듀이의 자유교육론에서 직업적 활동의 의미

The significance of vocational activities in liberal education

This essay intends to reinterpret Dewey's view of education as growth by inquiring into the meaning of vocational activities. The main purpose of the essay is to bridge the theoretical gap between liberal and vocational education and to address the possibility of vocational activities as the content of liberal education. In reading carefully Dewey's writings on experience, education as growth implies liberation from the past state of living and meaning concerning practical, cognitive, emotional, and believing aspects and involves continual processes of setting up new relationships with environment. That is to say, growth is to liberate from the narrow past state of living and meaning by extending the previous meaning by way of learning by experience. The main part of individual life is associated with vocational activities, which occupy most of activating time. So, the activities can and should be the major instrument to achieve growth as liberal education. In conclusion, the significance of vocational activities can be addressed in three points in view of liberal education with respect to internal relationship between growth and freedom. (1) Vocational activities are equal to the process of living in itself in the very sense that they consist of the heart of individual life. So, they should be liberated above all, for one's life are able to be free. (2) Vocational activities as the heart of life can and should function as the main axis to form the ideal of one's life, which is formulated at the final stage of an growing experience. (3) Vocational activities have intrinsic values in the sense that they give new understanding and meaning to the experiencers and give significance to their lives.