Chapter 12: Thinking in Education

In Chapter 12, Dewey continues to emphasize the danger and futility of isolating thought from experience, ideas from activity, mind from body. He recognizes that "it is not easy to secure conditions which will make the getting of an idea identical with an experience" (p. 132); yet he maintains that no one can give another an idea--something given must be owned by the other and cannot replace a notion or concept acquired in the struggle of inquiry. This is not to suggest that ideas learned are extraordinary or fanciful. To the contrary, even the most original of ideas is the result of putting "everyday things" to new uses, seeing the familiar in a new light.
Nevertheless, learning can be a process of discovery. As Dewey says, "the joy which children themselves experience [even in discovering something known to others] is the joy of intellectual constructiveness" (p. 131). Dewey's discussion in this chapter smacks of constructivism, and it reminds me of the following from How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Bransford et al., 1999), quoted in Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning (2001) by Courtney Cazden.

A common misconception...is that teachers should never tell students anything directly but, instead should always allow them to construct knowledge for themselves. This perspective confuses a theory of pedagogy (teaching) with a theory of knowing. Constructivists assume that all knowledge is constructed from previous knowledge, irrespective of how one is taught--even listening to a lecture involves active attempts to construct new knowledge" (p. 77).

Is this quote reconcilable with Dewey? Does it suggest that we can isolate ideas and meaning from experience and activity? Or, does it assume the student's own construction will involve prior experience? Dewey rejects education by transmission, but he also rejects teaching-by-"quiescence", and recommends instead "participation, sharing, in an activity...the teacher is a learner, and the learner is, without knowing it, a teacher--and upon the whole, the less consciousness there is, on either side, of either giving or receiving instruction, the better" (p. 132). The key, I think, is inquiry--an attitude which makes of experience, physical or mental, an activity.