John Dewey's Theories of Education

Dewey aimed to integrate the school with society, and the processes of learning with the actual problems of life, by a thorough going application of the principles and practices of democracy. The school system would be open to all on a completely free and equal basis without any restrictions or segregation on account of color, race, creed, national origin, sex or social status. Group activity under self-direction and self-government would make the classroom a miniature republic where equality and consideration for all would prevail.
This type of education would have the most beneficial social consequences. It would tend to erase unjust distinctions and prejudices. It would equip children with the qualities and capacities required to cope with the problems of a fast-changing world. It would produce alert, balanced, critical-minded individuals who would continue to grow in intellectual and moral stature after graduation.

The Progressive Education Association, inspired by Dewey’s ideas, later codified his doctrines as follows:

1.  The conduct of the pupils shall be governed by themselves, according to the social needs of the community.

2.      Interest shall be the motive for all work.

3. Teachers will inspire a desire for knowledge, and will serve as guides in the investigations undertaken, rather than as task-masters.

4.   Scientific study of each pupil’s development, physical, mental, social and spiritual, is absolutely essential to the intelligent direction of his development.

5.    Greater attention is paid to the child’s physical needs, with greater use of the out-of-doors.

6.  Cooperation between school and home will fill all needs of the child’s development such as music, dancing, play and other extra-curricular activities.

7.   All progressive schools will look upon their work as of the laboratory type, giving freely to the sum of educational knowledge the results of their experiments in child culture. These rules for education sum up the theoretical conclusions of the reform movement begun by Colonel Francis Parker and carried forward by Dewey at the laboratory school he set up in 1896 with his first wife in connection with the University of Chicago. With his instrumentalist theory of knowledge as a guide, Dewey tried out and confirmed his new educational procedures there with children between the ages of four and fourteen.