Any experience that could distorting the growth of further experiences can be described as miseducative

experiences (Dewey. 1938). As an early-years teacher, I find several real-life example about this theory
in my work environment, but the experiences from the students are mostly happen at home and
brought to the school environment. It is pretty common that young learners behaving on how they are
treated at home even when they are in school. So, how the parents treat them affects their behaviours
in school, including their willing to try or receive new experiences and knowledge. For example, one of
my students is pretty well-known to be very passive especially in physical activities. This behaviour
appear because the parents allow the child to not doing any activity that makes her uncomfortable
and/or that may cause any injury to her. This treatment makes the child would avoid any physical
activity and be very dependent to the adults (teachers) for simple tasks like opening her own snack box.
Unfortunately, the experiences of being passive and dependent affects the child in a negative way, her
development is below her classmates and she often refuses to join activities even for the art and craft.
The teachers need to show her how her friends enjoy the activities before she would finally join. In my
understanding, this could be classified as a miseducative experience. The treatment from the parents
gives her the understanding that it is okay to not participating in the activities in the school, which
obviously not true. The activities are designed to be age appropriate and give the students the
experiences they need to develop and grow, and her pre-existed knowledge on being passive prevent
her to participate in the activities and develop her potential in the maximum capacity.

Dewey combined both of continuity and interaction, continuity in learning refers to how the past and
present influence the future and the interaction is how the students’ situation affects their experiences
(Spanella. n.d). The influence can be positive and rich, but like the example above, it can be negative and
miseducative. As people naturally have their own level of cognitive domain, and recalling previous
information is one of the most basic cognitive domain skills, people would be able to make their own
connection of the previous experiences and the present experiences.

Miseducative experiences could happen when the educators (could be the teachers and parents) does
not understand the environment of the students developing (Montour. 2020). In my case, the parents
do not understand that some inconvenience may be needed to make sure that the young students learn
something new and developing. Knowing the students’ context such as cognitive, emotional, social and
cultural would help the educators to build the positive influence for the students for the future learning
experiences (LearnJam.com. n.d)

References

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. Touchstone Book.

http://ruby.fgcu.edu/Courses/ndemers/Colloquium/ExperiencEducationDewey.pdf

Learnjam.com. (n.d). What makes an effective learning experience?. https://learnjam.com/what-makes-

an-effective-learning-experience/
Montour, L. (2020). John Dewey's concept of mis-education. Presentation Lucie Montour.
https://www.linkreducation.com/en/content/john-deweys-concept-of-mis-education-presentation-
lucie-montour/25670

Spanella, T. (n.d). John Dewey on Education: Theory & Philosophy.

https://study.com/academy/lesson/john-dewey-on-education-theory-philosophy-quiz.html