The place of experience in John Dewey's philosophy of education

Abstract

According to John Dewey, one of the foremost representatives of pragmatism, school is life itself, rather than preparation for life. Since life and school are based on the same principles, schools should provide students with knowledge that will provide practical benefits in daily life, rather than useless knowledge to be learnt by rote. The source of such knowledge should be the own experiences and lives of students, not teachers. According to John Dewey, experience is the source of all kinds of knowledge and it is what students benefit from, because the knowledge learned on the basis of students’ own experiences are permanent and can be used in every area throughout life. This study, taking these ideas as bases, will describe the meaning of the concept of experience in the John Dewey’s philosophy of education and examine the ideas related to this concept.