Dear Tom,
Thanks for your response and questions. You really go right to the
heart of the matter, and of course there are no easy answers to your
questions. However, undaunted, I will try to shape some.
Without going into a lot of detail, I see Dewey's educational
theory in terms of objectives and methods. With regard to objectives, two
Deweyan ones stand out for me: (1) mastery of subject-matter or expansion
of student interests ("growth") and (2) development of habits of
intelligence or moral traits of character, meaning wholeheartedness
(singel-mindedness), courage, self-direction, responsibility, tolerance,
cooperativeness, and social consciousness.
As for methods, I think the key is child/curriculum integration,
and I believe Dewey wants us to do this by structuring our classrooms so
that students develop their own reasons for working with the curriculum,
ideally (and eventually) making the curriculum a new interest of their own.
But how do we do this? In my own efforts in my own classroom, I try bring
together three sets of concepts which Dewey (I don't believe) makes much
effort to connect. I'm thinking of the quality of student classroom
experience (continuities students build with our classes which determine
what they focus on in our courses, the quality of student work (their
constructions and criticisms), and their levels of interest and effort.
My biggest challenge is trying to replace high grades (or pleasing
me or someone else) as the main goal with some goal which reflect a
student's "voluntary" interest. I agree with Dewey that without such
genuine goals which require mastery of the subject-matter, students learn
what Dewey called "intellectual dishonesty" (<Democracy and Education>).
In such circumstances, students really work with divided attention and
their efforts lack sincerity. This lack of sincerity is important (in my
mind) as a loss of student personal integrity. And this, for Dewey (and
me), has negative consequences for the sort of effort students put forth.
All this is easy to say but hard (at least for me) to do. This
leads me to your second question: is Dewey's pedagogy only good for young
students? My answer is "no." Phil Eddy on the Dewey -Line suggested that
Dewey was a very unDeweyan teacher because he may have felt that college
students had sufficient interest in subject-matter to be able to learn from
lecture. But Phil Eddy also suggested that Dewey might have had second
thoughts at some point. In <The Way Out of Educational Confusion> (1931),
Dewey says the project method is worth a try at the college level. And in
a number of essays (which ones I cannot remember right now) Dewey
distinguishes the first two years of college from the second, arguing that
the first two should be spent finding "one's calling" and the second two,
receiving professional training. Perhaps it was in the first two years of
work that Dewey wanted to experiment with the project method, but I am just
speculating.
Why do I myself believe his principles apply at the college level?
Much of my answer relies upon what Dewey says at the opening of <Democracy
and Education>. He claims that out-of-school education is filled with the
vitality of everyday life and occurs through cooperation with others.
School education, by contrast, according to Dewey, can be awfully abstract
and dry. As a result, he asks us to combine the two. [A similar dichotemy
is presented in the first chapter of <Reconstruction> when Dewey compares
traditional Greek instruction in warfare and more positivistic or
matter-of-fact approaches.] And my strong feeling is that there is even
more danger at the college level of offering material which is dry and
abstract (and presented as if beliefs could be handed out like "pieces of
pie" or "bricks" [<Democracy and Education>]) than at the earlier school
levels.
Again, thanks for asking, and of course I'd be grateful for any
clarifying or challenging thoughts you might have about these issues.
How is your ajustment to the South from the West going?
Sincerely,
Steve Fishman