Missing Socialization in Today’s Public Schools
How do democratic public schools address the socialization of students? How are children brought together to make a kinder world? Does anyone even ask that question today?
This past weekend I read “My Pedagogic Creed” by John Dewey (a little light reading on a Sunday afternoon), and I was struck by how far our public schools have strayed from addressing the social needs of children and their families.
Even if you are no Dewey fan, his ideas about schools growing out of community, with special consideration of the child’s home life, are compelling. Dewey believed schools should be about this social connection.
He saw schools as “social institutions.”
Think how far we have strayed from this concept today. The total focus is on the student’s future. Yet, what we need most is to teach students, not only how to get along, but, and excuse me if it sounds mushy, how to be friends.
Several anti-social conditions surrounding today’s public schools jump out Missing Socialization in Today’s Public Schools:
