Theories of Childhood, Second Edition (Carol Garhart Mooney) / quote 14 of 70
Mis-educative experiences
Dewey avoided the either/or discussions so common to educational philosophy. He believed that the real issue is not a matter of new versus old approaches to education but rather what conditions make any experience worthy of being called “educational.” Dewey insisted that education and experience are related but not equal, and that some experiences are not educational at all. He called these mis-educative experiences. Dewey believed that an activity is not a learning activity if it lacks purpose and organization. He criticized the more traditional formal teaching environments of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in which children learned information by rote and spent days reciting facts out of context.