In praise of Dewey

One of my favorite observations from John Dewey is that children constantly ask questions... except in the classroom. It's worth thinking about for a while and what it says about our goals in education.

What are we doing that where we want people to learn we create an environment to make active and curious people passive and non-curious?

I expected I would like teaching when I started. Since learning about Dewey and his legacy and concluding that I would not lecture or give tests, I love teaching. Most of my students say they've never taken a course like mine and want to know how they can take more.

Diane Ravitch's book The Uncertain Crusade has an interesting chapter on the rise and decline of "progressive education." Dewey himself was not happy with all that went under that name. Based on the little I have read of Dewey, his model of a school demanded better and better-trained teachers than what it aimed to replace. However, given how vaguely he wrote, he could hardly blame others for misunderstanding.

We should politicize education. That will end well.

In France Dewey influenced Freinet : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9lestin_Freinet