HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF EDUCATION M.Ed 2nd sem notes
HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF EDUCATION
An Assignment Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Course of M. Ed, Semester -2
Punjabi University, Patiala - Punjab
By
Samir Tirkey
Registration No. 2020M.ED031
Submitted To
A.P. Tejinder Singh
Swami Vivekanand College of Education
Banur– Punjab
A brief life sketch:
Philosopher Aurobindo (1872-1950) can be viewed as a 20th century renaissance person. Born in Kolkata, India, Aurobindo was educated at Cambridge University. He was an intellectual who intensely analyzed human and social evolution.
An Introduction:
This paper highlights Education and Holistic Development of Sri Aurobindo, in the light of his philosophical contributions to Education. It relates the importance of Aurobindo’s philosophy of education with different components of education: aims of education and holistic development, curriculum, transaction, school, relationship of teacher and pupil; discipline; and finally the implication of Aurobindo’s philosophy of education on globalization.
Aurobindo Ghosh was an Idealistic to the core. His Idealistic philosophy of life was based upon Vedantic philosophy of Upanishad. He maintains that the kind of education, we need in our country, is an education “proper to the Indian soul and need and temperament and culture that we are in quest of, not indeed something faithful merely to the past, but to the developing soul of India, to her future need, to the greatness of her coming-self creation, to her eternal spirit.”
Sri Aurobindo’s (1956) concept of ‘education’ is not only acquiring information, but “the acquiring of various kinds of information’’, he points out, “is only one and not the chief of the means and necessities of education: its central aim is the building of the powers of the human mind and spirit”.
His aims of Education and Holistic Development:
Shri Aurobindo emphasized that education should be in accordance with the needs of our real modern life. In other words, education should create dynamic citizen so that they are able to meet the needs of modern complex life. According to him, physical development and holiness are the chief aims of education. As such, he not only emphasized mere physical development, but physical purity also without which no spiritual development is possible. In this sense physical development and purification are the two bases on which the spiritual development is built. The second important aim of education is to train all the senses hearing, speaking, listening, touching, smelling and tasting. According to him these senses can be fully trained when nerve, chitta and manas are pure. Hence, through education purity of senses is to be achieved before any development is possible. The third aim of education is to achieve mental development of the child. This mental development means the enhancement of all mental faculties’ namely-memory, thinking, reasoning, imagination, and discrimination etc. education should develop them fully and harmoniously. Another important aim of education is the development of morality. Shri Aurobindo has emphasized that without moral and emotional development only, mental development becomes harmful to human process. Heart of a child should be so developed as to show extreme love, sympathy and consideration for all living beings. This is real moral development. Thus, the teacher should be a role model to his children that mere imitation can enable them to reach higher and higher stages of development. Development of conscience is another important aim of education that needs to develop by the help of teacher. Conscience has four level chitta, manas, intelligence, and knowledge. Aurobindo emphasized that the main aim of education is to promote spiritual development. According to him every human being has some fragment of divine existence within himself and education can scan it from each individual with its full extent.His approach to yoga is an integration of the physical social behavior with metaphysical level as a holistic system of inner-self meditation and outer-social action: Knowing and behavior.
Holistic Development:
Education nourishes personality by improving all aspects of life as physical, mental, spiritual, vital, emotional, social, and cultural. It removes darkness and enlightens a person’s life. It helps him to eradicate poverty and misery from his life. Such a powerful, enlightened person becomes creative and he contributes in the development of his society as well as his country.
“Education to be true, must not be a machine made fabric; but true building of living evocation of power of the mind and spirit of human being.”
Integral education is a complete system of education. It develops not only cognitive mind but it develops physical, vital, spiritual, and psyche aspect of personality also. It nourishes a sense of integrity, beauty and harmony in all aspects of humanity. With the help of innovative techniques of imparting education and activity based learning, students are equipped with multi skills and abilities which can be applied and used in his life.
His Curriculum:
Aurobindo prescribed free environment for the child to develop all his latent faculties to the maximum and suggested all those subjects and activities should possess elements of creativity and educational expression. He wished to infuse a new life and spirit into each subject and activity through which the development of super human being could becomes possible. He laid down the following principle for curriculum-
Curriculum should be in such a way which child find as interesting.
It should include those entire subjects which promote mental and spiritual development.
It should motivate children towards the attainment of knowledge of the whole world.
