CHAPTER ONE
1.0 GENERAL INTRODU¬CTION
Philosophy has always enjoyed the premium of being the think tank of any epoch. This is precisely because philosophers devote their intellectual energy to solution of all that puzzle man in his existential world. Even though they may not furnish exhaustive answers to some of these problems, philosophers highlight them so that man may become aware of the problems confronting him in the world.
One of the areas where philosophy is useful to existence is in the education of human persons. Philosophy of education attempts to take care of such contentious issues in education as: What should be the aim or purpose of education? Should the primary aim of education be to instill knowledge, or to instill the ability to acquire knowledge, or nether? Opinions also vary on whether education should be an acquisition of facts or acquisition of values. Consequently, many have seen education as a means to an end, a preparation for life rather than life itself.
This work will struggle to establish that the goal of education is to unify and harmonize means and end, facts and values, theory and practice, knowledge and intelligence so that genuine and authentic education becomes a participation in the social consciousness of a race, life rather than a preparation for life. This intellectual work is an erudite attempt to reconcile these contradictions, and make education a holistic human formation. The work is in four chapters:
Chapter one states the problem to be solved, its historic background and the philosophical relevance of the work. Education, experience and Theory of knowledge are important tools in the understanding of Dewey’s thought on education. Effort is made at defining what they are to Dewey.
Chapter two covers a critical and lucid exposition of relevant and cognate views on education as experienced in the histories of philosophy.
In chapter three is seen a clear presentation and discussion of Dewean notion of education as a participation is social consciousness. This chapter contends that reconstruction of the ideas of school, education, subject matter/curriculum and aim/nature of education will go a long way in revealing that educational goal is not to be sought outside education itself, that education is life and not a preparation for it. All these investigations are done within pragmatic and progressivistic principles and provisions.
Chapter four summarizes the work and critically appraises Dewean notion of education as an exercise in social consciousness. This chapter also compares and contrasts Dewey and his predecessors with a view to seeing how timely and relevant his educational doctrines are to our contemporary world, especially to Nigeria, and Africa.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
A writer once observed that “a man who has been taught enough physics to produce atomic bombs cannot be said to be educated if he is not intelligent enough to desist from detonating it on his home town.” This pictures clearly and brings to focus the problems of separation of theory from practice, facts from value, knowledge from intelligence in education. This problem exist and persist because the mental powers have been developed without giving it any idea of the use to which they are to be put in the renewal and continuity of social life. Individuality has been denied a free scope within the common life to grow in its own way without being warped from its ideal by alien forces.1 Nothing good comes from education except in atmosphere of freedom and democracy. Very unfortunately, the most of the influential and operational pedagogies are guilty as charged, and thus education has become barren and counter-productive.
Educational theories based on the above principle are all “ill-children” of the struggle for supremacy between rationalism and empiricism; between absolutism and pragmatism (progressivism). In educational thinking, this struggle is preserved in the contention between naturalism and formalism. Formalism is well understood in terms of its affiliation with “educere” concept of education. “Formalists” uphold the view that education is a discipline in passivity in which the child learn what is good for it, and is made into a specific person by its education. The danger is that child is made into a stereotype incapable of utilizing its multifaceted innate capacities. This is the educational principle of traditional education. It tends to alienate the child from the society and culture by its insistence on isolating method of education. A child under this system is given knowledge; he is not allowed to discover and experience knowledge. He is programmed. Education thus lacks the essential element of initiativity and creativity.
Naturalism on its own has close relation with “educare” concept of education. It contends that a child should participate in its education; that the native instincts and powers of the child should be developed. This system seems to be advocating that people can be educated without one to guide or direct one’s active interest. Naturalistic approach could lead to over indulgence of the formless native instincts of the child. The effects could be disastrous to co-existence in the society.
A sound educational theory, therefore, should harness the strength of each of these views by providing a middle term that serves as connection and transition between formalism and naturalism, between theory and practice, between the individual and society so that authentic and genuine education becomes a participation in social consciousness of the race. John Dewey, the pragmatic educational reformer championed this notion of education. He writes:
I believe that the individual to be educated is a social individual and that society is an organic union of individuals. If we eliminate the social factor [formal aspect] we are left only with an abstract; if we eliminate the individual factor from society, we are left with an inert and lifeless mass2

1.3 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO THE PROBLEM
The necessity for grappling with a development that had divorced the school and its culture from society and its culture was an irritant that compelled Dewey to define his ideas on education .
This was the educational theory that John Dewey inherited in 1890’s America. He attacked this traditional concept of education on twofold grounds of not taking into cognizance the native experience of the child/learner and of not relating his formal studies to his development as a whole person. Later in his Pedagogical Creed he described this attitude and system as being “formal and barren” “It gives us only the idea of the development of all the mental powers without giving us any idea of the use to which these powers are put”
The pragmatic educator philosopher is of the opinion that a sound education should be sought in an educational system that recognizes and puts into use the immediate interest and powers of the child so that he learns through solution to real life problems. Consequently, education proceeds by the participation of the child in the social heritage of his people. Education thus becomes life rather a preparation for life.
1.4 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RELEVANCE OF THE PROBLEM
Many intractable problems in education emanate from the way men perceive realities. All knowledge and intelligent activities require a discrimination of differences: hot and cold, large and small, mind and body, individual and group, mental and social, means and end, etc. These abstracts/concepts are good only as they are not treated as pair of opposites, “independent and exclusive realities,” as dualities but as complimentaries.
When substance dualism is carried into the realm of education, the result is the conception of education as something opposing and contradictory to the society and its culture, so that in the education of the child his mental powers are not given social dimension.
Dewey’s philosophy of education is a demonstration that knowledge and values, means and end, mind and body are not inseparable but distinct realities that depend on each other.
Phenix noted with regard to education “human beings are engaged in continual interaction with other elements in their human and non human environment. People are what they are through interaction” . Consequently the philosophical relevance of this work is a proof that at least there is an instance that proves the inexistence of dualism as Descartes propounded.


1.5 DEWEY’S VIEW ON EDUCATION
Dewey’s view on education is closely tied with his epistemological theory. Man acquires knowledge through natural interaction with his environment. Dewy defined environment as “whatever condition interacts with one’s personal needs, desire, purpose and capacity to create experience which he had, and in this context, experience is the result of interaction between environment and man’s needs, desire, purpose, and capacities”
Education therefore means “intelligently directed development of the possibilities inherent in ordinary experience” . In other words, education aims at reconstruction of social experience of an individual so that he utilizes the past for resources for the future. The essence of education is the individual’s ability to solve problem of life, since living involves ability to solve problem. It is this idea thus expressed that gives significance to the following definitions of education by Dewey:

It is the reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of subsequent experiences

Education is life, because life is all about continuous reconstruction of individual or collective experience. To be educated is to be able to make use of life experiences in other to be better able to confront and participate in future life challenges.

1.6 THE IDEA OF EXPERIENCE IN EDUCATION
Experience is the fundamental stuff of the world. In this regard, Dewey regarded experience as natural events, processes and happening. In his Theory of Inquiry (theory of knowledge), Dewey identified experience as that one gains through reflective consciousness of the natural interaction between him and his natural environment. By its very nature, experience involves “trying” and “undergoing” in such a way that it involves “a connection of doing or trying, with something which is undergone in consequence.” The implication is that all activities that the activist does not gain or suffer any thing in consequence are not experience. An encounter is meaningless and no experience if the change brought about by the encounter is not “reflected back into a change made in us.” In fact, it is the active element (trying) and the passive element (undergoing), perfectly combined in an activity or encounter that makes for the fruitfulness of an experience.
In terms of experience, “education is equivalent to ‘experience,’ the experience of a living organism interacting with its normal environment.” Learning by experience would therefore mean initiating activities that will enable a “backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequences.” More still, experience is the meaning that accrues to a learner by his discernment of the relationship between what he does and what happen to him in consequence; or the relationship between “the after” and “the before” of what he does. Education in this way is a constant restructuring of worthwhile and “workable experiences.”

