John Dewey and Education

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This week’s reading was on “Thinking in Education” by John Dewey. This essay was about his thoughts of how education is seen as important but, isn’t actually being taken seriously as seen from his observations. He states that the way it is being handled and how it affects people’s learning experience. He talks about stages of thinking and how our educational system affects them. There are four main questions that are being addressed, why is “learning more about ourselves and the world” crucial to thought and education? In what ways does Dewey concern himself with the nature in the classroom? How can for some people, thinking is cut off from experience true and what are the consequences? What is the relationship between student being given something to do and being given something to learn?

Learning more about ourselves and the world is important because it helps us to learn where we stand and what we believe and opens us to understanding other things as well. Dewey stated that, “It consequently leaves a man at the mercy of his routine habits and of the authoritative control of others, who know what they are about…” (P.559). This means people that don’t know about themselves can’t control or understand others on a mental level. The people that do know about themselves know what they plan to do and know what they have to do to succeed. This allows for better understanding of the things around him and the skill of which is learns is higher.

Dewey concerns himself with the classroom by the way students are being taught and what it is that they are learning. Dewey states,” the situation should be of such nature as to thinking…” (P. 560). This means that the nature of thinking should be a pleasurable act not one that is being forced to partake in. The consequence is that the thing that what being thought cannot be connected to any experience of the thinker. Which in the end is not a good way to learn. This affects the way students are learning and thinking in a negative way. This also addresses how people are being cut off from experience is true and the consequence for this is indeed negative.

The differences of a student being given something to do and something to learn. There is a difference between the two and it does affect the way students think. When a student is being given something to do such as problems in a textbook. They tend to fit the solutions to the way of liking of the teacher. So not by the standards of the material being learned but by the tasks themselves. Now when a student is being given something to learn is a different objective entirely. This task is not to finish problems meaning he has mastered the subject. His or her task is to understand the subject. The problems textbooks create are not to teach students but to practice the understandings of the subject.