Teachers are the agents of knowledge and skills, and through whom the rules of conduct are enforced.
Dewey advanced the ideas that education was best born out of raw experience from which the learner begins to derive meaning. But for decades confusion arose from the misconception that learning would be derived from any experience. Children throughout North America in progressive classrooms, were being given the experience of freedom without meaning. Open classroom structures enabled children free reign but critics argued successfully that students were not learning. Dewey in his book Experience and Education, in the shadow of so much criticism about the progressive schools, defended the importance of experience that engages the learner at all levels of learning and produces significant learnings.