Final thoughts: Dewey's Experience & Education

I just finished Dewey's book, Experience & Education. I have some thoughts to sum up my understanding (I found about 1/3 of it difficult to follow).

Dewey expresses that all education should be based on the learner's past experiences and should then build on those experiences to create new experiences... creating a never ending cycle. Starting with the current understanding of the learner allows them to build on what they already know to create further learning/experiences.

The educator's job is to facilitate this learning process and become a contributor to the student's learning. My understanding is that since no one student is learning the same thing (because no student will have the exact same knowledge or experiences), it is difficult, as Dewey expresses, for the educator to design curriculum to suit every student's needs.

When I was speaking to that woman I met that went to the University of Chicago's school that John Dewey claimed part of in his studies at, she expressed to me that she was very good at math as a student. Because of this "experience" and skill, she learned a lot of math when she was attending that school (as progressive ideals state: you learn based on what you already know... she knew math... she learned more math). The negative side, as she mentioned, was that she remembered occasionally not understanding the work she was to "add to her experience" and felt like a failure as a result. She also mentioned the absence of grades and felt that she was out of touch with other students from other schools, confused as a child as to why she was given different treatment. She did not feel there was a lot of group activity or working with other students as much as she would have liked.

Although Dewey's theory seems logical... that all education should be based on experiences of individual students, building on their intelligence and challenging them to further intelligences and higher learning in creating new experiences... it does not seem as fluid as expected. Students are not machines and are not always understanding of the next level of learning as well as they understood the previous lesson.

Finally, although I am not educated enough to be an advocate for either traditional (in which I suppose I teach at, although arguable) or progressive schools, I do believe that the responsibilities of educators listed in the book are respectable:

1. Problems grow out of conditions of experiences being held at present and within the range of the capacity of the students.
2. It is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and production of new ideas.