EXPERIENCE & EDUCATION
John Dewey
The great educational theorist's most concise statement of his ideas about the needs,
the problems, and the possibilities of education--written after his experience with the
progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories received.
"No one has done more to keep alive the fundamental ideals of liberal civilization." -
Morris R. Cohen
Experience and Education is the best concise statement on education ever published
by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the
twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education
(Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this
book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening
experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had
received .
Analyzing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that
neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because
neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience.
Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience
and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking
for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of
education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an
"ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most
readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of
experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both
orderly and dynamic.
"John Dewey is to be classed among those who have made philosophic thought
relevant to the needs of their own day. In the performance of this function he is to be
classed with the ancient stoics, with Augustine, with Aquinas, with Francis Bacon, with
Descartes, with Locke, with Auguste Comte."
--Alfred North Whitehead
"No one who is informed in the educational held can doubt for a moment the profound
influence of John Dewey on both the theory and the practice of American education."
--William Heard Kilpatrick
"John Dewey is unquestionably the preeminent figure in American philosophy; no one
has done more to keep alive the fundamental ideals of liberal civilization; and if there
could be such an office as that of national philosopher, no one else could be properly
mentioned for it."
--"Morris R. Cohen
Preface
ALL SOCIAL movements involve conflicts, which are reflected intellectually in
controversies. It would not be a sign of health if such an important social interest as
education were not also an arena of struggles, practical and theoretical. But for theory, at
least for the theory that forms a philosophy of education, the practical conflicts and the
controversies that are conducted upon the level of these conflicts, only set a problem. It is
the business of an intelligent theory of education to ascertain the causes for the conflicts
that exist and then, instead of taking one side or the other, to indicate a plan of operations
proceeding from a level deeper and more inclusive than is represented by the practices
and ideas of the contending parties.
This formulation of the business of the philosophy of education does not mean that the
latter should attempt to bring about a compromise between opposed schools of thought to
find a via media, nor yet make an eclectic combination of points picked out hither and
yon from all schools. It means the necessity of the introduction of a new order of
conceptions leading to new modes of practice. It is for this mason that it is so difficult to
develop a philosophy of education, the moment tradition and custom are departed from. It
is for this reason that the conduct of schools, based upon a new order of conceptions, is
so much more difficult than is the management of schools which walk in beaten paths.
Hence, every movement in the direction of a new order of ideas and of activities directed
by them calls out, sooner or later, a return to and practices of the past--as is exemplified
at present in education in the attempt to revive the principles of ancient Greece and of the
middle ages.
It is in this context that I have suggested at the close of this little volume that those
who are looking ahead to a new movement in education, adapted to the existing need for
a new social order, should think in terms of Education itself rather than in terms of some
'ism about education, even such an 'ism as "progressivism" For in spite of itself any
movement that thinks and acts in terms of an 'ism becomes so involved in reaction
against other 'isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its
principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of
actual needs, problems, and possibilities. Whatever value is possessed by the essay
presented in this little volume resides in its attempt to call attention to the larger and
deeper issues of Education so as to suggest their proper frame of reference.
John Dewey
JOHN DEWEY, probably the most influential of all American philosophers, was born
in Vermont in 1859. After graduation from the University of Vermont, he received a
Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University and taught at a number of major universities,
including the University of Chicago and Columbia. Before his death in 1952 he bad
gained an international reputation for his pragmatic approach to philosophy, psychology,
and liberal politics.
Among his important books in these areas are: How We Think (1910), Reconstruction
in Philosophy (1920), Experience and Nature (1925), and Logic The Theory of inquiry
(1938). The commission, which he headed, that investigated the Moscow trials of 1936-
37 is not example of the practical approach to political action which characterized him
throughout his life and made him a controversial figure among liberals (though
universally condemned by Communists).
In all likelihood, Dewey's most enduring influence is in the field of education.
Believing in the unity of theory and practice, Dewey not only wrote on the subject, but
for a time participated in the "laboratory school" for children connected with the
University of Chicago. His chief early work in this field, Democracy and Education
(1916), was the most comprehensive statement of his position. The present work, written
more than two decades later, shows how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of the
intervening experience of the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his
theories had received. Consequently, it represents the best concise statement on education
by the most important educational theorist of the twentieth century. Moreover, it is
probably the simplest and most readable extended statement on this subject that Dewey
ever made.
