Duff's take on Chapter 3

Duff Rearick has written a great response to Chapter 3 of Dewey's Experience and Education.  He incorporates the importance of critical thinking in creating experiences for children.

Dewey Chapter 3 - The Criteria of Experience

Duff

January 12, 2016

“Is this decision, this activity about learning or control?”

               In the dark ages, in 1983 a young school administrator was hand picked by his district to cross the nation in search of the key to critical thinking.  How to teach children to think critically was at the time all the rage. Needless to say this was a heady time for a 33-year old assistant principal.

               You might think his selection stemmed from remarkable intellectual prowess.  You would be wrong.  He was chosen because no one else wanted the job.

               The young man flew about thinking he was important.  His journey took him from Los Angeles, to Dallas and other exotic sites finally ending in Washington DC.  He sought the Holy Grail of learning in 1983, critical thinking.  The answers proved elusive.

               By the time he arrived in Washington DC exhaustion had set in, his wife was tired of keeping the home fire burning and frankly he had stopped thinking.  At this last stop the young man sat in the back row of another hotel conference center.  He found himself beside a crusty old educator.  As the speaker waxed eloquently about some book or other he or she had written on critical thinking the old gentleman leaned over and whispered words that guided the rest of the young man’s career. 

“It is not the system or that kids cannot think, that is ridiculous. All kids can think critically, the problem is what we are asking them to think about.”

               After dropping this pearl of wisdom the old codger left never to be seen again. His message stuck, ‘What are we asking people to think about?’

               Fast forward to 2009.  The young man is now 59 years old and still searching for the Holy Grail.  Six fourth grade children, each 9 or so years old, are proceeding to dis-mantle an educational program.  They are bored.  Some are what we might label as gifted others not so much, each comes with different backgrounds and experiences.  The school tries an experiment.  The educators ask a groundbreaking question, ‘What are we asking these kids to do, to think about?’ 

               After much discussion and consternation the school decides to experiment.  The learners (aka children) are challenged with a new experience.  As a team they are assigned a project.  It is a difficult task that builds upon past experiences leading to new experiences. 

The young leaners are asked to build a hovercraft.  A parent (aka learning facilitator) volunteers to supervise but is restricted to safety, to insure no fingers are lost.  The children are given $100 and several weeks to complete the experience.  Outcome accountability is clear and simple, the craft must fly; it must fly with one child securely seated on it while flying; it must turn in four directions while flying; it must show emotion while flying.  Each volunteer must write a journal for review on the process.  In a few weeks this precocious group combines their experiences, builds upon past experiences and completes the task. The team demonstrates the outcome in front of peers and parents.  They meet all the criteria --- it flies!

               Bing the old codger now I was reminded that the problem is not with the children, it is not with the system, rather it is about risk and what we are asking teachers and children to think about.  This all leads back to John Dewey, Experience and Education, Chapter 3: Criteria of Experience and a series ideas we might consider.

               First, learning is a habit, school systems are built on habits indeed we live by habit.  You cannot change or transform habits by force.  We are too resilient.  To transform a habit we must alter the experience, thinking in such as a way as to cause the learner to choose to change.  This requires logical experiences building upon experiences and a lot of time. To be logical the experiences must have direction, a destination.

               Dewey believes in experiences building on experience.  He does not believe in random outcomes.

These experiences are guided by educators, teachers, (aka learning facilitators).  The experiences only make sense if there is an end goal a destination.  This said Dewey might suggest that we need to consider what the learners are thinking about, the experience as it relates to where the learning is taking the person.

Unfortunately as proven by our six nine year olds we underestimate the capacity of adults and children to think, to build experience upon experience.  If you look at our team they are given a defined destination, asked to blend their individual talents and experiences and a learning facilitator who just happened to be a parent.

The old codger’s comment and the nine-year-old experience are guides to the criteria of experience.  It all comes down to what we are asking adults and children to experience, to think about in a framework of increasing freedom, trust and choice.

But, this thinking is hard work at every level.  Henry Ford is purported to have said,  “Thinking is hard work that is why so few people do it.”  When you move down the path to which Dewey alludes; you must think with the end in mind, from that you find the criteria of experience.

In spite of the missed seat time, absence from critical instruction all of our nine children did well on their state exams, indeed one individual scored 100% in language arts and 99% in math.  I guess he did not miss too much when asked to think about something different.