The Philosophies and Practices of John Dewey.
Many educators, professors and students alike consider John Dewey the father of progressive education. They praise him for his unparalleled advancement in the field of education along with his insight of the maturing and thirsty human brain. He changed the way the future of the world was being taught. Educators were no longer drilling information into the masses and testing the regurgitation of said information. Now the educators were posing open-ended questions, teaching their students how to think and use their cognitive abilities, not firing cold, hard facts.
What is a mind to do? Is it possible, although a teacher is to explain something at one angle, whereabouts you can look at it from another? Can it be so that high school seniors in California are looking at their Prentice Halla textbook picture of a mushroom cloud over Hiroshima and not wonder the same things the teacher expects? Why should they not be worried about the poisonous radiation levels around them due to testing in New Mexico and the Philippines? Well, they should and we should be proud. Thank you John Dewey.
This does not mean to thank John Dewey in the actual sense that he was the one who taught these children the way to take one event, theory or experience and expand upon it. Rather he taught the nation and its thinkers at the time how to learn through experimentation, questioning and analyzing. Calling this method progressive education, Dewey believed that its purpose was "to discover and apply the principles that govern all human development that is truly educative, to utilize the methods by which mankind has collectively and progressively advanced in skill, understanding, and associated life" (Wirth, 122). .
Dewey's interests in the way children were educated stemmed from his original occupation as a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, specifically primary and secondary education.
