John Dewey

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During the first half of the 20th century, John Dewey (1859-1952) was America's most famous exponent of a pragmatic philosophy that celebrated the traditional values of democracy and the efficacy of reason and universal education.

Born on Oct. 20, 1859, in Burlington, Vt., John Dewey came of old New England stock. His father was a local merchant who loved literature. His mother, swayed by revivals to convert to Congregationalism, possessed a stern moral sense. The community, situated at the economic crossroads of the state, was the home of the state university and possessed a cosmopolitan atmosphere unusual for northern New England. Nearby Irish and French-Canadian settlements acquainted John with other cultures. Boyhood jobs delivering newspapers and working at a lumberyard further extended his knowledge. In 1864, on a visit to see his father in the Union Army in Virginia, he viewed firsthand the devastating effects of the Civil War.

Educational Career

Dewey's career in Vermont public schools was unremarkable. At the age of 15 he entered the University of Vermont. He found little of interest in academic work; his best grades were in science, and later he would regard science as the highest manifestation of human intellect. Dewey himself attributed his "intellectual awakening" to T. H. Huxley's college textbook on physiology, which shaped his vision of man as entirely the product of natural evolutionary processes.

Dewey later remembered coming in touch with the world of ideas during his senior year. Courses on psychology, religion, ethics, logic, and economics supplanted his earlier training in languages and science. His teacher, H. A. P. Torrey, introduced him to Immanuel Kant, but Dewey found it difficult to accept the Kantian idea that there was a realm of knowledge transcending empirical demonstration. Dewey also absorbed Auguste Comte's emphasis on the disintegrative effects of extreme individualism. The quality of his academic work improved and, at the age of 19, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and second in his class of 18.

Dewey hoped to teach high school. After a frustrating summer of job hunting, his cousin, principal of a seminary in Pennsylvania, came to his rescue. For 2 years Dewey taught the classics, algebra, and science, meanwhile reading philosophy. When his cousin resigned, however, Dewey's employment ended. He returned to Vermont to become the sole teacher in a private school in Charlotte, near his alma mater. He renewed acquaintance with Torrey, and the two discussed the fruits of Dewey's reading in ancient and modern philosophy.

Intellectual Development

At this time most American teachers of philosophy were ordained clergymen who tended to subordinate philosophical speculation to theological orthodoxy. Philosophy was in the hands of laymen in only a few schools. One such school was in St. Louis, where William T. Harris established the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Here Dewey published his first scholarly effort. Finally, Dewey decided to pursue a career in philosophy and applied for admission to the newly founded Johns Hopkins University, another haven for lay philosophers.

At Johns Hopkins in 1882 Dewey studied with George S. Morris, who was on leave as chairman of the philosophy department at the University of Michigan. Under Morris's direction Dewey studied Hegel, whose all-encompassing philosophical system temporarily satisfied Dewey's longing to escape from the dualisms of traditional philosophy. In 1884 Dewey completed his doctorate and, at Morris's invitation, went to teach at Michigan.

In Ann Arbor, Dewey met and married Alice Chipman. His interests turned toward problems of education as he traveled about the state to evaluate college preparatory courses. His concern for social problems deepened, and he adopted a vague brand of socialism, although he was unacquainted with Marxism. He still taught Sunday school, but he was drifting away from religious orthodoxy. In 1888 he accepted an appointment at the University of Minnesota, only to return to Michigan a year later to the post left vacant by Morris's death.

The next stage in Dewey's intellectual development came with his reading of William James's Principles of Psychology. Dewey rapidly shed Hegelianism in favor of "instrumentalism," a position that holds that thinking is an activity which, at its best, is directed toward resolving problems rather than creating abstract metaphysical systems.

In 1894 Dewey moved to the University of Chicago as head of a new department of philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy. Outside the academic world he became friends with the social reformers at Hull House. He also admired Henry George's analysis of the problems of poverty. To test his educational theories, he started an experimental school, with his wife as principal. The "Dewey school," however, caused a struggle between its founder and the university's president, William R. Harper. In 1904, when Harper tried to remove his wife, he resigned in protest. An old friend of Dewey's engineered an offer from Columbia University, where Dewey spent the rest of his teaching years. His colleagues, some of the most fertile minds in modern America, included Charles A. Beard and James Harvey Robinson.

Peak of His Influence

Living in New York City placed the Deweys at the center of America's cultural and political life. Dewey pursued his scholarship, actively supported the Progressive party, and, in 1929, helped organize the League for Independent Political Action to further the cause of a new party. He also served as a contributing editor of the New Republic magazine and helped found both the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Association of University Professors. After World War I, reaching the peak of his influence, he became a worldwide traveler, lecturing in Japan at the Imperial Institute and spending 2 years teaching at the Chinese universities of Peking and Nanking. In 1924 he went to study the schools in Turkey and 2 years later visited the University of Mexico. His praise for the Russian educational system he inspected on a 1928 trip to the Soviet Union earned him much criticism.

As a teacher, Dewey exhibited the distracted air of a man who had learned to concentrate in a home inhabited by five young children. Careless about his appearance, shy and quiet in manner, he sometimes put his students to sleep, but those who managed to focus their attention could watch a man fascinated with ideas actually creating a philosophy in his classroom.

In 1930 Dewey retired from teaching. A year earlier, national luminaries had used the occasion of his seventieth birthday to hail his accomplishments; such celebrations would be repeated on his eightieth and ninetieth birthdays. He continued to publish works clarifying his philosophy. In public affairs he was one of the first to warn of the dangers from Hitler's Germany and of the Japanese threat in the Far East. In 1937 he traveled to Mexico as chairman of the commission to determine the validity of Soviet charges against Trotsky. His first wife having died in 1927, Dewey, at the ripe age of 87, married a widow, Roberta Grant. In the early years of the cold war Dewey's support of American intervention in Korea earned him criticism from the U.S.S.R. newspaper Pravda. He died on June 1, 1952.

Dewey's Philosophy

In his philosophy Dewey sought to transcend what he considered the misleading distinctions made by other philosophers. By focusing on experience, he bridged the gulf between the organism and its environment to emphasize their interaction. He rejected the dualism of spirit versus matter, insisting that the mind was a product of evolution, not some infusion from a superior being. Yet he avoided the materialist conclusion which made thought seem accidental and irrelevant. While he saw most of man's behavior as shaped by habit, he believed that the unceasing processes of change often produced conditions which customary mental activity could not explain. The resulting tension led to creative thinking in which man tried to reestablish control of the unstable environment. Thought was never, for Dewey, merely introspection; rather, it was part of a process whereby man related to his surroundings. Dewey believed that universal education could train men to break through habit into creative thought.

Dewey was convinced that democracy was the best form of government. He saw contemporary American democracy challenged by the effects of the industrial revolution, which had produced an over concentration of wealth in the hands of a few men. This threat, he believed, could be met by the right kind of education.

The "progressive education" movement of the 1920s was an effort to implement Dewey's pedagogical ideas. Because his educational theory emphasized the classroom as a place for students to encounter the "present," his interpreters tended to play down traditional curricular concerns with the "irrelevant" past or occupational future. His influence on American schools was so pervasive that many critics (then and later) assailed his ideas as the cause of all that they found wrong with American education.

