The John Dewey System

The Dewey System In every aspect of society, guidelines are made to be followed for many years after they are created. In 1916, John Dewey created the guidelines for how all schools should be run. Dewey’s ideas of schools preparing students to pick up where the older generation left off in democracy was widely accepted and became the framework for the twentieth century schooling system. Dewey’s theory was for the focus of school to strictly be about the three “R’s” reading, writing, and arithmetic. These three main focuses were excellent for preparing students for the future, but schools today seem to be slipping away from Dewey’s ideas. In today’s school system, public schools have gone away from Dewey’s system, while private and charter …show more content…
The main focus of this cartoon though is the two scoreboards, one of which says “Game” and the other says “Test Scores.” What Koren is trying to say is that schools are focused on extracurriculars, mainly sports, and not at all focused on test scores. This cartoon is a good example for how school systems have put a bigger focus on Dewey’s ideas by transitioning the focus on to other areas of school that are not just the three “R’s.” Personally, I believe Koren’s ideas coincide with Dewey’s ideas, and that is a good thing to see. Schools that allow students to express their creativity and not just teaching them the basics to succeed, will create students that are independent and able to succeed in the future. This idea of focusing on other areas of education also creates a broad spectrum of students who want to do many different things when they grow up. Another person that agrees with Koren is Diane Ravitch, who was a former Assistant Secretary of Education. She believed that the …show more content…
Instead of preparing the students for the future by teaching them how to think for themselves, Botstein thought that kids should skip high school because it is a waste of time. This may go against every teacher’s thoughts on school, but it does not necessarily go against Dewey. Students could be educated in different ways to prepare for adulthood and the idea of the classroom seems unnecessary for some students. With the amount of people we have today, it is not uncommon for students to deem it unnecessary to go to high school. A small percentage of students knowledge could already exceed the expectations of high school and he or she could already be ready for college. Also, some students believe high school could be a waste of time and want to leave to pursue their dream of becoming an actor, or even go to trade school. For Botstein, high school is not a good representation for the real world because of the clique, like jocks and geeks. In adulthood, there are no cliques and the people that are successful are the smart people and not the jocks that were good at football in high school. Botstein’s ideas of skipping high school unless the school system was changed, goes against Dewey’s thoughts of preparing the students for the future with high school. Botstein is not necessarily ridiculous; he just has a different point of view of high school from what has been the