It should contain creativity of life and constructive capacities
Aurobindo describes curriculum for different stages of education–
Mother tongue, English, French, literature, national history, art, painting, general science, social studies and arithmetic should be taught at primary stage.
Mother tongue, English, French, literature, arithmetic, art, chemistry, physics, botany, physiology, health education, social studies at secondary stage.
Indian and western philosophy, history of civilization, English literature, French, sociology, psychology, history, chemistry, physics, botany at university level.
Art, painting, photography, sculptural, drawing, type, cottage-industries, mechanical and electrical engineering, nursing etc at vocational level.
Teacher-Taught Relationship:
Aurobindo enunciates certain sound principles of good teaching, which have to be kept in mind when actually engaged in the process of learning. According to Sri Aurobindo, the first principle of true teaching is “that nothing can be taught.” He explains that the knowledge is already dormant within the child and for this reason. The teacher is not an instructor or task-master; “he is a helper and a guide.” The role of the teacher “is to suggest and not to impose”. He does not actually train the pupil’s mind, he only shows him how to perfect the instruments of knowledge and helps him and encourages him in the process. He does not impart knowledge to him; he shows him how to acquire knowledge for himself. He does not call forth the knowledge that is within; he only shows him where it lies and how it can be habituated to rise to the surface.
School
Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy of education aims at modifying the school curricula, maximizing the learning modalities, helping the child to achieve his potentiality at his own pace and level and devote his time to discover himself. This kind of schooling is seen as an anti-thesis of an imposed uniformity of prescribed courses and teaching which the traditional schools purport to do and can be linked to what was taught in schools under the colonial rule. The type of schooling visualised by Sri Aurobindo is seen as aiming to bridge the gap between the child’s life at school and that at home.
In contrast to the educational ideas of Sri Aurobindo , the present day education system in India is purely an instruction-of-information enterprise, supported by a subject-time-bound curriculum, which neither relates to the needs or abilities of the learner nor takes into consideration the way children learn successfully. Instead of being child-oriented it is subject-oriented. The schools focus on competition with others, mastery of subject matter for getting better marks or grades than on learning in cooperation with and from one another for personal growth and for welfare of others.
This is not exclusive to Indian phenomenon, rather all over the world education is largely reductionist, materialist, ego enforcing, and devoid of the joys of the spirit. It is in this context that there is a need to examine initiatives which are rooted in Indian tradition, seek alternatives in curriculum teaching and learning for measuring success, involve children in the process of learning and focus on learning from the another and not from an authoritative pedagogue.
His Discipline:
Children should be provided with a free environment so that they are able to gain more and more knowledge by their own efforts. According to him any retrained and imposed environment stunt the growth and natural development. Aurobindo propagated the concept of self discipline which was the cure of impressionistic discipline.
Aurobindo’s Philosophy in Global Context
The 20th century saw the birth of a new social phenomenon termed as ‘globalization’. The idea is that the world is evolving into an interconnected social system producing a corresponding higher level of collective consciousness on a planetary scale. Therefore, humankind now has a communal responsibility to facilitate evolutionary movement toward global social integration, the construction of a new social reality and to cultivate planetary collective consciousness. Due to the severity of present day international problems, the grand idea of globalization now holds minimal concern for the majority of educators.
Sri Aurobindo Ghosh strived to philosophically reconcile Western scientific rationalism with Eastern transcendent metaphysics into a holistic narrative of reality. His academic interest was interdisciplinary in scope: political science, education, sociology, psychology and philosophy. He was deeply influenced by Western thought, most significantly, Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory and French intellectual Henri Bergson’s philosophy of cognitive evolution. The ideas of impending human evolution and global futurism became the foundation of his spiritual philosophy, sociological theories, political ideology and educational thought.
His approach to yoga is an integration of the physical social behavior with the metaphysical level as a holistic system of inner-self meditation and outer-social action: (1) knowing (seeking objective rational knowledge), (2) behavior (cultivating subjective positive social and humanistic mental models), and contemplation (nourishing reflective capitulation to the evolutionary energy of the absolute). His method of Integral Yoga is not a specific physical or psychological procedure of physical postures but it is to consciously surrender to evolutionary energy. This energy causes increasing levels of personal evolution, spiritual awareness, which is necessary for future social evolution.