1.7 THEORY OF INQUIRY: DEWEAN THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
Dewey’s theory of inquiry is a synthesis from the two traditional epistemological positions, namely: Empiricism and Rationalism His theory of knowledge is naturalistic in temper. Knowledge, for Dewey comes from natural interaction, action and reaction between an organism and its environment.
“Knowledge, he said is the outcome of action” Confronted with a puzzle, a learner/investigator constructs in imagination a theory of hypothesis of how it might be solved. The truth/falsity of proposed solution develops from whether or not the consequence of acting on the hypothesis corroborates it. If the hypothesis works, then the outcome is knowledge, and vice versa. Although the nature of the child enjoys freedom which is important, but it also by freely initiating activities and noting their consequences that he can say that he has acquired reliable knowledge.
Knowledge is a product of interaction or response of an organism to its environment, where it is a practical instrument in the guidance of that interaction or response. This new epistemology is also known as instrumentalism because it leads to problem solving. In another place, Dewey compares knowledge with validity of a map that depends on its ability to lead one out of the wood. In terms of education, knowledge is the third way between knowing and doing.















CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
In this chapter, we shall review some philosophers of education whose philosophy has to do with individual and social progress. The first to advance comprehensive thought on education is Plato.
2.1 PLATO (427-347)
The relation between education, individual and the society is much more pronounced in Plato’s Republic and in the Law. For Plato, education is essentially training in virtue upon which lies the future and sustenance of the city-state. Consequently, it is the duty of the state to secure sound education that will enable the citizen fulfill his civic mission to the state. In his words:
An uneducated man is unable to take part in a chorus, unable to join the pattern of the state life, and we must say that if a man has been sufficiently trained for this he is educated1

To partake in the active life of the society, the state discovers individuals’ talents and trains them according to the three major professions in benefit of the state. In this light, Plato maintained that a trained citizen participate in the social consciousness of the race as an artisan, or a guardian or as a philosopher king.
Apart from discovering of natural powers of individuals and progressively training them for the state, Plato emphasized the fact that education enables individuals become “cultural, moderate, able to see things for themselves and live the communal life” 2 .
Thus by social stimulation of the native instincts of individuals, education makes men moral and responsible citizens of the state.

2.2 ARISTOTLE (384-322BC)
In Aristotle’s politics, we also see a consolidation of Plato’s ideals of education: education enables the individual to share in the common life of the state. Aristotle’s ideas are that a generous education must promote the welfare of any form of government of the state. Aristotle writes: education ought to be adapted to the particular character belonging to each constitution, for instance the democratic spirit promotes democracy, and oligarchy spirit oligarchy3 .
Aristotle insisted that realizing this civic education demands that education must be patterned in such a way that it prepares a future citizen to take his place in the community to which he belongs. Education trains the intellect of the individual to produce the desirable virtue harmonious with the demands of the moral community. “In as much as the end of the state is one, it is manifest that education of the young be one and the same for all individuals, and the means to this is public school”
In Mediaeval period, the emphasizes was not on the civic dimension of education but on the employment of education in defense of Christian faith. Education did none but to enable man participate in the kingdom of God realizable through human sojourn on earth. The aim of education was sainthood: the perfection of human nature. The ultimate aim of educating people was metaphysical and spiritually oriented4 .
2.3 ROUSSEAU, JEAN-JACQUE (1712-1778)
Contrary to mediaeval excessive emphasis on the metaphysical cross-currents of man’s nature, Rousseau taught that human nature is good and does not need any metaphysical perfection. He maintained that education should not begin with the child’s contact with the society, which according to him is complex and artificial, tainting and corrupting the nature of the child.
Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of Nature, but everything degenerates in the hands of man…the (man) will leave nothing as nature mode it, not even man. Like a saddle-horse that must be trained for man’s service, he must be made over according to his peace, like a tree in his garden5

What Rousseau is saying is that education should protect the child from the society at all times until he is so completely developed that the society cannot destroy his inner nature6 . All children by nature are perfectly good; ready to learn from their natural environment so as to grow into virtuous and responsible adults. Contextually he wrote: “No other teacher than the world; no other teacher than things”. “Fix your eyes on nature. Follow the path she trends”.
In his epoch making work, Emile he exemplified this idea that the child is educated in a manner, which is natural and spontaneous. Thus, in contrast to social emphasis on the bringing up of a child, Rousseau championed naturalistic trend in education.

2.4 PESTALLOZI AND BASEDOW
Many other educators came under the influence Rousseau. Notable among them were Johann Bernahard Basedow7 and Pestalozzi. Both sough to put into action Rousseau educational principles, which can be described as an emphasis on child’s nature and freedom (from social contacts).

