Jan Resseger: What Dewey Says to Us Today

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1. Jennifer Mangrum says:

   January 4, 2018 at 11:04 am

   LOVE her words!

   Reply
2. Ed Johnson says:

   January 4, 2018 at 11:37 am

   A New Year’s lantern for seeing to improve public education…
   https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/ef7d8e97-1fe4-4ff4-8f83-cc0d57dad781

   Reply
3. Susan Lee Schwartz says:

   January 4, 2018 at 11:48 am

   I posted this wonderful essay at Oped News: https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/An-Urgently-Needed-New-Yea-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Education-Testing_Educational-Crisis_Philosophy_Politicians-180104-920.html#comment684766
   Below, is my intro and my comment:

   Introduction summarized from Jan’s piece:
   ‘We live in an era of attacks on the public schools and school teachers; in recent years we have listened instead to politicians, billionaire philanthropists,  business leaders, and tech titans! But, PROFESSOR John Dewey, an education psychologist perhaps America’s most famous education philosopher, published a short, readable education creed in 1897. Compare it to the ideas and principles that underpin today’s public education policy. His thinking directly confronts what is happening in our schools driven by high stakes test and punish—charter schools dominated by no-excuses compliance—schools with unworkable ratios of students per teacher—schools oriented to college-and-career prep. Imagine how different our schools might be if school teachers who have studied the philosophy and psychology of education were trusted by the education committees in Congress and across the statehouses.’

   MY COMMENT:
   I studied Dewey as all students of education did, in order to earn a degree. I used Dewey’s philosophy, and in every classroom where I was tasked with meeting education objectives, where LEARNING was the goal, my students thrived.
   In my last tenure, where they gave menothingbut an empty room, I brought Dewey’s philosophy into it, and in the end, my students were at the top of every city and state evaluation.
   I was the NYS EDUCATOR OF EXCELLENCE, and Harvard made me the NYC cohort for the REAL Standards Research, funded by Pew.– on THE PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING.

   WITHIN, 2 years, as the CURRICULUM written by billionaire businessman GATES was being pushed into the 15,880 SCHOOL SYSTEMS, and the Pearson TESTS were filling school storerooms, they came after me, and two hundred thousand tenured, experienced professional teachers who, like DEWEY, GRASPED WHAT EANING LOOKED LIKE.

   The media which these billionaire owned, spit lies about ‘those bad teachers’ and told our citizens what ‘teaching’ should do…
   The results are with us now.
   Imagine if the experienced PROFESSIONAL PRACTITIONERS OF MEDICINE, were removed from the hospitals… failure would follow.

   Reply
4. retired teacher says:

   January 4, 2018 at 12:03 pm

   What a great, insightful revisitation of Dewey’s precepts contrasted against current pedagogical malpractice! DeVos like Dewey is concerned about “individuals.” However, with DeVos self interest has greater value than self knowledge. Elevation of the self while causing harm to the community is consistent with a free market life philosophy. Dewey views self knowledge as the power to learn, grow, adapt as part of a community. The most authentic learners are life long learners. Anyone that believes in Dewey’s principles believes that elevating oneself is also elevating and contributing to the community at the same time. The free market destroys communities while public schools offer them stability and hope.

   Reply
5. Duane E Swacker says:

   January 4, 2018 at 3:24 pm

   “The free market destroys communities while. . . ”

   No, the free market doesn’t destroy communities. People with mal intentions, with good intentions, people who believe they are right in doing what they consider the proper course of action for others without those others input. . . People, individuals are the ones who end up destroying communities, heaping pedagogical nightmares on others, foisting unwanted changes, unwanted educational malpractices on the innocent are to blame, not the supposed “free market”.

   Tell me how can a description of supposed ideal human economic interactions-the free (sic) market” do anything. It is not an actor, a being of doing, a human but an inadequate description of human interactions that, by definition cannot logically “do” anything. To suggest that the “free (sic) market” can do anything is a logical falsehood that can only serve to enhance one person’s well being off the backs of others as it is used as a justification for very unequal and unjust human practices regarding any exchange of goods, thoughts and/or services.

   By inserting the concept of the “free (sic) market) into the mix the humans, the actual persons who do the damage are thusly exonerated from their true guilt in their failures of policy implementation. By stating that the “free (sic) market) does these things we give cover to those who should be rightly blamed, condemned and chastised for their harmful and destructive ideas, policies and actions. And it doesn’t matter if the intention of the doers is pure, righteous, etc. . ., what matters is the outcome of their actions, actions which cannot be blamed on some non-existing entity that is nothing more than a description of human economic activity.

   Reply
   • Duane E Swacker says:

     January 4, 2018 at 3:25 pm

     Supposed to be in response to retired teacher’s comment at 12:03.

     Reply
   • Susan Lee Schwartz says:

     January 4, 2018 at 3:44 pm

     Paul Craig Roberts writes at Oped. Here is his most recent. Suplly -side economics. gimme a break.

     Article: Phillips Curve R.I.P. | OpEdNews
     https://www.opednews.com/articles/Phillips-Curve-R-I-P-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-Deficit_Economics_Inflation_Keynesian-180103-953.html
     “The fact that something as straightforward and well explained as supply-side economics can be misrepresented for 35 years should give us all pause. When successive chairmen of the Federal Reserve and other central banks have no correct idea what supply-side economics is, how can they formulate a workable monetary policy? They cannot.
     “For a decade central banks have printed enormous quantities of new money. The excuse is to stimulate the economy by reviving inflation. However, the money has, for the most part, driven up the prices of financial assets instead of consumer and producer prices. The result has been a massive increase in the inequality of income, wealth, and opportunity.
     “The quantitative easing policy followed by central banks is based on belief in an economic relationship between inflation and GDP growth — the Phillips curve — that supply-side economics disproved during the Reagan administration. The belief in the Phillips curve persists, because supply-side economics was misrepresented by the financial media and neoliberal junk economics.

     Reply

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