Democracy+and+Education+Chapter+15

Play and Work in the Curriculum (Chapter 15) Group 4
 * __Summary__**

An increased interest in child psychology, the school reform movement, and the being in the schoolroom, has changed the curriculum so that it begins with “the experience and capacities of learners.” Active learning, which includes “plays, games, and constructive occupations,” has been incorporated into the school curriculum. These were previously used to make teaching easier and school more enjoyable for the child. It has been proven that when they are incorporated into the curriculum, the student is more engaged in what he is doing. This causes the artificial division between school and life to become bridged. For example, if children read about how seeds grow in a textbook, they will not understand the multiple processes involved in plant growing. On the other hand, if they actually plant seeds and watch them grow and die and help keep them alive by watering them, they are experiencing how plants grow and not just learning about it. A change in lifestyle and materials available to our society has changed the importance of having games, play and “active occupations” in the school curriculum. Books have been so mass-produced that they do not have the same effect as they use to. Play is more important because it replicates adult life. It is the duty of the teacher to present the plays, games and active occupations in an environment that the child will learn from what they are doing. The field of play and active occupations has a plethora of materials to work with. The students benefit intellectually by having these activities and materials incorporated into their education. This principle explains the importance of letting the pupil explore and make their own mistakes. It is better to give children raw material to work with rather than something that is more refined because they are less likely to make mistakes. By allowing them to make their own mistakes, you are allowing for them to learn their abilities and become creative. When activities and materials in school are too restrictive, the child does not understand what had to go into perfecting the activity. Active occupations should allow the child to fully understand a subject and actually experience something to understand it. Sometimes schools try to make learning easier by breaking down something into separate parts and then assuming that the children will understand the whole. Dewey says that this is wrong. Children can learn about objects just by using them and seeing what effects they can have on the world with them. They need to be able to connect the real world to what they are doing to fully understand it. Once they are connected, it is much easier for the child to understand. Active occupations are very helpful in school because the pupil is not doing them for a reward, rather they are getting valuable lessons out of them. As they mature, they will also build on these and try to understand more about a specific subject. If the sciences and the social sciences were more connected to real life and everyday living, which they are involved in, they would be better understood and less formal. Work and play are both included in active occupations. When the student plays it is a momentary concept. The child goes into play with a state of excitement and a preconceived, yet adaptable result in mind. Play turns into work when one has an end in view and does things to accomplish that end. When work is done only to receive a reward or avoid punishment, very little meaning is attached to the work. Work “offers little to engage the emotions and the imagination.” Play passes into work when there are definite materials with a distant result and persistent efforts are enlisted for their accomplishments. Both play and work have an ending result, but in work the activity is monopolized by the end result, while in play. The conventional understanding of work is that it has a specific aim which is the final material result. Dewey thinks, on the other hand, that work is really done to avoid punishment or gain a reward at its conclusion.
 * 1.The Place of Active Occupations in Education**
 * 2. Available Occupations-**
 * 3. Work and Play**

pg 195 top paragraph : “When exercises which are prompted by these instincts are a part of the regular school program, the whole pupil is engaged, the artificial gap between life in school and out is reduced, motives are afforded for attention to a large variety of materials and processes distinctly educative in effect, and cooperative associations which give information in a social setting are provided. Pg. 196 bottom: “The problem of the educator is to engage pupils in these activities in such ways that while manual skill and technical efficiency are gained and immediate satisfaction found in the work, together with preparation for later usefulness, these things shall be subordinated to education—that is, to intellectual results and the forming of a socialized disposition.”
 * __Key Passages-__**

pg 199 bottom of 1st paragraph: “Witness the different attitude of a boy in making, say, a kite, with respect to the grain and other properties of wood, the matter of size, angles, and proportion of parts, to the attitude of a pupil who has an object lesson on a piece of wood, where the sole function of wood and its properties is to serve as subject matter for the lesson.”

pg 197: “But it is the fault of a teacher if the pupil does not perceive in due reason the inadequacy of his performances, and thereby receive a stimulus to attempt exercises which will perfect his powers. Meantime it is more important to keep alive a creative and constructive attitude than to secure an external perfection by engaging the pupil’s action in too minute and too closely regulated pieces of work.”

pg 200 2nd paragraph: “Gardening, for example, need not be taught either for the sake of preparing future gardeners, or as an agreeable way of passing time. It affords an avenue of approach to knowledge of the place farming and horticulture have had in the history of race and which they occupy in present social organization. Carried on in an environment educationally controlled, they are means for making a study of the facts of growth, the chemistry of soil, the role of light, air, and moisture, injurious and helpful animal life, etc.”

pg 202 bottom: “ When an activity is its own end in the sense that the action of the movement is complete in itself, it is purely physical; it has no meaning. The person is either going through the motions quite blindly, perhaps purely imitatively, or else in a state of excitement which is exhausting to the mind and nerves.”

Pg. 203 end of first full paragraph: “If a child is making a toy boat, he must hold on to a single end and direct a considerable number of acts by that one idea. If he is just ‘playing boat’ he may change the material that serves as a boat almost at will, and introduce new factors as fancy suggests. The imagination makes what it will of chairs, blocks, leaves, chips, if they serve the purpose of carrying activity forward.”

Play: a chance at physical activities which bring the student’s natural impulses out in order to make going to school a joy and learning easier. “Play tends to reproduce and affirm the crudities, as well as the excellencies, of surrounding adult life.” Pg. 230
 * __Key Terms-__**

Work: It is an activity where there is rigid means to the consequence of a specific end. The consequence of a specific end would be the reward or omission of punishment. Work “offers little to engage the emotions and imagination; it is more or less a mechanical series of strains.” Pg. 232

Active Occupations: activities that should serve as typical examples for social situations. For example: “Gardening, weaving, construction in wood, manipulation of metals, cooking etc.” (p. 200)

Capacities: ones ability to develop and learn.

Crude Material: materials which are raw and unrefined.

1. What is the importance of the use of active occupations, play and games, in education? 2. What does Dewey mean when he says that it is desirable “to start from and with the experience and capacities of learners?” (pg. 194) 3. Were you able to play games and do hands on activities when you were in elementary school? How do you feel these activities furthered your understanding of what you were learning?
 * __Discussion Questions:__**