonder "Why is Dr. Pope making us read this essay? Are we going to talk about teaching Intelligent Design or something?"

Well, we can talk about that. But that's not the reason I assigned this piece. I think this piece is essential to understanding Dewey's ideas about knowledge, change, and the Absolute.

To put it very briefly, prior to Darwin the basis of philosophy was that knowledge was fixed and absolute. Anything worth knowing was Final. Darwin calls the existence of any essential quality of anything into question, by pointing out that organisms change over time and they do so as a result of environmental factors interacting (trans-acting?) with random changes in organisms. Thus what a thing IS is ultimately hard to pin down.

Dewey takes this insight and wants to apply it to philosophy, calling into question philosophy's traditional search for an Absolute Reality beyond our own. He wants us instead to focus on more immediate concerns:

"To improve our education, to ameliorate our manners, to advance our politics, we must have recourse to specific conditions of generation." (44) Specifics, not abstract generalities. Not essences. It's the move from Absolutism to Pragmatism.

Think this doesn't apply to education? Think of the difference between these two ways of describing a child who is acting up:

"He's a bad kid."

"He's a kid who acts badly."

Notes/Questions on My Pedagogic Creed

Here are my reading notes/key points/questions about Dewey's My Pedagogic Creed. You can post further questions as comments, or just jump right in and make your own post!

Article 1: What Education Is
It's a cultural process -- the process of bestowing "the funded capital of civilization" on the young. The young then get to meaningfully participate in civilization. Civilization then continues. Formal education is part of this process.

Process is one that we might call maturation. From self --> society. Puberty to adulthood. (See Parker's "Teaching Against Idiocy").

Process has two sides: psychological and sociological (or individual and social). Each individual has unique interests and powers. Education won't work unless it begins with where each child is at. Then must connect individual interests/abilities with social ends. (Themes of continuity and ends/means).

Article 2: What The School Is
The school is the social institution given the specific task of educating, given Dewey's definition of education.

"Education is the process of living and not a preparation for future living." (230)

Schools ought to be a genuine form of social life that reproduces and simplifies the complex social relations of the adult world. This allows children to gradually become a part of those relations without being overwhelmed or "disintegrated." (231) It is the transition between home and society, so it must base itself in home activities.

Does the school provide moral education? If so, how?

What do teachers do?

Article 3: The Subject Matter of Education
Wong to start with "subjects." Must start with social life and demonstrate that "subjects" gradually grow out of our everyday activities.

"The progress is not in the succession of studies but in the development of new attitudes towards, and new interests in, experience." (232-233)

"Education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are the same thing." (233)

Article 4: The Nature of Method
Action is where we must begin and end. Interests motivate action. Emotions follow action.

Odd bit about images (233). What's he up to there?

Article 5: The School and Social Progress
Education is the way we change culture because it's how culture is reproduced.

"Through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize it's own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move." (234)

Challenging Dewey

This clip portrays a provacative view of Dewey’s philosophies. It’s just an alternative view that one should ponder since we have read and discussed Dewey. I am not saying I share these views. I just think it is a good idea to be exposed to the opposing view of most things. (You are not having a problem with your speakers, there is no sound. )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwZTkitm3-I&feature=related


The clip was put together by Bruce Price the founder of Improve-Eduction.org (see link below.) Peruse and decide for yourself.

http://www.improve-education.org

Immature Adults

A few few questions resulting from the commentary on Mill's "On Liberty". Pg. 40 "Elsewhere Mill indicates that the benefits normally resulting form liberty do not accrue to the immature, who are not capable of profiting from free and equal discussion. Mill concludes that the immature may have their liberty intefered with provided that the end is their own betterment." Pg. 41 "Instead his point is that adults are permitted to restrict the range of children's freedom for the benefit of the child, whereas such paternalism would be impermissible if directed toward adults. Adults have a right to freedom. They cannot be intefered with for their own good."

My question is, Are there immature adults? My premises being that adults are members of society of the age of 18 or older. Also maturity being composed of an education, competence, and unimpaired judgement.

