Experience and Education
"John Dewey is unquestionably the preeminent figure in American philosophy; no one has done more to keep alive the fundamental ideals of liberal civilization; and if there could be such an office as that of national philosopher, no one else could be properly mentioned for it" (Morris R. Cohen).
John Dewey was an American philosopher whose ideas have been influential in both education and social reform. He was one of the leaders in a new school of thought that arose in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, pragmatism. A pragmatist is a person who view rejected the then modern philosophy in favor of a more naturalistic view of how humans acquire knowledge. A pragmatist also views that an ideology or proposition is true only if it is practical. With those views as his base, Dewey wrote about many topics that encompassed all
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This truism introduces the topic discussed in chapter one, traditional vs. progressive education. In only the first chapter, Dewey presents establishes his views on the current education. It being that neither traditional or progressive education or good for the school system. He suggests that a good education should improve both society and the individual student. He argues that an issue with traditional education is that it focuses on topics that are so bound in the past that a student will not be able to able to connect it to current or future issues. However, progressive educational he argues is too reactionary. It encourages reacting against what is current in education without establishing “a positive and constructive development of purposes, methods, and-subject matter on the foundation of a theory of experiences and its educational purpose” (Dewey, 7). So then how should the education system be structured? Dewey argues that a teacher must first understand the nature of human