Education as Community

When I started reading John Dewey’s article “My Pedagogic Creed”, my mind went all over the place with ideas, thoughts, reminders, and responses to what I was reading. The word “community” kept coming up as an interwoven thread throughout his entire musings, which will be my thread throughout this reflection.

Education starts in the home, a child’s first social community. Mexicans refer to someone being educated or not and what they mean is not BOOK education, but HOME education. If my Mexican husband comments that someone is “lacking education” his reference is to their HOME education – he is not making a comment on their school/book education. Dewey expounds upon this notion in his definition of education when he says “It is the business of the school to deepen and extend his sense of the values bound up in his [the student’s] home life”(Dewey). In essence, school is an extension and a continuation of what was first learned at home, in the first 4-5 years of life.

School as a “form of community life” also resonates with me. This concept is then woven throughout the rest of the article. He states that the teacher is there, as a member of the community, “to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences”(Dewey). The teacher as a guide. School is social in nature and as a social “group” should be dynamic, yet we (society, government) gives more credence to science, literature, history, math, than the arts and vocational subjects.

I have participated in music, specifically band, in school, since the 4th grade. Some of my memories of the impact of band in high school were friends of mine who passed their “core” classes only because of band and the requirement of a passing average to be in marching band. Band saved these students. Band, art, choir, orchestra – these types of school classes, are social in nature. My best friends were in band, band allowed me to excel in other areas. Band class is not your typical classroom with desks, books and learning. Creating music together is a social experiment in and of itself. Social by nature; feeding off the cues of others. Dewey references these types of “special studies” as representing “fundamental forms of social activity”. He is referring to all “special studies” and includes vocational studies as well – classes we saw go by the wayside for years – and are now making a comeback in vocational high schools that focus on what Dewey would call “fundamental forms of social activity” that should be in the forefront with the “formal subjects” of the curriculum taught through these activities’ lenses.

“If education is life, all life has, from the outset, a scientific aspect; an aspect of art and culture and an aspect of communication….The progress is not in the succession of studies but in the development of new attitudes towards, and new interests in, experience” (Dewey).

“I believe, finally, that the teacher is engaged, not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life” (Dewey). A teacher creates community in the classroom, helping students form new attitudes, new interests and new experiences through a subject area they are hired to teach. Education is not only WHAT we learn in the classroom – Education is LIFE.

Reference:

Dewey, John (1897, January). My pedagogic creed. School Journal, 54, pp. 77-80. Retrieved from http://dewey.pragmatism.org/creed.htm