Teaching in the Now: John Dewey on the Educational Present

John Dewey's Experience and Education is an importantbook, but first-time readers of Dewey's philosophy can find it challenging andnot meaningfully related to the contemporary landscape of education. Jeff Frank's Teachingin the Now aims to reanimate Dewey's text for first-time readers and anyone who teaches the text or is interested in appreciating Dewey's continuing significance by focusing on Dewey's thinking on preparation. Frank, throughclose readings of Dewey, asks readers to wonder: How much of what we justify aspreparation in education is actually necessary? That is, every time we catchourselves telling a student you need to learn this in order to do something else we need to stop and reflect. We need to reflect, because when we always justify the present moment of a student's education in terms of what will happen in the future, we may lose out on the ability to engage students attention and interest now, when it matters. Dewey asks his readers to trustthat the best way to prepare students for an engaging and productive future is to create the most engaging and productive present experience for students. We learn to live fully in the future, only by practicing living fullyin the present. Although it can feel scary to stop thinking of the work of education in terms of preparation, when educators reclaim the present for students, new opportunities for teachers, students, schools, democracy, and education emerge. Teachingin the Now explores these opportunities in impassioned and engaging prose that makes Experience and Education come alive for readers new to Dewey or who have taught and read him for many years.

Table of Contents:
Preface: Thinking with Dewey Introduction: Waiting 1. Opening Complexities 2. The Future Depends on the Quality of the Present 3. Ideals and Experiments: Creating the Present 4. We Make the Self by Living Conclusion: Futures for the Present Acknowledgments Notes References Index

About the Author :
Jeff Frank is a philosopher of education and teacher educator at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. His articles have appeared in leading journals of educational research, like Educational Researcher and the Teachers College Record, and he has published widely in philosophy of education journals, focusing on American philosophies of education and the intersections of philosophy and teaching. He is a big believer that engaging with philosophical work can make a practical difference in classrooms, and Teaching in the Now is meant to show how Dewey’s work can improve the way we educate, and think about education, in our time.

Review :
In this book, Jeffrey Frank makes a significant contribution to the field of philosophy in education and education in general. By making Dewey accessible and relevant to students, teachers, administrators, teacher educators, and parents, he invites readers to think differently with Dewey about education as preparation for the future. Through Dewey he argues that it is by providing rich, educative learning in the present that we prepare learners for the future, not the reverse. Both teachers and students are included in this notion of the present. By linking the current teacher/learner self to the ongoing self, making them not separate but continuous, Frank grounds us firmly in what is possible now.