Association of American Colleges and Universities, January 2001

prepared by Ross Miller, AAC&U

Selections from "My Pedagogic Creed," first published in The School Journal, Volume LIV, Number 3, (January 16, 1897), pages 77-80

Introduction

As active participation in the classroom, service learning, internships, and co-curricular volunteering experiences receive more emphasis on many campuses, Dewey's ideas about "experience" as the greatest teacher inevitably come to mind. Even a brief review of a small part of Dewey's massive writing about education reveals statements that, while written over a century ago, still apply to education reform at both the secondary and college levels. Following are a few selections from a single article that Dewey wrote.

"I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself."

 

"...The child's own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education. Save as the efforts of the educator connect with some activity which the child is carrying on of his own initiative independent of the educator, education becomes reduced to a pressure from without....If it chances to coincide with the child's activity it will get a leverage; if it does not, it will result in friction, or disintegration, or arrest of the child nature."

"...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 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; that his eye and ear and hand may be tools ready to command, that his judgment may be capable of grasping the conditions under which it has to work, and the executive forces be trained to act economically and efficiently."

"I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living."

 

"I believe that the school must represent present life—life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground."

 

"...I believe that much of present education fails because it neglects this fundamental principle of the school as a form of community life. It conceives the school as a place where certain information is to be given, where certain lessons are to be learned, or where certain habits are to be formed. The value of these is conceived as lying largely in the remote future; the child must do these things for the sake of something else he is to do; they are mere preparation. As a result they do not become a part of the life experience of the child and so are not truly educative."

"I believe that one of the greatest difficulties in the present teaching of science is that the material is presented in purely objective form, or is treated as a new peculiar kind of experience which the child can add to that which he has already had. In reality, science is of value because it gives the ability to interpret and control the experience already had. It should be introduced, not as so much new subject-matter, but as showing the factors already involved in previous experience and as furnishing tools by which that experience can be more easily and effectively regulated."

 

"I believe that at present we lose much of the value of literature and language studies because of our elimination of the social element. Language is almost always treated in the books of pedagogy simply as the expression of thought. It is true that language is a logical instrument, but it is fundamentally and primarily a social instrument. Language is the device for communication; it is the tool through which one individual comes to share the ideas and feelings of others."

"I believe that interests are the signs and symptoms of growing power. I believe that they represent dawning capacities. Accordingly the constant and careful observation of interests is of the utmost importance for the educator."

 

"...I believe that these interests are neither to be humored nor repressed. To repress interest is to substitute the adult for the child, and so to weaken intellectual curiosity and alertness, to suppress initiative, and to deaden interest. To humor the interests is to substitute the transient for the permanent. The interest is always the sign of some power below; the important thing is to discover this power. To humor the interest is to fail to penetrate below the surface and its sure result is to substitute caprice and whim for genuine interest."

"I believe that it is the business of every one interested in education to insist upon the school as the primary and most effective interest of social progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize what the school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of endowing the educator with sufficient equipment properly to perform his task."

 

"I believe that education thus conceived marks the most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience."

"I believe that with the growth of psychological service, giving added insight into individual structure and laws of growth; and with the growth of social science, adding to our knowledge of the right organization of individuals, all scientific resources can be utilized for the purposes of education."

 

"I believe that when science and art thus join hands the most commanding motive for human action will be reached; the most genuine springs of human conduct aroused and the best service that human nature is capable of guaranteed."

Full text of article located at http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~infed/e-texts/e-dew-pc.htm