"My Pedagogic Creed" is an article written by John Dewey and published in School Journal in 1897.
[2] According to John Dewey's article "My Pedagogic Creed" (1897), education is only as individual as our society allows it to be.
"Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs."
Psychological and sociological impacts are two sides of the education process that go hand-in-hand; "neither can be subordinated to the other or neglected without evil results following."
Hands-on learning that utilizes the senses and capacity of the student creates the most success, intrinsically and externally.
Utilizing the skills derived from effective psychological learning, social factors can be successfully recognized and addressed.
Dewey argues that some children are over labeled and misunderstood because we take away authentic experiences by not relating education to natural human order.
More importantly he emphasizes, "Existing life is so complex that the child cannot be brought into contact with it without either confusion or distraction... and he becomes either unduly specialized or else disintegrated."
This is summed up in the quote, "It is the business of the school to deepen and extend his sense of the values bound up in his home life."
In schools currently, the information is given, lessons are learned and habits are formed, similar to the banking model of education criticised by Paulo Freire in his 1970 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
He states, "The present educational systems, so far as they destroy or neglect this unity, render it difficult or impossible to get any genuine, regular moral meanings."
Following suit with his other theories, Dewey believes that subject matter should reflect students' real lives.
For example, students are often given literature lessons at the beginning of the learning experience, when it is the sum of events, making the subject relevant for the end of learning; This gives the student time to shape his or her own views before being told how history or someone else has seen something.
"I believe it is the business of every one interested in education to insist upon the school as the primary and most effective instrument of social progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize what the school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of endowing the educator with sufficient equipment properly to perform his task."