Experience and Educaton, by John Dewey (1938)
"Computers at School?" by Israel Scheffler (1986)
Decisions, Decisions: Building a Nation, Tom Snyder Productions (1997)
Introduction: Odd Things about Combining Computer Science and Education
Reading Dewey is a different experience than most Computer Science concentrators are used to, not just because Experience and Education is an argument rather than a body of facts/techniques but because Dewey's vocabulary seems abstract compared to the way software designers usually talk about teaching and learning.
If we compare computer science and education as disciplines, we notice a number of interesting similarities in their histories and differences in their outlooks. These comparisons and contrasts suggest some important questions:
Dewey's Experience and Education (1938)
On Tuesday we talked about some of the bigger/broader distinctions made by Dewey, but to connect his book with Scheffler's article we'll need to focus on various aspects of Dewey's concept of "educative experience":
In the final chapter of Experience and Education, Dewey writes of experiences like shop and home economics:
"The final justification of shops, kitchens and so on in the school is not just that they afford opportunity for activity, but that they provide opportunity for the kind of activity or for the acquisition of mechanical skills which leads students to attend to the relation of means and end, and then to consideration of the way things interact with one another to produce definite effects. It is the same in principle as the ground for laboratories in scientific research." (p. 85)
If we now consider a computer science course in schools, or a course that is centered around the computer in some way (e.g. a CASS-based mathematics class), the question becomes what kinds of activities are valuable and/or worth having/promoting at school. This is the question that motivates Scheffler's 1986 article, "Computers at School".
Israel Scheffler's "Computers at School?" (1986)
We'll discuss Scheffler's philosophical article, led by John's comments and questions. We'll try to be clear about Scheffler's concerns and arguments in each of the four sections of the paper, and reflect on whether/how this article stands up today; the four sections are:
"Reading" Decisions, Decisions in a Deweyan Light
Sounds dramatic, non? OK: it's a rather pretentious way of calling attention to the degree to which we evaluate a program like "Building a Nation" using assumptions about the aims of education and the nature of educative experiences.
Two Views of Philosophy and Education
Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? This question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked. When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we shall be well launched on the study of philosophy -- for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we do in ordinary life and even in the sciences, but critically after exploring all that makes such questions puzzling, and after realizing all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas.Bertrand Russell, from The Problems of Philosophy, chapter 1: "Appearance and Reality" Philosophy was stated to be a form of thinking, which, like all thinking, finds its origin in what is uncertain in the subject matter of experience, which aims to locate the nature of the perplexity and to frame hypotheses for its clearing up to be tested in action. Philosophic thinking has for its differentia the fact that the uncertainties with which it deals are found in widespread social conditions and aims, consisting in a conflict of organized interests and institutional claims. Since the only way of bringing about a harmonious readjustment of the opposed tendencies is through a modification of emotional and intellectual disposition, philosophy is at once an explicit formulation of the various interests of life and a propounding of points of view and methods through which a better balance of interests may be effected. Since education is the process through which the needed transformation may be accomplished and not remain a mere hypothesis as to what is desirable, we reach a justification of the statement that philosophy is the theory of education as a deliberately conducted practice.
John Dewey, from Democracy and Education, chapter 24: "The Philosophy of Education"
Theories of education, whether ancient, modern or contemporary, are usually concerned with justifying the decisions of societies, communities, and schools concerning the form, process and content of education. Theories are considered conservative, liberal, reactionary, or radical, not only because of their proximity to what educational arrangements already exist but also because of the pictures of society they promote.
The traditional view of the philosophy of education (consistent with the Russell quotation) sees it as a questioning of the assumptions, concepts, and consequences of both the theories and practices of education, from the standpoint of ideas and theories about knowledge, action, mind, history, humanity, justice, etc. But a second, more dramatic view of the philosophy of education is that proposed by Dewey in the "Philosophy of Education" chapter of Democracy and Education. Dewey turns the traditional view on its head, and claims that rather than the philosophy of education being the techniques of philosophy brought to bear on issues in education, the concerns and techniques of philosophy itself are best understood as a generalized theory of education. This view seems so clearly at odds with how education is discussed and studied in the modern university that it may be worth considering when we wonder how the future of educational technology can be brighter than its past!
For next time: Read the 1999 Sviniki article for Tuesday, and the selected chapters from Schank and Cleary chapters for Thursday. Both texts are online, but the Schank and Cleary is also available in the Bookstore. Project pages with the revised project descriptions should be up no later than next Thursday's class.