Psychologizing Curriculum

My pedagogical trod-forward is purposeful. My steps are grounded in a purpose in

education. 'Education for all' is the moral compass that guides. Or, to use the words of John Dewey;
What the best and wisest parent wants for his own children, that must the community want for all its
children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely. 1 This pedagogical footing is thus
with an attempt at educational broadness and depth, a horizontal and vertical integrated endeavour,
ultimately put, as universal. Universal in theory. That is, with the belief that the broad range of human
ability, is ordinary, not special.2 That the diversity in human potential, as non-exceptional. However, it
does not imply that there is one solution for everyone; rather, it reflects awareness of the unique nature
of each learner and the need to accommodate differences, creating learning experiences that suit
individual learners and maximize their ability to progress. 3 A One-size-fits-all. The appearance and
essence remains the same, (for example, to continue using the above metaphor, the socks on one's feet) 4
while the elasticity allows the contours and seams fit the individual's specific shape and dimensions. In
sum, while diversity is non-exceptional, individuation is exceptional.
One of the most influential thinkers in my pedagogical trod-forward is Dewey, especially his
challenge to teachers to psychologize their subject-matter. That is, to individualize the subject-matter
to fit the needs of particular students. To psychologize is of interest that is, it is placed in the whole
of conscious life so that it shares the worth of that life. 5 To reinterpret the fundamental concepts and
methods of the respective disciplines in accessible, engaging, and powerful ways for students. 6
According to Dewey, all subject-matter involves two intellectual aspects the logical and the
1 John Dewey (1915). The School and Society. The University of Chicago Press. p.3
2 OWP/P Architects, VS Furniture, & Bruce Mau Design, 2010. as quoted in Ontario Ministry of Education (2013).
Learning for All: A guide to Effective Assessment and Instruction for All Students, Kindergarten to Grade 12. Queen's
Printer for Ontario. p.13
3 ibid. p.14
4 This is keeping in mind that not everybody prefers to wear socks, or that not everybody can afford the luxury of socks.
5 John Dewey (1902). The Child and the Curriculum. Project Gutenburg Online. http://www.pgdp.net p. 34
6 John P. Smith III, Mark Girod. (2003). John Dewey & psychologizing the subject-matter: big ideas, ambitious teaching,
and teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19. pg.295-307. Quote from p.295.

psychological. The logical aspect is the content of subject-matter, as Dewey sees it, as the conceptual
frameworks, central questions, and processes of inquiry of that subject. It was the human experience of
the subject but distilled, codified, and abstracted into forms distant from that experience. 7 The
psychological aspect is the experience of the child, the elements of the child's needs and wants, from
their interests, what motivates them, from the subject-matter. It was the growing bud of the logical
what would become the logical given sufficient interest, study, and focus.
Dewey's essay The Child and the Curriculum (1902), is of particular interest in his use of idea
of the explorer and the map as an analogy, and a particular instance of, the relation between
psychological and logical ordering of subject matter, that is, between the student's experience with the
subject-matter, and that actual content of that subject-matter. We may compare the difference between
the logical and the psychological, writes Dewey, to the difference between the notes which an
explorer makes in a new country, blazing a trail and finding his way as best he may, and the finished
map that is constructed after the country has been thoroughly explored. 8 He rejected a priority of the
subject-matter over the interests of the child, just as he rejected positing the interests of the child over
the content of subject-matter. He argued for caution in approaching dualisms. Unpolished, his take is
that, divergent views emerge because different aspects of a problem are taken as significant by different
people with differing interests and/or attitudes. Individuals are usually inclined towards viewing things
in isolation, as autonomous. It is the smoothest route one can take. In fact, it seems as if it is the only
route one can take. One has come to a fork in the road, and seemingly, one must choose which road to
continue on with, the left road or the right one? In the cinematic world of The Matrix, do you choose
the blue pill or the red pill? It seemingly is an either/or question. Dewey's answer is that he will take
take his own path. Instead, he chooses not to drive further down any road, but instead decides to trod
between. It provides a change in vantage point, evincing a new outlook. He says no to choosing
7 ibid p. 297
8 Dewey (1902). p.25

