Dewey��s concept of ��the end goal of history�� is to produce freedom. Both Emerson and Douglass have a similar view on education and would probably agree with Dewey on such viewpoint. Montessori, too, has a comparable perspective with Dewey on the matter of education; she believed that children learn the most though experience and in an environment where they can learn things naturally.
Emerson, as a transcendentalist, did not put much attention to materialistic things in life but rather focused on the spiritual side, the organ of one��s highest thought. He claimed that without material, people can still bring happiness into life and he also tried to establish an ideal society through such viewpoint. Finally, his end goal of history was ��freedom�� and ��no concern for material,�� and he ultimately tried to bring freedom by transcending ignorance. Douglass, evidently, used education as a source of gaining freedom, and both Montessori and Dewey believed that in order for children to properly learn something, their thoughts should be connected with their experiences. For instance, only through practicing could people truly learn a foreign language,
Paragraphs 1 and 2 may be the best paragraphs to show the value of Dewey��s idea on education. In paragraph 1, Dewey explains that ��thinking is the method of intelligent learning.�� ��By thinking he means the process of dealing with experiential activities that deeply involve the student in such a way that the problems the student is to solve are really the student��s and not just artificial problems set by the teacher.�� Dewey then elaborates on his point that after thinking experience should follow. In paragraph 2, he explains that ��thinking must be connected with experience.�� In the same paragraph, he also explains that ��the initial stage of that developing experience which is called thinking is experience.�� The best-written paragraph of this entire essay, I believe, is the second paragraph for it holds the sentence mentioned right above. This sentence contains much of his basic theory of education, which implies working from concrete experience toward ideas that can then be converted back into a new concrete experience.