Dewey's education means increasing life experience.
(a) Education is growth.
Dewey believes that the essence and function of education is the process of promoting children's instinctive growth. It has three levels from low to high. First, because children never grow up, physiologically speaking, children? Organisms? This is a process of growth. Second, children will never reach adulthood, and their wisdom and ability are constantly developing. This kind of development is obtained by personal learning from experience. In this development process, although children have? The ability to learn from experience? But adults and educators do it for them? Auxiliary? It is also necessary. The task of school education is to train children to have? Grow up? Desire, the value of school education, depends on how much he can do. Third, children's habits and morals are gradually formed in the process of living and adapting to the environment. Adults and educators should make use of various conditions to promote the formation of children's habits and personalities.
(2) Education is life.
Dewey pointed out that children's instinctive growth always develops in the process of life, and life is the social expression of growth. What is the best study? Learn from life? School education should make use of children's existing life as the main content of their study. It is necessary to combine education with children's immediate life and teach children to learn to adapt to the immediate living environment.
Dewey thinks? Education is a process of life, not preparation for later life? . He regards education as the same concept as life, growth and development. Family life, school life, collective life and social life are all education, especially moral education. Education begins in society and will surely return to society. In school life, family life and social life, social life is the key to integrate the other two kinds of life. Education on various occasions is essentially a different form of life. The school must present the present life, that is, the real and energetic life to the child, just like the life he experienced at home, in the neighborhood and on the playground.
Children's social life is the foundation of all their growth. Many failures of education are because it ignores a basic principle, that is, school is a form of social life, and education and life are inseparable. Without social life, schools have no moral goals and objectives. If we are enclosed in an isolated school, we have no guiding principles. What is the best education? Learn from life? . Because? All life has a scientific side, an artistic and cultural side and an interactive side from the beginning? Only then can we realize the harmonious development of human beings. He believes that life is all about education, and the activities of the whole society are the scope of education.
(C) Education is the continuous transformation of experience
In Dewey's view, experience is the foundation of the world, and education is the process of obtaining various direct experiences through children's own activities. The main task of education is not to teach children existing scientific knowledge, but to let children gain experience by themselves in activities. ? Experience is the foundation of our life? From his point of view? All learning comes from experience? Scenery. In his view, education is to gain all kinds of direct experience through children's activities. In the activities of adapting to the environment, human beings must solve problems on the basis of old experience. Therefore, Dewey said: education is to constantly reorganize experience, so that the significance of experience is particularly increased, and at the same time, the ability to control later experience is also particularly increased. ?
Society is formed because people have mutual beliefs, purposes, consciousness and emotions, and because people are in contact and communication, and education is the channel to achieve effective contact and communication. The function of education is to continue social life, that is, education can pass on the accumulated experience of human beings from generation to generation, enrich the content of human experience, and enhance the ability of experience to guide life and adapt to society, thus maintaining and developing social life. Whether formal education or informal education, in fact, experience is changing. Life and experience are the soul of education. No life, no experience, no growth, no education. Education can transmit the accumulated experience of human beings, enrich the content of human experience, and enhance the ability of experience to guide life and adapt to society, thus maintaining and developing social life. Broadly speaking, it is the education that individuals contact and interact with others in social life, gradually expand and improve their own experience, develop moral quality and acquire knowledge and skills. Because the reformed experience must be closely combined with life, the reformed experience can promote personal growth, Dewey concluded? Education is life? 、? Education is growth? ,? Education is the constant transformation of experience? .
(d) How to understand the relationship between experience, growth and life?
? Experience? Is the essence of the course. The essence of curriculum is those experiences with continuous and interactive characteristics and educational significance. Based on children's existing experience, these experiences are necessary and indispensable for children's growth and social development. In Dewey's view, there is nothing wrong with starting from children's experiences. The problem is that children's experiences are not all educational. For example, he said that a thief keeps stealing and can become a capable thief through the accumulation of experience, but what about this experience? Have the wrong educational function? Of course not in the curriculum. In other words, we should criticize the experience in ethics, nationality and sociality when compiling the curriculum. Only in this way can it be meaningful for the development of students.