2.5 FROEBEL, WILLIAM AUGUST (1872-1852)
No doubt, another disciple of Rousseau was Froebel, the great German educator-philosopher. He trained children along the naturalistic principles of Rousseau. However, he went further than his mentor, Rousseau. He recognized the fact that “the child is not merely an individual, but is also a member of a group”8 .
In his Kindergarten, child’s garden9 , Froebel would not shield the child from social groups but would assist him to adjust himself, to participate or to share in the social consciousness of his race. The child’s nature is thus appreciated in order to enable him contribute in the development of the state.
“The aim of education according to Froebel is the development of the child’s capacities and powers in accord with his nature, and the redirection of undesirable native impulses”10 .
S. E. Frost succinctly summarizes Froebel’s educational advocacy that society should not be ignored, nor the child be educated in complete disregard of the values of society.
The question of social control in the education of the child, and education of the child according to his nature persists even to the contemporary era. Paulo Freire’s contribution here is enormous.

1.6 FREIRE, PAULO (1921-97)
Paulo Freire’s educational theory is a liberative pedagogy for the oppressed. He denounces the idea that individuals should not freely and intelligently share in the development and progress of the society. He maintains that education should not stifle human potentials but enable them to participate in the growth of the society, through self-determination in accordance with societal norms.
Thus, in pedagogy of the oppressed, he criticized education that does allow the child to contribute to social process. Freire pictures this erroneous education in what he called “Narrative education” or “Banking concept of education”. The teacher is the narrating subject and the child is the patient, listening object that has little or nothing empty bank account to be filled by the depositor.
Education thus has become an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositaries and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communication the teacher issues a communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive memorize and repeat”11 .

This is “Banking concept” of education: The child does not interact and share ideas with the teacher. He deposits knowledge into the children without allowing them the freedom of participating in the discovery of knowledge.










CHAPTER THREE
EDUCATION AS PARTICIPATION IN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

3.1 THE IDEA OF SOCIAL PARTICIPATION
The idea of education as a participation in social consciousness is central to the whole of Dewey’s doctrine on education. The educational import of this is understood at the examination of the philosophies behind his perception and understanding of education, its aims, the school curriculum, and school. The task of this chapter shall be to see how Dewey demonstrated that education is a function of individuals’ “participation in social consciousness of the race.”
Dewey sees human life as a self-renewing process in that man naturally and incidentally finds himself trying to renew and preserve his life and that of the community through initiating of the young into the social life of the society. This education as initiation, says Dewey, is a matter of urgent necessity because of the fact that man come and go, because of the reality of birth and death.

There is an urgent necessity that the immature members be not merely preserved in adequate numbers, but that they are initiated into the interest, purposes, information, skills and practices of the mature members: otherwise the group will cease its characteristic life.1224

But when social life becomes complex through civilization, education as initiation is ineffective in maintenance and preservation, and transmission of social heritage from the older culture to the succeeding one. Thus the gap the between the original capacities of the immature, and the standard and customs of the elders increases, and widens. Dewey contends that the option is the introduction of the formal education that will ensure that the child carries his interest into the larger society represented in books and other symbols of knowledge contained in the formal educational curriculum. He asserts that without such formal education, it is not possible to transmit all the resources and achievement of a complex society to the succeeding generation.1325
The necessity of this social significance of education explains away Dewey’ notion of education as a participation in social consciousness of the race. In My Pedagogical creed, he says: “I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race.”1426
Education thus conceived, can only be possible through the transmission of ideas via “communication of habits of doing, thinking, feeling from the older to the young”1527 But it is noticed that not all communication is capable of this transfer value, not all are educative. Dewey then concludes that any kind of communication that does not encourage free participation of members of a group is diseducative. Communication must be such that it modifies the disposition of the parties who partake in it through free sharing of numerous and varied common interests. All genuine social life, according to Dewey is identical with communication and is educative. Communication in this sense must the process of sharing experience till it becomes a common possession.1628
Dewey’ conception of education as a social function runs contrary to Rousseau’s insistence on the nature of the child as the preoccupation of education. Rousseau insists that education should desist from contaminating the nature of the child, which is good in itself. But the point Dewey is making is that natural faculties of the child, which forms the initiating and the limiting forces in all education develop only through social stimulation and contacts. By so doing, education becomes an art of allowing the young to participate in the know-how of the present, which in turn prepares them to forge ahead and encounter their own world when they are of age.1729 Education becomes a process or means by which the individual is acclimatized to the culture or environment in which he is born in order to advance it1830. We shall now consider the conceptual/theoretical framework underpinning this social import of education as advocated by John Dewey. The first is the need to review his concept of education.

