A Propaedeutic to John Dewey’s Educative Philosophy: … · the Curriculum” and “Outcomes Based Training and Education” ... Dewey’s . Art as Experience. ... growth and maturing

A Propaedeutic to John Dewey’s Educative Philosophy: “The Child and the Curriculum” and “Outcomes Based Training and Education”

By Stephen Lasse

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This paper was completed and submitted in partial fulfillment of the Master Teacher Program, a 2-year faculty professional development program conducted by the Center for Teaching Excellence, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY 2012.

I had resolved to write my Master Teacher Program paper on my experience applying

John Dewey’s aesthetic theory from Art as Experience to the 2010 Advanced Land Navigation

committee Cadet Summer Training.1 When I started the MTP in the fall of 2010, it seemed the

perfect match to apply theory to practice as we talked about ways to develop faculty knowledge,

abilities and skills in the classroom with the goal of enhancing cadet learning. I had already

partnered with a trainer from the Center for Enhanced Performance (CEP) for two semesters to

demonstrate how their activities provide a practical application of Dewey’s aesthetic theory.2 I

had also just completed the first summer land navigation training at USMA using a new training

method implemented by the Director of Military Instruction (DMI) based on an adaptive leader

development theory that, as I interacted with, proved to be another application of Dewey’s

aesthetic theory.

I had resolved to use this MTP paper to show how Dewey’s theory of beauty could be

seen as a vital contribution to the growth of teachers, how through applying that theory to

summer training there are interesting parallels to all the topics we covered during our two year

program. By the fall of 2010 I had also read Dewey’s How We Think, and as the MTP

progressed through discussions of learning styles, teaching pedagogy, assessing teaching and 1 This is for the United States Military Academy MTP, starting the fall semester of 2010 going through the spring semester of 2012.

2 I covered Dewey’s Art as Experience for three lessons in my epistemology block for my PY201 Introduction to Philosophy course, mandatory for second year cadets. I had my PY201 sections visit the CEP for one lesson to use their training activities as a practical application of Dewey’s theory. I partnered with Ms. Sandi Miller, CEP trainer.

A Propaedeutic to John Dewey’s Educative Philosophy

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testing, etc. I found his aesthetic theory and his discussion of critical thinking and learning

reflected in the modern theories we discussed in our monthly MTP sessions. During the summer

of 2011 I conducted two weeks of research at the John Dewey Center in Carbondale, Illinois and

started reading some of his education theory. I found that Dewey had at one point in time

written about and practiced in his pedagogy everything we discussed and read in MTP.

At first I found it a bit amusing that none of the modern academic research into scholarly

activities ever even recognized Dewey’s contributions to education. My mentor in graduate

school would expound on how current intellectuals snub the American pragmatists of the 19th

and 20th centuries, not deigning to recognize that most modern U.S. worldviews are based on

beliefs founded on principles established by that cluster of thinkers from William James to John

Dewey. I was surprised to prove that sentiment from my initial exposure to John Dewey’s

writings.

I first read Art as Experience in an aesthetics class in 2007. At that point I had served as

a combat officer in the army for over twenty years and had a wealth of practical experience in

training and leadership development. I realized that the somewhat vague impression I had of

John Dewey being the individual who invented the decimal system and had dabbled in

progressive education and debated democracy and communism was largely mistaken.3 I was

shocked to find his aesthetic theory that links beauty to experience provides the most efficient

blueprint to build an effective COIN strategy. I had just finished a four-year stint of working

with Colombian military forces in their first national campaign against the FARC, as well as

3 Melville Dewey, not related, invented in the decimal system in 1876. John Dewey did become known as the “father” of progressive education theory, and he did serve on the “Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials.”


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participating in the Global War on Terrorism in Afghanistan.4 I remain convinced to this day

that Art as Experience is more valuable for military leaders charged with planning and executing

COIN tactics than anything produced by General Petraeus or David Kilcullen.5

I had resolved to insert Dewey’s theories back into the MTP generated scholarly

discussion on the practice of teaching and learning in our classroom activities. I wanted to

demonstrate how his discourse on The Child and the Curriculum from 1902, intellectual

development of critical thinking from How We Think, 1910, and his experience based aesthetic

theory Art as Experience from 1934 all are still applicable in the academic research of today—so

that other professional educators could see how Dewey’s theory can stimulate our MTP

conversation aimed at enhancing teaching and learning for the development of future leaders in

our Army.

Then I began to realize that there is something fundamentally troubling that modern

scholarly research into learning and teaching has overlooked significant contributions to

education theory from American intellectuals of the 19th and 20th centuries. These theories tend

to focus on healthy growth and maturing through experience. John Dewey laid out how

experience is educative through the way the subject [psychological] connects with the object

[logical],6 that growth is only realized through the healthy interaction of the two. His theories

4 COIN stands for Counter Insurgency Operations. FARC is the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, who also participate in the cocaine industry.

5 General Petraeus developed a new COIN manual and implemented that strategy as Commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq. David Kilcullen is an anthropologist who advised Petraeus and has written numerous articles and several books on COIN.

