Experience And Education :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION

2008-05-10
THE BOOK GIVES YOU AN INSIGHT ON HOW EDUCATION SHOULD BE AND A COMPREHENSIVE ACCOUNT ON WHERE OR/AND HOW EDUCATORS LOOSE THE MARK.

Dewey

2008-05-02
The book was received in excellent condition. I was pleased that it arrived in a timely fashion, before my class started. I was kept updated on the progress of delivery. Great Service!

Perfect

2008-02-09
The book was in great condition. I am sure I probably could have paid cheaper going to a store, but this was easier for me.

Experience & Education by John Dewey

2007-12-18
If you are think about reading Experience & Education by John Dewey, get ready for a "heady" read. This book is very dense and thoughtful. If you are an educator be prepared to read this book at a slow pace and take notes. Dewey, illustrates two thoughts in education: traditional vs. progressive.

According to Dewey, traditional education is focused on content rather than process. Progressive education, is more of a free approach with freedom of choices being most useful in education. Throughout the book, the reader must understand the nature of human experience. Dewey theorizes that the human experience has two principles: continuity and interaction.

Continuity is a concept that people will influence the future, for better or for worse. Interaction, according to Dewey, refers to situational influence on one's experience. Meaning the present experience is a function of the interaction between the past experience and the present situations. An applied example of this would be a teacher's experience of a lesson. The lesson will have much to do with the teacher's past interaction with the content. And this past interaction will them manifest out with how the teacher thinks, arranges and presents the content in the lesson.

This is a great book of cognition and metacognition.

Nancy Linden

Timeless

2007-12-13
John Dewey's Experience and Education is a timeless treasure on the educational process in the United States. Although the language maybe flowery and dated the ideas are fresh and meaningful. I have worn out the binding in this short 91 page gem of learning theory from reading and rereading passages that are as relevant today as they were almost 70 years ago. As I continue in my process as a graduate student in education this book will be a worthwhile reference and inspiration. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the value of education.

Experiencing Experience and Education

2007-12-13
Experience and Education is the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education (Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received.

Analyzing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.

Experience is Not Enough 2006-11-09
Finally somebody who gets it! Unfortunately, as I read John Dewey's Experience & Education I constantly needed to remind myself that Dewey understood what education should be back in the late 1930s, and the "new" education, contemporary or "progressive" as he often referred to it reflects a new-fangled educational system that by today's standards would seem old fashioned. Regardless the times, Dewey's précis is "the rise of what is called new education and progressive schools is in of itself a product of discontent with traditional education". Though he outlines both the wrongdoings and celebrations of both traditional and progressive philosophies of education, Dewey's prescription is for a "sound philosophy of experience...not a name or slogan". The question remains nearly seventy years later, have we yet filled a prescription which lends educators the ability to look beyond the `isms' of educational philosophies and reason in terms of the greater realm of experience?

In 2006 educators are still wading through a sea of ever-changing views of education. According to Dewey, we continue to consent to struggling with new philosophies due to our disgruntlement with policies of the past. The "old" school of education was flawed because teachers were enforcers; experts of education that pushed "autocratic and harsh" arrangements upon students, withholding the undeniable experiences students sought and deserved. Traditional schooling demanded teachers uniformly enforce a "military regime of pupils who were permitted to move only at certain signals" impeding a learner's ability to experience intellectually beyond the surroundings of the habitual desks, blackboard, and meager school yard. Old schools imposed an appalling hypocrisy of memorization of facts and figures, historical dates and such all in preparation of the unknown future, with little regard to the present. Generally in an attempt to keep order, teachers failed to seek the cooperation of students in preparing the purposes of education and learning.

Therefore, in what was likely the backlash of traditionally educated pupils sprouted a generation of new-age educators referred to by Dewey as the progressive-ists. Bearing mind that progressive education realistically commenced at the end of nineteenth century, the wrongdoings of the era I shall now reflect upon, are quite a century old. While progressive education focused on the freedom of the learner, the dismissal of traditional education aroused contemporary difficulties when educators recognized that new education was more difficult than the old. Progressive schools, founded in life-experiences, were rarely well organized as few teachers truly conceptualized the discrepancies in experiences. Moreover, because children were perhaps overly indulged in the participation of learning purposes, school was an amusing fun time in which "visitors (were)...shocked by the lack of manners in students they came across".

