Dewey’s Educational Theories and Aims of Education:

Dewey’s educational theories are based on his philosophical and psychological ideas
stated above.

Till the end of the 19th century the educational world was dominated by the religiously-
motivated moral aim, the disciplinary aim, and the informational aim.

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Dewey discarded all these aims of education. He puts forward his aims of education in
the light of the rapid social and economic changes in the world — particularly in
America.

Dewey does not believe in an ultimate aim of education. He provides no fixed and final
goal of education. He always speaks of immediate or proximate aims. To him education
is experience which is subject to constant change with the changing pattern of life. The
process of education is a continuous process of adjustment. The individual has always to
adjust and re-adjust himself to the environment.

Dewey agrees to the function of education as preparation for life, if it refers to life now
and the immediate future. Pupils, he said, are not interested in the distant or remote
future. Any such attempt would not stimulate them to learn. Education should ensure
adequate preparation for immediate life. This will encourage the pupil to learn. Dewey
also agrees with the aim of education as self-realisation of the individual.

The pupil lives, exists, grows, develops in the present world. He should realise all his
powers now. All educational efforts should be directed to that goal. Dewey wants that
each pupil’s powers and potentialities to be developed not according to any absolute
standard but according to the pupil’s own capacities and opportunities.

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The pupil’s progress is to be measured by his own best standard and not by the
standards set by others who differ in ability and temperament. Education is a process of
growth. Education, he says, “protects, sustains and directs growth.” Teacher stimulates,
fosters and strengthens this growth.
Dewey’s Ideal School:
Dewey set up a model school to experiment his cherished ideas of education and to
bring the school into close touch with real life in the University of Chicago in F896. He
painfully noticed the failure of the existing schools to keep pace with the tremendous
changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution and the democratic ways of living in
America.

To Dewey, the school is an essential social and psychological institution. The school is
not a place where some dry knowledge is imparted. For Dewey, the school is a place
where the child learns by his own personal experiences. Considering the school as a
psychological necessity he wanted the ideal school to be like the ideal home.

In the ideal home the parent knows what is best for his child and provides his needs.
Real-life experiences of home and community have to be provided. Instead of a
‘listening school’ it has to be a ‘doing school’ in which morals as well as occupational
skills are acquired by living and acting in real situation.

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The economic, social, political and all other activities and problems of society should
constitute the curriculum of the school.

Dewey outlined a definite scheme of elementary education at three

stages:
(a) The play period from 4 to 8;

(b) Period of spontaneous attention from 8 to 12, and

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(c) Period of reflective attention from 12 onwards.

As a social institution, the school will try to develop a social consciousness in the child.
The school is to be a representative of the society outside it. According to Dewey: “The
school is to be a reflection of the larger society outside its walls, in
which life can be learnt by living. But it is to be a purified, simplified
and better balanced society.”
Dewey considered the ideal school as an enlarged ideal home. He liked his ideal school
to be an ideal community like the family where the pupils are engaged in common
pursuits and educative experiences. “The school, in fact, should be an enlarged family, in
which discipline the child receives more or less accidentally at home is continued in a
more perfect form with better equipment and more scientific guidance”, said Dewey.

Dewey’s school will be a place where moral education is provided not in the form of
separate lessons and precepts but through activities performed jointly with others. The
school must enable the child to be aware of himself and of the society.

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He thinks that “the best and deepest moral training is precisely that which one gets
through having to enter into proper relations with others in a unity of work and
thought.” The school should give a clear conception to its pupils of the needs and
problems of modern life and help to solve those problems. The school will try to enable
its students to adjust with the society outside.

Teachers in Dewey’s Scheme: Discipline:

Dewey gives an important place to the teacher. He is a social servant. His duty is to
maintain a proper social order and to see that the children grow in a social atmosphere.
A teacher should be concerned more with the pupil’s impulses and interests rather than
the inculcation of knowledge.

His main function is to guide the young through the complexities of life. The teacher has
to help the children so that they can adjust successfully with the contemporary
conditions of life.

Dewey was a staunch advocate of freedom of children. But this freedom has to be
regulated and organised by the teacher and it should be exercised in the interest of the
society as well. The teacher is not to impose his personality or his ideology on the child.
His business is to select the influences which should enrich the child’s experience and to
help him so that he can properly respond to such influence.

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He must know the intelligence and temperament of each pupil for guidance in desirable
channel. He must realise that his own superiority in experience and knowledge should
enable the pupils to reach a stage higher than his (teacher’s) own in the evolutionary
scale. The teacher must, at the same time, ensure that the individual and the group
move in harmony, “both acquiring the best and most positive habits of growth.”

Even in the matters of discipline, he is to simply guide the child on the basis of his richer
experience and wider wisdom. No rigid discipline should be imposed on the child. The
teacher should encourage self-discipline and group-discipline. The students should be
trained to maintain discipline of their own accord. It should develop from within.
Discipline from within is true discipline. Discipline is inherent in the child.

