John Dewey was an interesting man whom every parent should know about because his theories are still in evidence today in our schools. Dewey was associated with progressive education, which means that he thought schools should teach children how to solve problems instead of teaching them lessons with large amounts of information. He wanted to give children tools so that they could use their judgment instead of their knowledge. Dewey was also one of the founders of Pragmatism. Pragmatism is difficult to define, but a brief defination is a “philosophical view of human knowledge and thought to be biological in nature [or in other words] that our knowledge is meaningful in perspective to its relationship to us (http://johndewey.shawnolson.net/)”. Dewey thought that the school day was too long and restrictive and children should be allowed to have real life challenges which they could use in the future. For example, Dewey wanted the children to learn math by cooking and geography by going to different places to learn. Essentially, he wanted the children to experience education and not just learn it. This piece is highly important for parents to know because there are programs like outdoor labs that are there for their children. If a child cannot learn a certain way then try another way. Just think, if John Dewey did not speak up about his views of education then who would? Parents need to be active their children’s education the way Dewey took action on his views on education.
http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/dewey/educ.html
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Cool, so what this means to me is that John Dewey
ReplyDeleteis partly the reason why we have field trips in our schools, too bad we can't take children out to places every day because of the lack of money, but his way would be really fun to teach I think.