3.2 EDUCATION
In 1897, precisely at his thirty-eighth birthday, John Dewey published a prophetic work entitled My Pedagogical Creed, which is a microcosm of his philosophical insight on education.

I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race. This process begins unconsciously at birth, and is continually shaping the powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, ideas, arousing his feelings and emotions.1931

This thesis rests on two factors in education: “the psychological” and “the social” It is not immediately evident what Dewey meant by these two factors, and what import they have for education. Nevertheless a rereading of Dewey reveals that the ‘the psychological” denotes the “the child natural instincts “, “his habits”, “his mental powers”, while “the social” means “social demands made on the child.” Dewey states that of these two factors, the psychological (the child’s interest) is the “starting point”, the prime matter of all sound education. No education proceeds by neglecting the child’s instinct; the educable, the raw material for education. In any case the psychological is compromised, education will run into “friction, or disintegration” or “arrest of the child’s nature.” The net consequence is a haphazard or arbitrary educational system. “ If we eliminate the individual factor from the society, we are left with an inert and lifeless mass”2032
The exact meaning or perception of the educational significance of these natural instincts poses a bigger puzzle. Are the blind instincts of children good in themselves as Rousseau advocates? Are we to indulge in the blind impulses of the child? Dewey admits that these juvenile inclinations are formless and as such unknowable until they are translated into their social equivalents:

The child has his own instincts and tendencies, but we do not know what these mean until we can translate them into their social equivalents…we must be able to project them into the future to see what their outcome and their ends will be.2133

In other words, it is the social end/value/function that gives meaning and significance to the native powers of the child. This is the meeting point of the psychological and the social. Their harmonious rapport and unity is an educational necessity. A “compromise between the two, or a superimposition of one upon the other” will result in either a psychological or a social definition of education, which is evil to education.
Social definition of education makes education a forced or external process subordinating the freedom of the child to a preconceived set of social goals. On the other hand, the psychological develops the cognitive leaving it unpowered and undirected as to what use or benefit it is to the society.
Sustainable education therefore must of necessity be an organic union or fusion or synthesis of these two factors, which are the two indispensable sides of the same reality, education.

3.3 AIMS IN EDUCATION
Ordinarily “to ask for an aim is to ask for more specification for what an action or activity is”2234 To ask about the aims of education is therefore a way of getting people to get clear about and focus their attention on what is worth while in education2335. Dewey gives a general idea of aim:

An aim implies an orderly and ordered activity, one in which the order consists in the progressive completion of a process. Given an activity having a time span and cumulative growth with time succession, an aim means foresight in advance of the end or possible termination2436

