The school curriculum has undergone great reform in the past century. The reasons for the reform are three aspects: one is the efforts of reformers, the other is the improvement of interest in studying children's psychology, and the third is the experience of school education. A lesson from these three aspects is that teaching should start from students' experience and ability. When children have the opportunity to engage in various physical activities to mobilize their natural impulses, going to school is a pleasure, and teachers' management of students is much easier. The natural impulse here refers to those games and active homework. If school teaching is not based on children's reality, learning can't arouse students' interest in learning, and learning becomes a boring thing. Students' learning is only to cope with their homework and complete the tasks assigned by teachers. This kind of study becomes ineffective and wastes the time of students and teachers. Effective learning means that knowledge acquisition is the result of purposeful activities, not the result of coping with school work.
The task of the school is to set up an environment in which games and work can promote the intellectual and moral growth of young people. If only games and competitions, handicrafts and labor are used in schools, it is not enough. Everything depends on how we use them.
2. Available homework
Active homework materials include: paper, cardboard, leather, cloth, yarn, clay and sand, metal, tools, etc. The manufacturing methods include: folding, cutting, measuring, casting, making patterns, heating and cooling. There are many ways to do homework, such as outdoor travel, gardening, cooking, sewing, painting, singing and so on. Educators make students engage in these activities, so that they can improve their skills and have fun in the activities, and the results obtained are secondary.
these activities mentioned by Dewey are similar to the "comprehensive practical activities" in our education, but the difference is that the comprehensive practical activities in our education are only used as a supplement to text learning, such as manual courses and labor technology courses offered in primary schools, and the purpose of teaching is not to really improve students' skills. Just as a minor subject, let students relax after studying major subjects such as Chinese, mathematics and English. In Dewey's place, these activity classes are regular courses.
Dewey's practical activities exclude those materials selected by teachers in advance, which can control students' operation and avoid mistakes. But it is wrong to expect students to use ready-made materials to gain intelligence. Only by starting with rough materials and using them purposefully can students acquire the intelligence contained in the finished materials. If a student can choose his own materials, he can personally feel the knowledge derived from the size, shape, color and texture of the materials, which will improve his wisdom. The purpose of students' homework heals in human nature, or the purpose required by daily experience, the more real the students' knowledge is. If the teacher chooses materials for the students, then the knowledge gained by the students is only one aspect.
active homework should pay attention to all, and the situation of homework is completely infectious. This means that active homework is not for acquiring a certain unilateral ability, such as Chinese learning, word recognition and mathematical operation, but for people's all-round development, including skills, attitudes, habits, knowledge recognition and belief formation. Without wholeness, education becomes a mere study of technology and individual knowledge points. For example, when primary school Chinese teaches literacy, teachers will only teach students what a word is, but not how it comes from and how it is structured. This kind of education can easily make students feel boring and boring, so that students are tired of learning. Because it is not combined with students' own experience, it arouses their interest in learning. This is not active homework, and there is no teaching that is not effective and pays attention to integrity.
Dewey further pointed out that all sciences developed gradually from useful social work. The relationship between homework and scientific methods is as close as that between homework and scientific materials.
Third, work and games
The term active homework includes both work and games. Games and work are not antagonistic to each other. Both of them consciously have a certain purpose, and design the selection and adaptation of materials and processes to achieve the desired purpose. The difference between the two is mainly the difference in time span. This difference affects the direct degree of connection between ends and means. In the game, activity is its own purpose, not its future result. For example, when a child is young, he is curious about everything and likes to help his mother wash dishes, sweep the floor, wash clothes, etc. But when the child grows up, when adults ask him to wash dishes and sweep the floor every day, he doesn't want to do it, because when the child is young, he likes to do housework just as a game, and he doesn't want to do it as a result, and he won't do it continuously every day. However, when older children ask him to do housework every day, it becomes a job. The game is free and plastic. And work is not free, especially when adults are in poor economic conditions, and they must engage in jobs they don't like in order to get paid. This kind of work is almost hard work, so people need leisure time to refresh themselves. And art is the answer to this demand, and people need art to nourish their hearts.
Dewey summed up the relationship between games, work and art: the psychological difference between games and work cannot be confused with the economic difference, which is very important. From the psychological point of view, the prescribed characteristics of the game are not recreation, nor are they aimless. In the game, the purpose is to carry out more similar activities, rather than stipulate the continuation of activities according to the results produced. When the activity becomes more complex, the significance of the activity will increase because more attention is paid to the special results obtained. Therefore, activities gradually become work. Man-made economic conditions make games a useless excitement for the rich, and work an undesirable labor for the poor. Without these man-made economic conditions, games and work are equally free, and both can cause motivation from themselves. From the psychological point of view, work is just an activity, consciously taking care of the consequences as part of the activity; When the consequences are beyond activities and activities are only a means to an end, work becomes forced labor. Work is always permeated with game attitude, and this kind of work is an art-although it is not used to being called this way, it is indeed art in nature.
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PS: Punching in the 91-day Challenge Training Camp in the University Hall (Chapter 43)