Experience and Education PDF

# Sintesi di Esperienza ed educazione di Dewey ## Premessa This short essay was published in 1938 and belongs to the last phase of Dewey's production. It does not contain any new ideas, neither from a philosophical nor pedagogical point of view. It is rather the mature synthesis of the author's th...

# Sintesi di Esperienza ed educazione di Dewey ## Premessa This short essay was published in 1938 and belongs to the last phase of Dewey's production. It does not contain any new ideas, neither from a philosophical nor pedagogical point of view. It is rather the mature synthesis of the author's thinking on the general theme of education and "new schools," of which Dewey was an active supporter in the previous decades. This essay is written in response to the increasingly severe criticism directed at the new schools, and in general to the philosophical and pedagogical (and political: the very idea of democracy realized, of a school for all, training a society of equals) ideas that supported them, that were made starting from the crisis of 1929. The fundamental thesis is that the guiding principles of the new schools are correct, but changes are necessary to implement the program. In *Experience and Education*, Dewey clearly contrasts his own philosophical thinking with that of the "conservatives," those who advocate a return to the tradition that preceded new schools, but he does not spare criticism for the actual management of these schools. It is then significant that Dewey considers, throughout the entire essay, the new schools directly inspired by the philosophical conception of experience: he does not talk about pedagogy, but of the philosophy of education. The term is certainly justified: the whole essay (as is the rest of Dewey's entire work) is philosophical. Perhaps Dewey is truly the last of the modern philosophers in which pedagogy is, fully, a philosophical discipline. ## Sintesi *Experience and Education* is divided into 8 short chapters (only the third, dedicated to the philosophical study of experience, is longer). Let's look at them chapter by chapter. ### 1. Educazione tradizionale ed educazione progressiva The fundamental thesis of this chapter is that the mechanical opposition between traditional education and progressive education (i.e., new schools) should be rejected. It is true that they are fundamentally different: * Traditional schools impose programs and methods of learning that "remain foreign to the student's actual abilities," propose a static knowledge, codified once and for all and detached from experience, and this in the context of a society in which "change is the rule, not the exception." * New schools, on the other hand, pay great attention to the actual abilities of students, trying to develop their potential, and propose knowledge tied to experience and from which they dynamically rise to theory. But the real problem is another. Once the guiding principles for the school of the future are defined (and they cannot but be those of the new schools, not those of the traditional schools), the problem is to translate them into practice effectively. For example, the old school was completely centered around a certain idea of organization, hierarchical, centered around authority; the new school will not have to reject the idea of organization, but will have to pose the problem of how a good and efficient school organization can be built starting not from the principle of authority, but from concrete experience, because it is through the latter that one learns. The underlying principle is in fact that "there is an intimate and necessary relationship between the process of actual experience and education." But if we reject the idea that authority should be imposed from the outside on students, as in the old school organization, "the problem becomes that of finding the factors of control within the experience"[1]. This first chapter thus raises the problem that will be addressed throughout the essay: it is not sufficient to proclaim the principle that education must be linked to experience, rejecting the principle of authority for its own sake in order to achieve a true education in freedom; in fact, an education that claims to be based on the idea of freedom can be just as dogmatic as any other. It is in fact dogmatic any education that is not based on a critical examination of its own foundations. And imposing the principle of freedom without this critical examination is no different from imposing any other principle. ### 2. Bisogno di una teoria dell'esperienza In this chapter, Dewey clarifies why a theory of experience is indispensable, that is, a philosophical reflection on the underlying pedagogical principle, the idea that one learns in relation to experience.. This philosophical deepening is indispensable because not all experiences are educational. On the contrary, there are those that are strongly diseducative. It is only a certain type of experience that allows for education. The thesis is that there are two types of experiences: * Some promote the acquisition of new experiences in the future; * Others limit the possibility of acquiring new experiences in the future. What determines this difference? The quality of the experience that the educator proposes. It is not so much about the experience being pleasant or not at the time; this is relatively secondary, because it only applies to the moment. The problem is its effect in the long term; it is its influence on subsequent experiences. In short, "The central problem in an education based on experience is that of choosing