John Dewey & his Relevance Today

Richard J. Bernstein discusses the life and thought of John Dewey and his relevance today in a talk given a few years back. I don't remember the location or date of the lecture, but I will be sure to update the description at a later time when I figure out those details.
#Philosophy

[@williamtell5365]

Dewey has been continually relevant since his work in the early 20th Century, because his work responds closely to the times in which he lived (and we live).

[@maxheadrom3088]

I know very little about him, let me be clear, but it seems to me his ideas on education were revolutionary for the time. AFAIK, he considered children's education the most important.

[@williamtell5365]

@@maxheadrom3088 Yes, his impact on the American educational system was immense. More for good than bad.

[@nthperson]

Very little is written about John Dewey's admiration for the American journalist/political economist Henry George. During the Great Depression, Dewey delivered an address over radio in New York City calling for the adoption of Henry George's system of public revenue as an essential step to ending the depression and setting the stage for a stable economic future.

[@dfilliernl]

This lecture has been immensely helpful. Thanks so much for your commitment to excellent scholarship.

[@the_Analogist4011]

I wish there was a better way than youtube to try to explore and expand my ideas of a practical epistemology

[@Th3BigBoy]

There is but you probably don't have the drive to pursue it.

[@the_Analogist4011]

​@@Th3BigBoy tell me about it though. Between work and family its looking like the ship has sailed. But then this is my actual big advantage, i'm actually raising kids, not just reading books about it

[@Th3BigBoy]

@@the_Analogist4011 I was going to suggest good old fashioned dialogue. find an interlocutor and let glorious dialogue help you discover epistemic justification. I said the comment about drive because I imagine most people don't care about such a pursuit, and will therefore revile you for being 'strange'.

[@the_Analogist4011]

@@Th3BigBoy my best partner right now is my wife herself. And I muse with a few other parents as well. Its so much like school. I have done great work and made much progress, but it has not been part of officially sanctioned class time, therefore I get no "formal" credit...

[@vhyome9786]

The aesthetic ideal vs. the ascetic ideal.

[@gavintoohey6604]

Ballin

[@anthonymccarthy4164]

I used to be a bigger fan of him but the more I've read of him, the less I think he was as good as I used to.

[@Animalis_Mundana]

Thanks for Russian collectivism/Prussian education model. Don't believe me, read his book on Russian education system and how it influenced American education system.

[@the_Analogist4011]

Seems to me that the Sudbury Vallry School are the true inheritors of his legacy

[@user-bp7go4zp2i]

None~

[@JonSebastianF]

This overly appraising style of essay is a bit too much, I think: It takes out all most of the informative disagreements and errors :/

[@ozzy5146]

The idea that children know how to guide themselves in the classroom: ABSURD. They don't want to be anywhere near schools, if it means learning the things their parents want them to learn. But they know better what's good for them than their parents, right Mr. Dewey? FAIL.

[@JingleJangleJam]

And yet, the well-known inventor Westinghouse, claimed it was not in school that he learned his abilities for tinkering, but rather, at home when his father allowed him free time to play with his inventions.

[@Sazi_de_Afrikan]

@@JingleJangleJam The guy you're responding to is probably ignorant of how educational research continually confirms Dewey's ideas, but the US never implements them on a wide scale. Finland implements them and they're in top shape when it comes to education and post-school success.

[@JingleJangleJam]

​@@Sazi_de_Afrikan I could imagine that. My father is a geology teacher. Wishes to implement John Dewey style of not having tests to help the popularity of the Geology curriculum in Australia, on a national level. However, geology was the least implemented curriculum in all of schools in Australia, strangely, since a major part of our economy is fossil fuel export. Many schools actually did not have it available as a subject. Our education school has high amount of drop-outs, so it was an ''adult re-entry school'', although some students from other high schools wanting to study Geology but unable to went there as well. Lots of students who had had issues in high school or even some refugees students from Africa did better there. It was on the whole the same as a normal school, though, far from as good as Finland sounds. The difference that made things better for those students, if I recall correctly, was it was less in the strict puritan sense, where other schools had to have strict uniforms, our teachers often berating some students even at times over little things like socks or hair extensions. Then there was the fact that, you would not be scolded if you walked out of the classroom in the middle of the teacher's talk, did not have to slavishly ask permission when you wanted to go to the bathroom. It was really filling in the gaps where other schools failed, and naturally, students turned to delinquent style disobedience. I suppose Australia has a slightly Prussian-style disciplinarian culture in some parts of its schools. There is also a unique two-class based system, where more and more troubled kids in homes with less economically secure parents go to schools, and elite citizens send their students to ''private schools'', ie. schools that are much more better off in being funded. Still, the elitist style of these schools is very much like the English style of a class system among schools with higher ones above lower ones - they have even more elaborate and different traditional uniforms, like blazers and old Oxford style architecture. I suppose it has some tradition and taste the more it relies on something certain and prestigious about the archaic 19th century past. Luckily though, I grew up unhappy so I had more time to want to read to try to capture some meaning in my life. Curiosity led me not to study for my exams in highschool, and instead to go to the library, and read during lunch times, for instance, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or other interesting science fiction I got interested in. Philosophy just came by stumbling upon the right interesting book, lasting much longer in its influence upon life, leading me in part to my interest to try and go into biotechnology at university to study genetic engineering of human genomes. Unfortunately, the same old problems I had had at high school returned in university, and I couldn't bring up the desire in me to go to its classes anymore.

[@MrJustSomeGuy87]

Are you a troll? This can’t be a serious comment. If it is serious then…yikes. Just listen to 12:25

[@ozzy5146]

@@JingleJangleJam An anecdote that involves the personal interaction of a father and son has absolutely NOTHING to do with teaching a crowded classroom with kids who don't want to be there.