The Structure of Education

The structure of education is as important as its content, and as Dewey indicated, there is a tension between traditional and progressive education, between education with a clear and strong structure and education giving the child more free rein to explore and to learn on his or her own (Dewey 17). Some combination of the two is clearly possible and probably necessary, and this may mean a structure to start the child on a subject or to shape certain elements of learning while still encouraging the chid to learn more on his or her own.

John Dewey calls for a philosophy of education to create a foundation to understand what education is, how it takes place, and how it can be facilitated. Dewey says that the only way to formulate a philosophy of education is to know what actually takes place when education occurs, and this begins with an understanding of human nature and how it operates in the face of social forces. Much of what we say to define education is self-referential--that is, we say education is what takes place when people are educated, or education is the process of being educated. This circular reasoning does not explain the matter sufficiently. Education may also be described as intellectual and emotional growth, and this growth begins with the needs and powers of the individual student. Education is a vital element in human development, enabling the human being to shape a future quite different from the past. The human being does not operate on instinct al

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nt ages for the majority of the population. Learning itself is seen by Piaget as a process of discovery on the part of the individual, and learning as a formal activity becomes a system of organization by which instruction is enhanced by the way the teacher arranges experience. Learning is thus experiential, and Piaget suggests that experiences have meaning to the extent that they can be assimilated. Such assimilation does not take place without accommodation, an aspect of considerable importance from the point of view of adaptation and possible development: One of the principal aims of the teacher will be to present situations to the child which require him to adapt his past experience. The teacher is concerned with facilitating adaptation and assisting the child along the developmental path (Flavell, 1963, 91). The learning situation thus becomes a means of discovery as the child encounters something that is unknown, new, or problematical for the child. The achievement of understanding of this experiences produces an adaptation, and each adaptation made by the child is a discovery for him or her, an insight made through experience. Such a discovery process is ongoing and is not to be seen as a series of leaps from one in

Category: Psychology - T