between either the blue pill or to the red pill. (thus, the questions become, does he choose both pills, an
entirely differently coloured pill hidden from view, or does he choose not to digest pills at all?) It is
easier to see conditions in their separateness, to insist upon one at the expense of the other, to make
antagonist of them, than to discover a reality to which each belongs, writes Dewey. 9 Regarding formal
education, he says, The easy thing is to seize upon something in the nature of the child, or upon
something in the developed consciousness of the adult, and insist upon that as the key to the whole
problem In other words, We get the case of the child vs. the curriculum; of the individual nature vs.
social culture. Below all other divisions in pedagogical opinion lies this opposition.10
The psychological experience and the logically formulated experience, are one. The two are
mutually depended.11 He argued that the classroom teachers objective should be to bring the two
together, to bring the interests and experiences of the child into contact with the ideas and experiences
contained in the subject-matter, to see what in appearance are opposite, as interrelated. To see the
elements of the subject-matter in the child's experiences and to see the child's experiences in the
subject-matter. In other words, the teacher's milieu is the space between the objective framework of the
curriculum and the subjective framework of the student. To display their interconnectedness, but also to
maintain the integrity, of both the child and the curriculum. He explains,
Without the more or less accidental and devious paths traced by the explorer there
would be no facts which could be utilized in making the complete and related
chart. But no one could get the benefit of the explores trip if it was not compared
and checked up with similar wanderings by others; unless the new geographical
facts learned, the streams crossed, the mountains climbed, etc., were viewed, not as
9 ibid. p.7
10 It is interesting to note the ongoing 'opposition' between these two poles in educational theory, over a century ago, after
Dewey's essay appeared. In fact, an opposition that can be traced back through the history of Western Civilization to the
ancient Greeks, in the ideas of Plato/Socrates, and Aristotle. The opposition between the child and the curriculum, for
example, as seen in ideas of epistemology.
11 ibid. p.7

mere incidents in the journey of the particular traveller, but (quite apart from the
individual explorer's life) in relation to other similar facts already known. The map
orders individual experiences, connecting them with one another irrespective of the
local and temporal circumstances and accidents of their original discovery.12
Dewey sees knowledge, or various subject areas, such as botany, geography, mathematics, etc.,
as experience itself, accumulated experience they are that of the human race. They embody the
cumulative outcome of the efforts, the strivings, and the successes of the human race generation after
generation.13 However, it is not a massive disorganized conglomerate, haphazardly structured piles of
information, but in some organize and systematized way that is, as reflectively formulated. Dewey
sees education as on-going experience, the experience of one merging with the experience of another,
'reflectively formulated'. The experiences, the various knowledges, the child brings, are the starting
points of education, the end points in the curriculum, in the accumulated knowledge of society. There is
no separation between the child and the curriculum, according to Dewey. The facts and truths that
enter into the child's present experience, and those contained in the subject-matter of studies, are the
initial and final terms of one reality. To pit one against the other, is to stifle growth, it is to set the
moving tendency and the final result of the same process over against each other. Knowledge is
accumulated social experience, not individual experience alone, not related to anything else.
Knowledge is something like a total body of known facts, each consumes and/or contributes to the
total body (this says nothing, however, about the ability (the power to) take and/or contribute, that is,
between the included and excluded). Beautifully captured in his words:
the subject matter of science and history and art serves to reveal the real child
to us. We do not know the meaning either of his tendencies or his performances
excepting as we take them as germinating seeds, or opening bud, of some fruit
12 ibid. p.25-26
13 Ibid. p.16

