Teachers, Leaders, and Schools: Essays by John Dewey

The Need for Orientation (1935)

The Need for Orientation (1935) FOR ONE WHOSE LIFE HAS been given in one form or another to education, it is no gratification to say things that may be construed as an attack on our educational system. But we are living in a time when discriminating criticism is a necessary condition both for progress and for cashing in on the many good things that are already in the schools. And it is not teachers that are primarily criticized but the system under which they work. I am glad to believe there were never so many teachers in this country as there are now who are trained for their work and who are eager to improve themselves professionally. But the setup of the system distracts and confuses their minds as well as their work. It is to these things I shall refer. The system is a system only by courtesy. In fact, it is more like a patchwork, and a patchwork whose pieces do not form a pattern. It is a patchwork of the old and the new; of unreconstructed survivals from the past and of things introduced because of new conditions. This statement applies equally to the things taught, the ways they are taught, the social control of the educational system, and its administration. In consequence, the new studies that have been introduced have split up the curriculum into unrelated parts and created congestion. There are too many studies and too many courses of study, and the result is confusion. Return to the strict and narrow curriculum of the past is urged by some as a remedy. But there is no use in discussing its desirability, because it is impracticable . The forces of the modern world are here, and they are going to continue to act upon the schools. The demands of an industrialized and technological society cannot be ignored. The old education, even in this country, was a con202 First published in Forum 93 (June 1935): 333–35, as part 1 of a debate with Tyler Dennett entitled “Education and Our Society: A Debate.” The Need for Orientation 203 tinuation or an imitation of an education designed for a small and select class. The number in high schools and colleges has increased sixfold and more in about a generation. This irruption is something unprecedented in the history of any nation. Its members proceed from those who do not have the background, traditions, or needs of the class to which the old system catered. New studies and courses are brought in as a response to their needs. But they are brought in piecemeal, without a unified aim. And the old studies persist, with little modification , side by side with the new ones. Only those pupils who have a strong natural bent come out with any clear idea either of their own capacities or of the world in which they are to live. The schools are a drift rather than a system. The methods of discipline and instruction in such schools as are adequately supported have been revolutionized in a generation or so, and mostly for the better—though the rural schools in a large part of the country are still in a condition that should be a public scandal. There is much more recognition of the make-up of individuals and much more adaptation to individual needs than there used to be. But in our large cities, with their inhuman aggregations of students and their overstuffed classes, the change has affected the general spirit of the teaching much more than its actual impact upon students. Methods are still largely mechanical—even more so oftentimes than in many of the old, small rural schools. The worst thing is that, even in the schools where pupils are not treated as intellectual robots, their individual traits are stimulated more or less at haphazard, rather than directed. It is certainly not the fault of teachers that so many of the recent graduates of the schools now find themselves at a tragic standstill, without an occupation and without prospect of one. It is not the fault of teachers that so many young men and women still in high schools and colleges find themselves in a state of painful and bewildering insecurity about the future. But it is the fault of the system that so many of these young persons have no intellectual legs of their own to stand upon, no sense of perspective by which to take their bearings, no insight into the causes of...