John+Dewey+Page

** John Dewey Project - Group Work ** Group 1 (Matt and Michelle) Group 2 (Jessica and Lindsey) Group 3(Laura, Kim and Katie) 

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." -John Dewey

__John Dewey, Prior to Becoming the "Father of (Progressive/Modern/American) Education" __ ** Childhood and Education: __﻿ __**  ** Pursing a Career and Continuing Education: **
 * John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859 in Burlington, Vermont. The picture below shows his childhood home and also his birthplace.
 * Dewey was the third children born to his parents Archibald and Lucina. His father loved literature and his mother practiced Calvinism. Calvinism is a religion in which one's faith is expressed through moral behavior and good works.
 * His father served in the Civil War and as a very young child John witnessed the horrors of way (1861-1865)
 * Dewey earned average grades in school and entered the University of Vermont at the age of 15. He excelled in Science.
 * During his senior year at the University of Vermont, Dewey discovered the world of ideas. Once Dewey enrolled in courses on psychology, religion, ethics and logic he become much more interested in his schooling than he was during his previous language and Science courses.
 * After being introduced to the works of different philosophers the quality of Dewey's school work improved and after 5 years in college, at the age of 19, Dewey graduated second in his class.
 * After graduating from the University of Vermont, Dewey was unsure what type of career he wanted to pursue but he had an interest in teacher.
 * After enjoying his summer off Dewey's cousin, who was a principal at a seminary in Pennsylvania, helped land him a teaching job at his seminary.
 * In his spare time Dewey continued to read philosophy.
 * Dewey taught at the seminary for 2 years and then his cousin resigned as principal. With his cousin's resignation Dewey lost his job as well.
 * Dewey then returned to Vermont where he became the only teacher at a private school in Charlotte.
 * While back in Vermont, Dewey was able to meet up with a former professor. The former professor was H. A. P. Torrey and the two of them would get together often to discuss Dewey's readings in ancient and modern philosophy.
 * It was around this time that Dewey decided he wanted to pursue a career in philosophy and applied to John Hopkin's Univeristy. At this point in history the majority of philosophers were religious men who placed more importance on religious ideas than on creative thought.
 * In 1884, Dewey completed his doctorate program and earned his Ph.D from John Hopkin's University. He was almost immediately offered a teaching position at the University of Michigan. (Picture below taken in 1885 with his colleagues at the University of Michigan)
 * It was in Ann Arbor, Michigan that he met his wife Alice Chipman. They would eventually have 7 children. (Picture below shows Alice Dewey with their son Gordon who died at age 8 on a European trip)
 * It was also in Michigan, while traveling the state to monitor the quality of college preparation courses, that Dewey became very interested in the problems in education.
 * After reading William James's //Principles of Psychology// Dewey became a firm believer in "instrumentalism," the belief that thinking is an activity which, at it's very best, is directed toward solving problems.
 * In 1894, Dewey and his family move to Chicago where he accepted a position as the head of a new department of philosophy and psychology at the University of Chicago. (Picture below taken during Dewey's time at the University of Chicago)
 * It was at the University of Chicago that Dewey decided to start a school to test his new theories of education, this would become the Laboratory School.
 * The Laboratory School was ran by Dewey until 1904 when he resigned because of a conflict over his wife's employment.
 * After resigning from the University of Chicago, Dewey got a job at Columbia University in New York City. It was here that he spent the remainder of his teaching career. (Picture below was taken during Dewey's years at Columbia)
 * The progressive education movement begins in the 1920's and is based on Dewey's ideas.
 * Dewey retired from teaching in 1930. Yet, he continued to publish works clarifying his ideas.

**A Few Key Points: ** 
 * Thought, for Dewey, was part of a process by which man related to his surroundings.
 * Dewey believed that a consistent model of education could train men to break through habit into creative thought.
 * Dewey saw American democracy, which he considered the best form of government, challenged by the effects of the industrial revolution, which had led to too much wealth in the hands of a few men. This threat, he believed, could be met by the right kind of education.
 * The "progressive education" movement of the 1920s was based on Dewey's ideas.

I thought I would try to condense the most important aspects of Dewey's life and what made him the philosopher and educator that he was (above) and focus on the significance of the Laboratory School (below). It was said that Dewey was a shy and quiet man, and as a teacher he sometimes put some of his students to sleep. I think that reading some of Dewey's work over the past couple weeks there have certainly been points where I can not argue with that! Therefore, hopefully this will be a place for just the bare basics and overall themes. 