to be borne. The whole world of visual nature is all to small an answer to the
problem of the meaning of the child's instinct for light and form. The entire
science of physics is none too much to interpret adequately to us what is
involved in some simple demand of the child for explanation of some casual
change that has attracted his attention. The art of Raphael or of Corot is none
too much to enable us to value the impulses stirring in the child when he draws
and daubs14
Or, to put it from a different angle,
If man draws all his knowledge, perception, etc., from the world of the senses
and the experiences gained from it, then what has to be done is to arrange the
empirical world in such a way that man experiences and becomes accustomed
to what is truly human in it.... If correctly understood interest is the principle of
all morality, man's private interest must be made to coincide with the interest of
humanity15
The child and the curriculum are two sides of the same coin. From the side of the child, writes
Dewey,
it is a question of seeing how his experience already contains within itself
elements facts and truths of just the same sort as those entering into the
formulated study; and what is of more importance, of how it contains within
itself the attitudes, the motives, and the interests which have operated in
developing and organizing the subject-matter to the plane which it now
occupies.
14 Dewey (1905) op. cit. p.21
15 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Collected Works, Vol. 1. As quoted in John Bellamy Foster (2000). Marx's Ecology:
Materialism and Nature. Monthly Review Press. p. 63

On the flip-side, from the side of the subject-matter,

it is a question of interpreting them as outgrowths of forces operating in the
child's life, and of discovering the steps that intervene between the child's
present experience and their richer maturity.
Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made
in itself, outside the child's experience; cease thinking of the child's experience
also something hard and fast; see it as something fluent, embryonic, vital; and
realize that the child and the curriculum are simple two limits which define a
single process. Just as two points define a straight line, so the present
standpoint of the child and the facts of studies define instruction. It is
continuous reconstruction, moving from the child's present experience out into
that represented by organized bodies of truth we call studies.16
Here, Dewey asks some relevant questions:
Of what use, educational speaking, is it to be able to see the end in the
beginning? How does it assist us in dealing with the early stages of growth to be
able to anticipate later stages? The studies, as we have agreed, represent the
possibilities of development inherent in the child's immediate crude experience.
But, after all, they are not parts of that present and immediate life. Why then, or
how, make account of them?17
Or, from the angle of the explorer and the map, Of what use is this formulated statement of
experience? Of what use is the map?18 He answers in dualistic manner, in two parts, interpretation and
guidance. [T]o see the outcome, says Dewey, is to know in what direction the present experience is
16 Dewey (1905) op. cit. p.15-16
17 Ibid. p.17
18 ibid. p. 26

moving. That is, the end has meaning only as a means, that is as a goal which we move towards, as the
reverse is likewise true, the means are pointless without and end point in sight. It is the child's emerging
capabilities and knowledges which is the point of departure, and that they are just that, emerging,
current features of the child, having no deeper significance unless they are interpreted as a sign or
index of potentialities for further growth.19 The child's present experiences, interests, wonderings, are
just that, present. In other words, the map is not a substitute for personal experience. The map does not
take the place of an actual experience.20 The logical experiences are not substitutions of individual
experiences. The mathematical formula for a falling body does not take the place of personal contact
and immediate individual experience with the falling thing. From the angle of logical, from the angle
of the map, it is nothing but,
a summary, an arranged and orderly view of previous experiences, serves as a
guide to future experience; it gives direction; it facilitates control; it
economizes effort, preventing useless wandering, and pointing out paths which
lead most quickly and most certainly to a desired result. Through the map every
new traveller may get for his own journey the benefits of the results of others'
expectations without the waste of energy ad loss of time involved in their
wanderings wanderings which he himself would be obliged to repeat were it
not for just the assistance of the objective and generalized record of their
performances21
They become old and stale if seen as not moving forward, of continually renewing itself. Dewey sees
the child's present interests spoiled if seen as being final. What we need, Dewey argues, is
something which will enable us to interpret, to appraise, the elements in the child's present puttings
19 Phillips. op cit. p.410
20 Dewey (1905). op. cit. p.26
21 ibid. p.26-27

