45
The School and Society
This passage by John Dewey, a philosopher and educational reformer, was first
published in 1900.
Some years ago I was looking about the school supply stores in the city, trying to
find desks and chairs which seemed thoroughly suitable from all points of view—
artistic, hygienic, and educational—to the needs of the children. We had a good deal
of difficulty in finding what we needed, and finally one dealer, more intelligent than
the rest, made this remark: 'I am afraid we have not what you want. You want
something at which the children may work; these are all for listening.' That tells the
story of the traditional education. If we put before the mind’s eye the ordinary
schoolroom, with its rows of ugly desks placed in geometrical order, desks almost all
of the same size, with just space enough to hold books, pencils and paper, and add
a table, some chairs, the bare walls, and possibly a few pictures, we can reconstruct
the only educational activity that can possibly go on in such a place. It is all made 'for
listening'—for simply studying lessons out of a book is only another kind of listening;
it marks the dependency of one mind upon another. The attitude of listening means,
comparatively speaking, passivity.
There is very little place in the traditional schoolroom for the child to work. The
workshop, the laboratory, the materials, the tools with which the child may construct,
create, and actively inquire, and even the requisite space, have been for the most
part lacking. They are what the educational authorities who write editorials in the
daily papers generally term 'fads' and 'frills.'
We can also examine the uniformity of method and curriculum. If everything is on a
'listening' basis, you can have uniformity of material and method. There is next to no
opportunity for adjustment to varying capacities and demands.
It is in response to this approach that the curriculum has been developed from the
elementary school up through the college. There is just so much desirable
knowledge, and there are just so many needed technical accomplishments in the
world. Then comes the mathematical problem of dividing this by the six, twelve, or
sixteen years of school life. Now give the children every year just the proportionate
fraction of the total, and by the time they have finished they will have mastered the
whole.
If we take an example from an ideal home, where the parent is intelligent enough to
recognize what is best for the child, and is able to supply what is needed, we find the
child learning through the activity of the family. Inquiries arise, topics are discussed,
and the child continually learns. The child participates in the household occupations,
and thereby gets habits of industry, order, and regard for the rights and ideas of
others, and the fundamental habit of subordinating his activities to the general
interest of the household. Participation in these household tasks becomes an
opportunity for gaining knowledge. The ideal home would naturally have a workshop
where the child could work out his constructive instincts. The life of the child would
extend out of doors to the garden, surrounding fields, and forests.
Now, if we generalize all of this, we have the ideal school. There is no mystery about
it, no wonderful discovery of pedagogy or educational theory. It is simply a question
of doing systematically and in a large, intelligent, and competent way what for
various reasons can be done in most households only in a comparatively meagre
