It follows that whatever can be learned outside the educational system should be learned outside it because the educational system has enough to do teaching what can be learned only in the system. Even if driving a car, understanding plumbing, and behaving like a mature woman are valuable subjects, they can be, and therefore should be, learned outside the educational system. Reprinted with permission from Dutton. Add to this that Dewey insisted the schoolroom must mirror the community and you find classrooms cluttered with cardboard boxes, children learning arithmetic by keeping store, and education stuck in the concrete and unable to carry the child from there to abstract concepts and ideas. Reprinted with permission from Perseus.
Children are subject peoples.
School for them is a kind of jail. We encourage children to act stupidly, not only by scaring and confusing them, but by boring them, by filling up their days with dull, repetitive tasks that make little or no claim on their attention or demands on their intelligence. Our hearts leap for joy at the sight of a roomful of children all slogging away at some imposed task, and we are all the more pleased and satisfied if someone tells us that the children don't really like what they are doing. Because, in schools where every task must be completed and every answer must be right, if we give children more demanding tasks they will be fearful and will instantly insist that we show them how to do the job. When you have acres of paper to fill up with pencil marks, you have no time to waste on the luxury of thinking.