In 1947, after the emancipation of India, Sri Aurobindo devoted himself entirely, along with his soul mate and social comrade, Mirra Alfassa (“the Mother”), to liberate the whole of humanity socially and spiritually by advancing Integral Yoga and planetary social activism toward human unity and global evolution.
Sri Aurobindo’s vision of evolution as a long slow process of dialectical energy of evolution being the intercourse between spiritual descent into the world and evolutionary ascent of consciousness. Aurobindo’s idea is that evolution is the incarnation of the Divine on earth through descent into the earth nature and thus into the collective embodiment of humankind. Within this framework, Sri Aurobindo asserts that planetary evolution has resulted in distinctive spheres of existence. In this sense, Philosopher Aurobindo (1872-1950) can be viewed as a 20th century renaissance person.
An Introduction:
Mahatma Gandhi's thought and philosophy on almost all aspects of life is worth reassessing especially in the light of what he has to say on educating the masses and the role of education should play in eradicating evils of ignorance, superstition and other follies specially in the rural sector where infrastructure for basic facilities of life is inadequate and poor. In his Collected Works, a passage written in 1942, amplifies his ideas on the role of the village. He states that 'my idea of village swaraj is that it is a complete republic, independent of its neighbours for its own vital wants, and yet interdependent for many other in which dependence is a necessity'.
Gandhi's thrust towards empowerment through education of the poor and women especially in the rural sector me be better understood when we consider the times when the average life span of an Indian women was only 27 years. Babies and pregnant women ran a high risk of dying young. Child marriage was common and widows were in large number. Only 2% of women had any kind of education and women did not have an identity of their own. In North India, they practiced the purdah system.
An attempt is made hear to re-evaluate Gandhian approach to education and its impact among the poor, the down-trodden and the rural sector of the country.
Work Education:
Gandhi did not separate work and education. His educational philosophy rests on the central principle that all learning would be located around work. He called this approach Nai Talim: nai means new and talim in the Urdu language means education. Nai Talim represents basic education for all. The crux of Nai Talim lay in overcoming distinctions between learning and teaching, and knowledge and work. The principal idea is to impart the whole education of the body, mind and soul through the handicraft that is taught to the children. Basic education is a principle which states that knowledge and work are not separate. Mahatama Gandhi promoted and educational curriculum with the same name based on the pedagogical principle. It can be translated with the phrase “Basic Education for all”. However, the concept has several layers of meaning. It developed out of Gandhi’s experience with the English educational system and with colonialism in general. In that system, he saw that Indian children would become dominant. In addition, it embodied a series of negative outcomes: the disdain for manual work, the development of a new elite class, and the increasing problems of industrialization and urbanization. The three pillars of Gandhi’s pedagogy were its focus on the lifelong character of education, its social character and its form as a holistic process. For Gandhi, education is the moral development of the person, a process that is by definition lifelong. Gandhi says: By education I mean an all round drawing out of the best in child and man-body, mind and spirit. Literacy is not the end of education nor even the beginning. It is only one of the means by which man and woman can be educated. Literacy in itself is no education. He would therefore begin the child’s education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to produce from the moment it begins its training. He encouraged mental work, pottery, spinning etc. they symbolized the values of self-sufficiency or Swaraj and independence or Swadeshi. Thus every school can be made self-supporting.
Education for SWARAJ:
"The real difficulty is that people have no idea of what education truly is. We assess the value of education in the same manner as we assess the value of land or of shares in the stock-exchange market. We want to provide only such education as would enable the student to earn more. We hardly give any thought to the improvement of the character of the educated. The girls, we say, do not have to earn; so why should they be educated? As long as such ideas persist there is no hope of our ever knowing the true value of education." (M. K. Gandhi True education on the NCTE site)
Literacy is not an end of education or even the beginning. All literate men may not be truly educated while the 'illiterate rural masses' at time may cultivate refined sensitivity and progressiveness that 'true education' is supposed to bring out. "Rural areas are less literate but have a better, more balanced gender ratio than urban areas.
The harsh truth is that modern education has increased social discrimination instead of eradicating it. It is generally believed that the gender ratio is adverse (in favor of men) in those states where the literacy rate is lower and the gender ratio is more balanced where the literacy rates are higher. This is a completely false interpretation. Beginning with a ratio of 972 females per 1000 males in 1901 the proportion was, on the whole, moving down consistently through the decades (except for slight increases in the year 1951 and 1981) and arrived the lowest figure of 927 females in 1991, while the literacy rate has been steadily up from a low of 5.39 per cent in 1901 to a high of 52.21 per cent in 1991."
