Why a formal education, as opposed to informal, inductive, or inferential education? John Dewey introduces his answer to this question by claiming that there is a “difference between receiving an education through informal socialization and deliberate education of the young.” The difference is…

•  informal education, while a recognizably valuable form of demonstrative and inductive education, fails to pass on complex information and information that our seniors don’t know.
• formal education passes on the knowledge, resources, and achievements of a complex society that is constantly evolving beyond the knowledge and technological capacity of its aging generations.

He further distinguishes between these two tracks of education using an unfortunate, outdated, and offensively applied term, “savage” to describe communities that choose to educate their youth informally. Here his choice of words dates him and frames his opinion with an air of ignorance that comes with sweeping and inaccurate generalizations. He argues that these groups instill values that keep people loyal to their group through a kind of social membership. In such communities, all learning is done through apprenticeship, observation, and indirect learning. 

Dewey argues that this kind of education is no longer enough. Now, the divide between capacities of the young and the needs of the old are widening more than ever. Only the less technologically advanced professions have anything to teach the young about how to work. Thus, the ability to share information effectively and intentionally is a key part of building new business as well as continuing to learn and grow as a person. Only formal education can get learners these skills, claims Dewey.

 However, Dewey points out that there are some short-comings to formal education. At it becomes more disconnected from reality, it is constantly at risk of becoming remote and dead, abstract and bookish. In “advanced culture” (Dewey’s term) education has been recorded and stored in symbols, but these can become technical and superficial if they are disconnected from the world for which the youth are to be educated in order to be successful. Therefore, “one of the weightiest problems” , says Dewey, is to keep a balance between informal and formal, the incidental and the intentional, modes of education. This is why he argues we need a formal education system.