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John Dewey is renowned
as one of the prominent figures in educational history. His impact upon American
education has been immense. Born in Burlington, Vermont, October 20,1859, John
Dewey got education in Vermont, graduating in 1879 from the University of
Vermont. For two years taught school in Pennsylvania. His article "The
Metaphysical Assumptions of Materialism" published in the Journal of Speculative
Philosophy in April 1882 enjoyed favorable response from the critics. He got a
doctoral degree in philosophy from the Johns Hopkins University in 1884.
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John Dewey’s philosophical and educational theory
Dewey was swayed by the theory of evolution. He acclaimed that the mind as well
as the body evolved, and that idea arises from happenings and is nothing more
than plans of action by which the organism adjusts adequately to his
surroundings. Where as is the process by which man adjusts and it begins as an
outcome of the felt need of the individual and also all thinking is problem
oriented. Further, the product of human thought is the tool of action. Human
thinking occurs in a social environment and the social service is the test by
which truth is established. Dewey emphasized that the truths of philosophy are
not vested. In case the scientist is subjected to carefully scrutinize hi
hypothesis of controlled observations and verification, so must the philosopher.
The philosophical area of metaphysics is thus insignificant by reason of the
problems that do not lend themselves to this kind of inspection.
One of his philosophical thought is that the best form of government is
democratic government along with the growth. In truth, the value of education
exists to the extent it creates a hunger for continued growth. A man is good to
the extent that he is growing or becoming better. At this time, in a democracy
the free exchange between men permits modification, change and growth.
With regard to the school, Dewey said that the school is a miniature community
as it provides for social and individual growth. He forlorn the teaching of
subjects for their own sake and said that any subject is just a means and not a
end in itself. Thus, it is the means, by which the individual rebuilds his
experience, deduce it’s meaning and thereby prepares him for the future. The
only freedom with surviving significance is the intellectual freedom of
perception and judgment exercised for an intrinsically deserving end or aim.
Education is a reconstruction of experience, which adds meaning and competence
in the directing of following experience. The subject matter of the school
should consist of realities, which are noticed, remembered, read, vexed and
implied for the aim of solving some felt problem, and interest and encouragement
are fundamental elements in the learning process. The idea of experience
involves the aspects of doing and undergoing. When the individual goes through
something, he both acts upon it and takes pleasure from or undergoes the
outcomes of it. The association between these active and passive elements in
experience is the standard of the experiential value. Dewey bemoaned the firm,
passive and unquestioning methods of the traditional schools. Lectures only
provide the individual with data. The pupil must act upon the information via
experience former to the acquirement of knowledge. Discipline is interior and
positive and pupil must be trained to ponder his actions so that he will
undertake them with consideration. A pupil is regularized when he comprehends
what he must do and is moved to take upon oneself the action quickly, using the
required means obligatory. When the pupil maintains the ability to experience in
an intelligently induced course of action in the face of impediments, he is
disciplined. He advocated that the children must never be treated exactly alike.
Every other child has it own needs and experiences, which are uniquely his own.
The child should be
interested in and disciplined in the direction of the development and
maintenance of intelligence on an individual basis. Because society changes, the
individual pupil must ascertain how to think in order to contend with a mutable
environment. When a school accomplishes this with each child, the school no
longer eternalizes society; rather it becomes an essential force in the
reconstruction of society.
John Dewey, whose views have influenced much recent discourse on aesthetic
education, sustained the conception of the ‘esthetic’ as integrating intellect,
emotion, and physical dimensions of the individual. Dewey evades the
uninterrupted link between the aesthetic and the ethical, but attacks the
difference within art and every day life. This difference disappears in what
Dewey refers to as the 'esthetic experience,' an extended form of experience
including a live creature's determined interplay with its environment; this
interplay in turn bring together phases of doing and holding up the aftereffects
of one's actions. Customary experiences, which hold these extents, are
distinguished from esthetic experience in the fact that the following includes a
clear permanence between doings and undergoing. The effort combines intellect,
feeling and systematic functions; and the altogether outcome is a kind of
culmination permeated by meaning, a reigning emotion, and systematic
perseverance.
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