Editorial Foreword
Experience and Education completes the first ten year cycle of Kappa Delta Pi
Lecture series. The present volume therefore is, in part, an anniversary publication
honoring Dr. Dewey as the Society’s first and tenth lecturer. Although brief, as compared
to the author’s other works, Experience & Education is a major contribution to
educational philosophy. Appearing in the midst of widespread confusion, which
regrettably has scattered the forces of American education and exalted labels of conflict
loyalties, this thin volume offers clear and certain guidance toward a united educational
front. In as much as teachers of the “new” education have avowedly applied the teachings
of Dr. Dewey and emphasized experience, experiment, purposeful learning, freedom, and
other well-known concepts of “progressive education” it is well to learn how Dr. Dewey
himself reacts to current and educational practices. In the interest of clear understanding
and a union of effort the Executive Council of Kappa Delta Pi requested Dr. Dewey to
discuss some of the moot questions that now divide American education into two camps
and thereby weaken it at a time when its full strength is needed in guiding a bewildered
nation through the hazards of social change.
Experience & Education is a lucid analysis of both “traditional” and “progressive”
education. The fundamental defects of each are here described. Where the traditional
school relied upon subjects or the cultural heritage for its content, the “new” school has
exalted the learner’s impulse and the current problems of a changing society. Neither of
these set of values is sufficient in itself. Both are essential. Sound educational experience
involves, above all, continuity and interaction between the learner and what is learned.
The traditional curriculum undoubtedly entailed rigid regimentation and a discipline that
ignored the capacities and interests of child nature. Today, however, the reaction to this
type of schooling often fosters the other extreme--inchoate curriculum, excessive
individualism, and spontaneity, which is a deceptive index of freedom. Dr. Dewey insists
that neither the old nor the new education is adequate. Each is mis-educative because
neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience.
Many pages of the present volume illustrate the meaning of experience and its relation to
education.
Frowning upon labels that express and prolong schism, Dr. Dewey interprets
education as the scientific method by means of which man studies the world, acquires
cumulatively knowledge of meanings and values, these outcomes, however, being data
for critical study and intelligent living. The tendency of scientific inquiry is toward a
body of knowledge which needs to be understood as the means whereby further inquiry
may be directed. Hence the scientist, instead of confining his investigation to problems as
they are discovered, proceeds to study the nature of problems, their age, conditions,
significance. To this end he may need to review related stores of knowledge.
Consequently, education must employ progressive organization of subject- matter in
order that the understanding of this subject-matter may illumine the meaning and suffice
of the problems. Scientific study leads to and enlarges experience, but this experience is
educative only to the degree that it rests upon a continuity of significant knowledge and
to-the degree that this knowledge modifies or "modulates" the learner's outlook, attitude,
and skill. The true learning situation, then, has longitudinal and lateral dimensions. It is
both historical and social. It is orderly and dynamic. Arresting pages here await the many
educators and teachers who are earnestly seeking reliable guidance at this time.
Experience and Education provides a fine foundation upon which they may unitedly
promote an American educational system which respects all sources of experience and
rests upon a positive-not a negative- philosophy of experience and education. Directed by
such a positive philosophy, American educators will erase their contentious labels and in
solid ranks labor in behalf of a better tomorrow.
ALFRED L. HALL-QUEST,
Editor of Kappa Delta Pi Publications
Chapter 1
Traditional vs, progressive Education
MANKIND likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its
beliefs in terms of Either-Or, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities.
When forced to recognize that the extremes cannot be acted upon, it is still inclined to
hold that they are all right in theory but that when it comes to practical matters
circumstances compel us to compromise. Educational philosophy is no exception. The
history of educational theory is marked by opposition between the idea that education is
development from within and that it is formation from without; that it is based upon
natural endowments and that education is a process of overcoming natural inclination and
substituting in its place habits acquired under external pressure.
At present, the opposition, so far as practical affairs of the school are concerned, tends
to take the form of contrast between traditional and progressive education. If the
underlying ideas of the former are formulated broadly, without the qualification required
for accurate statement, they are found to be about as follows: The subject- matter of
education consists of bodies of information and of skills that have been worked out in the
past; therefore, the chief business of the school is to transmit them to the new generation,
In the past, there have also been developed standards and rules of conduct; moral training
consists in forming habits of action in conformity with these rules and standards. Finally,
the general pattern of school organization (by which I mean the relations of pupils to one
another and to the teachers) constitutes the school kind of institution sharply marked off
from other social institutions. Call up in imagination the ordinary school- room, its time
schedules, schemes of classification, of examination and promotion, of rules of order, and
I think you will grasp what is meant by "pattern of organization." If then you contrast this
scene with what goes on in the family, for example, you will appreciate what is meant by
the school being a kind of institution sharply marked off from any other form of social
organization.
