Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made
in itself, outside the child's experience; cease thinking of the child's
experience as also something hard and fast; see it as something fluent,
embryonic, vital; and we realize that the child and the curriculum are
simply two limits which define a single process. --from The Child and
the Curriculum In this single volume, readers will find two of John
Dewey's insightful essays on education in America. He considered proper
education to be fundamental to a functioning democracy. The problem,
according to Dewey in The School and Society, with the old education
model was that elementary schools did not encourage exploration and
curiosity in their students. In The Child and the Curriculum, Dewey
expands upon his definition of the ideal teaching method. A child's
life, he says, is an integrated whole. A child will flow from one topic
to another, taking a natural interest in subjects and dealing with a
world of direct experience. School, on the other hand, addresses a world
disconnected from a child's life. A more reasonable approach would be to
strive to integrate their experience with the vast body of knowledge
that society wishes them to know. By honoring the individual, both the
student and the subject matter will come together in a process that
produces a mature adult. American educator and philosopher JOHN DEWEY
(1859-1952) helped found the American Association of University
Professors. He served as professor of philosophy at Columbia University
from 1904 to 1930 and authored numerous books, including How We Think
(1910), Experience and Nature (1925), Experience and Education (1938),
and Freedom and Culture (1939).