It is the foresight or the foreseen end, which gives direction to the activity and influences the step taken to reach the end which “summarizes and finishes off” the process. Educationally speaking, this means that education has only an aim, which summarizes all other possible aims. Dewey writes: “the aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education-or that the object or reward of learning is continued capacity for growth.” Dewey advanced the notion that growth is the sole end (aim) of education. Commenting on aim in Dewey’s theory of education, Harry Schofield notes that education enables individuals to obtain further knowledge beyond what they receive in schools. Education not only requires us to learn, it teaches them how to learn.2537 “There are no final educational ends in and of themselves. The ends are subject to constant reconstruction in the light of uncertain and changing future.” Education equips individuals to intelligently take their places in the recreation and advancement of the society through solutions to problems presented by uncertain and ever-changing world.
That is to say that any achievement in education has “a temporal place and order, in such a way that each prior event leads into (anticipates) its successor. The successor event then takes up what is furnished and utilizes it for other stage, as it were, summarizes and finishes off the process” It follows here that not all experiences is educative. “The measure of value of experience lies in the perception of relationship [to past and present] or continuities to which it leads up”26 38
It isn’t difficult to observe that Dewey propounds an educational aim that is not furnished from “without” but from “within,” The principle of foresight is central to Dewey’s view on aim, it functions in three ways:
(1) It involves a careful observation of the condition present in the given situation in order to find out what means are available for reaching the end and to discover possible hindrances in the way of reaching the objective.
(2) It makes possible the choice of alternative with regards to means of the end. “To foresee a terminus of an act is to have a basis upon which to observe, to select, and to order objects and our own capacities”2739 Foresight enables us to act with prediction of possible outcome of alternatives. The degree of this, is the degree to which one is intelligent or “stupid or blind” To make one’s action an intelligent one, one must “stop, look, listen” in discussion.
(3) The idea of foresight suggests the proper orders in which the means could be used to ensure an economical selection and arrangement of educational resources.
In order to ensure that the foreseen terminus ad quem of education is realized, Dewey posits a number of criteria:
(1) The aim must not lie outside our activities or “foreign to the concrete makeup of the situation.” When aims are given ready-made by “some authority external to intelligence”, the latter is left with nothing but a mechanical choice of means.
(2) The aim must be flexible, capable of meeting inevitable changing situation as they evolve. This means that aim in its inception is not rigid or flexible but is “a mere tentative sketch” which is progressive; that is, capable of being added to and subtracted from.

3.4 THE CHILD AND THE CURRICULUM
All the philosophical questions raised and considered pertinent to educative process have ramification in the curriculum. Curriculum is “the experiences which are provided to the student under the direction of the school”2840 Educational aim, nature, school and subject matter; all have curriculum implications since it is through them that all philosophy of education find its fulfillment and actualization. Dewey’s philosophy of education is no exception hence the need for a general consideration of the principle underlying his choice and selection, and direction of education by curriculum. Dewey noted, with dissatisfaction that the root cause of persistent problem in education is in the wrong principle on which old/traditional education is built. Its curriculum is built outside the “immediate instincts and activities of the child himself”
The Centre of gravity is outside the child. It is in the teacher, the text book, anywhere and every where you please except in the immediate instinct and activities of the child29 41

Traditional school thus neglects the life of the child, his curiosity and spontaneity in the formulation of school curriculum, and sacrifices these potentials and capacities for growth on the altar of insistence on a standard curriculum which would provide a uniform course of studies irrespective of their individual differences
This philosophy of standardized curriculum or teacher-centered curriculum has done more harm than good to education. Dewey articulates this properly:

“The source of what is dead, mechanical and formal in schools is found in the subordination of the life and experience of the child to the curriculum. It is because of this that ‘study’ has become a synonym for what is irksome, and a lesson identical with a task”3042

The child’s experience and the various forms of subject matter that make up the curriculum are not to be set against each other. They are simply complimentary, mutually enriching, and analogically similar to the ontological status of the two sides of a coin (of the same reality). The individual factor (the child’s life) and the social factor (the curriculum) are organically related. They are not dualities. They are complimentaries. They are “signs or indices of growth-tendencies.” Any education, which is a compromise between the two, or is a superimposition of one upon the other leads to “barren” and “formal” education.
Against this background is the need that curriculum formulation should be on the principle of organic relation between the child’s instincts and the demands of the society. No impositions on the part of the teacher and the school. The school as a social agent has the duty of progressively selecting those positive influences that shall affect and assist the child in responding to the current needs and progress of the society in which the child lives. That is to say that the subject matter of the curriculum or the influences are to be pragmatically selected and applied.

3.5 THE SCHOOL
Dewey upholds the view that education is concerned with the individual in the society and not individual as isolated from the society. Share with him:
The school is primarily a social institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends.3143

