The School and Society
In the lectures included in the initial publication, Dewey proposes a psychological, social, and political framework for progressive education.
He argues that the progressive approach is both an inevitable product of the Industrial Revolution and a natural fit with the psychology of children.
Articles in the 1915 edition extended his argument with reprints of Dewey's work published in the Elementary School Record.
Louisa Parsons Stone Hopkins captured the spirit of the time in her speech to the 1890 Boston Mechanic's Fair:It has been difficult to escape from the traditions of an exclusively book education.
The grammar schools, as their name indicates, have tied the child to the dead past, and confined him to the medieval form of brain activity and thought expression, until his connective tissues have ceased to be sensitive to the environment of nature, and he forgets the material and laws that touch him on every side : he observes nothing; he discovers nothing; he constructs nothing.
[5]While the introduction of manual tasks in classroom was underway well before The School and Society's publication, Dewey's work helped to lay a coherent theoretical foundation for progressive experimentation in education.
Dewey explains that such work built character, fostering independence and initiative, but that "concentration of industry and division of labor" has eroded the possibility of such meaningful, practical learning opportunities in the childhood home.
Fundamentally, education must follow larger shifts in society rather than implement isolated ideas which are "arbitrary inventions" made by "the over-ingenious minds of pedagogues" to deal with their specific challenges.
An important part of such an education is "manual training," which includes wood- and metalworking as well as household chores, such as cooking.
Dewey concludes the story:I need not speak of the science involved in this — the study of the fibres, of geographical features, the conditions under which raw materials are grown, the great centres of manufacture and distribution, the physics involved in the machinery of production; nor, again, of the historical side — the influence which these inventions have had upon humanity.
[7]: 48–49 This "passivity of attitude" and "mechanical massing of children"[7]: 51 are due to the rigid curriculum and method, which are still rooted in a "mediæval conception of learning".
As an example, he describes a cooking class which, through a series of questions by the teacher and students, ultimately leads to lessons in organic chemistry and experiments regarding the effects of heat on the protein in eggs.
[7]: 59–61 After describing a number of other activities from the laboratory school he comes to what he sees as the largest "stumbling block" that traditionalists have with these approaches: Stimulating inquiry and interest is fine, they say, but "how, upon this basis, shall the child get the needed information; how shall he undergo the required discipline?
Kindergarten, he argues, comes out of Froebel's synthesis of observation of children's play with the early 19th century idealist symbolism of Schelling.
It then becomes difficult to move students from kindergarten into the primary grades, which are organized around the practical concerns of the 16th century: reading and mathematics for commerce.
[7]: 78–86 While Dewey is careful to emphasize that these institutions have evolved over time, he notes that the patchwork nature of the sequence remains.
On the first floor the four corners represent practice, the machine shop, the textile industries, the dining room, and the kitchen.
These activities are meaningful in the realm of the home and commerce to the individual, but they gain their social meaning from the collective knowledge of the center.
Arrayed around a central museum the art and music studios and the different libraries relate to one another, but also to the practical pursuits of the first floor.
He outlines some of the changes he has seen in psychology that should impact teaching practice: Dewey then details various ways that curriculum has come in line with these newer understandings, and in some cases anticipated them.
For Dewey, this emphasis on symbolism misunderstands the true imagination of the child which suffers from the abstraction and too-quick variety of Froebel's method.
He concludes with a plea that the gap between methodologies in kindergarten and primary school be bridged, in the interest of a more productive and pedagogically consistent path for the child.
The work was cited by Édouard Claparède who helped shape a progressive éducation nouvelle in Geneva, Switzerland, in the years leading up to the first world war.
[12][11]: 88 However, Dewey's work was distrusted by the elites in the monarchic and authoritarian German Empire,[11]: 83 as it "built on interaction and cooperation, and therefore on democracy.
[1] Bonoso claims a Spanish version, translated by Domingo Barnés Salinas, appeared in Latin America as early as 1900.