6 By employing the subject-object debate here, I will use these connotations for my paper: subject linked to the psychological aspects of the person involved [the Child]; object linked to the logical aspects of the scientific facts or body of knowledge that comprises [the Curriculum] the thing the subject is expected to learn.


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provide a comprehensive way to frame what actually comprises education as well as the

fundamental factors that are constitutive elements of intellectual growth.

The modern theories we have discussed in MTP are interesting and innovative. I do

believe that it is invaluable to investigate ways to integrate them into the classroom and apply

new research into teaching and learning activities. It can be exciting and enticing to follow

these latest trends and developments, breaking new ground and exploring fascinating related

issues. However, there is a subtle danger to overlooking the old pragmatic foundation. If I loose

focus on the objective to pursue an interesting twist, I will not be able to realize the original

intended goal. To apply to land navigation terms, if I deviate only two degrees off azimuth for

ten kilometers I would not even be able to see my intended destination when I complete that

course of travel.

I now propose to institute an azimuth check. I will introduce Dewey’s fundamental goal

and principle factors that Dewey ascribes to education as a vehicle for charting the directions of

the modern theories of learning and teaching. I acknowledge that I am an amateur in

professional education and have only three years experience teaching in the classroom.

However, I am convinced that John Dewey’s theories are relevant to the practical experience I

have with leadership development and operational tactics from the Army. Understanding his

theories provide a grounding framework for developing soldiers into effective, mature leaders

capable of adapting to challenging environments and missions. The more I teach, the more I am

convinced that leadership and pedagogy share the same dynamics in developing soldiers and

students. I hope that this introduction of an old and forgotten theory will contribute to the

modern conversation on pursuing excellence in the teaching and learning environment.


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An Introduction to Dewey’s Philosophy:

Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men.7

Harold Taylor, president of Sarah Lawrence College and activist for progressive education at the

post-secondary level, related a conversation with John Dewey concerning the administration of

learning. Taylor laid out the view that education requires philosophical insight and philosophical

insight develops from practical experience, and then posed two aspects of a major challenge to

this position. First, college educators have a wealth of practical experience but remain short-

sighted on critical thinking about practical aspects of teaching. Second, teachers, administrators,

and even students involved in the process of formal learning lack the time to reflect on the

context of their shared experiences in education.

Dewey responded by re-framing the context of the education process. For him, education

entails the intersection of logic, in the form of objective knowledge, with psychology, in the

shape of immature child. Education begins when administrators develop a body of knowledge

(Curriculum), based on reflective considerations from subject matter experts in the discipline

being taught. However, pedagogy culminates when teachers apply that curriculum (detailed

body of knowledge) to the real life experiences of those students who are charged with learning.

By applying theory to this effort, Dewey continues his adventure to recover philosophy. In this

case teachers, as subject-matter experts in the theory, become the conduit that applies said base

of knowledge to the students’ contextual framework. Dewey recommended for Taylor “… to 7 Dewey, John. “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy.” mw.10.46.


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stop being president and start teaching again. It’s the teaching that does it.”8 For Dewey, the act

of teaching as interaction with students and curriculum restores the proper balance in the

pedagogical relationship between logic [Curriculum] and psychology [Child].

Dewey envisioned teaching as translating the subject-matter of the curriculum into a

medium that the students can grow from interacting with. The major problem that Dewey found

in the education process is that administrators, teachers, and students tend to confuse that

relationship and wander from the goal of education. The act of teaching is the way Dewey

prescribes to correct that tendency to get off track. It is the way for philosophies of learning to

recover themselves by practical application towards the desired outcome. Teaching reunites the

child and the curriculum in the way that culminates in growth of the student in the more adult

subject matter of the body of accumulated knowledge.

In 2010, the Director of Military Instruction at the United States Military Academy

introduced the Outcomes Based Training and Education (OBTE) model to fix a long-standing

problem with land navigation instruction. DMI research revealed that approximately thirty

percent of all initial trainees would never learn the critical skills for land navigation; they would

fail all tests and seek out military operational specialties (MOS) that did not require using maps

and compasses. DMI determined that the demographic of routine failures rely on linear learning

methods for navigation – they prefer the step-by-step directions from mapquest over the

graphical representation of the map to plan a route to travel from point A to point B; while

spatial learners are more comfortable using the map for navigation. DMI analysis indicated that

the traditional Army training method fails to provide the environment where linear learners can

8 Dykhuizen, George. The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1973. p.xix – xx.


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process the topographical data depicted on two dimensional maps as a spatial representation of

the three dimensional terrain they are tasked with navigating through.

I will apply this OBTE model of land navigation instruction to introduce how Dewey’s

theory considers the immature child (student/trainee) and the curriculum (accumulated body of

knowledge on a specific subject matter) as being two fundamental factors to the process of

education, that are only united in growth with the mature teacher acting as interpreter or guide to

link the two.

