Dewey want to Seymour Learning? It's not Godin be easy

PART 1

Does this ring a bell?

"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"

This is how John Dewey (Experience and Education, p17) characterised the traditional model of schools.

In my experience, the situation has not progressed very far in the eighty years since Dewey was writing. As a teacher in the 'university-preparation' stage of an international secondary schooI, I have spent most of my time in classrooms upholding this model for which:

"the attitude of pupils must, upon the whole, be one of docility, receptivity and obedience". (p18)

The goals are fixed (we make common cause with students, parents and administrators to attain the highest scores in public examinations). We do not ask whether the examining body's criteria benefit the student, we simply train her to jump through the hoops.

Dewey then contrasted tradition with 'certain common principles' of 'new education' which are:

"cultivation of individuality ... learning through experience ... acquisition of [skills] as means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal ... making the most of the opportunities of present life ... acquaintance with a changing world." (p19)

That description of an education will appeal to many people who read it, but since we appear to be powerless to change the goal, the means we employ to achieve it also remain largely the same as before.

PART 2

Project-based learning is inspired by Dewey's philosophy of education as a social activity. The differences between Project/Challenge/Problem based learning methods are not really significant; their similarities are the important issue. Each of them helps students to:

learn about Real-world issues

"students are pulled through the curriculum by a Driving Question or authentic problem that creates a need to know the material" (Introduction to Project Based Learning, Buck Institute of Education)

Reflect on how and what they are learning

"Judge it by what the whole system learns, and that includes the teacher." (Interview with Seymour Papert)

choose how they learn

"Emphasise student independence and inquiry" (John Larmer on Edutopia)

Sustain Focus on a topic

"Challenge Based Learning slows down the experience to allow for full participation, ongoing reflection, and self-discovery." (CBL and personalized learning, digitalpromise.org)

PART 3

But it is easy to say what is wrong with an institution; much more difficult is actually to bring about change for the better. Generations of educators have nodded along with John Dewey but, unlike most areas of society in which change has been rapid, very little progress has been made. I think this is because we are prematurely congratulating ourselves on seeing the problem, not realising that it is only the first small step in a journey with no map.

Dewey knew this:

"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". (p20)

In other words, can we set some new goals? If we don't (and usually, in schools, we try to skip this most difficult step), then the change we say we want will not occur. We have people like Dewey and Papert to help us, but we must listen and let them teach us to think deeply about the reasons for what we are doing.

PART 4

Something has to give. There are only so many hours in a student's career. If you're going to do a new thing, you have to retire an old thing.

"The trend towards portfolio-based, so-called authentic assessment is very good, but it's very limited unless it goes with throwing out the content of what we're testing." (Seymour Papert)

If you've ever seen a conversation between teaching subject-specialists as they try to identify content to throw out, you'll know how hard this will be. Yet it has to happen.

Furthermore, let's not kid ourselves that projects will be easier to implement. On the contrary:

"we're going to have to work very hard to make the stuff that they're going to learn. It's not going to come about just by teaching the old stuff in a more, "constructivist" way." (Papert)

PART 5

So, like our students, we have to read; we have to work hard.

And we have to think and learn.

"Please ask someone, “what is school for?” and don’t stop asking until we can agree on the answer and start taking action" (Seth Godin in Stop Stealing Dreams)

You can read Dewey's answer in Article 2 here.

This is what my family said (and no-one mentioned exams):

• School replaces human nature with more society-friendly characteristics (in his 20s)


• School is there to prepare you for adult life. And I'm not sure it does that for our lot... (50s)


• I think school is there to teach children to read, so that they can go out and choose their reading, whether it be fiction or non-fiction, freely and independently. (50s)


• School gives children their first opportunity to live in a society away from their home surroundings and to build relationships beyond the family. (70s)

What do you think school is for?