? Grow up? Is the goal of education. ? Grow up? It includes children's physical development, psychological and emotional growth, the development of thinking and rational ability, the inheritance, dissemination and creation of knowledge and cultural heritage needed by social progress, and the accomplishment of democratic attitude, methods and scientific spirit. He proposed? Grow up? Is the fundamental feature of living things. Since human beings are creatures, they should also have the characteristics of growth, and not only normal children are growing, but also adults are growing. ? Grow up? This is the purpose of life and therefore the purpose of education.
? Education is growth? This assertion requires that children's instinct and innate ability should be considered in education, and the development of organs on which children grow should not be hindered or deformed; To cultivate children's initiative to cope with new situations, we should not overemphasize training, so as not to sacrifice personal understanding and lead to mechanical skills; We should respect our childhood, the needs and opportunities for growth, and don't ignore the process of growth, so as to inhibit seedlings and encourage them. The value of school education depends on the extent to which it creates the desire to continue to grow; See to what extent it provides a way to realize this desire. In other words, the central task of school education is to promote the growth of children. Everything starts from the needs of students and focuses on promoting the growth of children.
? Life? It is the process of education. Life is a dynamic process of continuous expansion, transformation and application of subjective experience. The student's experience should be his first time? Experience? . This kind of experience is not in the subject, not in parents and teachers, but in their daily problem-solving behavior and activities. Activities with no educational value cannot enter the curriculum. The selected activity should be a behavioral process centered on finding and solving problems.
Experience, growth and life are trinity relations. Education is life, education is for growth, and growth comes from experience. This is the core of Dewey's curriculum philosophy.
Education is growth: Dewey and Wang Yangming
? Education is growth? , is Dewey's famous thesis; What's your education? Conscience? , is the core concept of Yangming's mind. Dewey expounded from three aspects: the interaction between man and nature, the process of man's socialization and the connection between life and life? Education is growth? That makes sense. Wang Yangming thinks? Zhong Ni in a person's heart? ,? Conscience? It is a virtue that everyone has. Education is to cultivate conscience and let it grow.
Dewey saw the continuity of life and pointed out? Education is a process of constantly reorganizing and reconstructing experience? . Wang Yangming said: A scholar's ambition to be good is like planting a tree. Don't forget to help, just cultivate it. Naturally, it will grow day and night, end in anger and flourish. . Dewey and Wang Yangming both agree? Grow up? Thinking at the same time for educational purposes? Grow up? This is an internal requirement of life, not an external instruction. Dewey said: education itself has no additional purpose. He pointed out that a good educational purpose must be related to the specific activities and needs of the educated, so as to maximize the potential of the individual. Wang Yangming believes that the purpose of education is to show what the heart has. Conscience? Remove the blind of material desires to conscience, clear the obstacles of selfish desires, and restore a person's true conscience. Dewey's understanding of education is from the outside to the inside, while Wang Yangming's emphasis is on the inside.
Children standing hand in hand
Both Dewey and Wang Yangming disapprove of Rousseau's naturalistic education, which is far away from society. They think that following children's natural nature to implement education and promote children's growth should have social orientation. In Dewey's view, education is a process from biological individual to society. Children are the starting point of education and society is the end point of education. There is an educational process between children at the starting point of education and society at the end of education. ? Wang Yangming took it as his duty to carry forward the sacred learning, and expounded the theory of conscience as a good way to sweep away the secular and disturb the customs. Xiu Qi Zhiping? It is not only the process of personal inner cultivation, but also the goal of serving the society and making contributions. Yangming's psychology pays special attention to arousing children's inner conscience, which runs through daily life? The use of conscience? Emphasize that the cultivation of conscience lies in the cultivation of bit by bit behavior habits in social life.
Dewey's children mainly grow up in school, while Wang Yangming's children mainly grow up in society; Dewey focuses on the cultivation of social citizens, while Wang Yangming focuses on learning to be a saint. How to promote children's growth? Dewey and Wang Yangming both advocate communication? Doing things? To cultivate. Dewey tried to pass? Doing middle school? To promote children's growth, Wang Yangming tried to pass? Business? Promote the growth of children's conscience. The difference between them lies in the nature and process of doing things. Dewey did not make a clear definition of the nature of children's behavior. What does Wang Yangming think of teaching students to do things? Just because it's wrong is right? Boot process. In the process of learning to do things, Wang Yangming pays attention to the interaction between human experience and individual experience, while Dewey pays more attention to the significance of direct experience to life. But they all appeal to children's inner experience, not just following various external norms.