Play and work

It was good for me to open the blog back up after quite a bit of time and to realize that the next chapter in D&E was Work and Play in the Curriculum.  The highlights from the chapter reminded me of some things I had been starting to forget...

“If the mass of mankind has usually found in its industrial occupations nothing but evils which had to be endured for the sake of maintaining existence, the fault is not in the occupations, but in the conditions under which they are carried on” (p. 208).

As I wrote in an email, I would like to approach posting in the blog in a more sustainable way, as a transition for completing D&E and moving into a discussion on the works we've gone through.   So here goes. 

 “It is the business of the school to set up an environment in which play and work shall be conducted with reference to facilitating desirable mental and moral growth. It is not enough just to introduce plays and games, hand work and manual exercises. Everything depends upon the way in which they are employed” (p. 204).

The house and barn as viewed from the east side of the field.

I’m considering the relatively new activities I’ve started as my personal school environment… house projects, the orchard ,gardening, brewing.  Synthesizing Dewey and other works through these experiences should help with mental growth, as I work to create meaning from them in the context of my environment (or a more nuanced meaning from my environment through these works.)  Making conscious, informed decisions after critically thinking on the social context constitutes, I believe, what Dewey means by moral growth.   The examples I gave of my personal school environment are there for their own sake (they are my personal interests) but they are carried out at my house, which is shared with Ashley and soon our first child.  This is the immediate and most important social context, where moral meaning lives. 

The orchard with young trees covered in deer netting and surrounded by a small moveable fence.

Young grape vines

Evidence of deer in the garden

 “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” (p. 204).

Haying behind the house, seems to illustrate exactly the quote above.

“Moreover, opportunity for making mistakes is an incidental requirement. Not because mistakes are ever desirable, but because overzeal to select material and appliances which forbid a chance for mistakes to occur, restricts initiative, reduces judgment to a minimum, and compels the use of methods which are so remote from the complex situations of life that the power gained is of little availability. It is quite true that children tend to exaggerate their powers of execution and to select projects that are beyond them. But limitation of capacity is one of the things which has to be learned; like other things, it is learned through the experience of consequences… 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” (p. 205).

None of the whip and tongue grafts I attempted this spring have taken.  So clearly I made some mistakes, and perhaps have learned something of my own limited capacities.  This experience however has led me to research more, to prepare my own rootstock for next year and to make a more humble attempt at budding onto the rootstock already in the ground in the next few weeks.  Likely my second attempt at grafting will involve more nuanced attention to detail.

“The unity of the purpose, with the concentration upon details which it entails, confers simplicity upon the elements which have to be reckoned with in the course of action. It furnishes each with a single meaning according to its service in carrying on the whole enterprise. After one has gone through the process, the constituent qualities and relations are elements, each possessed with a definite meaning of its own. The false notion referred to takes the standpoint of the expert, the one for whom elements exist; isolates them from purposeful action, and presents them to beginners as the "simple" things” (p. 207).

The most recent new endeavor I’ve gotten myself into is the brewing of beer.  The details of each step of the brewing process are relatively simple, and work together in unity for the purpose of creating something of quality.  As I prepared to brew my first batch, I read a lot about the process and the equipment involved, planned, rechecked, and then finally gave it a try.  Despite have conceptual knowledge, it was not until after I had gone through the process that the individual, isolated elements of the process seemed to have simple relationships.  I think this parallels much of the way subjects are taught in school, only many of them don’t follow with an experience.  I believe I have been taught to take this approach: research and study the concepts first.  It has some advantages, giving me a plan to start with, but I feel that I will learn more as I continue to brew, although conceptually I may not actually add all that much.  The learning I think will be a nuanced understanding of the relationships between the elements in the process of brewing.  This conversation I think leads into Dewey’s great example…

“Gardening, for example, need not be taught either for the sake of preparing future gardeners, or as an agreeable way of passing time… There is nothing in the elementary study of botany which cannot be introduced in a vital way in connection with caring for the growth of seeds. Instead of the subject matter belonging to a peculiar study called botany, it will then belong to life, and will find, moreover, its natural correlations with the facts of soil, animal life, and human relations. As students grow mature, they will perceive problems of interest which may be pursued for the sake of discovery, independent of the original direct interest in gardening -- problems connected with the germination and nutrition of plants, the reproduction of fruits, etc., thus making a transition to deliberate intellectual investigations” (p. 208).

I think Dewey is discussing method here more than subject.  Brewing beer could serve as subject matter/method for microbiology, chemistry, consumption and digestion (both in yeasts and humans... probably not in elementary school) as well as waste, pollution, and the environment.  Approaching a subject such as “music” as something to be taught seems to isolate and remove the subject from life, simply by approaching it as a conceptual subject.  That says nothing of “math” or “chemistry.”  So taking these analogies into my classroom I think my subject matter/method should be more along the lines of activities which ideally inspire students to grow in the field of music in order to be done well.  Didn’t Dewey write near the end of D&E that he was advocating not for a philosophy of education, but of experience (or something like that?)  Experience is active, beginning with activity. 


 “When fairly remote results of a definite character are foreseen and enlist persistent effort for their accomplishment, play passes into work. Like play, it signifies purposeful activity and differs not in that activity is subordinated to an external result, but in the fact that a longer course of activity is occasioned by the idea of a result” (p. 212).

The fairly long process of creating what will become the baby’s.  Here the ceiling which was water stained and moldy has just been taken down, along with the loose insulation which was above it.

“As already mentioned, the absence of economic pressure in schools supplies an opportunity for reproducing industrial situations of mature life under conditions where the occupation can be carried on for its own sake… It is important not to confuse the psychological distinction between play and work with the economic distinction” (pp. 212-213).