What Parents Should Know

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

How Parents Can Use Dewey's Theory at Home.

As a parent I wanted to learn how can I use Dewey’s theory of learning through experiences. Whether it’s a negative or positive experience, it will help create children who can contribute to society effectively. One of the things a parent can do is bake cakes and/or cookies. While baking, a parent can talk about measurements (ie. how many cups of flour do we need). That is one of many great experiences for teaching math. Also going to the grocery store together will provide an experience with money. For example, a parent would say “We have $50 to spend on food today, let’s make a list of the food we need”. When going through the aisles the parent and the child could look at the prices and decide if the price is within the budget. For reading, a parent could read a newspaper, a recipe, a letter from grandparents, and even an electrical bill with their children to show them that reading is important and we use it all the time in our daily lives. We’re all different and we learn in different ways and have different experiences. Children will bring their experiences to the classroom and learn from one another. “Thus, teaching and curriculum must be designed in ways that allow for such individual differences.” For Dewey, education also serves a broader social purpose, to help people become more effective members of a democratic society.” Children need to interact to learn and they interact through experiences.

http://www.wilderdom.com/experiential/ExperientialDewey.html
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-dewey.htm

Video on Dewey

Here is a link to this video:

http://teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=732db9329ffe752c1568

Applications and Theories Educators Employ

John Dewey wanted students to learn from hands on experiences. Today we call this teaching approach pragmatism. Like the realists, the pragmatist believes that we learn best through experience, but pragmatists are more willing to put that belief into practice. Pragmatist prefers a curriculum that draws the disciplines together to solve problems. Dewey believed the child's home environment should be centered in the school. Cooking and sewing was to be taught at school and be a routine in the classroom. Reading, writing, and math was to be taught throughout the daily course of these routines. Building, cooking, and sewing had schooling components in it and the activities simultaneously represented everyday life for the students (at the time). The students used math to measure, reading and comprehension to understand the directions and other acquired skills to complete the tasks. The overall idea was that the child would experience school as being in a community. This would help the child learn how to share and communicate with others. Problems would be presented to the student and through the process of trial and error the child would be able to solve the problem. The teacher's responsibility was to assign appropriate tasks depending on the student’s level, supervise and assist until the task was completed. Still today we want our students to be part of the community and we stress the importance of community involvement. An example of this is when students are asked to work in small groups within the classroom. The students are given the problem and asked to solve the problems working with their classmates. The teacher’s job is to ensure that everyone participates and works well within the group. Other examples of how Dewey’s pragmatic teaching style is still applied today would be in lesson plans or classes that focus on specific areas of everyday life. Home economics would be a great example. Students must apply different skills to complete assignments. Dewey’s original elementary school at the University of Chicago was designed to exhibit, test, and conduct research in educational methods centering on the child. Subjects were correlated, connecting reading, writing, history, spelling, arithmetic, and science to life; emphasis was placed on physical training, music, art, and such practical skills as domestic science and manual training. Still today this influence of lesson planning exists. Many lesson plans include a hands on approach and connect a variety of subjects.

John Dewey-Background Information

John Dewey (1859-1952) was an American psychologist, philosopher, educator, social critic and political activist. He was born in Burlington Vermont on October 20, 1859. Dewey graduated from the University of Vermont in 1879, and received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1884. He started his career at the University of Michigan, teaching there from 1884 to 1888 and 1889 to 1894, with a one year term at the University of Minnesota in 1888. In 1894 he became the chairman of the department of Philosophy, Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of Chicago. In 1899, John Dewey was elected president of the American Philosophical Association. Dewey taught at Colombia University from 1905 until he retired in 1929, and occasionally taught as professor emeritus until 1939. During his years at Colombia he traveled the world as a philosopher, social and political theorist, and educational consultant. Among his major journeys are his lectures in Japan and China from 1919-1921, his visit to Turkey in 1924 to recommend educational policy, and a tour of schools in the USSR in 1928. Of course, Dewey never ignored American social issues. He was outspoken on education, domestic and international politics, and numerous social movements. Among the many concerns that attracted Dewey's support were women's suffrage, progressive education , educator's rights, the Humanistic movement and world peace. Dewey died in New York City on June 1, 1952.
http://dewey.pragmatism.org/