Fundamental Factors of the Educative Process

In his 1902 work The Child and the Curriculum Dewey identified two fundamental

factors in the process of education: the Child and the Curriculum. The Child represents the

subjective, psychological elements in the immature student/trainee who is intended to learn or be

trained. The Curriculum represents the objective, logical accumulation of a body of knowledge

that is intended to be learned or trained.

The fundamental factors in the educative process are an immature, underdeveloped being; and certain social aims, meanings, values incarnate in the matured experience of the adult. Such a conception of each in relation to the other as facilitates completest and freest interaction is the essence of educational theory.9

While this is a simple statement, it is relatively hard to grasp for those embarking in the

profession of education. It is always easier to understand these two factors in their separation

from each other, and to think of the process of learning or educating from either the perspective

of the Child or that of the Curriculum.

9 Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum, from The Philosophy of John Dewey: Two Volumes in One, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1973, p. 468.


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But here comes the effort of thought. It is easier to see the conditions in their separateness, to insist upon one at the expense of the other, to make antagonists of them, than to discover a reality to which each belongs. The easy thing is to seize upon something in the nature of the child, or upon something in the developed consciousness of the adult, and insist upon that as the key to the whole problem.10

The separation of the constitutive parts of education traps any training model based on

this division in a purely theoretical realm. No substantial growth can occur from either of

these isolated attitudes—the psychological immaturity will never realize the logical

development required to fully apply subject matter expertise to the real world. Like the MTP

discussions; you can have entertaining intellectual conversations, but no pragmatic growth in

the pedagogic relationship, either the adult talks down to the child or the child spurns the

development of the adult. You can crank up the motor of the education vehicle, but if a couple

of spark plugs are missing, the engine never reaches its full potential.

When this happens a really serious practical problem—that of interaction—is transformed into an unreal, and hence, insoluble, theoretic problem. Instead of seeing the educative steadily and as a whole, we see conflicting terms. We get the case of the child vs. the curriculum; of the individual nature vs. social culture. Below all other divisions in pedagogic opinion lies this opposition.11

Two fundamental errors occur through this enforced separation: the first focuses the educative

process solely on the curriculum; the second equally dangerous error focuses efforts solely on the

child. To get a handle on Dewey’s proper interaction of educative factors, I will first introduce

how ‘traditional’ Army training demonstrates this separation that also characterizes many

modern pedagogic theories.

Separation through Focus on the Curriculum:

10 Ibed, p. 469.

11 Ibed, p. 469.


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DMI’s quest to resolve the tension between linear learning styles and ‘standard’ training

methods through cadet summer training is a practical application of Dewey’s advocacy for

philosophy recovering itself through dealing with the problems of men.12 As the first Officer in

Charge (OIC) of the Advanced Land Navigation Committee in the summer of 2010 I started

noticing parallels between Dewey and the theory behind OBTE. The 2009 Army White Paper

outlining OBTE addresses the basic distinction between ‘standard’ or traditional Army training

methods and OBTE: traditional Army training methods have leaders training Soldiers “how to

apply approved, doctrinal solutions to particular problems” whereas OBTE method seeks to

instill in the Soldier the ability to learn “how to frame problems and solve them, focusing on the

result rather than the methods used to obtain them.”13 This differentiation between ‘standard’

and OBTE models of Army training highlights the double error of separating the two

fundamental factors of Dewey’s educative process.

‘Standard’ Army training focuses on the matured experience of the adult expertise in

subject matter – a specific task, condition, and standard are devised by the experts, and trainees-

students must master those doctrinally sound techniques in the regimented standard model.

Dewey identifies the mindset behind establishing ‘standard’ training methods:

Subject-matter furnishes the end [doctrine], and it determines [training] method. The child is simply the immature being who is to be matured; he is the superficial being who is to be

12 I do not claim that DMI used John Dewey to develop OBTE and the concept of Advanced Land Navigation training for cadets going in to their second summer at West Point. I was the first OIC for Advanced Land Navigation Committee, assigned to train cadets in the summer following their first academic year. I noticed direct parallel of OBTE to Dewey’s theories and applied Dewey’ to the practical aspects of implanting DMI’s initiatives for the summer of 2010.

13 Outcomes-Based Training and Education (Whiter Paper version 2.0) 10 August 2009. p. 1.


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deepened; his is narrow experience which is to be widened. It is his to receive, to accept. His part is fulfilled when he is ductile and docile.14

This view produces a dysfunction in the interaction of the two fundamental factors. The subject

matter expertise of the Curriculum is a critical element of the process; however, the Child lacks

the context to understand the ‘doctrinal’ template. Forcing the student to relate to the subject

matter from the mature experience of the adult hinders the Child’s ability to place the material

being taught in the framework of his experience. For Dewey, the educative process has to result

in the Child growing from the underdeveloped state to reach toward that adult grasp of the

subject matter. ‘Standard’ training methods separate the Child from the Curriculum; at best the

subject matter is only partially understood and the trainee will not retain the instruction beyond

any immediate test. Doctrinal templates do not widen experience; the Child requires a challenge

to solve in order to proceed from intellectual curiosity to maturity.

