The Child and the Curriculum and other Educational Essays

John Dewey recognized that children's development and learning were anything but rational and orderly, he and his followers advocated a child-centered and community- centered curriculum to give students experiences that make rigorous intellectual demands in the contexts of democratic social living. The Child and the Curriculum looks at the process of education from both perspectives-child and curriculum. Dewey leads the reader to view the curriculum, what the child must learn, from the child's present state of mind. He also considers the teacher's point of view as the vehicle that imparts and delivers the curriculum. Dewey understood that the structure of a child's mind is far different from that of an adult. A child does not have a framework in which to classify and place all the information he is receiving. The child is still developing both the context and the framework to process information about the world around him. The child's interests lie in the world of persons and relationships as opposed to that of facts and laws.

John Dewey was a philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He is best known for his ideas on progressive education, as well as his philosophy of pragmatism. He was one of the founders of functional psychology.