John Dewey's Curriculum Theory
John Dewey felt that the curriculum should ultimately produce students who would be able to deal effectively with the modern world. Therefore, curriculum should not be presented as finished abstractions, but should include the child’s preconceptions and should incorporate how the child views his or her own world. Dewey uses four instincts, or impulses, to describe how to characterize children’s behavior. The four instincts according to Dewey are social, constructive, expressive, and artistic. Curriculum should build an orderly sense of the world where the child lives. Dewey hoped to use occupations to connect miniature versions of fundamental activities of life classroom activities. The way Dewey hoped to accomplish this goal was to combine subject areas and materials. By doing this, Dewey made connections between subjects and the child’s life. Dewey is credited for the development of the progressive schools some of which are still in existence today.
Read more about this topic: Curriculum Theory
Famous quotes containing the words john, dewey, curriculum and/or theory:
“What should we know,
For better or worse,
Of the Long Ago,
Were it not for Verse:”
—Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878–1957)
“Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“If we focus exclusively on teaching our children to read, write, spell, and count in their first years of life, we turn our homes into extensions of school and turn bringing up a child into an exercise in curriculum development. We should be parents first and teachers of academic skills second.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“Won’t this whole instinct matter bear revision?
Won’t almost any theory bear revision?
To err is human, not to, animal.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)