Schools of To-morrow and The Schools of Utopia argue that education and learning are social and interactive processes, and thus the school itself is a social institution through which social reform can and should take place. Students should thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum, and all students should have the opportunity to take part in their own learning.
Schools Of To-morrow and The Schools of Utopia argue that education and learning are social and interactive processes, and thus the school itself is a social institution through which social reform can and should take place. Students should thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum, and all students should have the opportunity to take part in their own learning._x000D_ John Dewey (1859-1952) is one of the primary figures associated with the philosophy of pragmatism and is considered one of the founders of functional psychology. His ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Known for his advocacy of democracy, Dewey considered two fundamental elements—schools and civil society—to be major topics needing attention and reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality._x000D_ Excerpt:_x000D_ "What is learned in school is at the best only a small part of education, a relatively superficial part; and yet what is learned in school makes artificial distinctions in society and marks persons off from one another. Consequently we exaggerate school learning compared with what is gained in the ordinary course of living." (Schools Of To-morrow)_x000D_
Schools of To-morrow and The Schools of Utopia argue that education and learning are social and interactive processes, and thus the school itself is a social institution through which social reform can and should take place. Students should thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum, and all students should have the opportunity to take part in their own learning.
The quarter century that followed the end of the Second World War was marked by intense social and economic transformation: the changing face of postwar capitalism, a revolution in communications technology, the rise of youth culture, and the pronounced ascent of individual freedom all contributed to a dramatic push to remake, and thus improve, society. This push was especially felt within education, the primary vehicle for modernizing the postwar world from the ground up. Hall-Dennis and the Road to Utopia explores this moment of renewal through a powerful and influential education reform project: 1968's Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario. The Hall-Dennis report, as it became known, urged Ontarians to accept a new vision of education in which students were no longer organized in classes, their progress no longer measured by grades, and their experience no longer characterized by the painful acquisition of subjects, but rather by a joyous and open-ended process of learning. This new, democratic system of education was associated with the highest ideals of postwar progress, liberalism, and humanism, yet its recommendations were paradoxically both profoundly radical and fundamentally conservative. Its avant-garde research strategies and controversial "post-literate" curricular reforms were balanced by a pedagogical approach designed to mould students into obedient citizens and productive economic actors. As Canadians once again find themselves asking fundamental questions about the aims and objectives of education under radically changing circumstances, Josh Cole revisits Hall-Dennis to show how the committee and its report represent a significant moment in Canadian cultural and political history, a prescient document in the history of education, and a revealing expression of the fragmentary circumstances of global modernity in the second half of the twentieth century.
To celebrate the centenary of the first garden city at Letchworth, the Town and Country Planning Association has performed a service to planners everywhere by initiating the republication in facsimile form of the very scarce original first edition of To-Morrow. Accompanied by a running scholarly commentary on the text, and by a newly-written editorial introduction and postscript, jointly written by three leading commentators on Howard's life and work To-Morrow will immediately become a compulsory purchase for every serious student and practitioner of planning and for teachers and students of modern social, economic and political history.
