(Des)Construindo

THE END OF EDUCATION: Redefining the Value of School by Neil Postman.

Imagine a new type of school. A school with a different purpose and content. In this school, five narratives provide a purpose to schooling and, as such, offer moral guidance, a sense of continuity and understanding of the past, present and future. These narratives and the new purpose to schooling which they provide are Neil Postman's prescription for educational reform. What are schools for? This is the question Postman seeks to answer in The End of Education. His answer? School's role is to p...

John Dewey. Democracy and Education. 1916. (Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum)

Summary: In the previous chapter we found that the primary subject matter of knowing is that contained in learning how to do things of a fairly direct sort. The educational equivalent of this principle is the consistent use of simple occupations which appeal to the powers of youth and which typify general modes of social activity. Skill and information about materials, tools, and laws of energy are acquired while activities are carried on for their own sake. The fact that they are socially rep...

John Dewey. Democracy and Education. 1916. (Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive)

Summary: Education may be conceived either retrospectively or prospectively. That is to say, it may be treated as process of accommodating the future to the past, or as an utilization of the past for a resource in a developing future. The former finds its standards and patterns in what has gone before. The mind may be regarded as a group of contents resulting from having certain things presented. In this case, the earlier presentations constitute the material to which the later are to be assimi...

John Dewey. Democracy and Education. 1916. (Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life)

Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life Summary: It is the very nature of life to strive to continue in being. Since this continuance can be secured only by constant renewals, life is a self-renewing process. What nutrition and reproduction are to physiological life, education is to social life. This education consists primarily in transmission through communication. Communication is a process of sharing experience till it becomes a common possession. It modifies the disposition of both ...