**<span style="color: #0d0d8c; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 22px;">The University of Chicago Laboratory School ** **<span style="color: #0d0d8c; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 22px;">a.k.a. ** **<span style="color: #0d0d8c; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 22px;">The Dewey School ****<span style="color: #0d0d8c; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">﻿ <span style="color: #0d0d8c; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 22px;">﻿ ** <span style="color: #0d0d8c; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 18px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left;">The benefits of "learning by doing," or learning what is practical and current seems natural and obvious to many educators. I think we can all say that we learned more in our 1 (maybe 2) semesters of student teaching than in all our previous semesters of undergrad combined. However, when John Dewey set forth to create a school in which education through experience formed the foundation of it's curriculum this was not standard practice. When John Dewey established the Laboratory School is grew quickly. It was the first time in which the curriculum emphasized the child rather than the subject matter. <span style="color: #800000; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 22px; text-align: center;">~﻿Photographs of Traditional Classrooms in the Progressive Era~ <span style="color: #800000; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: medium; text-align: left;">Prior to the era when Dewey developed his Laboratory Schools at the University of Chicago the majority of students were attending schools in which they basically followed directions given by their teachers throughout the day. During this time learning basically consisted of rote memorization and the idea of differentiation was completely foreign. Each day students would perform the same series of exercises; exercises that had no relevant use outside of the classroom. Educators did not think about how certain lessons were useful outside the classroom. The teaching profession was not highly sought after and becoming a teacher was relatively easy. Student teachers were placed in classrooms within months of training at state schools. In fact, the school system was in such shambles that in 1893, one pediatrician spent a great deal of time to research and then published a book entitled __The Public School System of the United States__. In his book, Rice stated that he witnessed apathy, incompetence, and even corruption almost everywhere within the educational establishment. He also felt that teachers were hired based on politics and that the least able teachers--he felt there were plenty of them--were usually placed in the lowest grades on the theory that they required less effort (//it's okay if your blood is boiling--mine was too//). <span style="color: #800000; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 33px; text-align: center;">This photo was taken in an American school between 1900-1910. Notice the desks are all connected and bolted to the floor and that walls are pretty much bare. Also, notice the students looked thrilled! This photo was taken in 1923. But, the desks are still in rows and the walls are still very dull and bare. This is a floor plan for a one room school house in Michigan. It was designed in the 1890's but the models was used up until the 1950's. Once again, all desks in straight, narrow rows with the teachers desk located directly at the front on the classroom. Where did they have their "class meetings" or gather around their easel? They certainly couldn't just push the desks aside considering they were likely bolted to the floor. ~Photographs of the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago~ During the 1890's John Dewey and a group of forward-thinking educators believed they could change American Schools. Together this group of scholars launched the "Laboratory School." Dewey considered this school a laboratory to test his notion that education could integrate learning with experience, hence the name. At this same time many universities were conducting similar experiments, however, Dewey's laboratory school was also very humanistic in it's approach. Dewey wrote that students learn and grow best in a //"embryonic community life, active with types of occupations which reflect the life of the larger society, and permeated throughout the spirit of art, history, and science."//It was because of this that Dewey's Laboratory School classrooms represented small communities. Students worked in groups on practical projects that were incorporated into larger lessons. The students were also taken on field trips outside of the school often. They would visits farms to learn about orchards and harvest or local stores to learn about various jobs like clerks and delivery positions. Within a few years of starting his s chool, Dewey listed a set of beliefs that he hoped his successors would follow for years to come:
 * <span style="color: #800000; display: block; font-size: medium; line-height: 33px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"> Students begin learning by experimentation and develop interests in traditional subjects to help them gather information.
 * <span style="color: #008000; display: block; font-size: medium; line-height: 33px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Students are part of a social group in which everyone learns to help each other.
 * <span style="color: #008000; display: block; font-size: medium; line-height: 33px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Students should be challenged to use their creativity to arrive at individual solutions to problems.
 * <span style="color: #008000; display: block; font-size: medium; line-height: 33px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;">The child, not the lesson, is the center of the teacher's attention; each student has individual strengths which should be cultivated and grown.

<span style="color: #008000; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">Elementary geography class at the Laboratory School. Notice the sand table puts <span style="color: #008000; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">an end to the standard rows and the walls are covered with information, maps, and diagrams. <span style="color: #008000; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">At the Laboratory Schools, students studied different roles by actually "doing" what it was they were learning about. They were given the opportunity to experience these things first hand. <span style="color: #008000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> <span style="color: #008000; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; text-align: center;">T<span style="color: #008000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">his photo was taken at the Laboratory School in 1904. <span style="color: #008000; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">Students are seen here dancing around a Maypole. <span style="color: #008000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> <span style="color: #008000; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #008000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">As the caption reads, this picture was taken in the garden at the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago, sometimes referred to as the University Elementary School. The students are making models of the pet rabbits.

<span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 170%;">**"If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow."** <span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 170%;">**-John Dewey** <span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 170%;">**1859 - 1952**

<span style="color: #0d0d8c; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 90%;">~This portion of the overall class wiki, on John Dewey, will continue to be added to as we learn and discuss more about Dewey.~ <span style="color: #0d0d8c; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;">

<span style="color: #be8813; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 130%;">﻿<span style="color: #be8813; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 80%;">Thoughts/Comments/Questions should be addressed in the "discussion" tab of this page.

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