The educative process only culminates in growth when Dewey’s two fundamental factors

are combined in the right way. In this instance, ‘standard’ Army training does not help the linear

learner to see the two dimensional lines of the map as representations of the three dimensional

terrain features they represent. For that to happen, OBTE trainers do not follow a format to

present a task, condition, and standard way to use a compass and map to navigate. OBTE

instructors rather focus on creating the conditions where trainees will have to solve problems

geared to their contextual level of understanding; OBTE methods develop students’ ability to

think critically and adapt to grow to a higher level of maturity – in this case being able to

visualize the linear map in three dimensions.

14 Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum, p. 471. [Emphasis mine]


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Whereas standard Army training methods seek to teach Soldiers and leaders how to apply approved, doctrinal solutions to particular problems, OBTE seeks instead to teach them how to frame problems and solve them, focusing on the results rather than the methods used to obtain them. It is thus designed to create thinking, adaptive Soldiers and leaders who are capable of applying what they know to solve problems they have previously not encountered.15

This framing of problems calls for the OBTE leader-trainer to, in effect, translate the

subject matter of land navigation skills from the advanced maturity of the expert into a medium

that the comparatively immature trainee [Child] can relate to and grow from the interaction.

The systemized and defined experience of the adult mind, in other words, is of value to us in interpreting the child’s life as it immediately shows itself, and in passing on to guidance or direction.16

Trainers accomplish this interpretation of the body of knowledge by presenting a series of

progressively more complex problems that the child [trainee] will have to interact with the land

navigation skills in order to solve.

Separation through Focus on the Child:

Many military leaders and professional educators alike leap from judgment to condemnation

of OBTE and Dewey on this point. The assessment is that this practice constitutes indulging the

trainee-student; without adherence to doctrinal methods teachers-trainers are merely entertaining

and coddling the children. This separation mindset sees this interaction as capitulation to the

immature child—resulting in lazy soldiers, or students, who will have to be “entertained” and,

therefore, will never reach the maturity of discipline to know the body of knowledge. Standards

must be clearly imprinted on the trainees and students must be held accountable to those

standards at all times.

15 OBTE, p.5.

16 Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum; p. 473.


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However, both OBTE and Dewey condemn indulging the trainee-student. They both

emphasize that the educative process is used to set the contextual framework from which real

learning can occur. The Child is not entertained solely for him to enjoy his current level of

immaturity; rather this process is used to propel the trainee to the next level of maturity—it does

not eliminate standards, it widens the trainee’s experience to grow into the subject matter.

It is important to emphasize that OBTE is not a free ride. While trainers encourage students to experiment and make mistakes during learning, OBTE requires accountability for both trainers and students. It therefore does not eliminate standards. Instead, it provides a more realistic context in which to observe performance, and it allows the development of standards that help measure things that are important but have not previously been measured in any meaningful way – things like initiative, judgment, problem solving, resilience, and grit. Eventually, it should help us to better assess Army Values and the Warrior Ethos.17

Dewey is quite adamant that the Child is not to be coddled. While teachers are interpreting the

subject matter down to the maturity level of the trainee-student, they also must interact with the

Child to determine his ability to interact with the subject matter. This second aspect of the role

of interpretation is essential because the focus is not on satisfying the student to remain in that

immature state. Teachers–trainers operate as guides in Dewey’s educative process when they

introduce bite sized levels of logic (from the body of knowledge) to the appropriate

psychological level (of the trainee-student), not to indulge that present immaturity. Rather the

purpose is to present the logic in bites that are big enough to make the student thoughtfully chew

the material and desire more substantial amounts in his next meal—to wean the Child off baby-

food and progress to solid food and an adult palette. This translation of logic to psychological is

required to build the foundation for growth to occur.

What we need is something which will enable us to interpret, to appraise, the elements in the child’s present puttings forth and fallings away, his exhibitions of power and weakness, in the

17 OBTE, p. 6.


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light of some larger growth-process in which they have their place. Only in this way can we discriminate.18

Not only does Dewey call for the teacher to translate the subject matter – he is calling for the

teacher to discriminate the ability, or maturity, of the Child. As the leader-trainer is

psychologizing the subject matter, he is also gauging the ability of the student-trainee to logically

interact with that subject matter. Only by measuring or assessing both can he know how to push

and prod – guide the Child to the next level of growth. Dewey’s educative process accounts for

how student, teacher, and subject matter all are challenged to grow from the experience.19

Any power, whether of child or adult, is indulged when it is taken on its given and present level in consciousness. Its genuine meaning is in the propulsion it affords toward a higher level.20

SOURCE OF SEPARATION: Mis-understanding of the Educative Process

One of the problems with administrators – both in the Army and in higher education – is that

most of them have bought in to this dichotomy in popular intellectual circles about how the

learning process occurs. Either trainees’ must be forced to follow the task, condition, standard

format to learn [the Curriculum must be presented in the pure logical sterility of the subject

matter expert] or the student is left entirely alone to figure it out on his own initiatives or whim

[indulge the Child and spoil the trainee].21 This current view of the educative process is curious

18 Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum, p. 474.

