We should adopt more of John Dewey’s ideas, not just the Dewey Decimal System

I recently learned that John Dewey was not just some random librarian who spontaneously came up with the way we organize books on shelves. Turns out, he’s also an early 20th-century progressive educator who HATED the fact that schools had severed knowledge from application. Basically, his educational theory proposed that a curriculum should be inspired by difficulties that students face daily. He also believed that communication is central to a democratic civic arena — and he’s right.

One of the biggest problems with the modern education system, particularly education surrounding writing and communicating, is that instruction focuses too much on how and not enough on why.

For example, when I was in elementary school and first learning to write essays, I was told that I would need to learn to write argumentatively. “You have to be convincing!” my teachers would say, so we were tasked with writing papers that argued about which flavor of ice cream was best and why. It didn’t really mean anything to me at the time, and most of my concerns at the time centered around not being able to sit by my friends at lunchtime (school administration decided that letting us sit wherever we wanted made us too noisy, so we had to sit boy-girl-boy-girl for meals).

Coincidentally, during this time in my elementary education, I was also learning about the Revolutionary war and the Constitution. In my history class, we read the Preamble, and I remember being fascinated with how one simple document, beginning with “We the people,” essentially formed a new government out of nothing.

After I was telling my mom about school one day, she encouraged me to use what I was learning in my classes to do something about my school lunch seating situation. She explained what a petition was, and helped me type a paragraph on the home computer that began with “We the students” in extra big font. The paragraph asked our teachers to let us sit wherever we wanted, on a trial basis, and promised that if we were too loud, we would go back to the boy-girl arrangement. Enthusiastically, I brought my little document to school and had all of my friends sign it at recess.

But when I proudly presented the paper, signed by over fifty fourth-graders, to my teacher, she looked concerned and had another teacher watch our class while went to the office. Within 20 minutes, our entire grade was menacingly called to the library, where my teacher and our principle were waiting, stern looks on their faces.

“This,” Principle Dickenson said, holding up my petition, “is incredibly disrespectful.”

She continued to explain that defying school rules about lunch put us in danger of losing privileges like recess and free time, and that organizing against school officials was even grounds for suspension. I sat criss-cross-applesauce on the carpet, tears welling in my eyes. What on earth had I done wrong?

Finally, her lecture was over. She finished by asking whoever had written the terrible document to turn themselves in, or else we would all lose recess for a week. I went up to my teacher and burst into tears, admitting everything. She looked at me, confused (I have always been a bit of a teacher’s pet. I assume she expected one of the troublemakers had written it). I was told to go back to class.

When my mother picked me up that day and heard what had happened, she was livid. As an educator herself, she had encouraged me to create the petition as a way to actually use my writing and persuasion skills and participate in democracy the same way the Founding Fathers had. She had even checked my writing to make sure it was respectful and reasonable. But school administration would rather I use my writing skills to defend chocolate ice cream and saw the act as treacherous, somehow. I have vivid memories of her at the computer that night, typing her thoughts into a several-page email.

The next morning, she demanded an audience with Principal Dickenson. I received no consequence for my actions, and a few weeks later, our teachers quietly changed our lunch seating arrangements — boys on one side of the table, girls on the other.

I like to think that if John Dewey had been my elementary school teacher that year, he would have encouraged my petition. After all, what harm would it have really done if they had let us sit where we want for a week, then told us we were too loud? I would have complained to my mom, and she would have said, “Sorry, sweetie. You didn’t live up to your terms, so the petition didn’t work.” And I would have learned just a little bit more that day.

But instead, something inside me changed fundamentally. Instead of learning how petitions work, I learned how easily leaders could be threatened. Previously, I had thought that leaders were to be obeyed blindly because they knew what was best for us. This was the first instance of realizing that leaders were capable of being wrong. And I could prove it with my writing and my actions.

If the Great Society is to become a Great Community; a society in which the ever-expanding and intricately ramifying consequences of associated activities shall be known in the full sense of that word, so that an organized, articulate Public comes into being … a subtle, delicate, vivid, and responsive art of communication must take possession of the physical machinery of transmission and circulation and breathe life into it…The essential need is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion, and persuasion. (Dewey 112–208)

Learning to communicate with purpose is essential for our society. It allows us to be a part of the discussions that change laws and influence decisions. It is what we do as humans! We argue. We debate. And from those discussions, we learn and get better. And these ideas have to start being taught young — or else we risk a generation of mindless robots who know how to write about ice cream flavors and little else.

Thanks, John Dewey. And screw you, Principal Dickenson (I googled it. She’s still principal, almost 15 years later).

Much of the information about John Dewey comes from this chapter: Civic Participation and the Undergraduate Curriculum, by Wendy B. Sharer