The School Experience

Education is just a transfer to the student or discovery by the student of knowledge from the past. Dewey noted the issue was not in what education is, but in how it is done. Being a proponent of positive educative experience, he noted that progressive education and traditional education provide experiences. This makes the issue not whether experience is provided or not but what sort of experience the educator will use to have the student acquire knowledge. Dewey framed the question in his book as follows: "How shall the young become acquainted with the past in such a way that the acquaintance is a potent agent in appreciation of the living present?" (23). According to Dewey, traditional education would just funnel the knowledge accumulated through history into the student through books and instruction from a teacher without connecting the past to the reality of the student. Acquiring the knowledge became the end goal of the education process. Dewey expressed the view that the present should always remain in focus. By keeping the present at the core, the student and teacher would avoid the pitfalls of creating a disconnect between what is being taught to the reality of the student.