Reflections on John Dewey

Sally Kleinknecht

University of Southern Indiana

For Education 603

Dr. Robert Boostrom

December 10, 2002

“Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in, learning by a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they are still so intrenched in practice (38)?” Dewey poses a great question! I see in my own limited amount of schooling and teaching, that although I have been taught otherwise in the past two years, I continue, for the most part, to teach in a “pouring in” fashion. In this paper, I would like to explore in the first part what Dewey means by “pouring in” and why he thinks we (educators) teach in that way. Secondly why I (and possibly other educators) teach this way, and what I can do to change in the future.

Dewey describes growth in education as “being an end” - that growth is an end in itself (50). One erroneous idea of growth instead is that growth has an end – that growth and development have a goal in mind that one can reach and then one is finished. The adult is the standard and a child must be educated so that he can reach that standard. With that philosophy, an educator needs only to fill the child with all the knowledge that will bring him up to the adult level. Dewey describes this method as “pouring knowledge into a mental and moral hole which awaits filling (51).” However, it is obvious in real life that growth happens continuously, whether physically or educationally. I did not stop learning once I graduated from high school or even college. I may have become an adult, but my learning didn’t stop. In fact, in many ways, my learning had just begun. Now, as a middle age adult going back to school, I see even more that growth and “the educational process is one of continual reorganizing, reconstructing, and transforming (50).” Teaching this semester at USI, I am already thinking ahead to next year – what I want to do differently, what I need to learn myself, how I need to change some of my methods, how I need to observe other professors to gain new and fresh ideas. I will (hopefully) never come to the end of my growth. Pouring knowledge into a child’s mind may give him an advantage in Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy, but does not constitute true learning. Nevertheless, how did we get to the point where learning is only bookish-facts and not life?

Dewey says that it happened very naturally as civilization advanced. When societies were small and self-contained, education was passed along from one generation to the next through the living and working together side-by-side. What was important to the group was passed on for the sake of survival of the group itself. Education was informal – one learned from watching those in authority (such as parents) and eventually doing those tasks with them. Education was experienced. As civilizations advanced, “learning by direct sharing in the pursuits of grown-ups became increasingly difficult (8).” More and more students were separated from the real life experiences. Instead of being on a farm and knowing how to milk a cow, how to distinguish between a Guernsey and a Hereford, or how to breed cattle, the student would read about it in a book. Most of what had to be learned was now stored in symbols – language. Certain facts were deemed important for all students to know, even though they may never encounter a farm or a cow. “Such material was relatively technical and superficial (8).” Education became isolated from the real world experiences. It also lost the camaraderie of working together in a group for a common cause – life itself.

If we, as educators, know that “pouring in” knowledge is not educating a child, then why do we do it? Dewey says that we know “that education is not an affair of ‘telling’ and being told, but an active and constructive process (38).” But that all we do is preach it – we do not implement it. He says the reason we do not implement it is that school environment is not equipped to put it into practice with all the “tools and physical materials. It also requires that methods of instruction and administration be modified to allow and to secure direct and continuous occupations with things (38).” Administrators would have to change how they manage the schools and teachers would have to change their method of teaching. I think Dewey knew it would take a complete overhaul of the system – even back in his time – to implement his philosophies. That may be why he started his own school; it was easier to start a new school than to reform an existing school. Is it possible to change our schools so that we are not just “pouring in” knowledge, but we are actually giving students experiences that connect them to the real world and transform them? Can change start with me – the bottom up, or does it need to start at the top – the administration? Since I can only change myself, let’s start with me. What have I experienced educationally that confirms some of Dewey’s thoughts and criticisms?

Both Paul and I were products of public school education, all the way from kindergarten through college. I look at Paul and he has such a wide range of knowledge that he is able to assimilate and use repeatedly. He grew up on a farm, went to Reitz taking some agricultural-related classes and then ended up at Purdue graduating in Agricultural Economics. He did not know if he wanted to farm or not, but he knew he would be in some agricultural field. Much of his education seemed to relate to his own personal knowledge base and experience. I think Paul’s education is a good example of Dewey’s technical definition of education, which is the “reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of subsequent experience.” Paul’s learning had meaning to him from the very beginning. His education took his real life experiences, i.e. the skeleton, and put meat on it. His mother was also a teacher, and he saw her enthusiasm for learning, which I think made a difference.

