Unit I - My summary on Dewey's Child & the Curriculum

John Dewey (1859-1952), puts forward his views and beliefs on education in his seminal work "Child & the Curriculum". He analyzes two competing ideas on the subject - teaching the child vs teaching the subject that divided US education in the early 20th century. In his essay, he first explores the opposing views and then argues on how the differences could be eventually resolved to construct a curriculum that can successfully meet the educator's objective.

In the process of examining the competing theories of education, Dewey examines a child's world and describes how it operates and how they learn naturally through the process of experiencing life. He realized from his personal experience and through active research that the structure of a child's mind in the context of learning is diametrically opposite to an adult. A child's thought doesn’t have the framework to classify and assimilate all the information that he is receiving. He is still in the process of developing the context to process all the information about the world that he is absorbing. His true interests lie with the surrounding people and relationships as opposed to concrete facts and laws.

According to Dewey, an ideal curriculum must meet the child on his own terms. It should provide him with the opportunity to explore experience and connect relevant information leading to learning the abstract principles and constructing the worldview, which should be the eventual goal of the curriculum. While espousing his theory, Dewey also reflects on the broader subjects of the anthropological, psychological and societal aspects of education.

Dewey finally concludes that the educators should stop trying to resolve the irresolvable ideas on teaching the child vs. teaching the subject and instead find a way to reframe the differences. He explains that both the subjects are actually parts of the same goal which he redefines as teaching through experience.
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