In Dewey's view, education is the process of children's life now, not the preparation for their future life. The best education is "learning from life" and "learning from experience" Therefore, the purpose of education lies in the process of education, and education has no purpose except itself.
The biggest waste of the school is that students can't use the experience they have gained outside school completely freely; At the same time, he can't apply what he learned in school to his daily life. Make children lack the ability of real life, become obedient, obedient and careful, and lose their innovative spirit and sense of responsibility.
Dewey put forward the idea that "education is life" in order to change the disadvantages of traditional education, which attaches too much importance to the teaching of predecessors' knowledge and ignores children's participation in social practice.
But how?
He believes that the teaching process is divided into five steps accordingly. First, the teacher provides the child with a scene related to the current social life experience; Second, the children are ready to deal with the problems in the situation; The third is to let children think and suppose to solve problems; Fourth, children arrange and arrange their own assumptions to solve problems; Fifth, children test these hypotheses through application. This teaching process is the famous "five steps of teaching" in the history of education.