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John Dewey and the Beginnings of Progressive Early Education in Hawai‘I Alfred L

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John Dewey and the Beginnings of Progressive Early Education in Hawai‘I Alfred L John Dewey in Hawai‘i 23 John Dewey and the Beginnings of Progressive Early Education in Hawai‘i Alfred L. Castle Hawai‘i has often been the beneficiary of the insights of reality called “practice” while reserving the higher order extraordinary men and women who visited the islands “theory” for the transcendent, changeless divine realm. and made important observations. Among these was Mystery and glamour attached to the eternal, sempiternal perhaps America’s most famous philosopher, John Dewey realm, while the material or “practical” realm was (1859-1952). First visiting Honolulu in 1899 as the guest deemed inferior. The separation of the two conceptual of Mary Tenney Castle and her family, Dewey would help orders was mirrored in the distinction between practice establish Hawai‘i’s first progressive kindergartens while and theory. This isolation of theory and practice has, in also assisting in the establishment of the new progressive Dewey’s estimation, held mankind back for centuries. Castle Kindergarten on King Street. Dewey was a close The devaluing of the natural realm of the changing friend of his University of Chicago colleague and symbolic and flawed mundane world was regnant, according to interactionist George Herbert Mead and his wife Helen Dewey, until the early modern period when Galileo, Castle. He had met the late Henry Castle, a young Newton, and Bacon began the slow process of taking philosopher whose life had been cut short in a shipping the natural world as worthy of precise quantitative accident on the North Sea, in 1895. Dewey’s visit coincided interpretation. Over time, science rid itself of the last with the incipient efforts of educators to formulate a radical vestiges of the illusory search for ultimate, invariable re-engineering of early education, which would forever reality and became more secure with experimentalism change the way the public looked at young children and and operationalism. As a result of this development, eventually lead to a comprehensive K–12 public education which, Dewey believed, is fundamental to modernity, for the territory, and then the state, of Hawai‘i. mankind came to see values as not permanently fixed and Dewey’s intellectual journey from traditional hierarchical, but relational, instrumental, and corrigible. epistemological Hegelian-style idealism to the Mankind thus possesses the method and means, through instrumentalism now associated with his famous name observation, experiment, and interpretation, to wrestle was well developed by the end of the nineteenth century. meaning and provisional truth from the realm of nature. Perhaps his best description of his intellectual position For Dewey the pragmatist, mankind was still in the was described in his 1929 book The Quest for Certainty. process of removing the manufactured barriers between The positions he articulates in this book framed his basic knowledge and practice, science and values, and the educational philosophy, which he would apply to Hawai‘i’s noxious false problems, such as the relationship between early progressive kindergartens and especially to the Henry mind and body, spirit and matter, theory and practice— and Dorothy Memorial Kindergarten and its teachers in the between an ultimate Truth and flexible, instrumental, late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. provisional truths. For him, nature is the origin of all The historical quest for certainty about which Dewey ideals and goods vouchsafed to mankind. Men’s minds writes, and which he deplores, has a long lineage. It were now free to jettison the search for illusionary originated in man’s search for security from the perils of certainty and to pursue discoverable, multiple paths to the natural world, a search that resulted in a comfort in enjoyable goods defined not by gods but by humans. manufactured realms of eternal truth and transcendent From the hazards of mutable nature, man could find no reality. Over the ages, Dewey concludes, mankind, at least redoubt. But in nature he could use ideas as instruments in most cultures, created a set of empirical practices that for action that could achieve partial, corrigible truths and allowed them to deal with the inferior realm of material multiple goods. v v 24 Educational Perspectives Volume 47 Numbers 1 and 2 The basic framework above, often called metaphysical develop creative individuals who could work effectively to naturalism, had shaped Dewey’s educational philosophy by eliminate existing social evils and build a better society. For the late nineteenth century. His theory, which would help Dewey, the school was the medium for developing habits for to shape education for the twentieth century, resulted from systematic inquiry and for tolerance of the new and untried. his rejection of the rigid and formal approach to education In a rapidly industrializing America, Dewey feared that dominated schools in the late nineteenth century. the