John Dewey Research Paper

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High School Educational System High schools are often criticized for not explicitly keeping in touch with their original goals or for not having goals that will cater to what the students want or need. The ultimate goal of a high school should be to provide knowledge, to students, that will aid them for the rest of their lives. This goal can be achieved by changing the way society approaches educating students, by not focusing on the traditional means of college. In John Dewey’s essay “Self-Realization as the Moral Ideal” he wrote, “...if I were asked to name the most needed of all reforms in the spirit of education, I should say: ‘Cease conceiving of education as mere preparation for later life, and make it the full meaning of the present life.’” Dewey touches on the idea of what an ideal goal of educational system should be. It should not be to prepare the individual to play his or her certain position in life. It should be to encourage the student to learn as much as they can and to apply it in everyday life. A person's life should not be centered around pushing through high school to get to college, and…show more content…
This issue is best explained by using the topic of learning foreign languages. Judith Graham, a human development specialist, said, “Scientists believe that language is acquired most easily during the first ten years of life. During these years, the circuits in children’s brains become wired for how their own language sounds.” If this is the case, why do most schools start the learning of foreign languages when a student starts high school. To be able to get the full benefit out of learning a new language, foreign language studies should start much earlier when students are in elementary school. This will allow students to more easily retain what they have learned in their foreign language studies and increase their probability of being

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