Philosophical Works

To the year of his death Dewey remained a prolific writer. Couched in a difficult prose style, his published works number over 300. Some of the most important works include Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (1891), The Study of Ethics (1894), The School and Society (1899), Studies in Logical Theory (1903), How We Think (1910), The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays in Contemporary Thought (1910), German Philosophy and Politics (1915), Democracy and Education (1916), Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), Human Nature and Conduct (1922), Experience and Nature (1925), The Public and Its Problems (1927), The Quest for Certainty (1929), Individualism Old and New (1930), Philosophy and Civilization (1931), Art as Experience (1934), Liberalism and Social Action (1935), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), Freedom and Culture (1939), Problems of Men (1946), and Knowing and the Known (1949).

Further Reading

For more information see Dewey's autobiographical fragment,"From Absolutism to Experimentalism," in George P. Adams and William Pepperell Montague, eds., Contemporary American Philosophy: Personal Statements (1930). His daughters compiled an authoritative sketch of his life in Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of John Dewey (1939), which also contains valuable summaries of aspects of his philosophy.

Indispensable for any examination of Dewey's thought is Sidney Hook, John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait (1939). John E. Smith presents an excellent chapter on Dewey in The Spirit of American Philosophy (1963). Paul K. Conkin in Puritans and Pragmatists: Eight Eminent American Thinkers (1968) attempts an evaluation of Dewey's place in the context of American ideas. Morton G. White, Social Thought in America (1949), considers assumptions common to Dewey and his colleagues in other disciplines. Longer, more challenging treatments of Dewey's ideas are in George R. Geiger, John Dewey in Perspective (1958); Robert J. Roth, John Dewey and Self Realization (1962); and Richard J. Bernstein, John Dewey (1966). See also Jerome Nathanson, John Dewey: The Reconstruction of the Democratic Life (1951).

Additional Sources

Campbell, James, Understanding John Dewey: nature and cooperative intelligence, Chicago, Ill.: Open Court, 1995.

Ryan, Alan, John Dewey and the high tide of American liberalism, New York: W.W. Norton, 1995.

Dewey, John (1859-1952) American educator, social reformer, and philosopher of pragmatism. Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, and had a relatively undistinguished academic career, until he enlisted at Johns Hopkins, America's first graduate university, in 1881. At this time he was influenced by Hegel, and his writings never lost an enthusiasm for the dynamic, the vital, and the progressive. His work took on a steadily more practical bent when in 1894 he became chairman of the department of philosophy, psychology, and education in Chicago. Here he remained for ten years before removing to Columbia, where the Journal of Philosophy became largely a house magazine for discussions about and by Dewey. His work as a psychologist and educational thinker crystallized a reaction against the excessively formal and rigid educational practices of the time. Dewey recognized that the child is an active, exploring, inquisitive creature, so the task of education is to foster experience infused by skills and knowledge. Dewey's enormous influence owed more to his skill at expounding the pragmatic, scientific, and democratic progressiveness of the America of his time than to accurate or technical philosophical argument. But his development of the pragmatism of James and Peirce remains influential. In his hands enquiry is a self-corrective process conducted in a specific historical and cultural circumstance; it requires no foundation in certainty or ‘the given’, and knowledge is just that which is warranted through enquiry. Dewey expressed his views in a torrent of books and articles: the centennial bibliography of his work contains more than 150 pages.

(1859-1952), philosopher and educator. Dewey was a world-renowned founder of pragmatic philosophy and theoretician of progressive education. His voluminous writings dealt not only with philosophy and education but also with politics, art, and current events. He was a founder and the first president of the American Association of University Professors, an organizer of the New School for Social Research in New York City and of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, an officer of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a trustee of Hull-House; he also chaired the commission that investigated Leon Trotsky's Moscow trial. Throughout his long career, Dewey was engaged with scholarly and public concerns that were shared by many of his contemporaries. He was once described as "the most profound, most complete expression of American genius."

Born and reared in Burlington, Vermont, Dewey graduated from the University of Vermont in 1879. Thereafter, he taught school for two years before enrolling for graduate study at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he imbibed the reverence for empirical, hypothesis-testing science that was the staple of conversation at the new university. This attitude was critical in turning Dewey away from abstract approaches to philosophy, as were the reform interests of Harriet Alice Chipman, a student at the University of Michigan, where Dewey taught from 1884 until 1894 (with one year, 1888-1889, at the University of Minnesota). Chipman became Dewey's wife in 1886. (She died in 1927, and Dewey married Roberta Lowitz Grant in 1946.)

Dewey's eagerness to find ways to relate philosophy to contemporary concerns was an important source (as were his own children) for his interest in education, and, during the ten years he served on the faculty of the University of Chicago (1894-1904), this interest became a primary one. Dewey presided over the university's work in philosophy, psychology, and education and was director of the university's Laboratory School. His most important educational writings, The School and Society (1899) and Democracy and Education (1916), grew out of observations made at this time. It was during the Chicago period that Dewey developed a conception of education as an experimental science capable of guiding individual and community growth and of illuminating problems of associated life, or democracy.

Dewey left Chicago in 1904 to become a professor of philosophy at Columbia University. His prolific writings set forth a functionalist conception of psychology, in which intelligence is portrayed as a constantly changing capacity that develops through continuous interaction between people and their environment, and a liberal, instrumentalist conception of democracy, in which public problems are seen as requiring continuous, ever-widening discussion among citizens. The test of a democracy, Dewey believed, is the degree to which all people likely to suffer the consequences of a decision have participated in the making of that decision.

During his years at Columbia, Dewey achieved fame of a kind rare for such a reticent, often rumpled philosopher. He visited Japan, China, Turkey, and the Soviet Union, but, after 1904, New York remained his home. The optimism and emphasis upon education as both schooling and, more important, a mode of democratic politics that was so characteristic of his thought was essential in all that he wrote and said in his long life. Dewey's greatness as a thinker was inseparable from a consistency of perspective across specialized domains and over time combined with an unusual agility in applying that perspective to an extraordinary array of life's momentous and more mundane concerns.

Bibliography:

Neil Coughlan, Young John Dewey: An Essay in American Intellectual History (1972); George Dykhuizen, The Life and Mind of John Dewey (1973).

Author:

Ellen Condliffe Lagemann

See also Education; Progressivism.

Dewey's original philosophy, called instrumentalism, bears a relationship to the utilitarian and pragmatic schools of thought. Instrumentalism holds that the various modes and forms of human activity are instruments developed by human beings to solve multiple individual and social problems. Since the problems are constantly changing, the instruments for dealing with them must also change. Truth, evolutionary in nature, partakes of no transcendental or eternal reality and is based on experience that can be tested and shared by all who investigate. Dewey conceived of democracy as a primary ethical value, and he did much to formulate working principles for a democratic and industrial society.

In education his influence has been a leading factor in the abandonment of authoritarian methods and in the growing emphasis upon learning through experimentation and practice. In revolt against abstract learning, Dewey considered education as a tool that would enable the citizen to integrate culture and vocation effectively and usefully. Dewey actively participated in movements to forward social welfare and woman's suffrage, protect academic freedom, and effect political reform.