The three characteristics just mentioned fix the aims and methods of instruction and
discipline. The main purpose or objective is to prepare the young for future
responsibilities and for success in life, by means of acquisition of the organized bodies of
information and prepared forms of skill, which comprehend the material of instruction.
Since the subject matter as well as standards of proper conduct pre handed down from the
part, the attitude of pupils must, upon the whole, be one of docility, receptivity and
obedience. Books, especially textbooks, are the chief representatives of the lore and
wisdom of the past, while teachers are the organs through which pupils rue brought into
effective connection with the material. Teachers are the agents through which knowledge
and skills are communicated and rules of conduct: enforced
I have not made this brief summary for the purpose of criticizing the underlying
philosophy. The rise of what is called new education and progressive schools is of itself a
product of discontent with traditional education. In effect it is (I criticism of the latter.
When the implied criticism is made explicit it reads somewhat as follows: The traditional
scheme is, in essence, one of imposition from above and from outside. It imposes adult
standards, subject-matter, and methods upon those who are only growing slowly toward
maturity. The gap is so great that the required subject matter, the methods of learning and
of behaving are foreign to the existing capacities of the young. They are beyond the reach
of the experience the young learners already possess. Consequently, they must be
imposed; even though good teachers will use devices of art to cover up the imposition so
as to relieve it of obviously brutal features.
But the gulf between the mature or adult products and the experience and abilities of
the young is so wide that the very situation forbids much active participation by pupils in
the development of what is taught. Theirs is to do--and learn, as it was the part of the six
hundred to do and die. Learning here means acquisition of what already is incorporated in
books and in the heads of the elders. Moreover, that which is taught is thought of as
essentially static. It is taught as a finished product, with little regard either to the ways in
which it was originally built up or to changes that will surely occur in the future. It is to a
large extent the cultural product of societies that assumed the future would be much like
the past, and yet it is used as educational food in a society where change is the rule, not
the exception. If one attempts to formulate the philosophy of education implicit in the
practices of the new education, we may, I think, discover certain common principles amid
the variety of progressive schools now existing. To imposition from above is opposed
expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity;
to learning from texts and teachers, learning through experience; to acquisition of isolated
skills and techniques by drill, is opposed acquisition of them as means of attaining ends
which make direct vital appeal; to preparation for a more or less remote future is opposed
making the most of the opportunities of present life; to static aims and materials is
opposed acquaintance with a changing world.
Now, all principles by themselves are abstract. They become concrete only in the
consequences, which result from their application. Just because the principles set forth
are so fundamental and far-reaching, everything depends upon the interpretation given
them as they are put into practice in the school and the home. It is at this point that the
reference made earlier to Either-Or philosophies becomes peculiarly pertinent. The
general philosophy of the new education may be sound, and yet the difference in abstract
principles will not decide the way in which the moral and intellectual preference involved
shall be worked out in practice. There is always the danger in a new movement that in
rejecting the aims and methods of that which it would supplant, it may develop its
principles negatively rather than positively and constructively. Then it takes its clew in
practice from that which is rejected instead of from the constructive development of its
own philosophy.
I take it that the fundamental unity of the newer philosophy is found in the idea that
there is an intimate and necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and
education. If this be true, then a positive and constructive development of its own basic
idea depends upon having a correct idea of experience. Take, for example, the question of
organized subject-matter-which will be discussed in some detail later. The problem for
progressive education is: What is the place and meaning of subject-matter and of
organization within experience? How does subject-matter function? Is there anything
inherent in experience, which tends towards progressive organization of its contents?
What results follow when the materials of experience are not progressively organized? A
philosophy which proceeds on the basis of rejection, of sheer opposition, will neglect
these questions. It will tend to suppose that because the old education was based on
ready-made organization, therefore it successes to reject the principle of organization in
toto, instead of striving to discover what it means and how it is to be attained on the basis
of experience. We might go through all the points of difference between the new and the
old education and reach similar conclusions. When external control is rejected, the
problem becomes that of finding the factors of control that are inherent within
experience. When external authority is rejected, it does not follow that all authority
should be rejected, but rather that there is need to search for a more effective source of
authority. Because the older education imposed the knowledge, methods,