the kind of experiences present that will live fruitfully and creatively in the experiences that will follow". ### 3. Criteri dell'esperienza This is the central chapter of the essay, which philosophically defines the notion of experience. The starting point is given by the fact that what we are talking about is education for all: we need a notion of experience that grounds a democratic education, that truly allows, operationally, to promote the development of a democratic society. However, why do we prefer democracy and insist so much on an educational principle effective for all? Dewey's answer is emphatic: the reason is that "the social arrangements of democracy promote a higher quality of human experience, a more widely accessible and possible experience than forms of non-democratic social life." It is this higher quality that is the ultimate goal, and it is a political goal, based on a philosophical idea (the idea that human life can have levels of qualitative diversity in relation to different forms of experience) [2]. What, then, is the philosophical vision of experience that we must use to build a correct concept of education? We must recall three principles. * **Principle of continuity**. Through experience, man creates habits, that is, behaviors that stably allow him to interact with the world. In this context, "every experience made and suffered modifies the one who acts and suffers, and at the same time, this modification, whether we want it or not, influences the quality of subsequent experiences." This leads to the principle of continuity: "The principle of continuity of experience means that every experience receives something from those that precede it and modifies in some way the quality of those that will follow." There is always some form of continuity in experience: it is a matter of ensuring that the influence of each experience on subsequent ones is positive, that is, promotes the acquisition of new experiences qualitatively of a higher degree. [3] * **Principle of growth** (in the text: growth, according to a translation of almost fifty years ago). Education is successful when the continuity of experience allows genuine growth of man, in terms of his ability to acquire new experiences, of a greater ability to interact positively with the world, by continuously learning from experience. "For example, a boy who learns to speak has a new facility and a new desire. But he has also expanded the external conditions for further learning. When he learns to read, he opens up to a new environment around him at the same time." Naturally, the two principles can come into conflict: it is perfectly possible for growth to be blocked due to the fact that continuity has determined habits that block, rather than promote, the acquisition of new experiences. It is the educator's job to make sure this does not happen. It is his responsibility to ensure that it does not happen, and Dewey therefore argues against any spontaneity in pedagogy and in favor of an organization of work that leads to a correct programming of experiences. Naturally what is said above also applies to the educator: he himself must continuously learn from experience and it is in the name of his superior experience that he is able to guide young people, without infringing on their freedom. The teacher "is responsible for creating the conditions for a kind of present experience that has a beneficial effect on the future." We must not forget the fact that education is always also a transmission of experiences between generations, and that we live in a world that has been profoundly modified by the people who preceded us. Understanding experience must therefore take into account the fact that the present can be understood, in terms of action, and therefore of the future, only if one understands the past that generated it. Dewey therefore argues against an education that forgets the past, but also against an education that aims to revive the past (as often happens in traditional schools); it is instead in favor of an education that, through the experience of the present, allows one to understand it through the past, guiding the young towards the future. * **Principle of interaction*. The conditions of experience are always two: an external condition (object), which can be placed under the control of the educator in a situation structured like that of a school, and an internal one (subject), of which the educator must be aware and which is much more difficult not only to control but also to know. "Any normal experience is a reciprocal interplay of these two sets of conditions. Taken together, and in their interaction, they constitute what I call a situation." Of course, this means that if the conditions of the subject and those of the object are not in agreement, a non-educational experience is produced. It can depend as much on the subject as on the object. It is therefore not possible to define a priori an educational approach that does not take into account the identity of the students and their previous experience. The responsibility of the educator is therefore to create learning situations that respect the principles of continuity and growth, linking together the past, the present and the future. To combine the subject and the object in experience. ### 4. Controllo sociale In the fourth chapter, Dewey examines, in the context of the conditions defined in the previous chapter, the question of social control.. In traditional schools, it is exercised from the outside, through the principle of authority. By working didactically in such a way as to create learning situations