This reflection is based on the following statement by John Dewey under his Article 1 of My Pedagogic Creed:
"With the advent of democracy and modern industrial conditions, it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him[/her] for the future life means to give him command of him[/her]self; it means to train him[/her] that he[/she] will have the full and ready use of all his[/her] capacities…"
We shall begin where John Dewey and 21st century
U.S. public education agree. This certainly includes that
America is a democratic society, eager for innovation and progress in an unpredictably changing world.
The million dollar question is that of how children should be educated in an unpredictable world, in an unending arena of expansion known as the age of information. The advent of this new face of society has evolving needs calling for many types of leadership. This is where I strongly agree with Dewey’s poignant statement that it is ‘impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions’. Unfortunately to say, I believe that the test-teaching and core curriculums used for teachers to keep their jobs and for schools to remain open, is in fact focusing almost primarily on just a few subjects compared to the wide world of democracy.
As was mentioned in the first paragraph, Dewey’s view of an active and changing democracy is in line with the values of the politics of this country. Gifted programs are being eliminated because they are not a “problem to be fixed”. Students of all intelligences are being robbed of the opportunity to explore so many more ideas, field trips, and activities, as well as self-directed exploration.
I do not believe that I am far off in hypothesizing that students currently being educated under the centralized and standardized mandates, will not be prepared for ‘a future life’ as Dewey describes, as an individual who has ‘command of him/herself’…having had training which has given him ‘the full use of his/her capacities’.
As a surviving student of a similar model of education, I am heartbroken to say that my creativity and curiosity drive was already stifled in the early grades. I was able to re-kindle this desire to explore and learn after post-high school self-chosen “field trips”, exploring the world of work on my own by different jobs and “off the charts” job shadowing, reading books and participating in discussions on controversial and current issues, doing volunteer work, and experiencing the possibility for true democratic change in a small way. I am pleased that I was able to do this, and to what I can offer thanks is ambiguous. However, as I talk to my fellow students, I am overwhelmed with the majority of a generation of uninterested and docile people in regards to education or careers. Many students value education as a means to make money, not as a means to make positive social change.
Major structural change in education would do our information-and-subjects-rich world a great service to our society. The focus of this new model of education would follow in line with John Dewey’s insistence that the individual’s personality might be nurtured and trained, in hopes that curiosity and creativity will not be demolished by the current structure of the core curriculum used in all
U.S. public education, from kindergarten-12th grades.