Gandhiji advocated a complete reform which he called "Sarvodaya" meaning comprehensive progress. He believed that the difference between men and women was only physical and expressed several times in his writing that in many matters, especially those of tolerance, patience, and sacrifice, the Indian women is superior to the male. Gandhiji declared that there is no school better than home and there is no teacher better than parents.
He said men and women are equal, but not identical. "Intellectually, mentally, and spiritually, woman is equivalent to a male and she can participate in every activity". "Indian society is a male-dominated one", Gandhiji used to remind us even illustrating from his own life situation. Gandhiji has illustrated in his autobiography (The story of my Experiment with Truth) how early in his marriage he too wanted to dominate his wife. He often said that paternal society is the root cause of inequality. In his book, there is a very touching chapter about when he asked his wife to clean a public toilet and the resulting conflict between him and his wife. He has written how ashamed he was of himself, and how he took care not to hurt her anymore for the rest of his life.
We may address this issue from feminist perspective as well. The way Gandhi had sensitive approach to the caring and the nurturing traits of women, modern feminists emphasis on the experiences of motherhood, a women undergoing experiences of trauma / rejection etc., as victims of rape, sexual harassment etc., add another dimension. Gandhi glorified women as mother and also for her capacity to undergo suffering to emerge wiser out of that experience that is provided in the 'laboratory of life'. If we relate it to situational mode of knowing that differs from the contextual mode of knowing. Gandhi comes close to the former.
"In the United States, Jane Roland Martin was one of the first professional philosophers of education to bring a feminist perspective to her work. Jyotsna Kamat finds similarity of Gandhian approach to women-education in the country to some contemporary feminist writings. She writes: "Gandhi will have full support for her feminist concern that the 'very definition of education' and the educational realm adopted implicitly by the standard texts in philosophy of education excludes women." (Martin, 1999, 150)
Apart for referring to certain women-related issues like sexual harassment, feminist authors have focused on gender-linked approaches to knowing their implications for teaching in its various manifestations. In addition, feminist scholarship has sparked philosophical analyses of types of relationships and practices that in the past were generally ignored by philosophers of education. For instance, Sara Ruddick has argued that mothering constitutes a kind of practice driven by the aims of preservation, growth, and social acceptability. Engaging in the practice of mothering, Ruddick argues, fosters certain metaphysical attitudes, cognitive capacities and conceptions of virtue.
From a perspective such as Ruddick's, mothering appears to be a profound educational significance. Gandhi emphasized on attitudinal change that should come from education in its true sense of the term. Gandhi dose not mean that women should not cook, but only that household responsibilities be shared among men, women and children. He wanted women to outgrow the traditional responsibilities and participate in the affairs of nation. He criticised Indian's passion for male progeny. He said that as long as we don't consider girls as natural as our nation would be in a dark eclipse.
With our more emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI) and computers in school learning, we are optimistic that education now is on the right track. It given more emphasis on "doing", where "doing", unlike in Gandhian term, is more mechanical and robotic. 'Doing' now means mostly proving mathematical theorems and writing computer programs. In the field of AI the criterion of "what work" is straightforward, clear, and objective in the manner of engineering design; arguments and criticisms from outside the field can make no claim at all against it. It is this type of thinking that makes humans imitate machine thinking; it keeps no scope for any indecisiveness of the human thinker; there is no grey area; everything is either black or white. This mechanical way for testing intelligence makes us 'mantra vid', one who knows all the formulas and have all the required information in one's field, but education here fails to make us 'atma-vid', one who is a aware of what lies beyond the surface experience, of values and ideals, the drives and the motivating force that inspires us to 'know'.
Gandhi comes close to Dewey in this regard. In an address entitled "Education for the Rank and File," David Snedden drew on the social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer in asserting that society, like nature itself, was governed by often harsh natural lows that must be obeyed. Snedden saw the ultimate aim of education as "the greatest degree of efficiency".
This meant that for "the rank and file," that is, "those who do duty in the ranks..., who will follows, not lead,... utilitarian training which looks to individual efficiency in the world of work."
Dewey thought he saw a social class dualism in David.Snedden's distinction between vocational educational for the rank and file and liberal education for the few that would lead.