http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/dewe.htm

Theoretical Contributions Dewey Made to Early Childhood Education

Dewey is admired as the greatest educational thinker of the 20th

century. John Dewey's focus on education was a unique element of

his philosopical thinking and writing. Although he did not coin the phrase progressive education, it has come to be associated with Dewey. http://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/articles/proged.html Progressive education according to Dewey, was a wild swing in the philosophical pendulum, against traditional education methods. In progressive education, freedom was the rule, with students being relatively unconstrained by the educator. The problem with progressive education, said Dewey, is that freedom alone is no solution. Learning needs a structure and order, and must be based on a clear theory of experience, not simply the whim of teachers or students.

His theory of experience continues to be read and discussed not only within education, but also in psychology and philosophy.
In the late 1920s and 1930s, John Dewey became famous for pointing out that the authoritarian, strict, pre-ordained knowledge approach of modern traditional education was too concerned with delivering knowledge, and not enough with understanding student’s actual experiences.
Dewey became the champion, or philosophical father of experiential education or as it was then referred to, progressive education. But he was also critical of completely “free, student-driven” education because students often don’t know how to structure their own learning experiences for maximum benefits.
Why do so many students hate school? It seems an obvious, but ignored question.
Dewey said that an educator must take into account the unique differences between each student. Each person is different genetically and in terms of past experiences. Even when a standard curricula is presented using established pedagogical methods, each student will have a different quality of experience. Thus, teaching and curriculum must be designed in ways that allow for such individual differences.
For Dewey, education also serves a broader social purpose, which was to help people become more effective members of a democratic society. Dewey argued that the one-way delivery style of authoritarian schooling does not provide a good model for life in democratic society. Instead, students need educational experiences which enable them to become valued, equal, and responsible members of society.
Thus, Dewey proposed that education be designed on the basis of a theory of experience. We must understand the nature of how humans have the experiences they do, in order to design effective education. In this respect, Dewey's theory of experience rested on two central tenets -- continuity and interaction.

I found a very interesting website from scholastics.com http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3424

This article, written by the Early Childhood Today Editorial Staff, is about how John Dewey knew that, out of necessity, even the youngest children participated in household chores and activities, and he quickly recognized the wonderful learning opportunities these everyday experiences provided. He came to believe that the child's own instincts, activities, and interests should be the starting point of education.

Continuity refers to the notion that humans are sensitive to (or are affected by) experience. Humans survive more by learning from experience after they are born than do many other animals who rely primarily on pre-wired instinct. In humans, education is critical for providing people with the skills to live in society. Dewey argued that we learn something from every experience, whether positive or negative and ones accumulated learned experience influences the nature of one's future experiences. Thus, every experience in some way influences all potential future experiences for an individual. Continuity refers to this idea that each experience is stored and carried on into the future, whether one likes it or not.
Interaction builds upon the notion of continuity and explains how past experience interacts with the present situation, to create one's present experience and perspective. Dewey's hypothesis was that a current experience can be understood as a function of ones past (stored) experiences which interacting with the present situation to create an individual's experience. This explains the "one man's meat is another man's poison" maxim. Any situation can be experienced in profoundly different ways because of unique individual differences e.g., one student loves school, another hates the same school. This is important for educators to understand. While they can't control students' past experiences, they can try to understand those past experiences so that better educational situations can be presented to the students. Ultimately, all a teacher has control over is the design of the present situation. The teacher with good insight into the effects of past experiences which students bring with them better enables the teacher to provide quality education which is relevant and meaningful for the students.

http://books.google.com/books?id=98kVAAAAIAAJ&dq=inauthor:John+inauthor:Dewey&pgis=1