John Dewey This Short Last

John Dewey

This short last chapter in John Dewey's book Experience and Education, entitled Experience- the Means and Goal of Education emphasizes the author's firm belief in his in progressive education. He points out that the new progressive view of education based upon experience must be taken into consideration at least because two factors: first, the agreement among all those involved in some form of education or the study of the science of education that the state education was at the time he wrote the book was unsatisfactory and second, the progress of sciences related to the study of the human mind and behavior requested that the field of education be at least reconsidered and directed toward one way or another as a result. His rhetoric proves beyond a doubt that his pint of view id that education must move toward the new scientific methods leading to progress and not regress.

Dewey agrees that the research for the development of a new methodology in education is at its early stages and those who are to take this path must use sound scientific methods that will protect their results from being based on false principles. He warns those who are believe that the scientific research can be replaced with improvisational means in the filed of education that it is highly likely to come out with false results. This can be applied to any field of research, of course. The merit of his comments is that he questions the very meaning of the notion of education as it was understood at the time he wrote the book. Alternative methods of education have the same goal and the issue in Dewey's view is how to use the progress of science to make those methods more effective for the sake of education.