For Dewey. All meanings emerged from socio- cultural linguistic transactions. Concepts are cognitive meanings. Dewey warned against hypostatizing concepts through the occupations, something he supports for the kind of philosophical reasons, and education for the occupations, a kind of social pre-destinations he entirely rejected. For Dewey, the most important distinction to be drawn was not between liberal versus vocational education. But between liberating versus enslaving education.
Basic education or Nai Talim is based on the fundamental principle of "learning by doing". Gandhi is essentially a doer than a thinker and, therefore, his concepts of basic education can be classified as activity method or practical method. It is primarily a method of co-relation of book learning, craft and like- situations. He lays great emphasis on the necessity of training student for manual work under the supervision of teachers. Gandhi is of the Opinion that education should be imparted through craft like gardening, weaving, spinning, carpentry, etc. A realistic scheme of education must be closely integrated with the physical and social environment of the student.
The core of his proposal was the introduction of productive handicrafts in the school curriculum. Was he really wanted was for the schools to be self supporting, as far as possible. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, a poor society such as India simply could not afford to provide education for all children unless the schools could generate resources from within. Secondly, the more financially independent the schools were, the more politically independent they could be. What Gandhi wanted to avoid was dependence on the state which he felt would mean interference from the centre. Above all else, Gandhi values self-sufficiency and autonomy. These were vital for his vision of an independent India made up of autonomous village communities to survive. It was the combination of swaraj and swadeshi related to the education system. A state system of education within an independent India would have been a complete contradiction as far as Gandhi."
Gandhi sought to keep the centrality of the 'charakha' in our education system. This he did in to revolutionise entire teaching programme that traditionally associated productive handicrafts with the lowest groups in the hierarchy of castes. This now kept room for "racial restructuring of the sociology of school knowledge in India, where knowledge of the production processes involved in crafts, such as spinning, weaving, leather-work pottery, metal work, basket making and book binding, had been the monopoly of specific caste groups in the lowest strata of the traditional social hierarchy. Many of them belonged to the category of 'untouchables' India's indigenous tradition of education as well as the colonial education system had emphasized the skills(such as literacy) and knowledge of which the upper castes had a monopoly.
To quote Krishna Kumar: "The social philosophy and the curriculum of 'basic education' thus favored the child belonging to the lowest stratum of society. It sought to alter the symbolic meaning of 'education' and thereby to change the established structure of opportunities for education. Schools must be self-supporting, as far as possible, not to be dependent on the contributions from the poor students, and also self-sufficiency will protect schools from dependence on the State and from interference by it financial self-sufficiency was linked to truth, and autonomy to non-violence."
Gandhi and established in South Africa. Phoenix Farm, started in 1904, and Tolstoy Farm, which was established in 1910, provided him with a lasting interest and faith in the potential of life in a rural commune. John Ruskin's Unto this Last apparently inspired the first of these experiments last. Krishna Kumar writes: "Gandhi drew three lessons from this book, or rather, as Louis Fischer has explained, Gandhi read three messages into the book. The first message was that the benefit of all is what is good economy is all about; the second was that earnings from manual work (such as that of a barber) have the same value as mental work (such as that of a lawyer); and the third one was that a life worth living was that of a laborer or craftsman".
It appears that especially in the context of education Gandhi seemed reluctant to commit himself to a purely secular position, but the fact remains that his basic education plan provides no room for religious teaching. In June 1938 he had to explain the matter in the some detail because a delegation of educators demanded to know precisely what his view was on this matter. His answer was: "We have left out the teaching of religion from the Wardha scheme of education because we are afraid that religious as they are taught and practiced today lead to conflict rather than unity. But on the other hand, I hold that the truths that are common to all religion s can and should be taught to all children. These truths cannot to taught through words or through books - the children can learn these truth only through the daily life of he teacher. If the teacher himself lives up to the tenets of truth and justice, then alone can the children learn that Truth and Justice are the basis of all religions."
Education as a dialogue:
For Gandhi creativity is the basic instinct in men that makes him dynamic and living. Gandhi's conception of basic education was concerned with learning that was generated within everyday life which is the basis on which informal educators work. It was also an education focused on the individual but reliant on co-operation between individuals. Gandhi's insistence on autonomy and self-regulation is reflected in the ethos of informal education. It was also an education focused on the individual but reliant on co-operation between individuals.
