Experience and Education Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00B9DC5M8 | Format: PDF
Experience and Education Description
Experience and Education is the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education (Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received.
Analyzing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 2 hours and 28 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: University Press Audiobooks
- Audible.com Release Date: February 1, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00B9DC5M8
This book was written about 20 years after Dewey's best-known education book, Democracy in Education. By the time he wrote this, he was celebrated by many (progressive educators) and scorned by others (traditionalists). Dewey wrote this book as a way to tell both sides that they have it wrong: in frustration with traditional methods of education, progressives were rebelling too far in the opposite direction. Tight external discipline was replaced by no discipline. Inflexible curricula were replaced by thin curricula. Strict drill was replaced by lax 'learn what you want' attitudes. In brief, Dewey wrote against the "either/or" approach he saw prevalent in education.
IF you look at the lesser-starred reviews below, you will see that one main criticism about this book is that it seems to state the obvious. I was not around then, but I am betting that this is a testament to Dewey's influence that what needed to be said then now seems so commonplace. Curriculum is necessary, Dewey wrote, but that doesn't mean that it can't be made relevant to students' lives. Explicit teaching and discipline are necessary but that doesn't mean that the student must be 'put upon' as much as 'worked with.' Education should not be simply the passive receipt of information from instructor to student via memorization, but that doesn't mean that schools should be squeamish about instilling things into students (or that everything has to be student-initiated).
If I have one complaint about this book, though, it is not that its contents are commonplace, but they are sometimes a bit contradictory.
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