3. Dewey’s philosophy on education, published in Experience and Education
(1938), is an analysis of both traditional and progressive education. Where
traditional education focused upon curriculum and cultural heritage for its
content, progressive education focused on the learner’s interest and impulse,
unconstrained by the educator (p. 9). According to Dewey, neither of these
systems is adequate. Traditional education consists of a rigid regimentation,
ignoring the capacities and interests of the learner. Progressive education
allows excessive individualism and spontaneity which Dewey says is “a
deceptive index of freedom” (p. 10).
What Dewey’s philosophy (1938) proposes is a carefully developed theory of
experience and its relation to education. Sound educational experience
involves both continuity and interaction between the learner and what is
learned (p. 10). Thus, Dewey’s philosophy is that experience arises from the
interaction of two principles: continuity and interaction.
Experience and Education (1938) demonstrates Dewey’s ideas on education, in
a concise statement that resulted from his observational experience with
progressive schools. Written in essay format, it divides Dewey’s philosophy into
eight chapters that are organized so that each one presents a definitive aspect
of his philosophy.
4. Traditional vs Progressive Education
The Need of a Theory of Experience
Criteria of Experience
Social Control
The Nature of Freedom
The Meaning of Purpose
Progressive Organization of Subject-Matter
Experience – The Means and Goal of Education
5. Dewey (1938) opens the first chapter with a statement about the opposition
that exists in educational theory: the contrast between traditional and
progressive education. He depicts traditional education as a system that
consists of bodies of information, skills, developed standards, and rules of
conduct that worked historically, and that encourages a student attitude of
docility, receptivity, and obedience. The task of educators in traditional
education is to communicate knowledge and skills, and to enforce rules of
conduct onto the new generation.
He depicts progressive education as a system that criticizes traditional
education in that it imposes adult standards, subject matter, and methods
upon a young generation. It provides minimal active participation by students
in the development of subject matter. Progressive education offers learners the
following: growth and expression of individuality; free activity; learning
through experience; the acquisition of skills as a means of attaining ends which
are vital and appealing to students; and, becoming acquainted with a changing
world. Dewey (1938) views progressive education as an intimate and necessary
relation between the processes of actual experience and education (p. 20).
6. However, Dewey (1938) believes neither progressive
nor traditional education is the solution to the
opposition that exists in educational theory. He
proposes that the problems they present require a
resolution based on a new philosophy of experience.
As long as the assumption exists that it suffices to
reject the ideas of traditional education and to go to
the opposite extreme to progressive education, the
problem at hand (the lack of a new philosophy of
experience), will not even be recognized, let alone
being resolved (pp. 21-22).
8. As a brilliant, undisciplined, and unconventional
thinker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau spent most of his life
being driven by controversy back and forth between
Paris and his native Geneva. Orphaned at an early age,
he left home at sixteen, working as a tutor and
musician before undertaking a literary career while in
his forties. Rousseau sired but refused to support
several illegitimate children and frequently initiated
bitter quarrels with even the most supportive of his
colleagues. His autobiographical Les Confessions
(Confessions) (1783) offer a thorough (if somewhat
self-serving) account of his turbulent life.
9. Rousseau first attracted wide-spread attention with his
prize-winning essay Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts
(Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts) (1750), Rousseau
in which he decried the harmful effects of modern
civilization. Pursuit of the arts and sciences, Rousseau
argued, merely promotes idleness, and the resulting
political inequality encourages alienation. He continued to
explore these themes throughout his career, proposing in
Émile, ou l'education (1762) a method of education that
would minimize the damage by noticing, encouraging, and
following the natural proclivities of the student instead of
striving to eliminate them.
10. Rousseau began to apply these principles to political issues
specifically in his Discours sur l'origine et les fondements
de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (Discourse on the Origin
of Inequality) (1755), which maintains that every variety of
injustice found in human society is an artificial result of the
control exercised by defective political and intellectual
influences over the healthy natural impulses of otherwise
noble savages. Rousseau The alternative he proposed in Du
contrat social (On the Social Contract) (1762) is a civil
society voluntarily formed by its citizens and wholly
governed by reference to the general will [Fr. volonté
générale] expressed in their unanimous consent to
authority.
11. Rousseau also wrote Discourse on Political Economy
(1755), Constitutional Program for Corsica (1765), and
Considerations on the Government of Poland (1772).
Although the authorities made every effort to suppress
Rousseau's writings, the ideas they expressed, along
with those of Locke, were of great influence during the
French Revolution. The religious views expressed in
the "Faith of a Savoyard Vicar" section of Émile made a
more modest impact.