The natural impulses of the child ought to be directed and disciplined through the
cooperative activities of the school. It is such a discipline that will lead to character
training, not the discipline that is the result of force or imposition from outside.

The teacher’s duty is to provide the right type of physical environment that will enrich
the child’s experience, and will direct his activities in a cooperative manner. The
individual will thus develop social attitudes, interests and habits.

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Thus, according to Dewey, the main purpose of school discipline is the cultivation in the
pupils of social attitudes, interests and habits, and ideals of conduct through the
conjoint activities of the school which has been organised as a community.

Dewey’s Conception of the Curriculum:

Dewey had no faith in the traditional curriculum as it cannot fulfill the aims of
education set forth by him. He did not believe in the faculty theory of psychology which
divides the mind into different compartments such as memory, imagination, perception,
judgement etc.

He considers mind as an organic whole. So he does not like the division of knowledge
into isolated branches or special studies. The traditional curriculum does not take into
account the child’s nature and so he has discarded it.
To Dewey, it is the child’s own activities around which the school subjects should be
organised, not around subjects like science, literature, history, geography etc. Dewey’s
curriculum includes the “occupations” and “association” which serve the needs of man.
Subject compartments, according to Dewey, are not necessary for children. Dewey
considered the child as a unity developing through its own activity but in a social setting.

Mind, he said, is essentially social. It was made what it is by society and depends for its
development on social agencies. It finds its nutrient in social supplies. It is, therefore,
essential that social experiences should form the main factors of the curriculum.

Dewey says, “the beginning is made with child’s expressive activities in dealing with the
fundamental social material — food, shelter, clothing, and the direct modes of social
communication like speech, writing, reading, drawing, modelling, moulding etc. Thus
the curriculum in the primary school should be organised according to the four-fold
interests of the child in conversation, enquiry, construction and artistic expression.”

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The traditional curriculum included subjects as mere information. No attempt was

made to relate them to actual needs of the child. Dewey’s curriculum is based on the
actual experiences, interests and impulses of the child. Instruction is a “continual re-
construction”. The past experiences are reconstructed in the light of the present
experiences.

Actual experiences will arouse interest and great motivation for learning. Hence the
curriculum is bound to be dynamic and not static or fixed. Action, said Dewey, must be
given priority to abstract thought. The teacher has to plan and organise learning
situations for pupils with the help of his matured experiences.

According to Dewey, the curriculum should consist of “educative experiences and

problems”. The aim is to enrich the experiences already gained by him. The problems
should be so organised as to inspire the pupil to add the existing knowledge and ideas.

If should be noted that Dewey uses the word “educative experiences” in a special sense.
According to Dewey, only those experiences are educative which pay due regard to the
natural inclinations of the child in the context of the social, political, physical and
economic conditions of the community.
According to him, an educative experience is creative and leads to further experience. It
has the power of modifying the experiences and modification, thus effected, affects the
subsequent experiences. An educative experience subordinates books, teachers and
apparatus to the natural inclinations of the pupil and takes into consideration the social,
political, physical and economic conditions of the community.

Besides, in general principles of curriculum construction, Dewey has advised as to how

to organise the curriculum. Dewey has proposed an integrated curriculum and followed
the principle of correlation in the organisation of subjects. He says, if different subjects
are taken from the materials of day-to-day life, the subject-matter of each subject links
the present with the past and they are taught in such a way that their usefulness in the
immediate present is emphasised.

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Moreover, different subjects should be naturally correlated and, therefore, they should
not be presented as distinct studies. Dewey made industrial activities — and their
historical and social development — the center of the curriculum and grouped the rest of
the subjects around this center.

Dewey’s scheme of curriculum also included a esthetic, religious and moral education.
For full development, Dewey considered art as “perfected expression of basic human
activity”. He also writes, “arts represent not luxuries but fundamental
forces of development.”
Similarly, Dewey wants that religious and moral education should be made an integral
part of the basic experiences of the child. He, of course, does not want to give religious
and moral education through lessons but by practical experience. The children should
develop moral interest and insight. Morality in discipline comes through the free and
purposive judgement of the individual.

Dewey’s Methods of Teaching:

Dewey’s methods of teaching consist of three processes:
(1) Continuance of psychological order in the curriculum;

(2) Retention of problem or project method;

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(3) Extension of social opportunity.

The first is natural and, therefore, essential. The second would enable the pupils to learn
“not things but the meaning of things.” The third would arouse social consciousness.
Dewey’s methods of teaching are based on his pragmatic philosophy.

He is of opinion that direct experience is the basis of all method. Knowledge takes place
from concrete and meaningful situations. Hence, knowledge should come from
spontaneous activities of the children. Dewey’s methods of teaching are based on the
principles of ‘learning by doing’, activities in connection with the life of the child. In his
method, what a child does is the most important thing.

