Download Session One

Session One
Introduction
•
•
•
•
Website
Email List
Syllabus
Assign Topics
• What are some issues that you feel are
currently facing education- List three
• Examine f they match he syllabus
John Dewey
• Was opposed to traditional educational
practices
• He saw them as imposing learning on
children
• Focused on textbooks and passing on
information rather than teaching
children to think
• Focused on standards and rules
• Limited creativity
• Taught conformity
• He thought that schools were structured
through and unnatural patterns of
organization
–
–
–
–
Strict time schedules
Rules of order
Classification of individuals
Opposite a natural organizations like a family
Dewey’s Philosophy
• Rather than imposition from above is
cultivation of individuality
• Rather than external discipline is free
activity
• Rather than learning from texts and
teachers is learning through experience
• Rather than learning isolated skills and
techniques by drill and practice, is
gaining skills by ends that make direct
connections
• Rather than preparing for a remote
future to making the most of
opportunities of present life
• Rather than preparing for a static life,
prepare for a constantly changing world
• Dewey believes that traditional schools
try to impose values of a mature person
on a immature learner that is not ready
to learn them
• All education causes some type of
experience, Dewey believes that often
traditional education produces
experiences that have negative affects.
Those opposed to Dewey
• The purpose of education is to improve
Humankind
• WE cannot discover the difference between
bad and good in a laboratory or through an
experiment
• Governments improve not by forcing
programs through schools, but by improving
the citizens that make up the country
• Man by nature is free, in order for him to
succeed, he needs discipline.
• Education must recognize that values are
necessary part of societies
• A liberal education is for everybody
• An education is not for training for a better
job, but for becoming a better person
• Liberal education of the young is all about
teaching them the habits, ideas and
techniques they will need to continue to
educate themselves throughout their lives.
• You can only be a good citizen once
you have developed your intelligence
• Learning does not stop once you
become an adult
Conclusion
Dewey’s critics
• Intellectual training
– Feel the focus on
social emotional
detracts from
intellectual mission
of the schools
Dewey• Social-emotional
growth
– Can not develop
intelligence without
developing social
emotional
Adler vs. Holt
• Mortimer Adler feels
that democracy is
best served when
public schools have
a uniform curriculum
objectives for all
students
• John Holt feels that
imposed curriculum
damages the
individual and
usurps a basic
human right to
select one’s own
path of development
Adler
• Paideia proposes one curriculum that would
be used for everyone
• Some basic components of this include the
following
• Increased preschool education
• Common objectives for all children which
included
– Opportunities for personal development
– All children become full fledged citizens
– When grown all children will work
• To achieve these objectives, schooling
must be general and liberal
• One single 12 year course of study
• One elective- what world language(modern)
• No specialization, no electives
• There would be organized into three
main columns of teaching and learning
– Acquisition of organized knowledge
– Develop intellectual skills
– Enlarge the understanding of ideas and
values
•
•
•
•
•
!2 years of Physical education
Homework
Good teaching
Learning needs to be active
Teachers must help students process
discovery
John Holt
• Children should have the right to decide
what they want to learn, by whom, when
and how much they should learn
• Each of us has the right to control our
own learning
• Why should children be forced to go to
school, do homework when adults are
not forced
• Children should control their own right to
educate themselves, should control what and
when something goes into their mind
• Schools are terrible institutions, far worse
than many institutions than any on the
outside
• Teachers are given too much power, no one
should have that much power
• Schools are completely authoritarian
• The law in this country is beginning to see
schools in this light
Behaviorism Vs. Humanism
B.F. Skinner
• Proponent of
behaviorism
• Carl Rodgers
• Believed in the
human side of of
motivation
Behaviorism
• When a behavior is followed by a
consequence that is reinforcing it will
induce the behavior
• A hot person gets reinforced by
coolness when they go into the shade
• If the behavior is first associated with a
stimulus you can change a behavior
operant conditioning
• Negative reinforcement is the removal
of a negative. If you get a A, you will not
have to take out the trash
•
Are people free if they are controlled by
reinforcers?
• What about salaries, gifts ?
• Skinner believes that all effective
causes of behavior lie outside the body
Rodgers
• Believes in psychotherapy
• Freedom to do what is needed is an dinner
thing
• Everything can be taken from a man except
for his ability to choose his attitude
• Man has the ability to choose and is free