Experience and Education

Experience and Education is a short book that aims to summarize John Dewey's educational philosophy:

There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.

Dewey’s views were obviously enormously influential, but later writers would more successfully build upon and express Deweyite principles better than Dewey himself.