In this single volume, readers will find two of John Dewey's insightful essays on education in America. He considered proper education to be fundamental to a functioning democracy. The problem, according to Dewey in The School and Society, with the old education model was that elementary schools did not encourage exploration and curiosity in their students. In The Child and the Curriculum, Dewey expands upon his definition of the ideal teaching method. A child's life, he says, is an integrated whole. A child will flow from one topic to another, taking a natural interest in subjects and dealing with a world of direct experience. School, on the other hand, addresses a world disconnected from a child's life. A more reasonable approach would be to strive to integrate their experience with the vast body of knowledge that society wishes them to know. By honoring the individual, both the student and the subject matter will come together in a process that produces a mature adult. American educator and philosopher JOHN DEWEY (1859-1952) helped found the American Association of University Professors. He served as professor of philosophy at Columbia University from 1904 to 1930 and authored numerous books, including How We Think (1910), Experience and Nature (1925), Experience and Education (1938), and Freedom and Culture (1939).

The Child and the Curriculum is a seminal work in the field of education written by Catherine Isabel Dodd. The book is a thought-provoking exploration of the relationship between children, curriculum, and the educational process. Dodd argues that the curriculum should be developed in response to the child's interests and needs, rather than imposed from above. This book is a must-read for educators and anyone interested in the field of education. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This edition brings Dewey's educational theory into sharp focus, framing his two classic works by frank assessments, past and present, of the practical applications of Dewey's ideas. In addition to a substantial introduction in which Philip W. Jackson explains why more of Dewey's ideas haven't been put into practice, this edition restores a "lost" chapter, dropped from the book by Dewey in 1915.

These two influential books represent the earliest authoritative statement of Dewey's revolutionary emphasis on education as an experimental, child-centered process. He declares that we must make schools an embryonic community life and stresses the importance of the curriculum as a means of determining the environment of the child.

. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.