Cantu: Chapter 1

What Are Schools For?

At the heart of my teaching philosophy is the belief that instruction should be pragmatic. That education should be viewed not as a preparation for life, but as life itself (John Dewey, George Mead, Jerome Bruner).  Rapid economic, technological, and social changes are creating a world that is increasingly more connected.  To succeed students need to know how to compete, communicate and collaborate with the world (Charles Cooley, Max Wertheimer).

Historian Lewis Mumford stated in an 1939 address on Teacher Education that, "we must give primacy to the biological and social sciences (for) an active knowledge of the social environment and of the behavior of men in social partnership, their needs, their drives, their impulses, their dreams, is just as indispensable for working our new social order as reading, writing, and arithmetic was for those trained to capitalism."

To that extent, John Dewey believed that democracy was the best type of social order because it allowed for intelligent inquiry and reconstruction.  I agree with Dewey's rejection of the tabula rasa student and assert that no individual truly reaches a state of finished development.  There is always further growth.  For students to become conscientious and knowledgeable adults, they do not need to become expert historians.  They do, however, need to learn to find valid information, analyze it from multiple perspectives, and communicate it clearly.

For Further Reading:

Cooper, S. (2009).  Making history mine: Meaningful connections for grades 5-9.  Portland: Stenhouse Publishers.

Dewey, J. (1990). The school and society: The child and the curriculum.  Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 

Miller, R. (1995). What are schools for: Holistic education in American culture.  Brandon, VT: Holistic Education Press.

Mumford, L. (1946).  Values for survival: Essays, addresses, and letters on politics and education.  New York:  Harcourt, Brace and Company.

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