Democracy and education : an introduction to the philosophy of education / John Dewey.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Education as a necessity of life
Education as a social function
Education as direction
Education as growth
Preparation, unfolding and formal discipline
Education as conservative and progressive
The democratic conception in education
Aims in education
Natural developments and social efficiency as Aims
Interest and discipline
Experience and thinking
Thinking in education
The nature of method
The nature of subject matter
Play and work in the curriculum
The significance of geography and history
Science in the course of study
Educational values
Labor and leisure
Intellectual and practical studies
Physical and social studies : naturalism and humanism
The individual and the world
Vocational aspects of education
Theories of knowledge
Theories of morals

Publisher description: John Dewey (1859-1952) believed that learning was active and schooling unnecessarily long and restrictive. His idea was that children came to school to do things and live in a community which gave them real, guided experiences which fostered their capacity to contribute to society. For example, Dewey believed that students should be involved in real-life tasks and challenges: maths could be learnt via learning proportions in cooking or figuring out how long it would take to get from one place to another by mule history could be learnt by experiencing how people lived, geography, what the climate was like, and how plants and animals grew, were important subjects Dewey had a gift for suggesting activities that captured the center of what his classes were studying. Dewey's education philosophy helped forward the "progressive education" movement, and spawned the development of "experiential education" programs and experiments.