all one's life
Dewey was born in an ordinary family in Vermont, USA. 1879 graduated from university of vermont, and 1884 received a doctorate in philosophy from Johns Hopkins university. 1884- 1888, 1890- 1894 teaches philosophy at the university of Michigan, and 1889 teaches philosophy at the university of Minnesota. 1894- 1904 is the head of the departments of philosophy, psychology and education at the university of Chicago, and 1902- 1904 is also the dean of the school of education. 1904- 1930, once an adjunct professor in the philosophy department of Columbia University in new york. He has also served as the chairman of the American Psychological Association, the American Philosophical Association and the American Association of University Professors. From 65438 to 0896, he founded an experimental middle school as the experimental base of his educational theory and served as the principal of the school. Oppose the traditional educational methods of indoctrination and mechanical training and advocate learning from practice. Put forward the slogan that education is life and school is society. His educational theory emphasizes personal development, understanding of external things and acquiring knowledge through experiments, which has great influence. Dewey gave speeches in many parts of the world to publicize his ideas. He has visited China and India, so his thoughts have also influenced areas outside the United States.
Dewey's Philosophy of Education
Dewey clearly pointed out in his famous educational work "Democracy and Education" that "the purpose of education is to enable individuals to continue to receive education ... without seeking other purposes outside the educational process, and to make education an accessory to this other purpose. This "teleology" really makes people dare not accept it easily. It must be remembered that the education he said here is inseparable from the democratic society he pursues in his mind. For him, especially in the social environment at that time, he embodied an American spirit-personal development itself is the ultimate goal.
He said: "Education itself has no purpose. Only people, parents and teachers have a purpose. It is obviously a misunderstanding if we interpret his words as that education has no purpose. He "just hopes that people will not obliterate the essence and present life of children and adolescents because of the development of social efficiency. "He doesn't want education to be an accessory to other purposes, so he interprets the purpose of education as:" When a person shoots, his purpose is to aim the gun at it. But this object is just a sign, which makes us focus on the activities we want to carry out. "The ultimate goal of shooting is not the mandarin fish itself, but a concrete and meaningful symbol to aim at this action. Similarly, the educational process itself has a satisfactory significance in developing personal endowment, and the goal of education is only to play a guiding and guiding role.
In fact, he does not deny that education must have a "good educational purpose". The characteristics of these uses are as follows: 1. It must be based on the internal activities and needs of individuals; 2. It must be able to be transformed into practical methods and cooperate with the activities of the educated; 3. Educators should guard against the so-called common and ultimate goal. In fact, the orientation of contemporary education does swing between two educational purposes: one is to "make the educated become stereotyped products" and the other is to "ultimately improve the (innovative) ability of the educated".
Based on the emphasis on the educated themselves, Dewey opposed the traditional indoctrination education method. He pointed out, "Some people regard the senses as a mysterious spool, thinking that we can let knowledge pass through this spool and input it into our hearts from the outside ... thinking that as long as we keep our eyes on the books and let the children listen to the teacher forever, that is the secret of perfecting knowledge. He believes that the indoctrination education method is not real education, because "education is for growth": "the first condition for growth is immature state ... the word" no "has positive significance, not just nothingness or lack. He affirmed that this immature state is full of initiative and potential, and it can be fully developed without indoctrination.
For Dewey, creating sufficient conditions for learners to "experience" is the key to education: "The so-called experience is originally something" active-passive ",not something" cognitive ". Dewey believes that experience is the interaction between subject and object, organism and environment. He argues that this gradual education method enables learners to learn from activities, and experience itself refers to the process of interaction between the learning subject and the recognized object. However, he added: "The value of experience depends on whether we can perceive the relationship or causality caused by experience. Not every experience has educational value, but the interpretation of the subject gradually formed in the process of experience is the key. To this end, Dewey also pointed out that it is the function of education to cultivate learners' self-learning ability. He said: "On the other hand, the experience of educational function can increase the ability to command later experience. He called the cultivation of this ability "transformation", so he said "education is transformation".
To sum up, Dewey advocates that the implementation of teaching methods should closely follow the learner-centered premise, especially in the early stage of children's education, "do more work in the sense of sociology and psychology", and then slowly turn to "systematic and technical knowledge" in the later stage. As Joe R. Burnett said in 1979 about American educational practice, "Dewey's pedagogy could not be widely used in schools at that time or now. Because teachers have never been trained in this kind of education, schools do not have the manpower and material resources in this field, and parents and politicians do not support Dewey's pedagogy. 」
We can't deny that Maritain's criticism of Dewey-style education is worthy of attention: he thinks that "when people forget the object of being taught and the priority of the object, when the worship of means (not the worship of means with a purpose, but the worship of means without a purpose) only ends in the psychological worship of the subject, mistakes will occur." 」
main work
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John dewey's Philosophical Change
Democracy and education (or people-oriented and education).
Freedom and culture
My educational creed
Educational philosophy
Tomorrow school
Children and textbooks
The pursuit of certainty (1929), psychology, critical theory, school and society, experience and nature, experience and education, freedom and culture, human problems, etc.