"A teacher who establishes rapport with the taught becomes one with them, learns more from them than he teaches them, He who learns noting from his disciples is, in my opinion, worthless. Whenever I talk with someone I learn from him. I take from him more than I give him. In this way, a true teacher regards himself as a student of his students. If you will teach your pupils with this attitude, you will benefit much more them." (Talk to Khadi Viyalaya Students, Sevagram, Sevak, 15 February 1942 CW75, P. 269)
Education as a bridge between the local and the global:
The dehumanising effect of any education system may preserve order but it will not provide weapons to survive at a time of change and transition, from localization to globalization... It is only an environment, which fosters innovation that borderless minds can be formed and borderless thinking can flourish. It is only breaking up those walls and opening up those windows of mind will bring that fresh wind that will build the 'Innovative India' of our dreams.
Mahatma Gandhi sought to safeguard the human dimension of our existence and in this dialectic, man represented the whole of mankind, not just India, and the machine represented the industrialized. This alternate model of development will be decisive in his education policies. Gandhi wanted the reorder priorities, he was not against machine and industry but he was against the mechanisation of humans and dehumansing effect of it on society. Gandhi revolutionized the basic concept of education with more focus on an alternate model of development that will also empower the poor and the village along with benefits to the elite and the cities. No one had rejected colonial education as sharply and as completely as Gandhi nor did any one else put forward an alternative as radical as the one he proposed. But this is not just a usual stereotyped response that one can easily interpret Gandhian search for an alternate education system as a kind of xenophobia. "It would be equally wrong to see it as a symptom of a subtle revivalist dogma.
If it were possible to read Gandhi's 'basic education' plan as an anonymous text in the history of world education, it would be conveniently classified in the tradition of Western radical humanists like Pestalozzi, Owen, Tolstoy and Dewey. It dose not lend itself to be read in the context of the East-West dichotomy that Gandhi did deal with in some of his other writings."
Yet, the fact remains that Gandhi wanted education - reconstructed along the lines he thought correct - to help India move away from the Western concept of progress, towards a different form of development more suited to its needs and more viable, for the world as a whole than the Western model of development. Adequate definitions of "development" and "underdevelopment" must necessarily be linked to a form of self - reliance rooted firmly in the capacities and interests of the working people. Re-defining development in terms of an expansion of capabilities, or freedoms to lead a life which is valuable, (Sen.1993), Nobel laureate Amartya Sen defines development not in terms of GDP but in terms of 'the real freedoms that people enjoy.'
In the true sense of the term, development must embody five elements: political freedoms, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees and protective security.
Conclusion:
Dr. Karan Sing speak out on our behalf when he says: "I belong to the post-Gandhian generation, but it does seem to me, that as time goes by many of us who, when we were younger, tented to dismiss Gandhiji's ideas as being unrealistic and hopelessly idealistic, are now beginning to realise that perhaps, in the long run, those ideas can be of great value to the emerging global civilization." In Rio de Janeiro 1992, the Earth summit, there were thousands of green activists who drew their inspiration not from Marx, not from Lenin, not from Adam Smith but from Mahatma Gandhi. There were young people who had been influenced by the thoughts of this man, who spoke to them across the gulf of decades. Gandhi's emphasis on the individual rater than the machines and on small-scale village production rater than large scale manufacture can bring about peace, freedom and socio-economic development in a reasonable period.
I conclude with the following words of Arya Bhushan Bharadwaj: "We have a look back to Gandhi. After the near failure of both communism and capitalism, we have a look for a Third power which could provide a better and more positive "humane system" for building a better world, a new system that would be free from any sort of violence at the individual as well as at the social level. Here comes the relevance of Gandhi who advocated a new socio-political system based on human values of love and compassion."
An Introduction:
John Dewey [1859-1952] an influential philosopher, psychologist and educational thinker, published his book on “Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education in 1916. He is often considered as the father of constructivism. He believed that learning is a social, communal process requiring students to construct their own understanding based on personal experience.
The importance of inquiry as an instructional approach:
Dewey emphasised the importance of inquiry as an instructional approach and has become associated with the discovery of learning and child-centred, progressive teaching approaches. While he certainly believed education needs to connect learning to the real world experience of learners and be child-centred, he also emphasised the importance of a rigorous curriculum that developed powerful methodologies and knowledge. Dewey was uncomfortable with some of the more extreme progressive pedagogical approaches that became associated with his name.
