Educational Philosophy free essay sample

He developed a broad body of work encompassing virtually all of the main areas of philosophy, and wrote extensively on social issues in popular publications, gaining a reputation as a leading social commentator of his time. Life Dewey was born on 20 October 1 859 in Burlington, Vermont, the third of four sons born to Archibald Sprague Dewey (who owned a grocery store) and Lucian Artemisia (ne Rich) (a devoutly religious woman), of modest family origins. He attended the University of Vermont in Burlington, and graduated in 1879.During this time, he was exposed to evolutionary theory, and the hurry of natural selection continued to have a life-long impact upon Dews thought. Although the philosophy teaching at Vermont was somewhat limited, his teacher, H. A. P. Torero, a learned scholar with broad philosophical interests and sympathies, was decisive in Dews philosophical development. After graduating in 1879, he worked for two years as a high school teacher in Oil City, Pennsylvania, but then borrowed money from his aunt in order to enter graduate school in philosophy at the School of Arts Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. We will write a custom essay sample on Educational Philosophy or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Two teachers in particular had a lasting influence on him: the German-trained Hegelian philosopher, George Sylvester Morris (1 840 1 899), and the experimental psychologist, Granville Stanley Hall (1844- 1924). He received his Ph. D. In 1884, and left to take up a faculty position at the University of Michigan, which he kept for ten years, and during which time he wrote his first books. He married his first wife, Alice Chapman in 1 886, and the couple had six children (with only four surviving into adulthood) before Alice died in 1927.In 1894, Dewey joined the eely founded University of Chicago where his early Idealism gave way to an empirically-based theory of knowledge, and he started to align his ideals with the emerging Pragmatic school of thought. While at Chicago, he produced a collection Of essays entitled Thought and its Subject-Matter, and his first major work on education, The School and Society in 1899. This work was based on the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (also known as the Dewey School) which he founded in 1896, which taught according to his progressive principles of hands-on learning and exploration.In 1899, he was elected president of the American Psychological Association, and in 1905 he became president of authenticate Philosophical Association. Having resigned from the University of Chicago over disagreements with the administration in 1904, he took up a position as professor of philosophy at Columbia University in New York, and he taught there until his retirement in 1930. He developed close contacts with many philosophers working from divergent points of view in the intellectually stimulating atmosphere of the north-eastern universities, which served to nurture and enrich his thought. He published two important books, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays in Contemporary Thought (1910) and Essays in Experimental Logic (1916). During this time, he traveled the world as a philosopher, social and political theorist and educational consultant, including trips to Japan, China, Turkey, USSR and Mexico. His interest in educational theory also continued during these years, fostered by his work at the Teachers College at Columbia, leading to the publication of How We Think in 1910 and, his most important work in he field, Democracy and Education in 1916.Along with fellow Columbia professors Charles Beard (1 874 1948), Thorniest Feeble (1 857 1 929) Ndjamena Harvey Robinson (1863 1936), he founded the New School for Social Research in 1 919 as a modern, progressive, free school. Dewey retired from active teaching in 1930, occasionally teaching as professor emeritus until 1939. However, his activities as public figure and productive philosopher continued unabated, including frequent contributions to popular magazines such as The New Republic and Nation, and participation in overall prestigious lecture series.He was involved in a variety political causes, including womens suffrage, the unionization of teachers and the founding Of the National Association for the Advancement Of Colored people, and he was involved in the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Against Leon Trotsky at the Moscow Trial. In 1946, almost decades after his first wife died, he married Roberta Loti Grant, and the couple adopted two Belgian orphans. Dewey continued to work vigorously throughout his retirement, including works on Logic, Aesthetics, Epistemological Politics.He died of pneumonia in his New York home on 1 June 1952, aged 92. Work Back to Top Dews output was prodigious: 40 books and approximately 700 articles in over 140 journals. Many of his most renowned works were published after he was sixty years old. Some of his best known publications include Democracy and Education(191 6), Human Nature and Conduct (1 922), Experience and Nature (1925) and The Quest for Certainty (1929). Dewey is considered one of the three central figures in American Pragmatism, along with CharlesSanders Price (who connected term) and William James (who popularized it). However, Dewey did not identify himself as a Pragmatist per SE, but instead referred to his philosophy as Instrumentalist, a similar but separate concept. Simply put, the doctrine of Pragmatism holds that the meaning of any concept can be equated with its conceivable operational or practical consequences, and that practical consent ounces or real effects are vital components of both meaning and truth. Even more simply, something is true only insofar as it works.Instrumentalist, on the other hand, is the ethological view that concepts and theories are merely useful instruments, and their worth is measured not by whether the concepts and theories are true or false (Instrumentalist denies that theories are truth- valuable) or whether they correctly depict reality, but by how effective they are in explaining and predetermination. An important aspect of Dews philosophy is that it starts from the point of view of Fallibility, that absolute certainty about knowledge is impossible, and all claims to knowledge could, at least in principle, be mistaken.Another important aspect is his belief that humanity should be considered not just as a spectator in the world, but as an agent. Dews overall ethical stance can be described as neologism: the belief that this life is neither perfectly good nor bad, and it can be improved only through human effort. He believed that philosophys motive for existing is to make life better, and this should be approached from a practical bottom-up starting point, rather than the theoretical top-down approach of most traditional philosophy.Consistent with his view that human thought should be understood as practical problem-solving, which proceeds by testing rival hypotheses counterinsurgencies, he advocated an educational system with continued experimentation and vocational training to equip students to solve practical problems. He also emphasized learning-by-doing and the incorporation of the students past experiences into the classroom. In his Democracy and Education of 191 6, he describes in detail how an ability to respond creatively to continual changes in the natural order vitally provides for individual and community life.