forth and fallings away, his exhibitions of power and weakness, in the light of some larger growthprocess in which they have their place.22 To see the child as in motion, in movement, in transition. A
being becoming, from whence it came. Learning and achievements are fluid and moving, says
Dewey. Any power, whether of child or adult, is indulged when it is taken on its given and present
level in consciousness. Its genuine power is in the propulsion it affords toward a higher level. To
'psychologize' is to provide platforms from which one propels higher, to present school material in
engaging, socially responsive ways, in which students become engaged, exceeding their own limits,
that is, trodding-forward. To help them find their own moral-compass in reading (the world) maps, their
central place in the circle of all things, which is, the 'meaning of life'. In short, relatedness, the
relationships between the self and all else.
Only in the classroom can psychologizing happen. In other words, classroom teachers, are in the
best position to analyze the psychological aspects of the child's life. Only teachers were in a position
to study and come to understand what elements of their subjects were already present and active in
their children's experience and could be engaged in the development of the logical. 23 The teacher's
task, in the analogy of 'the explorer,' is to provide the students with the skills with which to read the
various maps. To provide them with the tools and skills to adequately traverse (read) the world. These
tools, (sextant, compass, maps, skills with which to read maps, longitude and latitude, etc., etc..)
represent the development of critical awareness. One becomes cognisant that maps are ideologically
charted. The difference between Mercator's and Peter's projection (note the use of the word projection:
it is just that, a projection, one's view projected materially, the projection of the map). Both, however,
contain distortions. It seems thus that the teacher's job is to provide the necessary tools to help students
further develop their critical skills in exploring the world and their responsibilities and potential, to/in
it. From what is, to what might and/or ought to be.
22 ibid p.18
23 Smith & Girod op. cit. p. 297

I have said nothing so far, however, of the presumptions of explorer-hood, that is, as benign,
bringing benevolence and justice to the savages. I have said nothing of his sexist presumptions of
women and the household. Words/viewpoints, as expressed in the works of John Dewey. 24 Fundamental
questions that will be left in my pocket for the time being. To be left for another day, in my trodforward. Serious questions that will need be worked through. The answers to these questions require
action, to be worked through, to be worked out. That is, through practice. I can look to examples of
others (looking backwards), but this gaze must also include my own experiences, and that my future
students (looking forward). Other questions that linger: What does it mean (what does it look like?) to
psychologize subject-matter? How does one select which experience(s) over others, which
experience(s) are most promising? That is, how is psychologizing intertwined with issues of
knowledge and power? What structures and resources are available to support Dewey's bold and
ambitious goals of merging the world of the child to the world of the curriculum as a whole? What
methods are available?
To give an initial answer to the final question, consider the document by the Ontario Ministry of
Education, Learning for All (2013), as a useful foundation for answering Dewey's rally-cry. 25 Key
beliefs, used as a 'guiding-compass', in trodding-forward. These key beliefs foster a faith in people's
abilities. That is, that all can succeed, that, all students learn best when instruction, resources, and the
learning environment are well suited to their particular strengths, interests, needs, and stage of
readiness.26 As emphasized throughout the document, student achievement gaps can be narrowed and
show overall improvement, if responsibility is shared throughout the community, and if, there has
24 To provide a textual example of Dewey's racist and sexist views: In savage and barbarian communities, such directed
participation.... furnishes almost the sole influence for rearing the young into practices and beliefs of the group. (emp.
added) from John Dewey (2001). Democracy and Education. Pennsylvania State University E-Classics Series. p. 21; and
....it prepares them to some extent for the practical duties of later life the girls to be more efficient house managers, if
not actually cooks and seamstresses; the boys (were educational system only adequately rounded out in trade schools)
for their future vocations (emp. added) from Dewey (1915) op. cit. p.11.
25 While this document is fundamental in my trod-forward, this essay only skims the surface of its potentially potent brew.
26 OWP/P Architects op. cit. (emp. mine) p.8

been a sustained and deliberate focus on individual students' strengths and needs, assessment for
learning, and precision in instruction though evidence-informed interventions.27 In short, if the school
environment has been psychologized. The document does indeed provide a method, or rather, a
structure in method, in its 'Three Effective Approaches': Universal Design for Learning, differentiated
instruction, and the tiered approach to both prevention and intervention. These three approaches, in
combination, have been a powerful tool in teaching with a 'learning for all' (a humanist) pedagogy.

27 Fullan (2007) as quoted in Ontario Ministry of Education (2013). op. cit. p.11

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