Dewey believed developing intellectual powers is a necessary but not a sufficient goal of education. Schooling must equip young people to live a fulfilled life and become life-long learners, able to fulfil their potential and contribute to society. Dewey was alarmed that schools failed in this regard, promoting passive and compliant pupils rather than reflective, autonomous, informed decision makers. He believed one absolutely critical function of education is to develop the intellect, motivation and wisdom of young people so that they become ‘mature’ and effective citizens able to transmit culture from one generation to the next and transform it in the face of change: “What nutrition and reproduction are to physiological life, education is to social life.”
The link between democracy and education:
What is particularly interesting about this book is the link Dewey highlights between democracy and education reflecting his advocacy of democracy. Democracy is not only about extending voting rights, a big issue in 1916, but also equipping citizens with the ability to take on the responsibility to make informed, intelligent choices and decisions leading to the public good. He believed that democracy is not just a political system but an ethical ideal with active informed participation by citizens.. Established beliefs and theories should be critically questioned and revised in the light of developments, pragmatically evolving to meet the needs of changing times. If democracy is to work it required informed, knowledgeable and wise citizens and, therefore, education has a moral purpose. Classroom teachers and schools have a responsibility to nurture character as well as teach knowledge and skills.
Dewey stressed that education has to prepare students for an uncertain future and, therefore, a high priority should be given to developing effective habits and the ability to adapt and learn how to learn. This is notable given the fact that during his lifetime, with the notable exception of the great depression and two world wars, life for most people was comparatively predictable. Industrialisation and mass production meant many people had a job for life and emphasis in education was on preparing individuals for their respective roles in a fairly predictable workplace. The modern globalised world is by contrast highly unpredictable. Individuals often have little job security and multiple careers, and coping with uncertainty well has never been more important.
Teachers were viewed by Dewey as needing to be creative professionals demonstrating not only understanding of their subject matter but a passion for knowledge, intellectual curiosity, an understanding of the learning process and the children in their care. Dewey understood that excellent teachers responded quickly to student responses as indications of their current level of understanding, a direct consequence of constructivism.
Dewey understands of constructivism as a theory explaining how deep learning happens, further developed by Vygotsky and others, has become the established paradigm. Consequences, now widely recognised, include engaging and challenging students, relating learning to experience and listening to the voice of the learner in order to understand students’ thinking and adjust teaching accordingly. Dewey’s concern that a focus on the learner’s interests needs to be balanced with the need to develop powerful knowledge and understanding continues to matter today in debates about how to organise the curriculum.
As we move into the uncertain global information age perhaps Dewey’s concern with the relationship between effective democracy and education is his most important lesson. It has never been more important to help the young cope with uncertainty well, to learn how to learn for life, and to understand that education is a moral enterprise concerned with developing informed citizens capable of making informed choices and decisions.
Democracy
First, Dewey believed that democracy is an ethical ideal rather than merely a political arrangement. Second, he considered participation, not representation, the essence of democracy. Third, he insisted on the harmony between democracy and the scientific method: ever-expanding and self-critical communities of inquiry, operating on pragmatic principles and constantly revising their beliefs in light of new evidence, provided Dewey with a model for democratic decision making ... Finally, Dewey called for extending democracy, conceived as an ethical project, from politics to industry and society.
As commonly argued by Dewey's greatest critics, he was not able to come up with strategies in order to fulfill his ideas that would lead to a successful democracy, educational system, and a successful women's suffrage movement. While knowing that traditional beliefs, customs, and practices needed to be examined in order to find out what worked and what needed improved upon, it was never done in a systematic way. "Dewey became increasingly aware of the obstacles presented by entrenched power and alert to the intricacy of the problems facing modern cultures". With the complex of society at the time, Dewey was criticized for his lack of effort in fixing the problems.
With respect to technological developments in a democracy:
Persons do not become a society by living in physical proximity any more than a man ceases to be socially influenced by being so many feet or miles removed from others.
His work on democracy influenced B.R. Ambedkar one of his students, who later became one of the founding fathers of independent India.
Education:
Dewey's educational theories were presented in my Pedagogic Creed (1897) The Primary-Education (1898),The School and Society (1900) The Child and the Curriculum (1902) Democracy and Education 1916. Several themes recur throughout these writings. Dewey continually argues that education and learning are social and interactive processes, and thus the school itself is a social institution through which social reform can and should take place. In addition, he believed that students thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum, and all students should have the opportunity to take part in their own learning.
