Continuity

First of all, I really like how Dewey identifies and explains the problems with traditional education. I especially relate to page 18 where he talks about education being imposed from the top down and from the outside in. He says that the students don't have enough experiences in their bags to incorporate a lot of the new ideas in meaningful ways, so they just have to accept what gets thrown at them. That is definitely what happened to me in my sixth grade pre-algebra class. Order of operations?! I remember having a hard time accepting that because I didn't get how it related to anything I had previously learned. My teacher just kept repeating "be sponges to new information" to answer our blank stares.
I think continuity is key. Two quotes I like are "Every experience is a moving force"
(38) and "experience does not happen in a vacuum"(40). Education is active, if it is progressive. Mis-educative experiences don't get reflected upon or applied in future situations. That doesn't mean that they couldn't have been highly educative experiences, but it does mean that the way the experience was presented or approached neglected the learner. All our past experiences have an effect on our present experiences and our present experiences will sort of condition our future experiences. It's a neat, almost timeless, theory.
It is important to see that Dewey does give some credit to traditional education. He says that they do provide experiences of the students. There are opportunities. But, he says that we have to know that they aren't based on a philosophy of education nor of experience. That is limiting and dry because it doesn't drive the educators to see the students for the required material.
Life should be about learning, finding, experiencing. That can be accomplished in a myriad of ways. Remembering that it is not an either/or deal helps me to see that I earn valuable education at school, at work, at home and anywhere else I might happen to be at the moment.