What’s the specific issue about the curriculum that Dewey is trying to address?
What’s the specific issue about the curriculum that Dewey is trying to address?
There is an issue between the child and the curriculum. Because of the idea of a child very different from the idea of curriculum. The child is basically somebody who just bothered about the immediate environment. And then the child would move to another interest to fulfil it. As well the interest of a child keeps changing. And the child tries to look at the world in a flowing manner, not in the compartment.
But the child gets a totally different environment when they are in the curriculum environment. The curriculum is wast study, like study about humanity from the beginning of human beings, and study of maths, science, geography, history. It is too difficult for children who leave in the narrow world understand this wast curriculum. And who looks at the world in a flowing manner to look in the compartment curriculum. When the child suddenly goes into school, it is a huge shift for a child from the life of flowing and suddenly fitting into the life of compartment and division.
Another issue is curriculum structured unrelated to a child’s interest. Because every child works or behave based on their emotions. But to analyse the subject matter we don’t need the emotion, we need to look at in the intellectual. Here also their many problems happen in the life of children when they fit into the curriculum.
● What are the available views on this issue and why is Dewey unhappy with these available views?
Many educationalists tried to solve these problems because children and curriculum is an important part of the educational process even if have many differences. Some educationalist progressivist says that children are centre point, starting and ending point.you have to fully concentrate child and their experiences .they should get the freedom to explore and initiative. Most focusing on self-potential .but some others essentialist says that children are immature. adults have a responsibility to make them mature by discipline them and control them. You have to concentrate only on the subject while teaching, don’t want to bother about child’s experiences because they are immature. And they ignore the child different and diversity.logical and rational things are only would get by the subject matter. Here educators fill children’s mind with the subject matter and they try to build reality on that. Essentialist divide the subject to easy to learn by sequence study and step by step study. they considered children as an egoist and impulsive.no value of their thoughts because it is full of whimsies. Children have playful thought only they get matured by the real guidance of adults by grading and assessing. They are fighting in these two views.
● Dewey not happy with these views especially with essentialist because he values child to experience but essentialist doesn’t value to childhood experiences. He believes that it has so much value it has goes through enormous changes. their experiences have dynamism. And he says that the actual educator needs to validate child experiences. as an educator, we should start from their experiences and should grow. He couldn’t agree with essentialists because they ignore the developing forces and they expect to give what adults expect. And we can’t separate children and curriculum from the educational process, because both are the major things in the process.
What’s Dewey’s alternative view? How does formulate his argument?
The adult mind is very important for the growth of the child why because, the only adult can do those kinds of the individual which we want them to become in feature. we can try to make adult’s minds in a positive way apart from controlling them. Interaction between educator and students are most important here. The child is starting, their experiences are starting of the learning. The destination is the subject matter. He says that we can able to solve the proble if we looking at a child as a starting point and curriculum is the final point.
The teacher need to interpret the children and all their skills, and give them guidance for all over the success. Not interpreted in fixed or current experiences of the child, like if one child did best in the maths teacher would say he would be an engineer. It is not the right thing because we can’t guild the child without looking at the flowing experience of the child. So, bu the constituent interpreted to children teacher can guid child for good achievement in the feature and to reach their destination.
The teachers should guide the children under the subject matter. All subject in the curriculum does discuss all things from the beginning of human beings. The subject matter has two sights. One is psychological and another is the logical part. The logical part means the truth which we find in the ending, and all things described in the textbooks are the logical part of subject matter like formulas in maths and theories in science. The psychological part is the way which we reach to logical part. As the journey to know gravitation is a psychological part. Here the duty of the teachers is they want to look current experiences of child and what they know, and teachers understand the what next logical goal of a child, after this teachers should connect children from the current experiences to logical part by psychologizing the curriculum according to Dewey. It means children can start from what they know and gradually they can reach the goal of the textbook, this process would lead by the teachers.it is the duty of the teachers that, they stand up in the class and look at the children what they know, and then they need to learn them whatever children need to know to grasp the topic which teacher going to explain. Here understanding childhood experiences is important to know where teachers need to lead children. By looking at the subject matter teacher can break the lesson to comfort teaching. For example, when a teacher takes a multiplication lesson in the maths subject. The teacher should start from the experience of children that go to the shop buying chocolate, and then connect to the multiplication lesson. When we doing this child can connect subject matter to their own experience. It is not possible if the teacher directs enter to the lesson and start teaching.
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