Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

70 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
Indeed, the ideas and ideals of Dewey have been claimed by traditionalists and progressives
alike, a testament, no doubt, to his insight into the educational, psychological process. This being
so, it may be helpful to introduce Dewey’s thoughts on education by way of an organizational
framework that identifies a number of the key concepts that may be said to characterize progressive
educational theorizing in general. In doing so it will assist in highlighting the distinguishing
features his educational thought while drawing on his philosophical ideas to elaborate where
necessary.
ORGANIZING PRINCIPLES OF PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION
In his book, Issues and Alternatives in Educational Philosophy, George R. Knight has identified
the following six principles that can be used to characterize progressive educational thought:
(1) The process of education finds its genesis and purpose in the child; (2) pupils are active
rather than passive; (3) the teacher’s role is that of advisor, guide, and fellow traveler rather
than that of authoritarian classroom director; (4) the school is a microcosm of the larger society;
(5) classroom activity should focus on problem solving rather than on artificial methods of
teaching subject matter; (6) the social atmosphere of the school should be cooperative and
democratic.
The process of education finds its genesis and purpose in the child. Although Dewey would
never approve of efficiency models in education either in his own time or today, he did express the
need for a social vision in schooling. Above all, he believed most clearly in the centering of the
curriculum around the child. Where proponents of social efficiency like Philbrick said school was
about the imposition of tasks whether or not the child liked it, Dewey argued that tasks without a
known purpose reduce one’s desire to complete that task successfully, and to fight a child’s nature
is counterproductive. He says, in The School and Society, that one should “begin with the child’s
ideas, impulses, and interests” and use those to direct the child’s education.
For Dewey, the starting point in learning and in teaching is a problem felt by the child, as
distinct from a need or desire felt by the teacher or the community to pass on information about
a topic considered important to any particular body of knowledge. Knowledge, he wrote, was
of no educational value in itself but only insofar as the child could benefit from interacting
with it. This, of course, is in stark contrast to the view of educational psychologists such as
Thorndike who believed knowledge transfer from one experience to another was not possible. As
Dewey colorfully put it, the fact that we do not feed beefsteak to infants does not mean it has no
nutritional value. It simply has none for infants who are not ready to consume it. Similarly with
knowledge and the psychology of the student: in and of itself information is of no educational
value until the child is ready to benefit from interacting with it. At the same time, he was keen
to emphasize that responding to problems of inquiry encountered by the child could be the very
means of bringing him or her into contact with important bodies of knowledge. Rejecting what
he considered the faulty either/or dichotomy between child and subject matter, in Experience
and Education. Dewey argues that a continuum could be constructed from the incomplete and
unorganized experience of the child to the highly organized and abstract knowledge of the adult
world represented by the teacher and housed in the academic disciplines. The teacher’s job was
to introduce this knowledge to the child in accordance with his or her interests and level of
prior experience or knowledge—just as a child’s diet is gradually strengthened as it grows and is
capable of digesting more adult foods. This would be done through the “progressive organization
of subject matter.” Hence Dewey emphasizes on method.
Pupils are active rather than passive. Central to method in Dewey’s view is the recognition that
children are naturally active rather than passive. Writing of the nature of method in My Pedagogic
Creed, according to Ronald F. Reed and Tony W. Johnson, Dewey said, “the active side precedes