like those described, one cannot any longer use authority in a traditional way. But this does not mean at all giving up on control and accepting chaos in schools. In everyday life, all adult citizens live in conditions of strong social control and do not at all see their freedom limited because of this. How is this possible? It is like when one participates in a game: nobody feels their freedom challenged because there are rules. These are part of the reality accepted by all, they are not imposed by someone on someone else. So at school it is a matter of creating situations in which control is one of the elements of the situation itself, and is not imposed from above. Sometimes this will be necessary, but "the teacher reduces to a minimum the occasions in which he has to exert personal authority. When it is necessary (...) he does so in the name of the group's interest." Control is internal to the very nature of the work done in school as a collective enterprise. The teacher is part of this enterprise, and his freedom is at stake just like that of all the other members. The plan for the work must be constructed in such a way as to respect the freedom of all while making the rules necessary for its implementation acceptable to all. ### 5. La natura della libertà This is a very short chapter in which it is clarified what one should understand by the word freedom: Dewey clarifies that he intends to refer in particular to the freedom of intelligence, "that is, the freedom to observe and to judge". The term freedom is therefore connected to the notion of growth, as an expansion of the ability to have high-quality experiences. However, external freedom is also important for the purposes of education, firstly because it creates the external conditions for having positive experiences, but also because ancient Greek thinking that education must concern both the body and the mind must be taken into account. And external freedom regarding the body, always within the context of the social control defined in the previous chapter, is one of the conditions for the completeness of the experience of quality. ### 6. Il significato del proposito In this short chapter, Dewey examines in which direction the educator should move to educate the young towards self-mastery - a mastery that generates freedom, given that dependence on one's own impulses makes a man just as unfree as dependence on the will of others. Central is the notion of purpose. The purpose is the vision of a goal, and it is therefore an "intellectually rather complex" operation that is clearly distinct from simple instinct or impulse to action: it implies a plan indeed. Dewey emphasizes that "the crucial problem of education is that of achieving that action does not immediately follow desire, but is preceded by observation and judgment.” This idea is completely consistent with the definition of intellectual freedom from the previous chapter and from experiences that promote, and do not block, growth. ### 7. Organizzazione progressiva della materia di studio This last chapter - the eighth is in practice a short conclusion - is dedicated to the issue of subjects - the subject matter of study. For Dewey, subjects are areas in which experiences are organized. They must therefore always be treated in such a way as to have experience as their basis. The subjects themselves are the sediment of past experiences and must be treated in such a way as to allow one "to learn to know the past as a means of understanding the present," in view of that ability to judge and to have a purpose, as discussed in the previous chapter. They must be presented in a problematic way (reflection on experience) because "problems are the stimulus to think." Dewey takes the study of scientific subjects as an example, for which he defends the experimental method. ### 8. L'esperienza, mezzo e fine dell'educazione This is a short synthesis, on a page, of the concepts of the book, which concludes with the following thesis: "The essential point (...) is the problem of what one must do to make our doing deserve the name of education. (...) The fundamental problem concerns the nature of education without adjectives." ## Note 1. It should be noted that the problem is already in Rousseau, with whom Dewey is implicitly in dialogue: in *Emile* it is argued that the student should not learn from the teacher - that is, from another man with whom he is forced to establish a relationship of authority, and therefore the freedom of the student comes into play - but from nature itself, and therefore from experience. How to do this is the problem of the philosophy of education at a theoretical level, of didactics at an operational level. 2. This is not mentioned here at all, but this philosophical conception dates back to the Romantics and to young Hegel in particular (up to the *Phenomenology*). In Dewey's time it was supported by very different environments: it is a conception that can be found in Italian idealism (Croce and Gentile: the latter, for reasons analogous to those for which Dewey prefers democracy, believes that one should prefer fascism), in French philosophies of life (for example in Bergson), in American pragmatism (James, and so on). 3. From a philosophical point of view (though this is not mentioned in the text) this notion of continuity derives from the study of subject-object relations of the German tradition, from Kant to Hegel, reinterpreted in the light of Dewey's pragmatism: man learns in contact with nature and with other men, modifying the environment, only when he intends experiences as problems to be solved.