Experience and Learning

Both Dewey and Vygotsky emphasize that external and internal interaction happen when children are learning. Hence, they claim that communication/interaction/experience that children have with their environment is important. Moreover, the change in internal condition also changes external condition. Because in a sense, when we change the way we approach things, our actions accordingly change, which lead to the change in the environment. So the reason why we think that “pedagogy would rescue the child” (Popkewirz) is because we believe that by providing educative experiences for students to interact with, children can grow into a contributive citizen of the community.

Dewey said that experience can be both educative and non-educative. Hence, educators should provide such situations which students interact with. I thought that in a sense, this is also a form of power. How teachers provide that environment is based on teachers' subjectivity. Moreover, judgement of what is educative and non-educative is also based on teacher. However, I wonder whether all power are bad. We cannot escape from the power structure. Although Dewey's philosophy talks about a form of power, it is different to the power exercised in, for example, Carlisle school. What is harmful or not harmful? We can only determine by looking at the product of the treatment. But how we determine is also difficult because we're dealing with people's lives.