Reflective Teaching- Thoughts on Dewey

 

Being both cursed and gifted with the ability to see and understand both points of an argument or decision, I can see the benefits and pitfalls of Dewey’s belief and theory on the education system. The bare bones are that Dewey believed tradition education was rooted in forcing students to memorize information that others set as important versus his idea that students should learn with and through their actual learning experiences and capitalizing on their interests.

My position is firmly in the middle as usual. I absolutely agree with Dewey, we should be capitalizing on the students interests and life experiences to make their learning the most relevant to them. When they are invested and engaged, learning happens faster, deeper, and is retained longer. However, some things need to be taught to children even if their interests do not lie there, like world geography, history, and math. At one time or another everyone hates these topics, but we still needed to know the information.

Our role as teachers and adults is to find the connection between student and content to make it relevant and interesting. We would be practicing Dewey’s more progressive ideas against traditional education, but also making sure the standards that have been set forth by states are being met.