(1) About the essence of education. Dewey discussed the essence of education from various angles many times in his own educational theory. His views on the essence of education can basically be summarized by three important arguments he put forward, namely, "education is growth", "education is life" and "education is the continuous transformation of experience". He clearly pointed out: "Education is growth, and it has no other purpose except itself. If we want to measure the value of school education, we should see whether it can create a persistent desire for growth and whether it can provide a way to make this desire grow. " From the viewpoint that education is growth, Dewey also put forward that the essence of education is life from the perspective of the relationship between education and social life. He pointed out that children's instinctive growth always develops in the process of life, or that life is the social expression of growth. Therefore, education is life. In his view, people can't be divorced from the environment, and schools can't be divorced from the immediate life. The development and process of education is the immediate life itself. School education should focus on the existing life situation, rather than imposing future things and adult experience on children from the outside, otherwise it will ignore children's needs and interests and put them in a passive position in education. Dewey regards the essence of education as "the transformation or reorganization of experience" from the perspective of acquiring knowledge. This argument is completely based on his subjective empiricism and philosophical theory of agnosticism.
(2) About the purpose of education. Dewey discussed the purpose of education from many aspects, the most important of which was his discussion of "education has no purpose". Dewey believed that education is only a process, except this process, education has no purpose, or "in the process of education" has only purpose and "outside the process of education" has no purpose. The so-called "inside the educational process" means that the specific educational process determined by children's instinct, impulse and interest is the educational purpose, while the overall educational purpose determined by social and political needs is regarded as "outside the educational process" and dismissed as an external and fictional purpose. Based on this, Dewey proposed that we should pursue a "good educational purpose" and pointed out its characteristics: the educational purpose should be based on the individual activities, needs and existing abilities of the educated; The purpose of education must also be the method of organizing activity teaching, which can put forward the environment needed to liberate and organize students' ability; To set educational goals, we should avoid setting general and ultimate goals, but set current and various specific goals and so on.
(3) Basic principles of teaching. The core of Dewey's educational theory system is his teaching theory, and "learning by doing" is the basic principle of all his teaching theories. Fundamentally speaking, "learning by doing" is based on Dewey's empirical philosophy and instinctive psychology, and it is a central argument that completely denies the teaching of traditional education. Dewey comprehensively criticized the traditional teaching. It is pointed out that the basic principle and the most effective method of teaching is "learning by doing". On the issue of textbooks and courses, Dewey strongly opposes the textbooks centered on existing knowledge used in traditional education and the subject courses composed of such textbooks. He believes that it is against children's nature to impose such "prepared textbooks" on children. Various subject courses will only split and dismember children's own unified life experience, and will certainly hinder children's growth. He suggested that various activities, such as carpentry, ironmaking, cooking, sewing and various service activities, should occupy a central position in the curriculum. Dewey's most fundamental requirement in teaching methods is to teach in activities. He believes that the traditional classroom teaching is a situation in which students have no activities, and they can only "simply learn the texts in books" without developing students' production and thinking ability. Therefore, Dewey put forward that in the teaching process centered on students' active activities, "teachers and textbooks are no longer the only tutors for students, but the hands, eyes, ears and body are the sources of knowledge." The teacher became the initiator and the textbook became the experiment. In this way, teachers no longer play a leading role in teaching, but only play a staff role in assisting students' activities.