Democracy and Education - Softcover

Dewey, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1406861022 ISBN 13: 9781406861020

Publisher: Echo Library, 2007

Synopsis

John Dewey (1859-1952) believed that learning was active and schooling unnecessarily long and restrictive. His idea was that children came to school to do things and live in a community which gave them real, guided experiences which fostered their capacity to contribute to society. For example, Dewey believed that students should be involved in real-life tasks and challenges: maths could be learnt via learning proportions in cooking or figuring out how long it would take to get from one place to another by mule history could be learnt by experiencing how people lived, geography, what the climate was like, and how plants and animals grew, were important subjects Dewey had a gift for suggesting activities that captured the center of what his classes were studying. Dewey's education philosophy helped forward the "progressive education" movement, and spawned the development of "experiential education" programs and experiments.

About this title

About the Author:

John Dewey (1859–1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been very influential to education and social reform. Dewey, along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism and of functional psychology. He was a major representative of the progressive and progressive populist philosophies of schooling during the first half of the 20th century in the USA. Although Dewey is known best for his publications concerning education, he also wrote about many other topics, including experience and nature, art and experience, logic and inquiry, democracy, and ethics. In his advocacy of democracy, Dewey considered two fundamental elements—schools and civil society—as being major topics needing attention and reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality. Dewey asserted that complete democracy was to be obtained not just by extending voting rights but also by ensuring that there exists a fully-formed public opinion, accomplished by effective communication among citizens, experts, and politicians, with the latter being accountable for the policies they adopt.

About this edition

• Publisher: Echo Library
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1406861022
• ISBN 13: 9781406861020
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264