Among his writings, which are concerned with almost all philosophical fields except metaphysics, are Psychology (1887), The School and Society (1899; rev. ed. 1915), Ethics (with James H. Tufts, 1908), Democracy and Education (1916), Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), Human Nature and Conduct (1922), Experience and Nature (1925), The Public and Its Problems (1927), The Quest for Certainty (1929), Philosophy and Civilization (1932), A Common Faith (1934), Art as Experience (1934), Liberalism and Social Action (1935), Experience and Education (1938), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), Freedom and Culture (1939), and Problems of Men (1946).

Bibliography

See J. A. Boydston and K. Poulos, ed., Checklist of Writings about John Dewey, 1887-1977 (1978) and B. Levine, Works about John Dewey, 1886-1995 (1996); G. Dykhuizen, The Life and Mind of John Dewey (1973); J. J. McDermott, ed., Philosophy of John Dewey (2 vol., 1981); biographies by S. C. Rockefeller (1991), R. B. Westbrook (1991), A. Ryan (1995), and J. Martin (2002); studies by G. R. Geiger (1958, repr. 1974), A. Wirth (1966, repr. 1979), F. F. Cruz (1988), L. A. Hickman (1990), H. Cuffaro (1994), and A. Ryan (1996).

Throughout the United States and the world at large, the name of John Dewey has become synonymous with the Progressive education movement. Dewey has been generally recognized as the most renowned and influential American philosopher of education.

He was born in 1859 in Burlington, Vermont, and he died in New York City in 1952. During his lifetime the United States developed from a simple frontier-agricultural society to a complex urban-industrial nation, and Dewey developed his educational ideas largely in response to this rapid and wrenching period of cultural change. His father, whose ancestors came to America in 1630, was the proprietor of Burlington's general store, and his mother was the daughter of a local judge. John, the third of their four sons, was a shy boy and an average student. He delivered newspapers, did his chores, and enjoyed exploring the woodlands and waterways around Burlington. His father hoped that John might become a mechanic, and it is quite possible that John might not have gone to college if the University of Vermont had not been located just down the street. There, after two years of average work, he graduated first in a class of 18 in 1879.

There were few jobs for college graduates in Burlington, and Dewey spent three anxious months searching for work. Finally, a cousin who was the principal of a high school in South Oil City, Pennsylvania, offered him a teaching position which paid $40 a month. After two years of teaching high school Latin, algebra, and science, Dewey returned to Burlington to teach in a rural school closer to home.

With the encouragement of H. A. P. Torrey, his former philosophy professor at the University of Vermont, Dewey wrote three philosophical essays (1882a; 1882b; 1883) which were accepted for publication in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, whose editor, William Torrey Harris, hailed them as the products of a first-rate philosophical mind. With this taste of success and a $500 loan from his aunt, Dewey left teaching to do graduate work at Johns Hopkins University. There he studied philosophy - which at that time and place primarily meant Hegelian philosophy and German idealism - and wrote his dissertation on the psychology of Kant.

After he received the doctorate in 1884, Dewey was offered a $900-a-year instructorship in philosophy and psychology at the University of Michigan. In his first year at Michigan, Dewey not only taught but also produced his first major book, Psychology (1887). In addition, he met, wooed, and married Alice Chipman, a student at Michigan who was herself a former schoolteacher. Fatherhood and ten years' teaching experience helped his interest in psychology and philosophy to merge with his growing interest in education.

In 1894 the University of Chicago offered Dewey the chairmanship of the department of philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy. At Chicago he established the now-famous laboratory school (commonly known as the Dewey School), where he scientifically tested, modified, and developed his psychological and educational ideas.

An early statement of his philosophical position in education, My Pedagogic Creed (1897), appeared three years after his arrival at Chicago. Four other major educational writings came out of Dewey's Chicago experience. The first two, The School and Society (1956), which was first published in 1899, and The Child and the Curriculum (1902), were lectures which he delivered to raise money and gain support for the laboratory school. Although the books were brief, they were clear and direct statements of the basic elements of Dewey's educational philosophy and his psychology of learning. Both works stressed the functional relationship between classroom learning activities and real life experiences and analyzed the social and psychological nature of the learning process. Two later volumes, How We Think (1910) and Democracy and Education (1916), elaborated these themes in greater and more systematic detail.

Dewey's work at Chicago was cut short when, without consulting Dewey, Chicago's president, William Rainey Harper, arranged to merge the laboratory school with the university training school for teachers. The merger not only took control of the school from Dewey's hands but changed it from an experimental laboratory to an institution for teacher-training. Dewey felt that he had no recourse but to resign and wrote to William James at Harvard and to James M. Cattell at Columbia University, informing them of his decision. Dewey's reputation in philosophy had grown considerably by this time, and Cattell had little difficulty in persuading the department of philosophy and psychology at Columbia to offer him a position. Because the salary offer was quite low for a man with six children (three more had been born during his ten years at Chicago), arrangements were made for Dewey to teach an additional two hours a week at Columbia Teachers College for extra compensation. For the next twenty-six years at Columbia, Dewey continued his illustrious career as a philosopher and witnessed the dispersion of his educational ideas throughout the world by many of his disciples at Teachers College, not the least of whom was William Heard Kilpatrick.

Dewey retired in 1930 but was immediately appointed professor emeritus of philosophy in residence at Columbia and held that post until his eightieth birthday in 1939. The previous year he had published his last major educational work, Experience and Education (1938). In this series of lectures he clearly restated his basic philosophy of education and recognized and rebuked the many excesses he thought the Progressive education movement had committed. He chastised the Progressives for casting out traditional educational practices and content without offering something positive and worthwhile to take their place. He offered a reformulation of his views on the intimate connection between learning and experience and challenged those who would call themselves Progressives to work toward the realization of the educational program he had carefully outlined a generation before.

At the age of ninety he published his last large-scale original philosophical work, Knowing andthe Known (1949), in collaboration with Arthur F. Bentley.

Experience and Reflective Thinking

The starting place in Dewey's philosophy and educational theory is the world of everyday life. Unlike many philosophers, Dewey did not search beyond the realm of ordinary experience to find some more fundamental and enduring reality. For Dewey, the everyday world of common experience was all the reality that man had access to or needed. Dewey was greatly impressed with the success of the physical sciences in solving practical problems and in explaining, predicting, and controlling man's environment. He considered the scientific mode of inquiry and the scientific systematization of human experience the highest attainment in the evolution of the mind of man, and this way of thinking and approaching the world became a major feature of his philosophy. In fact, he defined the educational process as a "continual reorganization, reconstruction and transformation of experience" (1916, p. 50), for he believed that it is only through experience that man learns about the world and only by the use of his experience that man can maintain and better himself in the world.

Dewey was careful in his writings to make clear what kinds of experiences were most valuable and useful. Some experiences are merely passive affairs, pleasant or painful but not educative. An educative experience, according to Dewey, is an experience in which we make a connection between what we do to things and what happens to them or us in consequence; the value of an experience lies in the perception of relationships or continuities among events. Thus, if a child reaches for a candle flame and burns his hand, he experiences pain, but this is not an educative experience unless he realizes that touching the flame resulted in a burn and, moreover, formulates the general expectation that flames will produce burns if touched. In just this way, before we are formally instructed, we learn much about the world, ourselves, and others. It is this natural form of learning from experience, by doing and then reflecting on what happened, which Dewey made central in his approach to schooling.