19 This is in reference to the triadic nature of communication that Dewey proposes in his book Art as Experience. It is interesting that Dewey’s aesthetic and education theories parallel – indeed he sees art as being educative in that the individual grows through experience and each experience has an aesthetic or qualitative element as well as a quantitative element.


21 MTP article on ‘research’ proving fully-guided vs. minimally guided teaching.


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because in 1902 Dewey identified this separation of the Child from the Curriculum as a fatal

error in assessing the educative process.

There are those who see no alternative between forcing the child from without, or leaving him entirely alone. Seeing no alternative, some choose one mode, some another. Both fall into the same fundamental error. Both fail to see that development is a definite process, having its own law which can be fulfilled only when adequate and normal conditions are provided.22

A teaching or training methodology that adheres to one or the other philosophical extremes

will produce, at best, students who will never mature to the full potential of realizing a

disciplined mind. Dewey’s goal for education is to develop or nurture to full growth the

immature child to the discipline of the subject matter expert; the child cannot get there without

guidance to reach the destination, likewise he cannot be expected to interact with the pure, un-

translated subject matter from his current immature state. Disciplining the Child is not the way

to guide learning; rather the goal of education is to cultivate the Child from immaturity to a

disciplined mind.

Discipline of mind is thus, in truth, a result rather than a cause. Any mind is disciplined in a subject in which independent intellectual initiative and control have been achieved. Discipline represents original native endowment [immature Child] turned, through gradual exercise [teacher student interaction through the medium of subject matter], into effective power … The aim of education is precisely to develop intelligence of this independent and effective type—a disciplined mind. Discipline is positive and constructive.23

The fundamental error of separating the Child and the Curriculum leads to a negative

implementation of discipline in the academic or training institution. The forced separation of

these fundamentals of Dewey’s educative process relegates discipline to the role of enforcing a

uniformed mode of action, or interaction: students must conform to the subject matter.


23 Dewey, John. How We Think, Barnes and Noble Library of Essential Reading edition, New York, 2005, p. 49. [Italicized words mine]


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Discipline becomes the tool to shape students thought rather than the goal for the student to

achieve. These disciplining methods are actually counterproductive to the intellectual activity

required for growth.

Discipline, however, is frequently regarded as something negative—as a painfully disagreeable forcing of mind away from channels congenial to it into channels of constraint, a process grievous at the time but necessary as preparation for a more or less remote future … [discipline and drill] … is imaged after the analogy of the mechanical routine by which raw recruits are trained to a soldierly bearing and habits that are naturally wholly foreign to their possessors. Training of this latter sort, whether it be called discipline or not, is not mental discipline. Its aim and result are not habits of thinking, but uniform external modes of action.24

This mechanical rather than mental discipline forces the both the student-trainee and the

curriculum-body of knowledge to the lowest common denominator rather than encouraging

growth to full potential. A stagnation results from pitting logic against psychology instead of

integrating the two.

This fundamental opposition of child and curriculum set up by these two modes of doctrine can be duplicated in a series of other terms. “Discipline” is the watchword of those who magnify the course of study; “interest” that of those who blazon “The Child” upon their banner. The standpoint of the former is logical; that of the latter psychological. The first emphasizes the necessity of adequate training and scholarship on the part of the teacher; the latter that of need of sympathy with the child, and knowledge of his natural instincts …. Common-sense recoils at the extreme character of these results. They are left to theorists, while common-sense vibrates back and forward in a maze of inconsistent compromise. The need of getting theory and practical common-sense into closer connection suggests a return to our original thesis: that we have here conditions which are necessarily related to each other in the educative process, since this is precisely one of interaction an adjustment.25

Both Dewey and OBTE seek to integrate the logical Curriculum with the psychological Child

to work toward the goal of realization of constructive, positive mental discipline. In Dewey’s

educative process, the teacher bridges this gap by pyschologizing the subject-matter; by

24 Ibed, p. 49-50.

25 Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum, pp.471-472.


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translating the course material into the context of the child, the act of teaching frees education

from the trap set by separating Child from Curriculum.

[OBTE] Training emphasizes principles rather than checklists, procedures, or standards [mechanical discipline]. While there are certainly minimum standards for what an acceptable performance is, they are rarely discussed with the students, who therefore tend to strive to do their best.26

It is the failure to keep in mind the double aspect of subject-matter which causes the curriculum and child to be set over against each other as described in our earlier pages. The subject-matter, just as it is for the scientist, has no direct relationship to the child’s present experience. It stands outside it. The danger here is not a merely theoretical one. We are practically threatened on all sides … [by] … the general reduction to a lower intellectual level. The material is not translated into life-terms, but is directly offered as a substitute for, or an external annex to, the child’s present life.27

By its very nature Dewey’s function of teaching links the psychological aspect of the Child with

the logical accumulation of subject matter in the Curriculum. The artificial separation can only

be repaired by translating the subject matter into a medium that is on the current level of the

student, not to indulge the child to remain in his immature state, but to challenge him to interact

with the subject matter in a manner that requires intellectual discipline to solve problems. The

teacher doesn’t impose the discipline of the subject matter – the teacher guides the student

through interaction with problems of increasing difficulty to reach the mental discipline to solve

the challenges on his own. In this manner teaching reinstates the logical subject-matter into the

experience from which it had been isolated to form the body of knowledge.

