John Dewey

When teaching a new subject, it’s not only hearing what the instructor tells us but it also thinking or analyzing what we’re learning. In the reading “Thinking in Education” by John Dewey, he states four methods to reflect on what is being taught to us. To start off, the first method is thinking through experience. The second method is having a development where the children need to think for themselves. The third method mentioned is having sources that support our evidence. Finally the last method that is talked about is ideas can be guesses or theories that make have solutions.

Let’s elaborate on the first method. So the first method is the initial stage. “The initial stage of that developing experience which is called thinking is experience” (pg.559 para. 2). He is saying that he uses thinking through experience. Basically how we learn is through trial and error. In order to learn something we have to experience it. When we try a new recipe, we don’t just read through the instructions and it magically appears. We take our time to carefully read it, see what is needed and how do to it.

The second method that John Dewey mentioned is having a development for children to learn how to think for themselves. “Teachers following a developing method sometimes tell children to think things out for themselves as if they could spin them out of their own heads” (pg. 562 para. 3). As teachers they need to find a way for kids to learn and not just learn what they’re hearing. It’s also for them to remember what they learned in class. They need to make it big enough for them to learn it but small enough to grasp the knowledge. For example, when teaching math some students learn through visual aid. So in order to teach subtraction, some teachers use candy. They could say “If we have ten skittles and we take away two, how many do we have left?” The kids see ten skittles, take two away and see they are left with eight. That’s how they end up learning what they were taught.

“The correlate in thinking of facts, data, knowledge already acquired, is suggestions, inferences, conjectured meanings, suppositions, tentative explanations-ideas, in short” (pg. 563 para. 12). John Dewey believes we need to get the information and make observations in order to deal with it. We can’t just read something and believe it’s true. We need to actually observe what we’re seeing or hearing. We gather up facts, suggestions and so much more to get an overall idea of what we’ll be dealing with.

Lastly the fourth method he uses is ideas can be known as guesses. “Ideas, whether they be humble guesses or dignified theories, are anticipations of possible solutions “(pg. 565 para. 16). We all guess or we all have certain theories that we believe in. We may have a theory that oranges make teeth whiter. It make be true but first we need to test it out. We also have be humble about our theories and guesses.