threat to the future of democratic practice posed Such an approach was incorrect, he argued, because it was by unplanned technological, economic, and political based upon an erroneous psychology in which the child was development. These rapid and unplanned changes, he also thought of as a passive creature upon whom information feared, would increase human aberration and decrease the and ideas had to be imposed. amount of shared experience that is vital for the democratic Equally distressing to Dewey was an education based community. For him and for his followers, the school in a on sentiment and idealization of the child. This approach democratic society was the best hope for creation of a freer urged the child to choose what he wanted to study. For and more humane experience in which all could share Dewey, this approach ignored the lack of sophistication and participate. of the child’s experience. For the child, education ought Dewey, introduced to the Castle family by G. H. Mead, to be a continuous reconstruction of experience in which was soon in contact with Mary Castle about funds for the practical problems were solved through trial and error. University of Chicago Lab School and about coming to Once solutions were found, future solutions to identical Honolulu to help start the progressive Castle Kindergarten on problems would become part of a child’s habits and King Street. intelligence. Dewey’s slogan, “Learn by Doing,” was meant Like Dewey, Mary Castle understood that if education to call attention to the child as a naturally active, curious, was to be relevant and meaningful, it would need to be and exploring creature. Any properly planned education, transformed. Moreover, they wanted education to constantly therefore, should be sensitive to this active dimension of expand the range of social situations in which individuals life and must guide the child in such a way as to maximize perceived issues and made and acted upon choices. They his or her participation in different types of experience. wanted schools to inculcate habits that would enable The end of education must be development of the child’s individuals to control their surroundings rather than creativity and autonomy. merely adapt to them. Traditional formal education, which As Dewey saw it, the child’s nature is neither emphasized memorization and conformity to lessons taught completely malleable nor forever fixed. Like Aristotle, by an authoritarian teacher, was incapable of providing an Dewey believed that the function of education is to education that would improve society by making it more encourage those habits and tendencies that constitute “worthy and harmonious” (Cremin, 1964, p. 118). No longer intelligence. Dewey stressed creating the proper type of isolated from the reality of a quickly changing society, the environmental conditions for eliciting and nurturing these progressive school would become “an embryonic community habits. In the correct and controlled environment, adaptive life,” active with types of occupations that reflect the life of lifetime habits could be formed. Moreover, education, as the larger society. As Dewey said, the continuous reconstruction and growth of experience, When the school introduces and trains each child also develops the child’s moral character. Virtue is taught of society into membership within such a little by cultivating self-mindedness, objectivity, imagination, community, saturating him with the spirit of service, openness to new experiences, and the courage to change and providing him with the instruments of effective one’s mind in the light of new facts. self-direction, we shall have the deepest and best Dewey thought the school was best understood as a guarantee of a larger society which is worthy, lovely miniature society; as such, it should be representative of the and harmonious. (Dewey, 1899, p. 51) essential institutions of this society. As an ideal society, the school is the chief means of social reform. In the controlled Dewey’s educational theory included a condemnation social environment of the school, trained teachers could of “the old school” for the passivity of its methods and John Dewey in Hawai‘i 25 the rigid uniformity of its curriculum. For too long the abstraction. In this last stage, solutions to difficulties educational center of gravity had been “in the teacher, the or problems may be generalized to similar difficulties textbook, anywhere and everywhere you please except in or problems. the immediate instincts and activities of the child himself” In 1899, in an effort to memorialize her son and (Dewey, 1899, p. 51). The essence of the new pedagogy was granddaughter Henry and Dorothy Castle, Mary Castle to shift this center of gravity back to the child. The business invited Dewey to journey to Honolulu and, as her of the new school would be houseguest in Mānoa, to lecture on his theories as part of university extension work. In addition, she invited him to to not only facilitate and enrich the growth of the assist in the formation of the Henry and Dorothy Castle individual child, but also to supply the same results, Memorial Kindergarten.
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