by John Dewey
John Dewey is a primary reason for the failure of modern public education. It is necessary to understand his ideas and where modern educational ideas come from to truly understand why and how modern education is failing, and will continue to fail until severed from the subject of psychology. John Dewey did have some interesting ideas, but they far too often only involved minor areas of educational importance, while placed into positions of paramount importance by Dewey and his followers. Dewey pushed the notion of "subject relevance" to such an extreme that basic educational practices such as reading and writing were reduced in importance to a point where students today often fail miserably with them. These is often because Dewey's ideas have been ruthlessly followed, and actual important basics are neglected in favor of "socialization", encouraging "meaningful classroom experiences", and a general aversion to book-learning. More philosophizing, vague abstractions and sweeping generalities which never make it down from the high cloud level to practical applications in the world of real people and situations. Upon careful analysis by the honest reader Dewey's ideas can be seen to be very general, vague and largely unable to be realistically applied, regardless of how wonderful the ideas sound in theory. Also, it's so much what Dewey says that is wrong - it's what he omits and thereby relegates no importance to - educational basics, intellectual learning, imparting individual responsibility. Additionally, what he does concentrate on and stress is given far too much relative importance in the overall educational scheme of things. This book goes through Dewey's various ideas and approaches to education. Read it with the viewpoint of understanding where exactly modern education went wrong.
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