Here Dewey differed from Rousseau who advocates the withdrawal of the child from the society, from its warping influences. For Rousseau the school is simply a private institution. On the contrary, Dewey insisted that the school is a social institution, since the child is a social being; a relational being. Denial of the development of his social aspect of him amounts to a denial of his membership of a society. The school in this regard must incorporate the two fundamental factors in education, namely: the individual factor (the child’s experience) and the social factor (demands of the society on the child).
Taking cognizance of this is the beginning of a sound school: a social institution. The school simplifies the existing life in such a careful and systematic manner that the school becomes an embryonic form; becomes a microcosm of the complex and hyper-active life of the society which will either destroy, distort or confuse the child’s natural powers and render them unduly specialized, if not controlled with respect to the growth of the child.
The school has the function of harnessing the natural talents and aptitudes of the child in view of their social relevance and significance. The school stimulates the natural instincts/curiosity in children, and controls and directs them through the life of the community. This is Dewey’s notion of school.
He frowns at, and shuns such spirit in Traditional/classical School that does not encourage, stimulate and try to harness pupils’ talent, but repress them. Instead of the mechanical uniformity and rigidity of traditional school, the ideal school is characterized by flexibility and spontaneity, and not perennialism and conservatism. Dewey’s school is progressive in nature. John Brubacher has a succinct description of the revolutionary spirit of this progressive school. It is quite ad rem to quote him here:

Pupil’s activity, far from being a taboo became the central feature of the progressive school. Its curriculum became known as an “activity” curriculum. Children still dug subject matter out of text but not isolated from life and for more purpose of reproducing it on examination3244

On the basis of this social necessity is anchored the moral end of educating the child. The home is the first institution where the child imbibes the first universal principle of moral norms. The school acts to deepen and extend these moral codes bound up in the child’s home. In the school, the child gets integrated and deepens his “moral training” by entering into “proper relationship of thought and work “with others.
Above all there is a psychological element inhering in the idea school as a social institution. It secures the continuity in the child’s growth. Precisely because the informal or residual experience of the child gives background to the formal experience he acquires at school, which enables him to acquire a sense of continuity while widening his knowledge of the world.
To harmonize the social and the psychological dimensions of the school requires that the teacher does not impose certain ideas, or form certain habits in the child, but to select pragmatically, the influences which shall affect the child, and to assist him in proper responding to these influences.
Dewey remarks that it is the neglect to make the school a miniature of the society that is the bane of our educational problem, and bankruptcy in education. The old school is guilty of this crime. It is a place where certain facts are imposed on children in such a way that the aim of education is from without; is distant from the process that endangers it. Education itself then becomes a preparation for life rather than life itself.
The school is for Dewey a center for proper psychosocial unity. In the ideal school, we have the reconciliation of the individualistic and the institutional values”















CHAPTER FOUR
CRITICAL EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION
This work has tried in the preceding chapters to understand educator philosophers and their various rational inputs to the problem of alienation of the child from the society in the course of his education. Dewey’s contribution is quite appreciable. He demonstrated, and maintained that education becomes fruitful only when the child to be educated intelligently and freely enters into dialogue with his society and culture so that he is oriented towards experiences what he is likely to undergo in his adult life. Education should be life itself, not a preparation for life.
In this chapter, we shall try to appraise Dewey to see how successful his educational project is. We shall also assess Dewey with a view to looking at some possible philosophical implications of his pedagogy. Attempt will equally be made to juxtapose Dewey with educational predicament of Africa.


4.1 APPRAISAL
The edifice on education built by Dewey rests on four key elements that are interconnected to one another, and characterized his doctrine on education. These elements are experience, experimentalism, intelligence and democracy. With these educational materials, Dewey sought to show that all theories of education are unproductive unless they are in line with above essential elements. Education proceeds when it is connected with the learner’s real life situation in which he freely seeks for meaning (knowledge) in what he undergoes and direction from what he performs. Thus experience is the touchstone of education.
Another merit of Dewey’s educational thought is that it eliminates the division between the school and the life outside the school, between learning and doing. He meant that learning is most effective in live contexts, which set real problem and call for purposes and solutions. “One significant way of integrating the life of the school is not through mechanical devices but by relating all of it to the wider life of the community”145 The eloquent testimonies of the laboratory School established by Dewey in 1896 bears witness to the effectiveness of Dewey’ educational proposals.