Role of the Teacher: Psychologize the Subject-Matter

Dewey sees the two fundamental factors of educative process (Child [psychological – as

personal/subjective] and Curriculum [logical - as subject matter/objective]) as being linked

26 OBTE, p. 3.



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through the teacher in a triadic relationship that produces growth through all the participants

interacting with each other. Before exploring the dynamic of translating subject matter, it would

be useful to examine what Dewey means by relating the logical and psychological.

It may be of use to distinguish and to relate to each other the logical and psychological aspects of experience—the former standing for subject-matter itself, the latter for it in relation to the child.28

Dewey gives an example of how an explorer who visits new, unchartered territory will

take his notes and experiences in the new land and combine them with observations of others

from the same area to produce a map. The map orders and places the cumulative experience,

connecting each individual’s original discoveries that previously had only circumstantial

relationship with the collected body of knowledge. The making of the map represents the

Curriculum:

But the map, a summary, an arranged and orderly view of previous experiences, serves as a guide to future experience it gives direction; it facilitates control; it economizes effort, preventing useless wandering, and pointing out the paths which lead most quickly and most certainly to a desired result. Through the map every new traveler may get for his own journey the benefits of the results of others’ explorations without the waste of energy and loss of time involved in their wanderings ... [t]hat which we call a science or study puts the net product of past experience in the form which makes it most available for the future.29

Curriculum is logical, boiling down ‘just the facts’ from the combined subjective personal

experiences that contribute to the body of knowledge. However, Curriculum is not isolated from

the psychological; it stands poised between the original personal experience and the future

generation, waiting to interact with the Child. It is not separate from experience; the logical

exists to interact with the psychological.

28 Ibed, p. 476.

29 Ibed, p.477.


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There is, then, nothing final about a logical rendering of experience [Curriculum]. Its value is not contained in itself; its significance is that of standpoint, outlook, method. It gives past experience in that net form which renders it most available and most significant, most fecund for future experience … the formulated result is then not to be opposed to the process of growth. The logical is not set over against the psychological. The surveyed and arranged result occupies a critical position in the process of growth. It marks a turning-point.30

In How We Think, written in 1910, Dewey links these three participants (Child, Curriculum,

and teacher) in the educative process as he explains how the logical and psychological

components of thought compose the means and ends of mental training. The goal of education is

for the Child to internalize the accumulated subject matter from the Curriculum—to be able to

interact with it and apply it the way the skilled subject matter expert can.

What is conventionally termed logical (namely, the logical from the standpoint of subject matter) represents in truth the logic of the trained adult mind. Ability to divide a subject, to define its elements, and to group them into classes according to general principles represents logical capacity at its best point and reached after thorough training.31

The teacher-trainer has reached this level of developed training and interconnection with the

subject matter; he now has the task of guiding the student toward that mark. Due to the lack of

said training, the student cannot be expected to interact with the subject matter from this mature

connection to the subject matter:

But it is absurd to suppose that a mind which needs training because it cannot perform these operations can begin where the expert mind stops. The logical from the standpoint of subject matter represents the goal, the last term of training, not the point of departure.32

30 Ibed, p. 478. [Italics my word inserted]

31 Dewey, John. How We Think, p. 48.

32 Ibed, p. 48.


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The child has to psychologically grow into the subject matter. Teachers guide the child through

this process by converting the purely logical body of knowledge back into a medium the

immature student can relate to.

Hence the need of reinstating into experience the subject-matter of the studies, or branches of learning. It must be restored to the experience from which it has been abstracted. It needs to be pyschologized; turned over, translated into the immediate and individual experiencing within which it has its origin and significane.33

Hence, Dewey sees the teacher fulfilling the role of translator; interpreting the logical into the

psychological—simultaneously lifting the psychological to a mature discipline in the logical.

Each of the participants in this triadic relationship grows through this relatioship.

Such a teacher will have no difficulty in seeing that the real problem of intellectual education is the transformation of natural powers into expert, tested powers: the transformation of more or less casual curiosity and sporadic suggestion into attitudes of alert, cautious, and thorough inquiry. He will see that the psychological and the logical, instead of being opposed to each other (or even independent of each other), are connected as the earlier and the later stages in one continuous process of normal growth.34

Pyschologizing the subject-matter involves translating the logical into the context that the

immature can interact with it through a challenge the student can relate to his present level of

maturity—not for entertainment, but for the purpose of growing through the interaction. This

pyschologizing also involves interpreting the student and pushing, through challenges, that

subjective being to grow through interaction with the objective, logical, body of knowledge. The

trainer-teacher and the collected body of knowledge also both grow through that interaction.