In the Project or Problem Method, which Dewey advocated, the child’s interests and
purposes are the most important things. For his Problem or Project Method, Dewey laid
down the following five steps as essential:

(1) The pupil should have a genuine situation of experiences;

(2) A genuine problem should arise from this situation and should stimulate the
thinking of the child;

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(3) The child should obtain information or make observation(s) needed to deal with the
problem(s);

(4) The suggested solution(s) should occur to him;

(5) He should have an opportunity to test his ideas by application.

Dewey’s Conception of Democracy in Education:

According to Dewey, democracy means “equality of opportunity for everyone;
it means the emancipation of the mind as an individual organism to
do its own work.” It means freedom of thought as well as action. But freedom does
not mean unrestricted freedom.
It includes responsibility also. Dewey wants that education should reflect democratic
rights. They should have some say in matters of school organisation, selection of
textbooks, methodology of teaching etc.

The school authorities should not dictate in these matters. The students should also
enjoy learning freedom. A democratic system of education aims at the development of
individuality without obstacles from outside. This development means self-directed
development.

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In a democratic system of education the children will be trained to think, to act, to

develop qualities of initiative, independence and of an intelligent citizen. As regards
methods, the children will actively participate in the learning process. They will not be
passive recipients of knowledge. In a democracy, the child’s views will be honored.
Discipline in a democratic system of education will be free and through self-government
in the school.

Dewey’s Contribution to Education:

Dewey was an educational thinker and organizer par excellence. He was a great
philosopher, psychologist and educationist. His influence is far-reaching. He has
contributed immensely to every aspect of education in America as well as outside. His
motto was ‘Change for the Better’. He was more for practice than theory, more for
experimentation than speculation, more for action than thoughts.

We are grateful to Dewey for this lasting service to education. He introduced the
principle of activity in education. He intended that activity should be the basis of all
teaching and learning. He was the pioneer of the “Activity Movement” in education.
Parallel thinking of Dewey is observed in Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi.
Being contemporaries, they each seemed to have been influenced by the other two.

Dewey emphasised the necessity of relating education with the practical life of the child.
Education, he believed, divorced from the real situations of life is no education at all. He
stressed the practical value point of view in education.

The fusion of psychological and sociological aspects of education is the greatest

contribution that Dewey made to education-al thought. He held that the school should
foster a community of life, a process of living where the complexities of social life are
“simplified, purified and balanced.” The teacher said Dewey, is the senior member of the
school community rather than an officer appointed to impose certain ideas.

Dewey laid stress on both individual and social aspects of education. He emphasised the
necessity of studying the innate powers (capacities, impulses, interests) of the child, for
his successful education. He reconciled interest and effort. At the same time, he did not
fail to emphasise the social sanctions that govern education.

Without social media the individuality of the child cannot be developed to the desired
level. He rightly stressed that education is intended to be a means of preserving,
transmitting and advancing the culture of the community. Thus Dewey brilliantly made
fusion of these two standpoints (individual and social) in education. The credit of
emphasizing the development of the creative powers of the educand goes to Dewey.

One of the far-reaching and notable contributions of Dewey is the Project or Problem
Method. In the Project Method the child’s interests and purposes are the most
important things. Instead of learning lessons from the teacher, the pupils are faced with
some task to be accomplished, some problem to be solved.

He laid stress on the importance of the problem to stimulate effective thinking. The
Project Method is the practical outcome of Dewey’s philosophy. It is welcomed and
employed by educationists all over the world.

Dewey has rightly stressed on the need to train the pupils in cooperative activities and
democratic living in their community. Training for productive citizenship forms an
integral part of education. Dewey considered carefully and reasonably the growing
forces of democracy, science, industrialism, evolution and pragmatism.

He investigated almost all the aspects of human life and thought such as politics, ethics,
aesthetics, logic, religion and education. He has made notable contribution to every field
of his investigation. Dewey virtually discarded the old realm of knowledge.

He brought education more into accord with the activities of the present-day life. The
attainment of social unity was his goal. This was Dewey’s great message for school and
society. Dewey has made far-reaching contributions to the curriculum and methods of
teaching. He has successfully reconciled freedom and responsibility. His motto was an
education of, by, and for, experience.

The experiment in education developed by Dewey at Chicago in 1896 in his

experimental Laboratory School has stimulated the effort to bring the school into
intimate relation to the community life. He emphasised on the actualities of life in
education.

Educationists all over the world have agreed that pupil’s activity is the best method of
learning. Experimental schools in the present day are due to John Dewey. In the words
of Bertrand Russell, Dewey has an outlook which a “is in harmony with the age of
industrialism and collective enterprise.”

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

 Dewey’s Educational Theories and Aims of Education:

 Dewey’s Ideal School:
 Teachers in Dewey’s Scheme: Discipline:
 Dewey’s Conception of the Curriculum:
 Dewey’s Methods of Teaching:
 Dewey’s Contribution to Education:

Pragmatism: Meaning, Forms and Aims