Paper Summary:

The paper looks at three books which reflect alternative and progressive models of education that defy conventional expectations of a school. "Dewey?s Laboratory School: Lessons for Today", by Laurel N. Tanner presents key practices of Dewey?s laboratory school as vital lessons for educators today. "I Learn from Children", by Caroline Pratt, provides an insider?s perspective of the creation of an experimental school that mirrored many of the principles advocated by Dewey. "Scaffolding Children?s Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education" by Laura E. Berk and Adam Winsler discusses Vygotsky?s sociocultural perspective on education which states that the way human beings think is shaped by social experience. The paper shows that these three books share a common vision in creating an ideal learning environment for children. It shows, too, that unlike the traditional classroom, where the teacher teaches a pre-determined curriculum to a group of passive students, the classrooms depicted in these books are dynamic entities.

From the Paper:

"Tanner offers a powerful and convincing presentation of Dewey's principles of education. According to Tanner, educators today should emulate many of the characteristics of Dewey's school. According to Dewey, schools should recreate a "cooperative society on a small scale" in order to produce adults who are able to cooperate and work together in larger society (Tanner, 1997, p. 2). Pratt also shares Dewey's vision of a school mirroring the real world on a "children's scale" to prepare children for the real world. By attempting to reproduce this world, the children will have to understand the functioning of the various components and learn to interact with one another (Pratt, 1970, p. 26). The everyday life on the streets constituted a vital resource of learning for the young children and the teachers (Pratt, 1970, p. 31). When the eight-year-olds took over the responsibility of running the school store, they not only learned about the intricacies of the organization, but also the store's historical and the geographical dimensions (Pratt, 1970, pp. 108-109)."

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