Reflective thinking and the perception of relationships arise only in problematical situations. As long as our interaction with our environment is a fairly smooth affair we may think of nothing or merely daydream, but when this untroubled state of affairs is disrupted we have a problem which must be solved before the untroubled state can be restored. For example, a man walking in a forest is suddenly stopped short by a stream which blocks his path, and his desire to continue walking in the same direction is thwarted. He considers possible solutions to his problem - finding or producing a set of stepping-stones, finding and jumping across a narrow part, using something to bridge the stream, and so forth - and looks for materials or conditions to fit one of the proposed solutions. He finds an abundance of stones in the area and decides that the first suggestion is most worth testing. Then he places the stones in the water, steps across to the other side, and is off again on his hike. Such an example illustrates all the elements of Dewey's theoretical description of reflective thinking: A real problem arises out of present experiences, suggestions for a solution come to mind, relevant data are observed, and a hypothesis is formed, acted upon, and finally tested.

Learning

For Dewey, learning was primarily an activity which arises from the personal experience of grappling with a problem. This concept of learning implied a theory of education far different from the dominant school practice of his day, when students passively received information that had been packaged and predigested by teachers and textbooks. Thus, Dewey argued, the schools did not provide genuine learning experiences but only an endless amassing of facts, which were fed to the students, who gave them back and soon forgot them.

Dewey distinguished between the psychological and the logical organization of subject matter by comparing the learner to an explorer who maps an unknown territory. The explorer, like the learner, does not know what terrain and adventures his journey holds in store for him. He has yet to discover mountains, deserts, and water holes and to suffer fever, starvation, and other hardships. Finally, when the explorer returns from his journey, he will have a hard-won knowledge of the country he has traversed. Then, and only then, can he produce a map of the region. The map, like a textbook, is an abstraction which omits his thirst, his courage, his despairs and triumphs - the experiences which made his journey personally meaningful. The map records only the relationships between landmarks and terrain, the logic of the features without the psychological revelations of the journey itself.

To give the map to others (as a teacher might) is to give the results of an experience, not the experience by which the map was produced and became personally meaningful to the producer. Although the logical organization of subject matter is the proper goal of learning, the logic of the subject cannot be truly meaningful to the learner without his psychological and personal involvement in exploration. Only by wrestling with the conditions of the problem at hand, "seeking and finding his own way out, does he think …. If he cannot devise his own solution (not, of course, in isolation but in correspondence with the teacher and other pupils) and find his own way out he will not learn, not even if he can recite some correct answer with one hundred percent accuracy" (Dewey 1916, p. 160).

Although learning experiences may be described in isolation, education for Dewey consisted in the cumulative and unending acquisition, combination, and reordering of such experiences. Just as a tree does not grow by having new branches and leaves wired to it each spring, so educational growth does not consist in mechanically adding information, skills, or even educative experiences to students in grade after grade. Rather, educational growth consists in combining past experiences with present experiences in order to receive and understand future experiences. To grow, the individual must continually reorganize and reformulate past experiences in the light of new experiences in a cohesive fashion.

School and Life

Ideas and experiences which are not woven into the fabric of growing experience and knowledge but remain isolated seemed to Dewey a waste of precious natural resources. The dichotomy of in-school and out-of-school experiences he considered especially wasteful, as he indicated as early as 1899 in The School and Society:

From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school in any complete and free way within the school itself; while on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning in school. That is the isolation of the school - its isolation from life. When the child gets into the schoolroom he has to put out of his mind a large part of the ideas, interests and activities that predominate in his home and neighborhood. So the school being unable to utilize this everyday experience, sets painfully to work on another tack and by a variety of [artificial] means, to arouse in the child an interest in school studies …. [Thus there remains a] gapexisting between the everyday experiences of the child and the isolated material supplied in such large measure in the school. (1956, pp. 75 - 76)

To bridge this chasm between school and life, Dewey advocated a method of teaching which began with the everyday experience of the child. Dewey maintained that unless the initial connection was made between school activities and the life experiences of the child, genuine learning and growth would be impossible. Nevertheless, he was careful to point out that while the experiential familiar was the natural and meaningful place to begin learning, it was more importantly the "intellectual starting point for moving out into the unknown and not an end in itself" (1916, p. 212).

To further reduce the distance between school and life, Dewey urged that the school be made into an embryonic social community which simplified but resembled the social life of the community at large. A society, he reasoned, "is a number of people held together because they are working along common lines, in a common spirit, and with reference to common aims. The common needs and aims demand a growing interchange of thought and growing unity of sympathetic feeling." The tragic weakness of the schools of his time was that they were endeavoring "to prepare future members of the social order in a medium in which the conditions of the social spirit [were] eminently wanting" (1956, pp. 14 - 15).

Thus Dewey affirmed his fundamental belief in the two-sidedness of the educational process. Neither the psychological nor the sociological purpose of education could be neglected if evil results were not to follow. To isolate the school from life was to cut students off from the psychological ties which make learning meaningful; not to provide a school environment which prepared students for life in society was to waste the resources of the school as a socializing institution.

Democracy and Education

Dewey recognized that the major instrument of human learning is language, which is itself a social product and is learned through social experiences. He saw that in providing a pool of common meanings for communication, the language of each society becomes the repository of the society's ideals, values, beliefs, and accumulated knowledge. To transmit the contents of the language to the young and to initiate the young in the ways of civilized life was for Dewey the primary function of the school as an institution of society. But, he argued, a way of life cannot be transmitted by words alone. Essential to acquiring the spirit of a way of life is immersion in ways of living.

More specifically, Dewey thought that in a democratic society the school should provide students with the opportunity to experience democracy in action. For Dewey, democracy was more than a form of government; it was a way of living which went beyond politics, votes, and laws to pervade all aspects of society. Dewey recognized that every social group, even a band of thieves, is held together by certain common interests, goals, values, and meanings, and he knew that every such group also comes into contact with other groups. He believed, however, that the extent to which democracy has been attained in any society can be measured by the extent to which differing groups share similar values, goals, and interests and interact freely and fruitfully with each other.

A democratic society, therefore, is one in which barriers of any kind - class, race, religion, color, politics, or nationality - among groups are minimized, and numerous meanings, values, interests, and goals are held in common. In a democracy, according to Dewey, the schools must act to ensure that each individual gets an opportunity to escape from the limitations of the social group in which he was born, to come into contact with a broader environment, and to be freed from the effects of economic inequalities. The schools must also provide an environment in which individuals may share in determining and achieving their common purposes in learning so that in contact with each other the students may recognize their common humanity: "The emphasis must be put upon whatever binds people together in cooperative human pursuits … and the fuller, freer, intercourse of all human beings with one another …. [This] ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education" (Dewey, 1916, p. 98).

Dewey's belief in democracy and in the schools' ability to provide a staging platform for social progress pervades all his work but is perhaps most clearly stated in his early Pedagogic Creed:

I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. All reforms which rest simply upon the enactment of law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile …. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulateand form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move …. Educationthus conceived marks the most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience. (1964, pp. 437 - 438)

Perhaps it was with these ideas in mind that Dewey was prompted to equate education with philosophy, for he felt that a deep knowledge of man and nature was not only the proper goal of education but the eternal quest of the philosopher: "If we are willing to conceive of education as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and fellow men, philosophy may even be defined as the general theory of education" (1916, p. 328).

