Abstract

Education and development are dialectically intertwined, but the current approach to education in Nigeria does not really portray this dialectics. Education tends to be tailored towards paper certification. This has fostered a wrong epistemology where people see schooling as an adventure to be given degrees. This mainly theoretical research faults the Nigerian educational process and radically exposes the gulf between education and self-reliance. The educational thought of John Dewey is explored with a view to developing a curriculum structure that makes intelligence essentially this instrumental. In line with this, the idea of education is theoretically appraised and fundamental points in Dewey’s pragmatism are explored.

Key words: John Dewey, education, school, pragmatism, philosophy.