I, on the other hand, remember very little from school. I grew up in the city and had very few experiences that connected learning with life as Paul did with farming. I was involved in many activities – dance, piano, community service, student council, etc. and was valedictorian of my high school. However, the purpose of knowledge was for grades and grades alone. I enjoyed math like a good puzzle, but otherwise I was not challenged to think, or to put any of my knowledge to work. Life was totally segregated from my learning and my activities. After my sophomore year in college, I had to pick a major, so I did – physical therapy. It fit my personality and gifts well, and it was interesting to learn something finally that might be practical. Nevertheless, I still learned for grades – not for love of learning or for life itself. No one was able to help me make that connection. It took many years and much life for me to begin really to be educated. Home schooling Sarah was the beginning of education for me.

After Sarah was born, it was always assumed that she would go to public school (private school was out of the question financially). As she neared school age, we both had so many questions about what was best for her and for our family. We could give her so many more life experiences. I wanted her to love learning, unlike my experiences in grade school and beyond. Therefore, we made one of the hardest, yet most rewarding, decisions to date - to home school her. I knew, without reading Dewey but from experience, that to pour only facts into Sarah was not education. Dewey says, “To fill our heads, like a scrapbook, with this and that item as a finished and done-for thing, is not to think (147).” We wanted her to learn to think! However, even though I knew that, I had to fight the compulsion to do just that. It was far easier to teach facts alone for memorization on many arrays of subjects. This may be one reason of many that educators teach in this manner – it is easier to prepare. It also reflected well on the teacher (me) when Sarah appeared knowledgeable orally or on a written test. I wanted others (especially my family) to think we were doing a great job and how would they know that without Sarah being able to spout off all the states and capitals? If I felt that pressure as a home school mom, I can imagine the pressures that teachers are under to produce students who perform well. In addition, I would think that “pouring in” knowledge is the easiest short-term method to increasing test scores. Nevertheless, it takes dedication, time, and creativity, I think, to train for life, using meaningful experiences that relate to the present, instead of training for knowledge. It is a big risk because the results may not be evident quickly. Students may not score as well on standardized tests – proving their educability by our state’s standards. Home schooling was a risk that we decided to take. We used all of life experiences to teach Sarah – laundry, cooking, cleaning, budgeting, farming, auto mechanics and gardening to name a few. We also used community experiences to learn from, such as working at Impact Ministries in the inner city and working on a congressional representative’s campaign. We used travel to give her experiences outside of our own – from the inner cities of New York City, Chicago, Jackson, Mississippi and the Dominican Republic to the land of Germany for a year to rub shoulders with students who had grown up in 40 different countries. We read aloud books that narrated history from creation through now to give glimpses of worlds outside our own. Some of the biggest learning experiences came from things we did not seek – the deaths of her grandparents and her own physical ailments. These experiences cannot be learned from a book. Sarah is now a sophomore at Purdue – does she love learning? Yes and no. She loves learning from life, but is only tolerating learning subjects now that she sees no application – which, alas, is another lesson of life.

This is a summary of my past educational experiences, but what about my present? What keeps me from teaching my math students in the same manner that I taught Sarah? How do I keep from “pouring in” and, instead, challenge the students to think and experience math? I wish I had the answer – I wish Dewey would just tell me what to do. However, even if Dewey were alive, he would not tell me either. I need to use my own life experiences – reorganizing, reconstructing, and transforming them – to educate my students as only I can. That is the hard part and why I think most teachers do not do it. It takes work – hard, thought-provoking, work. We can go to seminars and classes, and hear all the good ideas and reasons why we need to change our teaching methods – as Dewey says, “It is preached; it is lectured; it is written about (38).” Nevertheless, in our busy and demanding society, we do not want to take the time and effort to reflect on our teaching and to change. I want to change, and have changed in many ways, but I still feel very constrained by what chapters are required of me to teach in a given semester before the student takes the final exam. I already have ideas for next time – trying to boost the student’s confidence in math, getting the student to relate his math to the outside world, and making it the student’s own problem (155) to name a few. I am looking forward to continued growth – trying new things and thus, expecting to fail in many of them. But, as Dewey say, “An ounce of experience is better than a tone of theory simply because it is only in experience that any theory has vital and verifiable significance (144).” I have the theory – now I just need the experience!