Participating in this key function is what prompts Dewey to tell Harold Taylor “it’s the

teaching that does it.” By translating the subject matter [logical] to the child [psychological] 33 Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum, p. 478

34 Dewey, John. How We Think, p. 49.


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education recovers itself, ceasing to be an intellectual problem and becoming a method,

cultivated by teachers, for nurturing growth. While the aim or goal is the maturing of the Child

toward intellectual discipline, all three participants in the triadic relationship of Child-

Curriculum-Teacher grow from the dynamic interaction of Dewey’s educative process.

Any power, whether of child or adult, is indulged when it is taken on its given and present level in consciousness. Its genuine meaning is in the propulsion it affords toward a higher level.35

The teacher is pushed and grows from the interaction with the subject matter – experiencing it in

a new way demands a greater grasp on the logic of the subject matter, in order to translate it to

the level of the Child; the teacher is also challenged in reading the psychological level and

response of the Child – propelling the guide to growth in the personal aspect the relationship as

well as the subject. Similarly, the subject matter responds to the dual interaction of teacher-

student in new ways, opening paths to advancement and growth of the body of knowledge

known as Curriculum.

Dewey’s Place in Modern Learning:

I have attempted to make a short re-introduction of John Dewey’s educative philosophy

to modern debate on learning and education. I realize that all the articles, theories, and books we

have utilized for the USMA MTP have not even mentioned John Dewey;36 certainly none of

them have considered any of the fundamental innovations that Dewey injected to the philosophy,

education, and psychology disciplines over one hundred years ago. I will quickly try to place 35 Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum, p. 475.

36 With the exception of our textbook for year two: McKeachie’s Teaching Tips. This book actually mentions “John Dewey’s philosophy” on page 207, but only in passing as a historical antecedent of “the ideas embodied in problem-based learning.


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why Dewey’s theories should be considered relevant to contribute to today’s conversation about

education theory and practice.

In a 2002 review article attempting to link cognitive psychology to college pedagogy,

Margaret W. Matlin makes the case that over 12 million undergraduate students utilize cognitive

functions in classrooms on a daily basis. She points out that while these two disciplines are

integrated in an intimate, practical way, they rarely interact with each other in a professional

way.

The problem, however, is that these two siblings—cognitive psychology and college-level pedagogy—are barely on speaking terms. I searched through recent issues of Applied Cognitive Psychology, a journal whose title suggests it would feature the application of cognitive psychology in the college classroom … from 1996 through 2000, I found only eight articles directly related to undergraduate learning.37

It is true that there is little modern scholarly work linking these two disciplines. This is a curious

development in the same country that William James, a 19th century cognitive psychologist,

merged psychology with philosophy to become the father of American Pragmatism. John

Dewey’s theories relating the educative nature of experience can be viewed as an extended

development of William James’ contributions to psychology and philosophy. Even before

publishing “The Child and the Curriculum” in 1902 Dewey had developed years of thought and

practice in the interdisciplinary realms of philosophy, psychology, and education.

In 1894 Dewey accepted a position as professor of philosophy and chairman of the Department of Philosophy, Psychology, and Education at the University of Chicago—a most important decision [in his development]. Such a troika of responsibilities might seem the height of pretense, but for Dewey it was merely a symbol of what we now call the interdisciplinary approach to human activity. He had become increasingly concerned with the social dimensions of behavior, particularly in the genetic state, and therefore wished to

37 Matlin, Margaret W. “Cognitive Psychology and College-Level Pedagogy: Two Siblings That Rarely Communicate,” in New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 89, Spring 2002, pp.87-103. p. 87-88.


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organize a program of around the philosophical and psychological problems of inquiry as found in the education of children. Also, during his time a Michigan, Dewey’s view of the meaning of psychology and its relationship to other approaches to human activity underwent a tremendous change due to the publication in 1890 of William James’ Principles of Psychology. In a later essay on “The Development of American Pragmatism,” Dewey details the importance of James’ Principles both in his own thought and for the subsequent direction of American philosophy.38

Throughout his career Dewey combined philosophic reflection with practical application.

During his ten years as professor of philosophy and chairman of the Departments of Philosophy,

Psychology, and Education at the University of Chicago (1894 to 1904) Dewey became the

acknowledged leader of the Chicago School, a group of thinkers from various academic

backgrounds who developed interdisciplinary theories for education. Simultaneously, Dewey

founded and administered the “laboratory school” as an experimental application of those

interdisciplinary theories with over 100 students from ages four to fifteen.39 For his entire life as

philosopher and educator, Dewey developed theories that he applied to real world problems and

issues. The healthy growth aspect of this synthesis is an important component to Dewey’s

progressive view of education. As Margaret Matlin suggests, this growth aspect has been

missing from modern thinking in these sibling disciplines.

