John Dewey: Education's Charles Darwin - thestar.com:
"Toronto spent the past week debating education, wringing its collective hands over a proposal to introduce boys-only schools. Would it be a step forward toward progress, or a move back toward segregating the sexes?
If the boys schools are meant to better suit students' needs, then there's a good chance the idea would have garnered support from at least one big-time reformer, John Dewey."
Dewey was born 150 years ago last week, in 1859 – the year Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species. It would later be seen as a prophetic coincidence. Darwin was one of Dewey's deepest influences.
This Dewey – not to be confused with Melvil Dewey, of the library classification system – is widely considered the most important philosopher of education of the 20th century, founder of the progressive education movement. Yet while his 90th birthday in 1949 was treated as an international event, with U.S. President Harry Truman sending him a personal note, Dewey is today something of a forgotten figure.
Going to school in North America once meant learning by rote. Times tables, Latin declensions, the dates of battles, Keats's "Ode to a Grecian Urn" – it was all mindlessly repeated by students and memorized, usually in an authoritarian setting.
"Toronto spent the past week debating education, wringing its collective hands over a proposal to introduce boys-only schools. Would it be a step forward toward progress, or a move back toward segregating the sexes?
If the boys schools are meant to better suit students' needs, then there's a good chance the idea would have garnered support from at least one big-time reformer, John Dewey."
Dewey was born 150 years ago last week, in 1859 – the year Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species. It would later be seen as a prophetic coincidence. Darwin was one of Dewey's deepest influences.
This Dewey – not to be confused with Melvil Dewey, of the library classification system – is widely considered the most important philosopher of education of the 20th century, founder of the progressive education movement. Yet while his 90th birthday in 1949 was treated as an international event, with U.S. President Harry Truman sending him a personal note, Dewey is today something of a forgotten figure.
Going to school in North America once meant learning by rote. Times tables, Latin declensions, the dates of battles, Keats's "Ode to a Grecian Urn" – it was all mindlessly repeated by students and memorized, usually in an authoritarian setting.