Bibliography

Archambault, Reginald D., ed. 1964. John Dewey on Education. New York: Modern Library.

Archambault, Reginald D., ed. 1966. Dewey on Education: Appraisals of Dewey's Influence on American Education. New York: Random House.

Cremin, Lawrence A. 1961. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876 - 1957. New York: Knopf.

Dewey, John. 1882a. "The Metaphysical Assumptions of Materialism." Journal of Speculative Philosophy 16:208 - 213.

Dewey, John. 1882b. "The Pantheism of Spinoza." Journal of Speculative Philosophy 16:249 - 257.

Dewey, John. 1883. "Knowledge and the Relativity of Feeling." Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17:56 - 70.

Dewey, John. 1887. Psychology. New York: Harper. Dewey, John. 1902. The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dewey, John. 1929. My Pedagogic Creed (1897). Washington, DC: Progressive Education Association.

Dewey, John. 1933. How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process (1910), revised edition. Boston: Heath.

Dewey, John. 1938. Experience and Education. New York: Macmillan.

Dewey, John. 1961. Democracy and Education (1916). New York: Macmillan.

Dewey, John. 1956. The Child and the Curriculum and The School and Society. Chicago: Phoenix.

Dewey, John. 1960. "From Absolutism to Experimentalism." On Experience, Nature, and Freedom. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.

Dewey, John, and Bentley, Arthur F. 1949. Knowing and the Known. Boston: Beacon.

Thomas, Milton H. 1962. John Dewey: A Centennial Bibliography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

— JONAS F. SOLTIS

A philosopher and educational reformer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a philosopher, Dewey followed pragmatism, and its practical orientation carried over into his educational ideas, which became the basis of progressive education.

Quotes:

"Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself."

"Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live."

"Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning."

"Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis."

"Luck, bad if not good, will always be with us. But it has a way of favoring the intelligent and showing its back to the stupid."

"Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination."

See more famous quotes by John Dewey

For the structural geologist, see John Frederick Dewey.

John Dewey

Dewey in 1902
Born	October 20, 1859(1859-10-20) Burlington, Vermont
Died	June 1, 1952(1952-06-01) (aged 92) New York
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Pragmatism
Main interests	Philosophy of education, Epistemology, Journalism, Ethics
Notable ideas	Reflective Thinking[1] American Association of University Professors Inquiry into Moscow show trials about Trotsky Educational progressivism
Influenced by Plato · Rousseau · Kant · Hegel · Peirce · James · Ladd  · Ward · Wundt
Influenced Veblen · Santayana · Kaplan · Hu Shih · Hook · Young radicals · Greene · Putnam · Chomsky  · Habermas · Rorty · West · Durkheim

John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology. He was a major representative of progressive education and liberalism.^[2][3]

Although Dewey is known best for his publications concerning education, he also wrote about many other topics, including experience, nature, art, logic, inquiry, democracy, and ethics.

In his advocacy of democracy, Dewey considered two fundamental elements—schools and civil society—as being major topics needing attention and reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality. Dewey asserted that complete democracy was to be obtained not just by extending voting rights but also by ensuring that there exists a fully formed public opinion, accomplished by effective communication among citizens, experts, and politicians, with the latter being accountable for the policies they adopt.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Life and works 2 Functional psychology 3 Pragmatism and instrumentalism 3.1 Epistemology 4 Logic and method 4.1 Aesthetics 5 On democracy 6 On education 7 On journalism 8 On humanism 9 Social and political activism 10 Other interests 11 Criticism 12 Academic awards 13 Honors 14 Publications 15 Works about Dewey 16 See also 17 References 18 External links

Life and works

Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, to a family of modest means.^[4] Like his older brother, Davis Rich Dewey, he attended the University of Vermont, from which he graduated (Phi Beta Kappa)^[5] in 1879. A significant professor of Dewey's at the University of Vermont was Henry A. P. Torrey, the son-in-law and nephew of former University of Vermont president Joseph Torrey. Dewey studied privately with Torrey between his graduation from Vermont and his enrollment at Johns Hopkins University.^[6][7]

After two years as a high-school teacher in Oil City, Pennsylvania and one teaching elementary school in the small town of Charlotte Vermont, Dewey decided that he was unsuited for employment in primary or secondary education. After studying with George Sylvester Morris, Charles Sanders Peirce, Herbert Baxter Adams, and G. Stanley Hall, Dewey received his Ph.D. from the School of Arts & Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. In 1884, he accepted a faculty position at the University of Michigan (1884–88 and 1889–94) with the help of George Sylvester Morris. His unpublished and now lost dissertation was titled "The Psychology of Kant."

In 1894 Dewey joined the newly founded University of Chicago (1894–1904) where he developed his belief in an empirically based theory of knowledge, becoming associated with the newly emerging Pragmatic philosophy. His time at the University of Chicago resulted in four essays collectively entitled Thought and its Subject-Matter, which was published with collected works from his colleagues at Chicago under the collective title Studies in Logical Theory (1903). During that time Dewey also initiated the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where he was able to actualize the pedagogical beliefs that provided material for his first major work on education, The School and Social Progress (1899). Disagreements with the administration ultimately caused his resignation from the University, and soon thereafter he relocated near the East Coast. In 1899, Dewey was elected president of the American Psychological Association. From 1904 until his retirement in 1930 he was professor of philosophy at both Columbia University and Columbia University's Teachers College.^[8] In 1905 he became president of the American Philosophical Association. He was a longtime member of the American Federation of Teachers.

Along with the historian Charles A. Beard, economists Thorstein Veblen and James Harvey Robinson, Dewey is one of the founders of The New School. Dewey's most significant writings were "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896), a critique of a standard psychological concept and the basis of all his further work; Democracy and Education (1916), his celebrated work on progressive education; Human Nature and Conduct (1922), a study of the function of habit in human behavior; The Public and its Problems (1927), a defense of democracy written in response to Walter Lippmann's The Phantom Public (1925); Experience and Nature (1925), Dewey's most "metaphysical" statement; Art as Experience (1934), Dewey's major work on aesthetics; A Common Faith (1934), a humanistic study of religion originally delivered as the Dwight H. Terry Lectureship at Yale; Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), a statement of Dewey's unusual conception of logic; Freedom and Culture (1939), a political work examining the roots of fascism; and Knowing and the Known (1949), a book written in conjunction with Arthur F. Bentley that systematically outlines the concept of trans-action, which is central to his other works. While each of these works focuses on one particular philosophical theme, Dewey included his major themes in most of what he published. He published more than 700 articles in 140 journals, and approximately 40 books.

Reflecting his immense influence on 20th-century thought, Hilda Neatby, in 1953, wrote "Dewey has been to our age what Aristotle was to the later middle ages, not a philosopher, but the philosopher."^[9]

Dewey was first married to Alice Chipman. They had six children.^[10] His second wife was Roberta Lowitz Grant.^[11]

The United States Postal Service honored Dewey with a Prominent Americans series 30¢ postage stamp.

