Chapter One: Traditional vs. Progressive Education

Let's begin by defining what Dewey actually means by traditional and progressive education:

1) Traditional Education: Education that is based upon the "process of overcoming natural inclination and substituting in its place habits acquired under external pressure" (17). "Subject matter education," as Dewey calls it, happens as information and skills that have been worked out in the past are transmitted to students. There is a pattern of organization that dictates learning, and as a result pupils tend to have an attitude of "docility, receptivity, and obedience" (18). This traditional mode is in essence--to Dewey--one of imposition from those in authority over their students.

2) Progressive Education: Education that is based upon students' impulses and interests, while taking into account that "there is an intimate and necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and education" (20).

Dewey is quick to mention the inherent flaws of traditional education. They are as follows: imposition of adult standards; teaching knowledge as a set of static principles; suppression of creativity, expression, and the cultivation of individuality; lack of learning through experience; acquisition of isolated skills without context; and its construction of the world as static rather than ever-changing (18-20). Yet, with all of these problems, Dewey strongly asserts that the worst thing to do would be to quickly switch to the opposite extreme. He states, "The problems are not even recognized [of traditional education], to say nothing of being solved, when it is assumed that it suffices to reject the ideas and practices of the old education and then go to the opposite extreme" (22). He calls for "a positive and constructive development of purposes, methods, and subject-matter on the foundation of a theory of experience and its educational potentialities" (22).

Before I explore Dewey’s idea for a theory of experience, I want to first express my own concerns about traditional education. Dewey mentions that “the gulf between the mature or adult products and the experience and abilities of the young is so wide that the very situation [traditional education] forbids much active participation by pupils in the development of what is taught” (19). For me, the absence of participation in any form for the student excludes that experience (here used loosely) from being educational. Whether it is through mental, emotional, physical or spiritual participation, education requires that a student gives a little piece of themselves to the process of learning in order for some portion of knowledge to flow into their being. As it is for most things of physical matter, you must create a space in order to position a given object within that space; so it is with the mind.

On the other hand, a problem exists for progressive education; it must not go too far in the opposite direction of traditional education. As Dewey states, “when external control is rejected, the problem becomes that of finding the factors of control that are inherent within experience. When external authority is rejected, it does not follow that all authority should be rejected, but rather that there is need to search for a more effective source of authority” (21). In other words, the problem is not with having a body/means of authority but with finding the right balance between authority and the freedom to encounter experiences of learning for yourself. Dewey ultimately conceives this balance as being a new philosophy of experience that serves as a foundation for issues of educational improvement. Yet, what is this “experience” as Dewey perceives it to be?