I. Nature of realization or appreciation
There are two kinds of human experience, one is our personal participation, not through the intervention of representative media, which is direct experience; The other is the experience gained through language and other media, which belongs to indirect experience. The scope of personal direct experience is very limited. Without the intervention of distant media, our experience would almost stay at the level of barbarian experience.
School education should link direct experience with textbooks expressed by symbols quickly and effectively. Before teaching can completely convey things and ideas through symbolic media, school education must provide many real situations, and individuals should participate in such situations to understand the meaning of materials and the problems conveyed by materials. From the students' point of view, the gained experience itself is valuable; From the teacher's point of view, these experiences are a means to provide teaching materials needed to understand the use of symbols, and also a means to arouse an open attitude towards the materials conveyed by symbols.
In primary education, the requirement of direct experience background is the most obvious, but this principle also applies to the primary stage of every subject. How direct experience becomes indirect experience, appreciation and understanding also need knowledge background. Knowledge background is a necessary condition for appreciation. In order to make indirect experience a cognitive experience, we must appreciate the media and get information. And appreciation depends on imagination. For example, a poem is an indirect experience. You can appreciate this poem through words, or you can listen to recitation, with the help of your imagination, and finally get the message and turn this poem into your own cognition.
Dewey said that without the process of appreciation, those symbols are just information and cannot enter the cognitive cycle. Sometimes I can understand, I can understand, I can't use it. For example, even if you recite a mathematical formula, you won't use it because you don't appreciate it. Use your own thinking to understand. That kind of knowledge is just dead knowledge, it can't be your knowledge.
Three principles are derived from the meaning of "appreciation": the nature of effective or true value standards; The position of imagination in appreciating reality; The position of art in curriculum.
(1) The nature of the evaluation standard. Every adult has gained a certain standard of the value of various experiences in the past experience and education process. Educators teach their own standards to their children, so that the standards taught are only a symbol or symbol. If parents teach their children to respect the elderly and bow to greet their elders, the child may be able to do it on the surface, but his heart does not agree with his parents' standards, so his greetings are just a form and have not been internalized. If his parents were not present, he wouldn't do what his parents asked.
(2) The appreciation of reality must be distinguished from the experience expressed by symbols. Even if it is a pure "fact", only an imaginative personal response can truly feel valuable. Imagination is a medium that can be appreciated in every field of knowledge.
(3) The position of literature and art in the curriculum. Dewey's art here is not only sketch, gouache, oil painting, but also practical art. As long as the results of his own activities have use value or aesthetic value, they can all enter the category of "art". This kind of art can be extended to many things in practice, as long as it is the result of one's own labor or something worth cherishing. Appreciation means expanding and strengthening underestimation. For a three-year-old child, it is very happy to be able to count dozens of Arabic numerals.
Second, the course evaluation
The theory of educational value includes not only the appreciation nature of the original evaluation criteria, but also the special orientation of evaluation.
The meaning of evaluation is an act of liking something and caring for it, and it also includes an act of judging the nature and weight of its value relative to other things. Evaluation is to evaluate the value.
Dewey values the intrinsic value of things, not the external evaluation. He thinks that as long as any subject can attract people immediately, there is no need to ask what is the use of it. As long as students can keep their thirst for knowledge, don't point out what special purpose this kind of learning should have. In other words, interest itself is valuable, and you don't have to care about its usefulness. If a student really likes painting and insists on painting every day, then you don't care about the use of painting for his future. Painting itself is valuable.
The value of tools is the subject you study, so it is valuable for purposes other than the subject. The value of tools has intrinsic value as a means to an end. Life is the reason for its own existence, and the clear practical value that can be put forward can only exist because they increase the experience content of life itself.
Third, the division and organization of value.
Dewey concluded: it is the result of social groups and class segregation to give each subject independent value and treat the whole course as a mixture of independent values. Therefore, the educational task of democratic social organizations is to fight against this isolated phenomenon and make various interests support and influence each other.
20 18/2/22
PS: 90-day Challenge Training Camp in University Hall. Chapter 46