In Experience and Education, John Dewey says that a bad educator is “unfaithful to the fact that all experience is ultimately social” (38). The role of the teacher is to interact with students, rather than treat them as sounding boards. Don Finkel then added that interaction between students is equally important. Students spark ideas in one another and are motivated by their peers.
For this blog post I want to talk about an alternative (or additional) type of social activity, because I believe that group work has many uncontrollable variables that may leave out some students from reaping its benefits. For example, if there are low and high-achieving students in the same group, it’s possible that the high-achieving students would end up teaching the low-achieving students, so that half the group ended up experiencing progressive education while the other half ended up with an unintentional simulation of a traditional education. Additionally, a socially ostracized student may receive a worse education because of their social position. They’d be discouraged from talking in their group, and this could develop into a habit of passivity that progressive education is trying to avoid.
I do think that group workshops have their place, because there’s a lot of value in bouncing ideas off of other people and of articulating one’s thoughts. In addition to workshops, though, I was thinking that it might be useful to have assignments that harness altruism. If students are encouraged to work for someone else who is relying on them, they would be motivated for social reasons. Concretely, this could look like partnering with the community to make something it needs, or for younger children this could be an imaginary character that needs the child’s help solving something.
In the computer science education internship I worked at, elementary school students were told that they needed to help two fictional characters (the Gamer Bros) program a game that was going to be released. When we asked students who their favorite characters were and why, many of them said that their favorite characters were the ones that needed their help.
Altruistic homework assignments bring out the same motivation to contribute for someone else’s sake that workshops often bring out. So if some students feel shut down in workshops by their peers, altruistic homework assignments might bring out the motivation without the more complex social factors that might get in the way.
Admittedly, the complex social factors have other benefits. I’ve participated in many successful (and unsuccessful) workshops and group work in my life, and I don’t think my education would have been the same without them. But I never got to try a more altruistic-themed homework assignment, and I wonder if there would have been value in doing those alongside the workshops.
Education 