Dewey: Inquiry and Existentialism

Dewey's Inquiry and the Existential Alternative

The second Dewey chapter completes the practical side of his system: the aims of education, the five steps of effective inquiry that became the famous scientific method in the classroom, the child-based curriculum he designed at the Dewey School, and the criticisms his work has continued to attract. The chapter closes with existentialism, the twentieth-century European philosophy that offered a sharply different account of what education is finally for.

Dewey on the Aims of Education

Why aims must always be plural, the criteria of a good aim, and the rule that aims must grow out of existing conditions rather than be imposed from outside

The Five Steps of Effective Inquiry

From genuine doubt to tested hypothesis: Dewey’s working model of how thinking actually happens and how it can be taught

Dewey's Curriculum

Why the curriculum must include the child’s own preconceptions, the four impulses Dewey identified, and the combination of subjects with life

Criticisms of Dewey

Henry Edmondson’s case against Deweyan experimentalism, the charges of religious rejection, and the claim that classroom experiments turn students into lab rats

Existentialism Introduced

From Kierkegaard to Sartre: the European philosophy that put choice, freedom, and responsibility at the centre of human existence

Existentialism and Education

The learner-centred approach, self-actualisation as the purpose of education, and the existential commitments of choice, freedom, and responsibility