among many other “active” things. He preached that teachers should hold off on having kids do things like reading and writing until the student found it necessary and appealing to do so (Dewey Article, Enotes). Dewey’s school had its successes and failures and there is a lot that can be taken away his grand “experiment.” While I do admit that a lot of great education practices were first developed at Dewey’s laboratory school, I cannot help but notice the fundamental flaws that existed in it. If I was to apply what Dewey showcased in his school to today’s world of education, I think his system would fail. The reason for this is first that Dewey seemed to be looking at education through “rose colored glasses” so to speak. In my opinion, a theory on education should be able to apply to any situation. I think about what Dewey had put together in his school, where the home life was heavily incorporated into the class curriculum. But, what about children that come from broken homes, as we see so often in today’s society? If a child is being abused or suffering under the watch of alcoholic parents, who could care less about their child’s education, how would that fit into Dewey’s system? Dewey’s school would probably work well in a case where a child has very supportive parents that are extremely interested in their child’s education, but how often is that not the case in today’s world? Henry Perkinson, an author and educator at New York University, makes a comment about Dewey’s lab school saying, “Dewey’s educational philosophy depicts a school or school enterprise that never existed and probably never could exist. To carry it out would require superteachers and superstudents” (Perkinson). While I believe Dewey is taking education in the right direction, I think he first needs to find a way to develop a theory on education that can apply to each and every student. Another area that I just can’t agree with Dewey in is how he resorts to experience as the primary way for a student to learn. Without a doubt, I believe that his method of inquiry can add a lot to a student’s education. In his school, the kids were doing so many amazing things that I wish I could have done in my years as a young boy. But, looking at the big picture, there seems to be so many things that a child must learn over their lifetime that they cannot possibly discover and “do” everything. Yes, you can learn math when measuring out the flour required to bake a cake, but can that form of math be applied to everything? There are other things out in the world like measuring liquids or counting coins. How would one child have the time and the means to experience every single thing? I think that at some point, students will need to use some form of memorization of information or facts as a basis of knowledge that they can then use to learn about other things. A quote from a parent that had a child in Dewey’s school really sums up this problem saying, “We have to teach him how to study. He learned to ‘observe’ last year” (Storr). I think that Dewey had the right idea, but he had everything backward>