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)
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5 comments:
I found this creed informative to me as a parent. Most parents know that education is important, but how it is important to a child in relation to the community/society around him is oftentimes overlooked. I feel like I have spent the last few years of my child's education unaware of the social importance of his school. I agree that "the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself" (229). Education is not what information you learn, but also how you apply it in certain situations. It is not until a child applies this information to an activity that he truly learns its importance. This educational experience needs to be immediate in the sense that the information applies to the child during childhood, not as a preparation for what may or may not happen to him in the future. I am sure everyone has heard of WIIFM...what's in it for me. Children are like adults, if they do not think something is useful and that it does not apply to them, they will not take interest in that information or activity. Am I making any sense?
I think it makes a lot of sense. The only thing I'd add is that Dewey has a very strong sense of the social, such that WIIFM may be okay for a 5 year old, but inappropriate for the adult. The adult must realize that "me" is merely a function of the "we."
I agree with Billie on the fact that socialism should be interpreted at a young age and that socially children do only think for themselves. Dewey shows that school and home should be connected, which is very true. Children should be able to take what they learn and use those facts at home. Dewey writes, "I believe, therefore, that the true centre of correlation of the school subjects is not science, nor literature, nor history, nor geography, but the child's own social activities." (232) Which I would have to say to him, that socialism is very key to the growth of an individual but with that comes all of the core subjects we study in schools. I feel like Dewey down plays the subjects we need to study in schools so that we can go on to get degrees, etc. I realize he isn't trying to cut science, math, and literature out of the classroom, but I don't agree that socialism is more important that learning how to read. I think that they need each other, that if you cannot read how to order something at a restaurant then you will have a hard time interacting with the waiter. This creed was very interesting to me to read. I realize the importance of John Dewey's impact on education, and I wish he were around to see how society and schools are today.
I agree with both Billie's and Kelsey's points. To add another point, Dewey states, "I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform." (234) I couldn't agree more with this statement. When a child enters kindergarten, you will have one who has gone to child care and has had social interactions and another who hasn't been to childcare but has brothers and sisters. On the opposite side, you may have a child who has been sheltered; no child care, only child, no interactions with other children. This one child will be overwhelmed with his peers upon the first few introductions. The school is the perfect environment to provide the social progress that this child needs. They will learn life long community and interaction skills that will carry them through life.
What does a teacher do in this situation? Dewey believed, "...the teacher is engaged, not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life." Also he believed that a teacher, "...is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right social growth." (235) Every teacher should know age appropriate social skills. For the child above, a teacher should gradually provide social interactions (pair child with another who is socially inclined). The goal is to have the child form the proper social skills.
I enjoyed reading everyone's comments. To me it is interesting how we can all read the same things, but like and dislike different parts of it. I think Dewey makes perfect since in his Pedagogic Creed. My favorite part was close to the part Kelsey quoted, but I like where he says "I believe that one of the greatest difficulties in the present teaching of science is that the material is presented in purely objective form, or is treated as a new peculiar kind of experience which the child can add to that which he has already. In reality, science is of value because it gives the ability to interpret and control the experience already had." (232). To me this stands out because I have always enjoyed science. I find it informative because if you think back to when you had to do science fair projects you pick a question,you make a hypothesis, determine a procedure to help you answer that question, and then you present your result.Your result may not be what you thought was going to happen. It could be,but not always. In science most scientist use a question with a known answer or way it is supposed to come out, but they try to find different procedures to make that happen. This can be applied to how different children can learn. Some may be visual learners, hands on learners, etc and as the teacher you have to be able to work with all of these types and find how that child can learn, . Science really helps children do a little of everything and I think it is great that he suggest we introduce it earlier in a child's life.
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