Functional psychology

See also: History of psychology

At University of Michigan, Dewey published his first two books, Psychology (1887), and Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding (1888), both of which expressed Dewey's early commitment to British neo-Hegelianism. In Psychology, Dewey attempted a synthesis between idealism and experimental science.^[12]

While still professor of philosophy at Michigan, Dewey and his junior colleagues, James Hayden Tufts and George Herbert Mead, together with his student James Rowland Angell, all influenced strongly by the recent publication of William James' Principles of Psychology (1890), began to reformulate psychology, emphasizing the social environment on the activity of mind and behaviour rather than the physiological psychology of Wundt and his followers.

By 1894, Dewey had joined Tufts, with whom he would later write Ethics (1908), at the recently founded University of Chicago and invited Mead and Angell to follow him, the four men forming the basis of the so-called "Chicago group" of psychology.

Their new style of psychology, later dubbed functional psychology, had a practical emphasis on action and application. In Dewey's article "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" which appeared in Psychological Review in 1896, he reasons against the traditional stimulus-response understanding of the reflex arc in favor of a "circular" account in which what serves as "stimulus" and what as "response" depends on how one considers the situation, and defends the unitary nature of the sensory motor circuit. While he does not deny the existence of stimulus, sensation, and response, he disagreed that they were separate, juxtaposed events happening like links in a chain. He developed the idea that there is a coordination by which the stimulation is enriched by the results of previous experiences. The response is modulated by sensorial experience.

Dewey was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1899.

John Dewey's USA Stamp

In 1984, the American Psychological Association announced that Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878–1972) had become the first psychologist to be commemorated on a United States postage stamp. However, psychologists Gary Brucato Jr. and John D. Hogan later made the case that this distinction actually belonged to John Dewey, who had been celebrated on an American stamp 17 years earlier. While some psychology historians consider Dewey more of a philosopher than a bona fide psychologist,^[13] the authors noted that Dewey was a founding member of the A.P.A., served as the A.P.A.'s eighth President in 1899, and was the author of an 1896 article on the reflex arc which is now considered a basis of American functional psychology.^[14]

Dewey also expressed interest in work in the psychology of visual perception performed by Dartmouth research professor Adelbert Ames, Jr. He had great trouble with listening, however, because it is known Dewey could not distinguish musical pitches - in other words was tone deaf.^[15]

Pragmatism and instrumentalism

Although Dewey referred to his philosophy as "instrumentalism" rather than pragmatism, he was one of the three major figures in American pragmatism, along with Charles Sanders Peirce, who invented the term, and William James, who popularized it. Dewey worked from strongly Hegelian influences, unlike James, whose intellectual lineage was primarily British, drawing particularly on empiricist and utilitarian ideas.^[16] Neither was Dewey so pluralist or relativist as James. He stated that value was a function not of whim nor purely of social construction, but a quality situated in events ("nature itself is wistful and pathetic, turbulent and passionate" (Experience and Nature).

James also stated that experimentation (social, cultural, technological, philosophical) could be used as an approximate arbiter of truth. For example he felt that, for many people who lacked "over-belief" of religious concepts, human life was superficial and rather uninteresting, and that while no one religious belief could be demonstrated as the correct one, we are all responsible for making a gamble on one or another theism, atheism, monism, etc. Dewey, in contrast, while honoring the important function that religious institutions and practices played in human life, rejected belief in any static ideal, such as a personal god. Dewey felt that only scientific method could reliably increase human good.

Of the idea of God, Dewey said, "it denotes the unity of all ideal ends arousing us to desire and actions."^[17]

As with the reemergence of progressive philosophy of education, Dewey's contributions to philosophy as such (he was, after all, much more a professional philosopher than an educator) have also reemerged with the reassessment of pragmatism, beginning in the late 1970s, by philosophers like Richard Rorty, Richard J. Bernstein and Hans Joas.

Because of his process-oriented and sociologically conscious opinion of the world and knowledge, his theory is considered sometimes as a useful alternative to both modern and postmodern theory. Dewey's non-foundational method pre-dates postmodernism by more than half a century. Recent exponents (like Rorty) have not always remained faithful to Dewey's original ideas, though this itself is completely consistent with Dewey's own usage of other writers and with his own philosophy— for Dewey, past doctrines always require reconstruction in order to remain useful for the present time.

Dewey's philosophy has had other names than "pragmatism". He has been called an instrumentalist, an experimentalist, an empiricist, a functionalist, and a naturalist. The term "transactional" may better describe his views, a term emphasized by Dewey in his later years to describe his theories of knowledge and experience.

Epistemology

Main article: Knowing and the Known

The terminology problem in the fields of epistemology and logic is partially due, according to Dewey and Bentley,^[18] to inefficient and imprecise use of words and concepts that reflect three historic levels of organization and presentation.^[19] In the order of chronological appearance, these are:

• Self-Action: Prescientific concepts regarded humans, animals, and things as possessing powers of their own which initiated or caused their actions.

• Interaction: as described by Newton, where things, living and inorganic, are balanced against something in a system of interaction, for example, the third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
• Transaction: where modern systems of descriptions and naming are employed to deal with multiple aspects and phases of action without any attribution to ultimate, final, or independent entities, essences, or realities.

A series of characterizations of Transactions indicate the wide range of considerations involved.^[20]

Logic and method

Dewey sees paradox in contemporary logical theory. Proximate subject matter garners general agreement and advance, while the ultimate subject matter of logic generates unremitting controversy. In other words, he challenges confident logicians to answer the question of the truth of logical operators. Do they function merely as abstractions (e.g., pure mathematics) or do they connect in some essential way with their objects, and therefore alter or bring them to light?^[21]

Logical positivism also figured in Dewey's thought. About the movement he wrote that it "eschews the use of 'propositions' and 'terms', substituting 'sentences' and 'words'." ("General Theory of Propositions", in Logic: The Theory of Inquiry) He welcomes this changing of referents "in as far as it fixes attention upon the symbolic structure and content of propositions." However, he registers a small complaint against the use of "sentence" and "words" in that without careful interpretation the act or process of transposition "narrows unduly the scope of symbols and language, since it is not customary to treat gestures and diagrams (maps, blueprints, etc.) as words or sentences." In other words, sentences and words, considered in isolation, do not disclose intent, which may be inferred or "adjudged only by means of context."^[21]

Yet Dewey was not entirely opposed to modern logical trends. Concerning traditional logic, he states:

"Aristotelian logic, which still passes current nominally, is a logic based upon the idea that qualitative objects are existential in the fullest sense. To retain logical principles based on this conception along with the acceptance of theories of existence and knowledge based on an opposite conception is not, to say the least, conductive to clearness – a consideration that has a good deal to do with existing dualism between traditional and the newer relational logics.

—(Qualitative Thought 1930)

Louis Menand argues in The Metaphysical Club that Jane Addams had been critical of Dewey's emphasis on antagonism in the context of a discussion of the Pullman strike of 1894. In a later letter to his wife, Dewey confessed that Addams' argument was

"the most magnificent exhibition of intellectual & moral faith I ever saw. She converted me internally, but not really, I fear.... When you think that Miss Addams does not think this as a philosophy, but believes it in all her senses & muscles-- Great God... I guess I'll have to give it [all] up & start over again."

