Child And Curriculum Analysis

According to John Dewey in his book on The Child and the Curriculum (1902), a child might not have a mental framework in which to classify and assimilate all the information that he is receiving in school. The child is still in the process of developing the context to process all the information about the world that he is absorbing. As part of a child’s survival and human development, he tends to focus more on the surrounding people and relationships as opposed to new concrete facts presented in formal schooling.
Dewey identified three factors in the “fundamental divergence” between the child and the curriculum. The child's experience is narrow and personal, but the world is vast extending both in space and time. The child also sees a united, whole environment, as opposed to the curriculum which
Dewey identifies the “three typical evils” that would impact learning:
There is no organic connection with what he has already experienced. This is called prior knowledge, or context. This connection is important for it helps to link the new with the existing knowledge and hence the learning makes sense and is meaningful to the child. Without this connection there is nothing to link the knowledge to, new information becomes a rule, only to be learned and recited. Gathering and reciting facts become routine for the child.
The child has no internal motivation to learn new material as it is presented as meaningless facts. The child learns not for intrinsic reasons but to avoid scolding or ridicule. The child might find no joy in learning. They can become disengaged with school life.
There is no quality of experience when information is presented in an external ready-made fashion or one size fits all approach. Without the delight of self-discovery or customised learning, the connection is not stored mentally. The material becomes “flat and common-place residua“ just knowledge to be