Dewey: Learning by Doing

Knowledge is the daughter of experience.

—Leonardo da Vinci, 1500

We believe only what we have experienced.

—Empedocles, early Greek philosopher, 450 B.C.

We learn by doing.

—John Dewey, Schools of Tomorrow, 1915

John Dewey (1860–1952), already a force in American education in 1900, exercised an increasing influence right down through the 1930s, particularly through his advocacy of the "progressive education" movement. His theories continue to live on today in Constructivism, with its learner-centered environment (see Constructivism). More popularizer than original theorist, Dewey very much mirrored his time, championing the trend away from Hegelian idealism toward experimental psychology and philosophical pragmatism, as exemplified in the works of William James. Dewey also caught the spirit of Darwinism and rode its evolutionary, organic thinking through a series of "ism's" variously termed experimentalism, instrumentalism, operationalism, and functionalism. Dewey's impact cut two ways. On the one hand he influenced progressive education, with its notoriously misguided emphasis on empty educational "method" at the expense of real content. But on the other hand, his writings promoted two aspects of educational theory and practice that are still central today:

• Scientific Method: Learning through observing

• Empirical Experience: Learning through doing

Dewey's two major books on learning were How We Think (1910), which recommends the use of the scientific method in educational psychology, and Democracy and Education (1916), which is a summary of the evolution of educational philosophies. The latter book takes the reader on a journey from the class-bound educational theories of Plato down through the individualistic theories of Rousseau and nation-state theories of Hegel, to the twentieth century's democratic theories of education. The excerpts below are taken from both these works.

Maxims from Dewey

• We Learn by Doing. "Recognition of the natural course of development always starts with situations involving learning by doing." "Education that associates learning with doing will replace the passive education of imparting the learning of others."

• We Learn by Observing, Reflecting, and Experimenting. "The scientific interest which requires personal observation, reflection, and experimental activity will be added."

• Mastery Through Experience, Not Information. "Master the problems of experience, not the piling up of information."

• Learning Is Continuous Learning. "The educational process is its own end, one of continually reorganizing, reconstructing, transforming."

• Everyday Application Is Key. "[Education carries an impact] as long as the student has a need for it and applies it to some situation of his own. Every new idea should be worked out in application."

• Learning Postulates Inquiring Minds. "Schools are unfortunately better adapted, as John Stuart Mill said, to make disciples rather than inquirers."

• Practice, Not Theory. "It is never as easy to fulfill requirements in practice as it is to lay them down in theory."

• Avoid Sheer Information Disconnected from Doing. "Only in education—never in the life of farmer, sailor, merchant, physician, or laboratory experimenter—does knowledge mean primarily a store of information aloof from doing."

• Knowledge Comes from the Physical World (Practice and Reflection). "Plato's 'knowledge' was based on cobblers, carpenters, and players of musical instruments."

Fastpaths

1899	John Dewey: Lectures in the Philosophy of Education. Contains an interesting critique of Herbart, one of Dewey's forerunners. (See Herbart.)
1910	John Dewey: How We Think. See above for comments.
1915	John Dewey: The School and Society. Cites Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Montessori, among others, as his forerunners.
1915	John Dewey: Schools of Tomorrow. Along with the titles of 1910 and 1916, this is the third most important of Dewey's books on learning, and in many ways his most satisfying, thanks to the concrete examples involved. The book is a series of case studies of schools, with Rousseau's "natural development and growth" theme playing the lead role throughout the entire book. By "schools of tomorrow," Dewey is referring to "progressive" education, which will become the reigning educational creed for teachers in the 1920s and 1930s and later give rise to modern Constructivism, with its emphasis on Rousseauian "guided" experiential learning environments.
1916	John Dewey: Democracy and Education. See above for comments.
1945	Robert Ulich: History of Educational Thought.
1947	Robert Ulich: Three Thousand Years of Educational Wisdom.
1973	George Dykhuizen: The Life and Mind of John Dewey.
1981	Richard Bernstein: John Dewey.
1987	E. D. Hirsch: Cultural Literacy. Describes some of the damage that Dewey and the progressive education movement have done to American education through the privileging of educational "method" over content and knowledge; a sane plea for standards, competencies, and a back-to-basics movement.
1995	Alan Ryan: John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism.
1996	Michael Sandel: "Dewey Rides Again," New York Review of Books (May 9, 1996).

See also Constructivism Herbart Rousseau