The Remarkable Staying Power of Deweyism

John Dewey was one of the first, if not THE FIRST,  author to articulate that it would be teachers, not workers in industry, who would lead the revolution.  Q:  Revolution from what to what?  A:  From oppression & depression to utopia and a brave new world.  It would not be workers who would lose their chains but teachers who would be the vanguard to change the world.

This vanguardism has been a feature behind much of education reform of the last 100+ years.

Dewey wrote in 1898 — The Primary Education Fetish:

- “There is a false education god whose idolators are legion, and whose cult influences the entire educational system. This is language study . . .
-“The endless drill, with its continual repetitions, is another instance of the same evil . . . No one can estimate the benumbing and hardening effect of this continued drill . . .
- “The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school life because of the great importance attaching to literature seems to me a perversion . . . “

The context of the times — Edward Bellamy’s book, “Looking Backward”, 1888 — strongly influenced readers toward a planned economy, socialism.  Hunger, homelessness, greed, inequality, etc. could be eliminated.  This is how Wikipedia describes the influence:

“It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately on its appearance a political mass movement.  In the United States alone, over 162 ‘Bellamy Clubs’ sprang up to discuss and propagate the book’s ideas.”

Dewey was deeply affected by this spirit of the times.

Most of education reforms from that time encompassed the discontent teachers felt with their own predicament and easily identified with Dewey and his “democratic” ideas.  Dewey knew how well “democracy” struck a chord in the minds of the populace and in fact has been criticized for using the term freely and frequently, at least 30 different definitions as counted by one critic!

The education “reform” that most exemplifies Dewey’s philosophy was/is whole-language.  Please see Wikipedia for a digest about the W-L movement, its context and its critics.

The reason I’m doing this long preamble to my comment on this Chapter in the book “Flip The System” , this chapter by Lieberman, Campbell & Yashkina, is because the program Teacher Learning and Leadership Program (TLLP)  is now under discussion. 

TLLP, in my analysis, is a direct cousin of the training devised by W-L enthusiasts, who with missionary zeal (backed up by “research”), set out to embed constructivist philosophy and pedagogic methods in public schools.  Much of that thrust, shift, flipping from teaching to learning, is what is now “informing” the 21st Century Learning, Common Core initiatives of today.

This is written in this chapter and I will do another essay on the parallels between this W-L training and TLLP in a later submission — Learning Professional Change, Lois Bridges, in “Reflections and Connections – essays in honor of Kenneth S Goodman’s influence on language education”.

I have been the lead teacher in a TLLP. Important to note that
School Boards have decision- making powers about which proposed projects are sent to the Ministry and once the TLLP has been approved, maintain control of the funds.