Dewey Wins!

If the 'New' Teaching Methods Pushed by High-Tech
Gurus Sound Familiar, It Isn't Surprising

By ROBERT CWIKLIK

The computerization of the American classroom would seem to be securely on the high-tech cutting edge of school reforms. But many experts involved in the effort are linking it to a teaching method that predates the Model T, "flappers" and bobbed hair.

As schools across the nation turn from installing computers to figuring out how to use them, many high-tech gurus are advising teachers to change their instructional style. The recommended approach tends to de-emphasize the traditional "chalk-and-talk" lecture method, preferring "authentic-learning" projects that students can complete by, say, conducting research on the Internet. Advocates hope that such exercises will make students active constructors of their own knowledge, rather than passive receptacles into which facts are poured.

But this "new" style of project-oriented teaching, sometimes called "child-centered," "progressive" or "constructivist" pedagogy, was pioneered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- minus the computers -- among reformers led by John Dewey. The philosopher and educator published an early description of his method, "The School and Society," back in 1899.

Dewey's demanding program was based on the theory that schools were at war against the nature of children, rather than enlisting the child's innate qualities in the task of learning. Instead of attempting to hammer facts into students, often with threats of punishment, Dewey wanted schools to present the curriculum as a series of problems, the solutions to which called upon children to employ the methods of the scientist, the historian and the artist. In doing so, students would construct, Dewey believed, a deeper understanding of traditional subjects and the methods used to advance them.