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The History of EE
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THE HISTORY OF EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION
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| Plato and his student Aristotle |
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Experiential education as a methodology has weaved in and out of education for decades and yet the theory itself has been around for nearly seventy-five years. The grandfather of experiential education is an American by the name of John Dewey. However, before discussing Dewey and his theory, it is important to see the path of philosophers that has led to his revolutionary idea in education.
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Sophists
These assumptions began their development in ancient Greece. Teachers in ancient Greece, called Sophists, were some of the first to tackle the difficult questions brought up in the study of epistemology. April Crosby (1981) calls the Sophists’ brand of teaching the “’pouring theory’ of education, because the teachers had the learning which they could pour into the students as if they were vessels.” (p. 5) Students were taught to memorize the opinions of their teachers. Once students understood these opinions they would be able to speak about these subjects.
"I regard it as the foremost task of education to insure the survival of these qualities: an enterprising curiosity, an undefeatable spirit, tenacity in pursuit, readiness for sensible self denial, and above all, compassion."
Socrates
Around 420 B.C. education made a radical change. The teacher and philosopher, Socrates, confronted the Sophists by posing questions about the underlying assumptions of their opinions. The Sophists opinions fell apart under scrutiny, and a huge leap towards experiential education took place. Socrates “taught by asking questions, not reciting answers.” (Crosby, 1981, p. 6) “He believed that the process of becoming educated was the important thing, rather than arriving at a final static state, and he practiced that” (p. 6) with his own learning and the learning of his students.
Plato
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The next step was taken by one of Socrates’ students, Plato. Plato built upon the teachings of Socrates by adding that “any learning of which we are capable is gained by reflection on our own beliefs, and this is accomplished best by critical discussion with others.” (Crosby, 1981, p. 6) Though he believed this process of putting your beliefs under constant scrutiny to be difficult and sometimes painful, it was the only way to realize the highest “reality.” Socrates and Plato “saw the role of a teacher as that of a midwife: helping to give birth to the knowledge that is already with in the student. The teacher simply assists with delivery. The goal is persons who can continue to express and examine their own and others’ ideas.” (p. 7) The idea that the teacher is a facilitator of learning is a pillar of the experiential education model.
Aristotle
Where Plato believed in absolutes, a true and perfect understanding that few can accomplish, Aristotle came along and took epistemology in another direction. Due to his roots in biology, Aristotle had a hard time with absolutes. He saw the world as much more dynamic, and therefore learning to him was more a journey of actualization. “The fully actualized human being, according to Aristotle, is the one who thinks most fully because thinking is the function of the human species, peculiar to it only.” (Crosby, 1981, p. 7) But problems arise with Aristotle’s theory when ethical questions are raised. A person can be highly intellectually developed, yet still not be considered a moral person. The contrasts between Plato and Aristotle’s theories uncover a number of dichotomies such as theory vs. practice, Reality vs. sensible world, and empirical vs. rational. Crosby (1981) takes the dichotomies further by saying, “The debate between empiricism and rationalism is the most basic epistemological debate in philosophy, and depending where you stand on this issue, radically influences how you would think education is effectively conducted, and what its proper subjects are.” (p. 8-9)
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Descartes and Hume
In the sixteenth century, the Frenchman, Descartes, and a Scotsman named Hume led this debate between empiricism and rationalism. Descartes was a rationalist and believed that only constructs of the mind were truly real. “This meant logic and mathematics were knowable, but the sensible world that we know through our senses was suspect; 2+2=4 never changes, he thought, but sensible things do.” (Crosby, 1981, p. 8) In the end, a strict rationalist would be “limited to fairly useless abstractions” (p. 9) because one is unable to trust their senses collecting information from the world. Therefore, there is no way to confirm information, and everyone is trapped in his or her own consciousness with no way to really know what is going on in the external world. The other school of thought was that of the empiricists, and for them Hume “said we could only rely on sense data, and that mental operations were only compilations and augmentations of what we gain through our senses.” (p. 8) This way of thinking ruled out such concepts as “God” and “causation.” Both are grounded in conceptualization; the existence of God is based on faith, and causation is an explanation of relation. These two schools of theory, by themselves, were very limiting. Making the connection between these contradicting theories is just what a German philosopher named Kant did in 1787.
Kant
After studying both Descartes and Hume, Kant realized that there must be a way to connect these two theories. Kant developed a theory that “provides room for both reason and experience to function.” (Crosby, 1981, p. 10) He proposed that the sense of order was not provided in the outside world, but within our own minds. Crosby paraphrases his theory in the following quote:
That is, we order our world in the very process of perceiving it. We cannot use what we perceive unless it is ordered according to certain categories, e.g., space, time, and causation. Kant hypothesized that because of the structure of the human mind, we would never receive experience except as already organized by our active, structuring minds. (p. 10)
Our mind takes the confusing input from the outside world and puts it into order. Given that we all have similar brain structures, our minds organize this information in similar ways. But within this similarity, there is also great diversity in how reality is interpreted. Everyone has his or her own individual reality. Kant added to the evolution of the experiential education pedagogy by providing a theory which leaves “room for both reason and experience to function, and gets us out of the disastrous problem of how to get in touch with that which we want to know.” (p. 10) Over a century later, these ideas reach John Dewey’s attention.
Dewey
Dewey picks up the debate and agrees with Kant that the mind is an ordering devise for what is experienced. But Dewey goes further to point out not only theoretical problems but also practical problems. These practical problems with the debate had not been addressed before. One problem he illuminated was that an over emphasis on the cognitive side of man tended to cut one off from his or her immediate world as well as one’s emotional and affective side. Dewey pointed out that this is impractical. How does this kind of knowledge really benefit a person? “Humans are more concerned with questions of value than questions of reality and any adequate epistemological and educational theory ought to be geared toward knowing values, rather than towards theoretical abstractions.” (Crosby, 1981, pg. 11) Values such as the difference between good and bad, success and failure, prosperity and adversity are what people are realistically interested in. Dewey says, “reflection and concern with knowing is a secondary learned behavior. Furthermore, it is learned primarily as a result of uncertain or problematic situations.” (p. 11) Dewey proposes that valuable learning is obtained through experiencing life, and “philosophy should investigate life as humans experience it, not as it might be.” (p. 11) It is not enough just to experience life. Learning does not automatically take place. There are multiple steps. When first introduced to an experience, the initial response is emotional and aesthetic. The move from the initial response to reflective meaningfulness is the goal, but it is definitely not automatic. Taking the experience and the emotions it generates, and pulling from it knowledge and insight, is what Dewey proposes. His ideas about experiential learning are eventually seen as the beginning of the experiential education pedagogy.
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