He went on to add,

"I can see that I have always been interpreting dialectic wrong end up, the unity as the reconciliation of opposites, instead of the opposites as the unity in its growth, and thus translated the physical tension into a moral thing... I don't know as I give the reality of this at all,... it seems so natural & commonplace now, but I never had anything take hold of me so."^[22]

In a letter to Addams herself, Dewey wrote, clearly influenced by his conversation with her:

"Not only is actual antagonizing bad, but the assumption that there is or may be antagonism is bad-- in fact, the real first antagonism always comes back to the assumption."

Aesthetics

Main article: Art as Experience

Art as Experience (1934) is Dewey's major writing on aesthetics. It is, according to his place in the Pragmatist tradition that emphasizes community, a study of the individual art object as embedded in (and inextricable from) the experiences of a local culture. Dewey attempted to justify the idiosyncratic collection of modern art that was assembled by the wealthy Albert C. Barnes at the Barnes Foundation. See his Experience and Nature for an extended discussion of 'Experience' in Dewey's philosophy.

On democracy

The overriding theme of Dewey's works was his profound belief in democracy, be it in politics, education or communication and journalism. As Dewey himself stated in 1888, while still at the University of Michigan, "Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous."^[23]

With respect to technological developments in a democracy:

"Persons do not become a society by living in physical proximity any more than a man ceases to be socially influenced by being so many feet or miles removed from others"

—John Dewey from Andrew Feenberg's "Community in the Digital Age"

His work on democracy influenced one of his students, Dr Ambedkar, who later went on to become one of the founding fathers of independent India.^[24]

On education

Main article: Democracy and Education

Dewey's educational theories were presented in My Pedagogic Creed (1897), The School and Society (1900), The Child and the Curriculum (1902), Democracy and Education (1916) and Experience and Education (1938). Throughout these writings, several recurrent themes ring true; Dewey continually argues that education and learning are social and interactive processes, and thus the school itself is a social institution through which social reform can and should take place. In addition, he believed that students thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum, and all students should have the opportunity to take part in their own learning.

The ideas of democracy and social reform are continually discussed in Dewey’s writings on education. Dewey makes a strong case for the importance of education not only as a place to gain content knowledge, but also as a place to learn how to live. In his eyes, the purpose of education should not revolve around the acquisition of a pre-determined set of skills, but rather the realization of one’s full potential and the ability to use those skills for the greater good. He notes that "to prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities" (1897, p. 6).^[25] In addition to helping students realize their full potential, Dewey goes on to acknowledge that education and schooling are instrumental in creating social change and reform. He notes that "education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction" (1897, p. 16).

In addition to his ideas regarding what education is and what effect it should have on society, Dewey also had specific notions regarding how education should take place within the classroom. In The Child and the Curriculum (1902), Dewey discusses two major conflicting schools of thought regarding educational pedagogy. The first is centered on the curriculum and focuses almost solely on the subject matter to be taught. Dewey argues that the major flaw in this methodology is the inactivity of the student; within this particular framework, "the child is simply the immature being who is to be matured; he is the superficial being who is to be deepened" (1902, p. 13).^[26] He argues that in order for education to be most effective, content must be presented in a way that allows the student to relate the information to prior experiences, thus deepening the connection with this new knowledge.

At the same time, Dewey was alarmed by many of the "child-centered" excesses of educational-school pedagogues who claimed to be his followers, and he argued that too much reliance on the child could be equally detrimental to the learning process. In this second school of thought, "we must take our stand with the child and our departure from him. It is he and not the subject-matter which determines both quality and quantity of learning" (Dewey, 1902, p. 13-14). According to Dewey, the potential flaw in this line of thinking is that it minimizes the importance of the content as well as the role of the teacher.

In order to rectify this dilemma, Dewey advocated for an educational structure that strikes a balance between delivering knowledge while also taking into account the interests and experiences of the student. He notes that "the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process. Just as two points define a straight line, so the present standpoint of the child and the facts and truths of studies define instruction" (Dewey, 1902, p. 16). It is through this reasoning that Dewey became one of the most famous proponents of hands-on learning or experiential education, which is related to, but not synonymous with experiential learning. He argued that "if knowledge comes from the impressions made upon us by natural objects, it is impossible to procure knowledge without the use of objects which impress the mind" (Dewey, 1916/2009, p. 217-218).^[27] Dewey’s ideas went on to influence many other influential experiential models and advocates. Many researchers even credit him with the influence of Project Based Learning (PBL) which places students in the active role of researchers.

Dewey not only re-imagined the way that the learning process should take place, but also the role that the teacher should play within that process. According to Dewey, the teacher should not be one to stand at the front of the room doling out bits of information to be absorbed by passive students. Instead, the teacher’s role should be that of facilitator and guide. As Dewey (1897) explains it:

The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences (p. 9).

Thus the teacher becomes a partner in the learning process, guiding students to independently discover meaning within the subject area. This philosophy has become an increasingly popular idea within present-day teacher preparatory programs.

As well as his very active and direct involvement in setting up educational institutions such as the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (1896) and The New School for Social Research (1919), many of Dewey's ideas influenced the founding of Bennington College and Goddard College in Vermont, where he served on the Board of Trustees. Dewey's works and philosophy also held great influence in the creation of the short-lived Black Mountain College in North Carolina, an experimental college focused on interdisciplinary study, and whose faculty included Buckminster Fuller, Willem de Kooning, Charles Olson, Franz Kline, Robert Duncan, and Robert Creeley, among others. Black Mountain College was the locus of the "Black Mountain Poets" a group of avant-garde poets closely linked with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance.

On journalism

Main article: The Public and its Problems

Since the mid-1980s, Deweyan ideas have experienced revival as a major source of inspiration for the public journalism movement. Dewey's definition of "public," as described in The Public and its Problems, has profound implications for the significance of journalism in society. As suggested by the title of the book, his concern was of the transactional relationship between publics and problems. Also implicit in its name, public journalism seeks to orient communication away from elite, corporate hegemony toward a civic public sphere. "The 'public' of public journalists is Dewey's public."

Dewey gives a concrete definition to the formation of a public. Publics are spontaneous groups of citizens who share the indirect effects of a particular action. Anyone affected by the indirect consequences of a specific action will automatically share a common interest in controlling those consequences, i.e., solving a common problem.^[28]
Since every action generates unintended consequences, publics continuously emerge, overlap, and disintegrate.

In The Public and its Problems, Dewey presents a rebuttal to Walter Lippmann’s treatise on the role of journalism in democracy. Lippmann’s model was a basic transmission model in which journalists took information given to them by experts and elites, repackaged that information in simple terms, and transmitted the information to the public, whose role was to react emotionally to the news. In his model, Lippmann supposed that the public was incapable of thought or action, and that all thought and action should be left to the experts and elites.

Dewey refutes this model by assuming that politics is the work and duty of each individual in the course of his daily routine. The knowledge needed to be involved in politics, in this model, was to be generated by the interaction of citizens, elites, experts, through the mediation and facilitation of journalism. In this model, not just the government is accountable, but the citizens, experts, and other actors as well.

Dewey also said that journalism should conform to this ideal by changing its emphasis from actions or happenings (choosing a winner of a given situation) to alternatives, choices, consequences, and conditions, in order to foster conversation and improve the generation of knowledge. Journalism would not just produce a static product that told what had already happened, but the news would be in a constant state of evolution as the public added value by generating knowledge. The "audience" would end, to be replaced by citizens and collaborators who would essentially be users, doing more with the news than simply reading it. Concerning his effort to change journalism, he wrote in The Public and its Problems: "Till the Great Society is converted in to a Great Community, the Public will remain in eclipse. Communication can alone create a great community" (Dewey, p. 142).

