Dewey, Hirsch, Freire & Adler: Education Theory Compared

Introduction: Experience Versus Knowledge

Dewey and Hirsch hold a fundamental disagreement on the educational merits of experience versus knowledge. John Dewey believed that students should learn through experience rather than passively receiving information from teachers. E.D. Hirsch, by contrast, believes that students need a baseline amount of knowledge in order to become productive members of society.

For Dewey, the goal of education was to cultivate people who could enjoy their freedoms and fulfill their responsibilities as citizens in a democracy. He believed that an unhealthy deference to authoritative knowledge made people susceptible to control and political authoritarianism — anathema to a democracy composed of free-thinking citizens. Dewey believed that students should learn through experience, thereby creating knowledge for themselves.

For Hirsch, the goal of education is to equip students with the basic competencies they will need to thrive in the modern world. Politically, Hirsch is concerned with the declining competitiveness of America, especially in comparison with countries like China and Japan, which emphasize rote learning and respect for teachers. He attributes this decline to an American educational curriculum that prioritizes experiential learning and holds students to no common national standard. Hirsch's position is largely a reaction to the excesses of the individual-centered education system shaped by Dewey, which has left the United States without enforceable academic standards.

Unlike Dewey, who believed that standard knowledge produces an unhealthy deference to authority, Hirsch argues that standard knowledge is shared knowledge — essential for communication within a community. This shared knowledge supports the functioning of society in practical ways: understanding literary allusions, drawing on a common historical context when evaluating new events or ideas, and participating meaningfully in public discourse.

Progressive and Traditionalist Views on the Didactic Method

Although Paulo Freire and Mortimer Adler both believed that the primary purpose of education was to train effective, conscientious citizens, the two differed greatly on the transmission of knowledge and the role of written authority in that training. Adler views the didactic method as one of the three fundamental branches of learning — providing the basis and substance for further inquiry. Freire, however, believes the didactic method produces an inadequate understanding of reality and encourages an unhealthy obsequiousness to authority, particularly political authority.

Philosophically, Freire held that words and concepts are inadequate, easily outdated stand-ins for reality. Because words and concepts are essential to the didactic method, their use results in what Freire calls the banking concept of education — a model in which students accumulate knowledge by receiving deposits from teachers who possess more of it. Students educated through the banking concept develop a false understanding of reality and become so reliant on received words that they fail to verify what they "know" through action. Freire argues that students should instead be critical co-investigators engaged in genuine dialogue with their teachers, rather than docile listeners.

Adler's conception of the didactic method was considerably less simplistic than the version Freire critiques. He recommends that teachers not merely fill students' memories, but instead pique their curiosity through dialogue and require them to organize their thinking through exercises and examinations. In this way, Adler's didactic approach incorporates active intellectual engagement rather than passive reception.

Dewey sought to develop self-aware, conscientious citizens by centering individual development in the curriculum. He recommended that teachers organize subject matter and activities that build on students' prior knowledge and experiences, making learning more meaningful and enriching for each individual student.