One reason for this inter-disciplinary separation or lack of integration can be found by

analyzing the main argument from another of the latest readings for my MTP. In “Lead the

Way; the Case for Fully Guided Instruction,” published in American Educator: A Quarterly

Journal of Educational Research and Ideas, the authors: Richard E. Clark, Paul A. Kirschner,

and John Sweller, endorse fully guided instruction for ‘novice’ learners and minimally guided

38 John J. McDermott, from: The Philosophy of John Dewey, Two Volumes in One; ed. John J. McDermott. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1973. p. xvii.

39 Ibed, p. xvii-xviii.


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instruction for ‘expert’ learners. Their description of fully guided vs. minimally guided

instruction could have been tailored to fit Dewey’s distinction between the two constitutive

factors of the education process and the double error that occurs through separating the Child and

the Curriculum, mentioned earlier in this paper. The authors’ stated goal of education

demonstrates the manifestation of Dewey’s concern for this forced separation.

First and foremost, long-term memory provides us with the ultimate justification for instruction: the aim of all instruction is to add knowledge and skills to long-term memory. If nothing has been added to long-term memory, nothing has been learned.40

Dewey would certainly have much to say about long-term memory and using it to further

the learning process. However, he would be quick to point out the error in substituting a tool in

the advancement of learning for the desired end-state of the process. Long-term memory is

important to aid in intellectual development, but the goal of instruction is to produce a

disciplined mind that can effectively utilize all the tools available to it.

Discipline of mind is thus, in truth, a result rather than a cause. Any mind is disciplined in a subject in which independent intellectual initiative and control has been achieved. Discipline represents original native endowment turned, through gradual exercise, into effective power … The aim of education is precisely to develop intelligence of this independent and effective type—a disciplined mind.41

By replacing the goal with a tool to realize the desired end-state, modern debate on learning

morphs into a theory that wanders from the true target. While intellectually interesting to

experts, the theory has been robbed of the power to promote growth. The theory gets trapped in

the logical side of the curriculum, separated from the psychological aspect that when combined

40 Clark, Kirschner, and Sweller; “Putting Students on the Path to Learning; The Case for Fully Guided Instruction,” American Educator, A Quarterly Journal of Educational Research and Ideas. Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2012, pp. 6-11. p. 9.

41 Dewey, John. How We Think, p.49.


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in the way inculcates growth. It is tempting for experts in the logical side to stay immersed in

the technical areas of their subject matter.

In a letter to American novelist James T. Farrell, who was taking a course in logic,

Dewey comments on the futility and danger of thinkers who devote themselves to a theory that

separates the objective from the subjective, formal logic being a branch of philosophy that

separates symbolic ‘knowledge’ from any psychological aspects, completely isolating the object

studied from experience:

… of course the fact I’m not up on symbolic Logic, may cause it to be sour grapes with me. But I know that C I Lewis at Harvard who is up on it, perhaps the best man in country, doesn’t think it covers the whole of philosophy; with many of its devotees—and they too numerous among the younger men in this country, its just a case of sharpening tools and never using them. Of course, some time the sharper tools may be of positive value. But I am reminded in the case of many of the young men, of what Plato said about the young logicians of his day—puppies sharpening their teeth, and they shouldn’t be allowed to go into logic till after 40!42

This tendency in modern educative theory to separate the constitutive parts that can only be

realized through integration sets up a condition where researchers, administrators, and teachers

engage in pedagogy with sharpened tools that they never apply to realize the true target of their

profession. Like Plato’s puppies43 with sharp teeth, they spend all their effort worrying at dried

42 Dewey, John. Letter to James T. Farrell, written from Key West, Florida, dated March 2, 1941. From: The Correspondence of John Dewey, Volume 3: 1940-1952, ed. Larry A. Hickman, The Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. 1941.03.02 (09727).

43 In the Republic, Plato determined that in order to have a just state, the community would have to educate a guardian class who would serve the best interest of the state rather than self-interest. Plato viewed his education system as a means to shape, mould, or develop leaders with the character of guard dogs—animals who love their family and are devoted to serving it loyally and lovingly, and who defend their family with hostile aggression against enemies who would do them wrong. Plato, and Dewey, would see nothing wrong with puppies playing with bones. However, sharpening their teeth would be pointless, as that is one of the final stages of preparation for the mature dogs of war going into battle—confusing their developmental exercises with their intended goal is unproductive, as well as dangerous for the safe training of the immature dogs.


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bones, not mature enough to engage in their true duty to function as guard-dogs of the state and

actually endangering the safe and complete development from adolescent dogs into dogs of war.

As Dewey advised Harold Taylor from Laurence College, educative theory must aim at the

right target. When it loses sight of its true purpose, education, as well as philosophy, needs to

recover itself. Dewey provides a way to recover both education and philosophy through the act

of teaching—psychologizing the subject matter restores the proper interaction of Child and

Curriculum, fulfilling the pedagogic function through healthy growth that can lead to flourishing

for Child, Curriculum, and teacher. My intent in re-introducing Dewey’s educative theory is to

recover his framework for education; to stop using the intended result of education as a cause or

a tool—to aim at the target of instruction and not at the means to develop a disciplined mind.

Documents

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