Experience + Reflection = Learning?

I like this. But I hope many people "experience" it through sharp questioning based on BOTH past experiences and other guiding ideas. And sometimes, the best approach is to cultivate visceral disagreements (while still being open to new understandings).

A dumb example: Never having taught kindergarten or elementary school, I am not a big fan of bringing students to gardens. Too many bugs and temptations to trample or scavenge, etc. (Museums, for me, are a another "breed of cat.") My interest is helping students experience reading and writing in their own contrary ways, and that involves a great deal of practice in skill acquisition.

That's not easy, not for learners, and certainly not for me.

Math might be even more difficult, because it quickly gets even more abstract what with fractions of fractions and subtracting negative numbers etc. Of course there are manipulatives to help some learners. And computer/"SmartBoard" virtual manipulatives can be even better.  Whenever I get to radicals and roots, I can't resist dipping into imaginary numbers.  It's more than just a way to review both square roots and multiplying negative numbers.

After struggling to figure out what times what equals negative one, I hope they say it's impossible - or a meaningless question.  Except, not exactly.  Turns out we need negative numbers to do particle physics.  They come up and then they cancel out to give math results that match with experimental measurements down to the 12th digit (or so).  And, imaginary numbers, in many ways, do even more than hint at dimensions impossible for us to think about in any other way  . . . because our senses have only evolved to "experience" three (or four) dimensions.

I'm sure the author had no such intention, but the danger of trying to anchor (hopefully not "everything") in "experience" is not that it runs into the often contrasting experiences of different students, but that it might obscure the more serious purposes of education.

One of those should be to broaden and extend student's life experience with burgeoning imagination and critical capacities. A related, but separate, purpose is to help them understand there is so much more wonder and possibility in this crazy world than their current experience (however broad, deep, or disturbing) can ever encompass.

Reading, Math, and Writing are all "experiences" in and of themselves.

Of the top of my head I have no quibble with the Dewey equation, but that's probably because I'm lazy minded.