John Dewey and Social Testing

John Dewey was big on hands-on experiential training for general education. Like, taking a piece of cotton, holding it in front of a classroom of young learners, talking about it, and then passing it around.

He would have, and probably did, cause others to create lesson plans around cotton to teach World and American History. He would have, and possibly did, cause others to have students analyze cotton's texture and its visual patterns under a microscope.

Dewey's approach left testing to the side, or should I think and say, "Dewey never stopped testing because he was testing his own philosophy of learning and practice incrementally." Testing is or should be an on-going activity inseparable from the learning process as well as indistinguishable from learning, in the most part.

In the social field we run into problems with testing. The latest on public schools and testing should be enough to prove this point.

Social testing is an ethical issue that goes beyond the classroom. Social testing gives the learner an opportunity to follow his or her choices, although the choices to be made are structured by rewards given at random and by schedules of positive reinforcement. The outcomes are still hard to predict because of the many variables present before testing, the many unknowns that the learner has processed in their own testing of others in their socialization process.

I have, I believe, been fortunate in my education, or at least my socialization; Perhaps I've been trained to be a little too sophisticated in some regards, less so in others. I've been fortunate in terms of knowing where I was going with my "social testing." I have not been surprised. Disappointed, yes, surprised, no. I suppose there's a little bit of Iago (Shakespeare) in all of us. The worse characteristics of human manipulation, that is. I hope not to duplicate these on my own part or the part of others. It unfortunate when I see Iago emerge in others at the end of my social testing of their character.

Kurt Vonnegutt I wish I could write like you!

So it goes.

Eddie Evans
Crime Scene Cleaners