The ideas of democracy and social reform are continually discussed in Dewey's writings on education. Dewey makes a strong case for the importance of education not only as a place to gain content knowledge, but also as a place to learn how to live. In his eyes, the purpose of education should not revolve around the acquisition of a pre-determined set of skills, but rather the realization of one's full potential and the ability to use those skills for the greater good. He notes that "to prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities". In addition to helping students realize their full potential, Dewey goes on to acknowledge that education and schooling are instrumental in creating social change and reform. He notes that "education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction".
In addition to his ideas regarding what education is and what effect it should have on society, Dewey also had specific notions regarding how education should take place within the classroom. In The Child and the Curriculum (1902), Dewey discusses two major conflicting schools of thought regarding educational pedagogy. The first is centered on the curriculum and focuses almost solely on the subject matter to be taught. Dewey argues that the major flaw in this methodology is the inactivity of the student; within this particular framework, "the child is simply the immature being who is to be matured; he is the superficial being who is to be deepened". He argues that in order for education to be most effective, content must be presented in a way that allows the student to relate the information to prior experiences, thus deepening the connection with this new knowledge.
At the same time, Dewey was alarmed by many of the "child-centered" excesses of educational-school pedagogues who claimed to be his followers, and he argued that too much reliance on the child could be equally detrimental to the learning process. In this second school of thought, "we must take our stand with the child and our departure from him. It is he and not the subject-matter which determines both quality and quantity of learning". According to Dewey, the potential flaw in this line of thinking is that it minimizes the importance of the content as well as the role of the teacher.
In order to rectify this dilemma, Dewey advocated for an educational structure that strikes a balance between delivering knowledge while also taking into account the interests and experiences of the student. He notes that "the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process. Just as two points define a straight line, so the present standpoint of the child and the facts and truths of studies define instruction". It is through this reasoning that Dewey became one of the most famous proponents of hand-on learning or experiential education, which is related to, but not synonymous with experiential learning. He argued that "if knowledge comes from the impressions made upon us by natural objects, it is impossible to procure knowledge without the use of objects which impress the mind". Dewey's ideas went on to influence many other influential experiential models and advocates. Problem-Based Learning for example, a method used widely in education today, incorporates Dewey's ideas pertaining to learning through active inquiry.
Dewey not only re-imagined the way that the learning process should take place, but also the role that the teacher should play within that process. Throughout the history of American schooling, education's purpose has been to train students for work by providing the student with a limited set of skills and information to do a particular job. The works of John Dewey provide the most prolific examples of how this limited vocational view of education has been applied to both the K–12 public education system and to the teacher training schools who attempted to quickly produce proficient and practical teachers with a limited set of instructional and discipline-specific skills needed to meet the needs of the employer and demands of the workforce. In The School and Society (1899) and Democracy of Education (1916), Dewey claims that rather than preparing citizens for ethical participation in society, schools cultivate passive pupils via insistence upon mastery of facts and disciplining of bodies. Rather than preparing students to be reflective, autonomous and ethical beings capable of arriving at social truths through critical and inter subjective discourse, schools prepare students for docile compliance with authoritarian work and political structures, discourage the pursuit of individual and communal inquiry, and perceive higher learning as a monopoly of the institution of education.
For Dewey and his philosophical followers, education stifles individual autonomy when learners are taught that knowledge is transmitted in one direction, from the expert to the learner. Dewey not only re-imagined the way that the learning process should take place, but also the role that the teacher should play within that process. For Dewey, "The thing needful is improvement of education, not simply by turning out teachers who can do better the things that are not necessary to do, but rather by changing the conception of what constitutes education". Dewey's qualifications for teaching—a natural love for working with young children, a natural propensity to inquire about the subjects, methods and other social issues related to the profession, and a desire to share this acquired knowledge with others—are not a set of outwardly displayed mechanical skills. Rather, they may be viewed as internalized principles or habits which "work automatically, unconsciously". Turning to Dewey's essays and public addresses regarding the teaching profession, followed by his analysis of the teacher as a person and a professional, as well as his beliefs regarding the responsibilities of teacher education programs to cultivate the attributes addressed, teacher educators can begin to re-imagine the successful classroom teacher Dewey envisioned.
Comments