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Dewey and Freire’s Philosophy of Education
The road less traveled in pedagogy: John Dewey and Paulo Freire on active, transformative education
I’m not shy about pointing out the problems in education. I’ve written a number of articles about them. I also write about solutions for those problems, though possible not as much as I should. The real solutions have been out there for a long time. Here are philosophies of education reform from two great minds who saw the path to real education that respects students. Despite the simple brilliance of these solutions, they are ideas sadly ignored by the education industry.
John Dewey’s (1859–1952) scientific orientation was biology, and he was influenced by the developments in evolutionary biology. His philosophical starting point was the fact that people exist within a biological environment. We create beliefs to adapt to our environment. Dewey created the term “instrumentalism” to describe the human activity of developing and using beliefs as tools or instruments for solving problems and altering our environment to meet our needs and desires. One of Dewey’s primary aims was to reform education to help children develop problem-solving skills — instruments to solve problems.