As with all educational philosophies that withstand the test of time, the celebrations of such generally outnumber the wrongdoings. Traditional, as well as progressive schools were no exception. Traditional educators were able to keep order in the learning environment in turn providing more teachable time to study the foundations of education, upon which all future learning would take place. In addition, traditionalists valued one of the most important lessons of life: that of "mutual accommodation and adaptation" of others. Surely an adult visitor to a traditional school would be impressed with the periods of "quiet reflection" offered, even for the youngest of pupils. Progressive education was not without its celebrations. Because progressive educators emphasized the freedom of the learner, genuine education came through experience and children were allowed their natural tendencies to socialize and participate in the purposeful planning of the curriculum. New schools even offered the opportunity to study life-skills experiences such as homemaking and mechanics. Yet despite the moving-forward approach of progressivism, "we are told that our schools, old and new, are failing in...the ability to (produce students that) reason".

Experiences are not enough. Dewey reminds us in Chapter 3: Criteria of Education that not all experiences are educative and some are even mis-educative. Everything depends on the quality of the experiences, and that if experience is within and of itself a philosophy of education it requires a plan of what and how such experiences will be implemented. This plan, which Dewey submits as a "Category of Continuity" is responsible for discriminating between the experiences that are meaningful and those that are not. Educational processes must be measurable in terms of good growth, for example providing opportunities for future growth in decent directions. In what is perhaps the finest vignette of Experience & Education Dewey tells of a burglar who gains experience robbing others and as his experiences grow "the burglar may grow into a highly expert burglar" hence not all experiences constitute positive growth. Still within the principle of continuity are the outside sources (i.e. demographics such as income, neighborhood, ethnicity, etc.) and social set-up of the surroundings (equipment, books, materials of learning) that make up the experimental situation. Lastly, teachers must take into account how such experiences are going to enhance his students in the future.

Dewey suggests that educational experiences are vital as some people with little schooling have been given the "precious gift of the ability to learn from the experiences they have (had)", and certainly not all educational experiences occurred in the schoolroom. According to Dewey, good experiences (and bad) are acted upon by a single impulse. I wonder what it might feel like if I put my hand in the fish tank, a student of mine might ponder. Their purpose for choosing to act upon the impulse, which creates the experience, will end with an observation. In this case the student observes the surrounding conditions of the sensation of warm, flowing water, a rapidly moving, exotic, tropical fish, and the final numbness of the fingers when the fish confuses the daring hand with that of his food. The observations my student has just experienced will undoubtedly aid him in future situations. The knowledge of this experience may be enough to prevent future finger-numbing encounters with the tropical chiliad, as their judgment in imminent situations will be the collectivity of previous knowledge and observations.

While we can be aware of consequences through previous experiences, the goal of the educator is in finding material for creating organized learning experiences. The search for high-quality learning experiences could be in of itself a paradox to Dewey's decree that we need to get back to an education that is "pure and simple"; an education that is a reality and "not a name or a slogan". After all, the "sound philosophy of experience" Dewey seeks is in actuality a name and a "slogan" called Experiential Education, which finds its way into the progressive era, in-between the common schools movement and the eras of school reform. Therefore, in answer to my earlier question: Have we yet filled a prescription which lends educators the ability to look beyond the `isms' of educational philosophies and reason in terms of the greater realm of experience? No; because it is the very nature of educators and humans in general to philosophize a new wave of education as a result of our discontent with the current. And these waves of change are good as it defines the very character of learners; those whose experiences constantly alter the way we perceive the world.

Quite the "educative" experience 2006-05-13
This book is possibly just as important, if not more important now as ever before. Dewey asserts that true learning occurs by experience (labs, experiments, hands-on activities) and not by fact-learning and regurgitation of statements. It is important to note that he also claims that not all experiences are "educative."

As contemporary educational philosophy shifts to more a more standardized curriculum and testing methods (i.e. No Child Left Behind) educators need to review this American philosopher's ideas because the quality of education is becoming more "miseducative." If the current trend of education continues in the same direction I can only assume that Literature classes will also be reduced to multiple-choice tests. One can only assume that Dewey is cursing contemporary education from his grave.

This is a great text for the message and philosophy contained within its pages. It is extremely concise and takes a couple of hours to read. I recommend this to all educators at every level.

Also recommended: "The School and Society & The Child and the Curriculum" by John Dewey.

A 'must' for everybody interested in educational issues 2006-03-09
Dewey's 'Experience and Education' is a classic text, written by one of greater education expert all over the world and times. Everybody interested in education, social science and its impact nowadays should read this book. Basis of progressive schools, philosophy of education and many of the curriculi changes were outlined in thirties by John Dewey. Easy to read (even for non native english speakers like me), paperback, it is a 'must' for all the people, not only those engaged in educational issues, but also everyone who wants to learn about the recent social and cultural changes of the last century. Great book, amazing reading...!

not 2006-02-06
The pages are so yellow and the type so jammed that I am not willing to stain enough to read it.