The New Media: Memo to Educational Planners

Abstract

Dearden analyzes the uses of play, activity, experiences, and self-expression as means of achieving these goals. Play, Dearden suggests, can help understand certain common sense concepts, but there is a limit to what can be picked up informally during play activities. Similarly, theoretical concepts cannot be learned merely as a result of experiences, for these are imposed upon physical phenomena by man. This is not to deny the importance of experience, but to underline the importance of the teacher's role in transforming the child's concepts and the meaning of these experiences. Activity is needed for to master concepts and ways of validating knowledge, but activity needs to be related to society's body of public knowledge. Autonomy of thought, Dearden suggests, develops in the child only to the degree that he enters into the community of knowledge. Self-expression depends less on catharsis than on a disciplined use of material and technique which might require deliberate teaching. Dearden's volume, in clarifying the above terms, highlights the humane aspects of the new education and helps to differentiate between freedom in the classroom and chaos. For while education may contain elements of child freedom, it does not result from unguided activities in the classroom. Children can be given a role in determining their own education, but this role generally is relegated to their selection of learning opportunities from a set of carefully predetermined alternatives. The classroom teacher maintains his role in setting goals in progressive primary education. Educational method is derived from the goals of education and takes into consideration the emerging abilities of the children. Free day is an instrument of education rather than a goal as it allows to make selections and to practice autonomy based upon reason. To the extent that it does not achieve the goals of education it may be modified with the hope of increasing the child's achievement of these goals. The Philosophy of Primary Education is a book that can be profitably read by all persons working with young at the preprimary as well as the primary level. The use of slogans such as meeting the needs of children or let's teach children, not subjects has been too often confused with statements about the purposes and goals of early childhood education. The analysis of such statements can help teachers clarify the philosophic base of education, which in turn aids him in aligning educational assumptions, goals, and methods. The limitations of Dearden's book are the limitations of analytic philosophy. While concepts can be clarified by these techniques, questions about method, organization, or the consequences of instructional techniques must be answered empirically. To the extent that Dearden has made statements in areas that are derived philosophically but are not supported by recourse to practice, this otherwise excellent book is weakened.