John Dewey (1859-1952) was an American philosopher, educator and social critic. Dewey is probably best known for his philosophy of education. This is not a special branch of his philosophy, however it is claimed that all philosophy can be conceived of as the philosophy of education.
The key concept in Dewey’s philosophy is experience. Dewey presented a comprehensive and synoptic image of man and the universe. The entire universe consists of a multifarious variety of natural transactions. Man is at once continuous with the rest of nature and exhibits distinctive patterns of behaviors that distinguish him from the rest of the nature. His experience is also pervaded with qualities that are not reducible to less complex natural transactions. Thus Dewey attempted to place man within the context of the whole of nature.
Dewey’s philosophy is both realistic and optimistic. In Dewey’s view, philosophy is dependent on, but should attempt to transcend, the specific culture from which it emerges. The function of philosophy is to effect a junction of the new and the old, to articulate the basic principles and values of a culture, and to reconstruct these into a more coherent and imaginative vision. Philosophy is therefore essentially critical and, as such, will always have work to do. For as the complex of tradition, values, accomplishments and aspirations that constitute a culture changes, so must philosophy change. Indeed, in pointing the way to new ideals and in showing how these may be effectively realized, philosophy is one of the means for changing a culture. Philosophy is continually faced with the challenge of understanding the meaning of evolving cultures and civilizations and of articulating new projected ideals.
Dewey is the inventor of instrumentalism. From Dewey’s perspective, there are no absolute first truths that are given or known with certainty. Furthermore, knowledge neither has nor requires such a foundation in order to be rational. Inquiry and its objective, knowledge, are rational because inquiry is a self-corrective process by which we gradually become clearer about the epistemological status of both our starting points and conclusions . We must continually submit our knowledge claims to the public test of a community of inquirers in order to clarify, refine and justify them.
Dewey’s thinking on education is based on his pragmatic view. It is essential to appreciate the dialectical context in which Dewey developed his educational ideals. He was critical to the excessively rigid and formal approach to education that dominated the practice of most American schools in the later part of the nineteenth century. He argued that such an approach was based upon a faulty psychology in which the child was thought of as a passive creature upon whom information and knowledge had to be imposed. But Dewey was equally critical of the “new education”, which was based on a sentimental idealization of the child. This child-oriented approach advocated that the child himself should pick and choose what he wanted to study. This approach also was based on a mistaken psychology, which neglected the immaturity of the child’s experience. Education is, or ought to be, a continuous reconstruction of experience in which there is a development of immature experience toward experience enriched with the skills and habits of intelligence. The slogan “Learn by doing” was not intended as a credo for anti-intellectualism but, on the contrary was meant to call attention to the fact that the child is naturally an active, curious and exploring creature. A properly designed education must be sensitive to this active dimension of life and must guide the child, so that through his participation in different types of experience his creativity and autonomy will be cultivated rather than stifled.
Like Aristotle, Dewey believed that the function of education is to encourage those habits and dispositions that constitute intelligence. Dewey placed great stress on creating the proper type of environmental conditions for eliciting and nurturing these habits. His conception of the educational process is therefore closely tied to the prominent role that he assigned to habit in human life. Education as the continuous reconstruction and growth of experience also develops the moral character of the child.
Dewey also thought of the school, as an ideal miniature society is the chief means for social reform. In the controlled social environment of the school it is possible to encourage the development of creative individuals who will be able to work effectively to eliminate existing evils and institute reasonable goods. The school therefore, is the medium for developing the set of habits required for systematic and open inquiry and for reconstructing experience that is endowed with greater harmony and aesthetic quality.
Dewey perceived actually the threat posed by unplanned technological, economic and political development to the future of democracy. The natural direction of these forces is to increase human alienation and to undermine the shared experience that is so vital for the democratic community. For this reason, Dewey placed so much importance on the function of the school in the democratic community. The school is the most important medium for strengthening and developing a genuine democratic community, and the task of democracy is forever the creation of a freer and more human experience in which all share and participate.
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