Customer Reviews

The School and Society (Arcturus Paperbacks; AB 151)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I liked the book overall. The content was excellent, and the educational ideas which Mr. Dewey expressed, are terrific. To me, the style of the writing was the problem. The book was written in 1899, and the wordy, pedantic style was common at that time. The main ideas in the book are hands-on education, and students' learning by doing. The first three chapters were taken from a lecture by Mr. Dewey that he delivered three years after he opened his University Elementary School in Chicago. The fourth chapter began by telling some of the financial information about the school. The average cost per student was $120. Mr. Dewey thought that advances in education were not keeping pace with advancements in society. He found it interesting that fourth graders in Moline, Illinois, did not realize that the Mississippi River in their geography books, had anything to do with the stream of water that flowed by their homes. This is a fairly small book, but I recommend The School and Society, if you can find the time to read it several times.

I am a education major at Macon State college. John Dewey's book is simply a summary of three talks Dewey gave to parnets and students at the University of Chicago Laboratory school in 1896. The book covers topics that are often very diverse and shares conflicting political and philosophic positions in education. I found this book hard to read and very wordy. I did not enjoy the read at all.