4.2 CRITICAL ASSESSMENT
However, it must be stated clearly that education built on concrete experience alone as conceived and advocated by Dewey is replete with some philosophical difficulties. It tends to leave out some important aspects of life unaccounted for. It denies, by its pragmatic criterion of value (pragmatic axiology), the existence and importance of transcendental experiences. Although unrestricted emphasis of “absolutism” in education should be eschewed, but total rejection of the absolutes, of truths that are not observable or empirically verifiable, as Dewey did, reduces man to mere material reality. But ‘are there spiritual realities?” If there are, the young must as well be directed to these, and education should account for them.
R. H. Hutchins’ contention on the essence of education is worth mentioning here since it is antithetical to Dewey’s pragmatic axiology. Hutchins believes that education should be truth oriented, and truth is one, unchanging and universal, independent on circumstances of life246. This is also an extreme position, just like Dewey. The fact remains that education should be a third way between the extremes of absolutism and experimentalism. Education should account both for metaphysical and religious dimensions of man. Education oblivious of these facts, is only a step away from atheistism.

4.3 DEWEY AND AFRICAN PREDICAMENT
“Education is perhaps the greatest cry in Africa”347 The level of education Africans acquired after the cultural erosion of Africa by the imperialist was a seal of our cultural alienation.448 We know that during and after colonial experiences, instead of teaching the young how to preserve and advance their cultures, the new school (Western School) spent time teaching them the rudiments of dissecting frog and the study of western histories. Today Africans are traumatized by “endless’ wars and a plethora of socio-political uncertainties due to the barren education imposed on Africans by the white. Instead of building themselves around huge potentials inherent in their religio-cultural diversities, Africans uneducatedly allowed themselves to be torn apart and alienated from one another along the lines of cultural plurality. Africans needs a nationalistic education: an education built around the ingredients of African brotherhood. The notion of education as individuals’ participation in the national consciousness is the way out. Unless this notion of education is completely made african in outlook. Africans and other developing nations of the world are heading for a tragic social, moral and family chaos whose harvest is not far away.



4.4 EDUCATION IN NIGERIA AND DEWEY’S PHILOSOPHY OF
EDUCATION
Dewey’s notion of education when placed side by side with Nigerian philosophy of education leaves more to be desired. Among the cardinal aims of Nigerian philosophy of education is the “development of the individual into a sound and effective citizen, and the full integration of the individual into the community”549
The question then is “How far has this noble idea been concretely realized?” It is commendable to note that many fine educational programs and projects have been executed in Nigeria in an attempt to realize some of these noble educational goals. The Universal Basic Education (UBE) is one of such programs. It seeks to give a universal, free and compulsory education to Nigerian youths from the primary to the secondary level. On the tertiary levels, various Ministries of education have also played heir roles at ensuring the acquisition of appropriate skills and the development of mental, physical and social abilities and competencies among youths. Our universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and others, are all positive steps taken at realizing these educational dreams.
Sad indeed it is to note that in spite of these huge investments in educational sector, Nigeria is yet to be numbered among the community of developed nations of the world. Why?
The Nigerian educational system needs as a matter of facts an urgency, a review of the national educational curriculum to enable students see the social and economic relevance of the various courses and disciplines they study in school. A situation whereby a child memorizes and recites States-and-Capital without a corresponding knowledge of the relevance of such knowledge is harmful both to the child and to the society in which he lives. A situation whereby a student is rated best in computer engineering when in practice he cannot butt a computer on is totally absurd. Education in Nigeria should be life rather than a preparation for life. The curriculum and the subject matter should be pragmatically selected in such a way that it incorporates the native needs and interest of the child and that of the community/society into the school curriculum, so that the learner freely and intelligently participates in the social consciousness of his race.
This I suppose is what Gabriel Idang contends when he opines that education in Nigeria should take into cognizance knowledge acquisition through solution to problem of life.
Experimentalism [or education based on workable experiences] encourages direct acquisition of skills by the individual from the lowest level of education. The teacher teaches to do and to discover. He is not keen on textbook method, he is an experimentalist6 50

What is expected from Nigerian teachers and schools is a reflective teaching to promote reflective thought and the ability to raise and help pupils to solve relevant problems of life751 This mode of education founded on Dewean principles of Instrumentalism, if properly understood and intelligently applied is the sure, easy and safe way forward to education in Nigeria.


4.5 CONCLUSION
Dewey’s educational principles have revolutionized educational world. It has provided a practical and progressive framework that can enable any nation to allow the young to meaningfully take their civic place in the preservation and development of their cultures. Dewey’s education is inevitable if man must brace up to the challenges of our ever-changing world.