My next question being if there are immature adults do mature adults have the right to restrict the range of freedom of the immature adult provided that the end is the immature adults own betterment?

According to the nonconsequentialist argument education is a prerequisite to moral agency and the tool to develop competent and morally responsible persons. (pg. 46) Also on pg. 45 "Competence is a prerequisite of responsible choice." Can we then say that lack of an education and incompetence results in impaired judgement?

If judgement is impaired then according to the nonconsequentialist argument the mature adult would have the right to intefer with the choices and freedoms of the immature adult if they believed the choices of the immature where not to their own benefit.

I think it would be interesting to discuss what Dewey's thought would be on this. He discussed the roles of the mature and immature and believed that those of maturity and greater experience had some level of duty to guide those of less maturity and experience.

How is it Possible?

A common theme in our class discussions lately has been relating curriculum to children's experiences. After reading the other blog posts, I think that we all agree this is a great theory but we also feel that incorporating it in the classroom seems impossible due to variations of student backgrounds.

I want to point out a section in Dewey that I feel gives a solution to this problem. My focus is on Chapter 5 and the vicious cycle addressed on page 62. Here, he is examining academic standards and how they require conformity when students are, by nature, irregular. According to Dewey, the only freedom that is of any importance is the freedom of intelligence (the ability to make observations and judgments). Yet, we as teachers have a list of information that has to be transfered to the students.

So how is it possible to allow all of these different students with various experiences to make decisions that will move them closer to freedom of intelligence while teaching them the set curriculum? The answer is right in front of us, just "stop and think."

"There should be brief intervals of time for quiet reflection provided for even the young" (63). Have students give meaning to what is being taught by letting them relate the information to their own experiences and make their own judgments through reflective assignments and discussions. This will get them involved in the curriculum and help them make connections in their own lives.

In an ARTE class I took, we kept a reflective journal where we wrote down what we thought about class topics. We also had several questions we had to answer after every reading assignment. The theme was always, how does this effect your thinking? I feel that this is close to what Dewey is prescribing. Making education child-centered.

Experience does make a difference...

After last class and tonight’s discussion, I agree that Dewey does make many good points and his suggestions could definitely be helpful to us as teachers. His point “we can be aware of consequences only because of previous experiences” (pg. 68) especially stood out to me. Everything that we have done in our pasts somehow affects our futures. For me personally, (relating this back to the vocational discussion a little) in high school, choosing to take part in the broadcasting program led me to want to go further with it, and I majored in it in college and obtained a degree in the field. After finding out that the market is very, very competitive especially since the market often moves “newbie’s” to small Podunk towns, extremely hard for fresh out of college kids to get into and not a very friendly, family oriented career, I decided that it wasn’t for me. (guess at 17 you don’t always think these things out in the long run huh?) These two experiences with broadcasting helped me figure out that it wasn’t for me. However, my experience with going to high school and college was good so I decided to go back to school to become a teacher and having previously worked so much with writing and reading, English Education became my major. So, my point here is that all of my experiences have nonetheless lead me to what I am currently doing and have had an affect on me on the way, just as Dewey has stressed. I know what can come of my going back to school, the consequences, I will be able to obtain another degree. This can also point to his ends and means comment, that every means leads to more means and more ends, as well as his memory of the past, observation of the present, and purpose for the future reference.
As for his thoughts on how schools and teachers need to be aware of their students’ past experiences and provide them with useful experiences for the future, I somewhat question. I don’t question the idea because I think that it would indeed be wonderful, but I question how it can possibly be done for so many different students in today’s society. I think it is almost impossible due to the popular answer given in class; there are so many social surroundings. I like the statement Dewey makes about school should be a place that it is ok to fail, not fail in a negative sense, but discover that it is ok not to get everything correct every time. Students should be able to learn from their mistakes and school should be a safe haven that allows for this. Learning should be a continuous process and reconstructing of experiences, but I must admit, I am scared of not being able to do this for all students. Is it really a possible solution or is it something that can only fully take place in a perfect world?