The Child And The Curriculum Including The School And Society

The two short, influential books represent the earliest authoritative statement of the famed educator's revolutionary emphasis on education as an experimental, child-centered process. 4 halftones and 4 charts.

"The Child and the Curriculum" is a very insightful essay by John Dewey that displays a unique approach to the Child and the Curriculum. John Dewey understood that a child's development and learning styles had nothing to do with being rational or orderly, but that the child must learn in their current state of mind which is very different from an adult. This 1902 essay shows how children integrate educational experiences into a continuum of knowledge. This book explains the "how" and the "why" behind the importance of a curriculum that leaves room to explore, connect information, and for a child to experience the world around them through learning. Learn how to honor the individual, and watch as the student and the subject matter come together in a beautiful process that will produce a mature adult. John Dewey: 1859-1952, Educator and Philosopher.

This edition brings Dewey's educational theory into sharp focus, framing his two classic works by frank assessments, past and present, of the practical applications of Dewey's ideas. In addition to a substantial introduction in which Philip W. Jackson explains why more of Dewey's ideas haven't been put into practice, this edition restores a "lost" chapter, dropped from the book by Dewey in 1915.

Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child's experience; cease thinking of the child's experience as also something hard and fast; see it as something fluent, embryonic, vital; and we realize that the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process. -from The Child and the Curriculum In this single volume, readers will find two of John Dewey's insightful essays on education in America. He considered proper education to be fundamental to a functioning democracy. The problem, according to Dewey in The School and Society, with the old education model was that elementary schools did not encourage exploration and curiosity in their students. In The Child and the Curriculum, Dewey expands upon his definition of the ideal teaching method. A child's life, he says, is an integrated whole. A child will flow from one topic to another, taking a natural interest in subjects and dealing with a world of direct experience. School, on the other hand, addresses a world disconnected from a child's life. A more reasonable approach would be to strive to integrate their experience with the vast body of knowledge that society wishes them to know. By honoring the individual, both the student and the subject matter will come together in a process that produces a mature adult. American educator and philosopher JOHN DEWEY (1859-1952) helped found the American Association of University Professors. He served as professor of philosophy at Columbia University from 1904 to 1930 and authored numerous books, including How We Think (1910), Experience and Nature (1925), Experience and Education (1938), and Freedom and Culture (1939).

This timeless book contains two John Dewey classics: "The School and Society" and "The Child and the Curriculum." Both books reflect Dewey's style: concise and to the point. This text focuses on the effects and the power that teachers should have in affecting student lives. There is much discussion on Dewey's classic "educative" experiences and how education should be hands-on learning. In "The Child and the Curriculum," Dewey asserts that curriculum should emulate real life challenges and "occupations" of everyday life. Learning occurs in doing and not in repeating facts and figures on multiple-choice tests. It also continues to show why coursework should not be limited to multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and other methods of factoid memorization but rather coursework should include the exploration of skill-sets and also how the curriculum should provide a catalyst for knowledge and skill exploration. Like most Dewey books, "The School and Society" and "The Child and the Curriculum" should be required reading for all education programs and for all educators. Considered by many to be the only true American philosopher, Dewey once again provides a clear look at why education in America is sub-par in quality and effectiveness.

. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.