Dewey is an educator who put forward that "education is life".
First, personality theory.
(1) Education is life: Dewey believes that education is the process of children's life, not the preparation for future life. He said: life is development, and continuous development is life. Therefore, the best education is "learning from life and learning from experience". Education is to provide children with conditions to ensure their growth or complete life. In his view, education is not to force children to absorb external things, but to enable human beings to grow their innate abilities.
(2) School is society: Dewey believes that since education is the process of social life, school is a form of social life. He emphasized that schools should "become a small society and a primary society". In school, we should simplify the real social life into an embryonic state and present the social life of children.
Second, the influence of characters.
Dewey's educational thought had a great influence on China's educational and ideological circles in the first half of the 20th century. Some important figures in the Republic of China, such as Hu Shi, Tao Xingzhi, Guo Bingwen, Zhang Boling and Jiang Menglin, all studied at Columbia University and were Dewey's students. He opposed the traditional indoctrination and mechanical training, and emphasized the educational thought of learning from practice, which had a certain influence on Cai Yuanpei, Yan Chu Yang and even Mao Zedong.