Dewey believed that communication creates a great community, and citizens who participate actively with public life contribute to that community. "The clear consciousness of a communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of democracy." (The Public and its Problems, p. 149). This Great Community can only occur with "free and full intercommunication." (p. 211) Communication can be understood as journalism.

On humanism

Dewey participated with a variety of humanist activities from the 1930s into the 1950s, which included sitting on the advisory board of Charles Francis Potter's First Humanist Society of New York (1929); being one of the original 34 signatories of the first Humanist Manifesto (1933) and being elected an honorary member of the Humanist Press Association (1936).^[29]

His opinion of humanism is best summarised in his own words from an article titled "What Humanism Means to Me", published in the June 1930 edition of Thinker 2:

"What Humanism means to me is an expansion, not a contraction, of human life, an expansion in which nature and the science of nature are made the willing servants of human good." — John Dewey, "What Humanism Means to Me"^[30]

Social and political activism

As a major advocate for academic freedom, in 1935 Dewey, together with Albert Einstein and Alvin Johnson, became a member of the United States section of the International League for Academic Freedom,^[31] and in 1940, together with Horace M Kallen, edited a series of articles related to the infamous Bertrand Russell Case.

As well as being active in defending the independence of teachers, and opposing a communist takeover of the New York Teachers' Union,^{[citation needed]} Dewey was involved in the organization that eventually became the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

He directed the famous Dewey Commission held in Mexico in 1937, which cleared Leon Trotsky of the charges made against him by Joseph Stalin,^[32] and marched for women's rights, among many other causes.

In 1950, Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Benedetto Croce, Karl Jaspers, and Jacques Maritain agreed to act as honorary chairmen of the Congress for Cultural Freedom.^[33]

Other interests

Dewey's interests and writings included many topics, and according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "a substantial part of his published output consisted of commentary on current domestic and international politics, and public statements on behalf of many causes. (He is probably the only philosopher in this encyclopedia to have published both on the Treaty of Versailles and on the value of displaying art in post offices.)"^[34]

In 1917, Dewey met F. M. Alexander in New York City and later wrote introductions to Alexander's Man's Supreme Inheritance (1918), Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual (1923) and The Use of the Self (1932). Alexander's influence is referenced in "Human Nature and Conduct" and "Experience and Nature."^[35]

As well as his contacts with people mentioned elsewhere in the article, he also maintained correspondence with Henri Bergson, William M. Brown, Martin Buber, George S. Counts, William Rainey Harper, Sidney Hook, and George Santayana.

Criticism

Dewey is considered the epitome of liberalism by many historians,^[36][37] and sometimes was portrayed as "dangerously radical."^[38] Meanwhile, Dewey was critiqued strongly by American communists because he argued against Stalinism and had philosophical differences with Marx, despite identifying himself as a democratic socialist.^[39]

Historians have examined his religious beliefs. Biographer Steven C. Rockefeller, traced Dewey's democratic convictions to his childhood attendance at the Congregational Church, with its strong proclamation of social ideals and the Social Gospel.^[40] However, historian Edward A. White suggested in Science and Religion in American Thought (1952) that Dewey's work had led to the 20th century rift between religion and science.

Academic awards

• Copernican Citation (1943)
• Doctor "honoris causa" – University of Oslo (1946)
• Doctor "honoris causa" – University of Pennsylvania (1946)
• Doctor "honoris causa" – Yale University (1951)
• Doctor "honoris causa" – University of Rome (1951)

Honors

• John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, New York is named after him.

Publications

Besides publishing prolifically himself, Dewey also sat on the boards of scientific publications such as Sociometry (advisory board, 1942) and Journal of Social Psychology (editorial board, 1942), as well as having posts at other publications such as New Leader (contributing editor, 1949).

The following publications by John Dewey are referenced or mentioned in this article. A more complete list of his publications may be found at List of publications by John Dewey.

• "The New Psychology" Andover Review, 2, 278-289 (1884)
• Psychology (1887)
• Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding (1888)
• "The Ego as Cause" Philosophical Review, 3,337-341. (1894)
• "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896)
• "My Pedagogic Creed" (1897)
• The School and Society (1900)
• The Child and the Curriculum (1902)
• "The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism" (1905)
• Moral Principles in Education (1909) The Riverside Press Cambridge Project Gutenberg
• How We Think (1910)
• German Philosophy and Politics (1915)
• Democracy and Education: an introduction to the philosophy of education (1916)
• Reconstruction in Philosophy (1919)
• Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology
• Experience and Nature (1925)
• The Public and its Problems (1927)
• The Quest for Certainty (1929)
• The Sources of a Science of Education (1929) The Kappa Delta Pi Lecture Series
• Individualism Old and New (1930)
• Philosophy and Civilization (1931)
• Ethics, second edition (with James Hayden Tufts) (1932)
• Art as Experience (1934)
• A Common Faith (1934)
• Liberalism and Social Action (1935)
• Experience and Education (1938)
• Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938)
• Freedom and Culture (1939)
• Theory of Valuation (1939). ISBN 0-226-57594-2
• Knowing and the Known (1949)

See also

• The Essential Dewey: Volumes 1 and 2. Edited by Larry Hickman and Thomas Alexander (1998). Indiana University Press
• The Philosophy of John Dewey Edited by John J. McDermott (1981). University of Chicago Press

Dewey's Complete Writings is available in 3 multi-volume sets (37 volumes in all) from Southern Illinois University Press:

• The Early Works: 1892-1898 (5 volumes)
• The Middle Works: 1899-1924 (15 volumes)
• The Later Works: 1925-1953 (17 volumes)
• Posthumous Works: 1956-2009

The Correspondence of John Dewey is available in 4 volumes via online subscription and also in TEI format for university servers. (The CD-ROM has been discontinued).

Works about Dewey

• Alexander, Thomas. John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature (1987) ^[41] SUNY Press
• Boisvert, Raymond. John Dewey: Rethinking Our Time. (1997) ^[42] SUNY Press
• Campbell, James. Understanding John Dewey: Nature and Cooperative Intelligence. (1995) Open Court Publishing Company
• Caspary, William R. Dewey on Democracy (2000). Cornell University Press.
• Crick, Nathan. Democracy & Rhetoric: John Dewey on the Arts of Becoming (2010) University of South Carolina Press.
• Fishman, Stephen M. and Lucille McCarthy. John Dewey and the Philosophy and Practice of Hope (2007). University of Illinois Press.
• Garrison, Jim. Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, 2010. Original published 1997 by Teachers College Press.
• Good, James (2006). A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John Dewey. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-1061-4. 
• Hickman, Larry A. John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology. (1992) Indiana University Press.
• Hook, S. John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait (1939)
• Kannegiesser, H. J. "Knowledge and Science" (1977) The Macmillan Company of Australia PTY Ltd
• Martin, Jay. The Education of John Dewey. (2003) ^[43] Columbia University Press
• Pring, Richard (2007). John Dewey: Continuum Library of Educational Thought. Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-8403-4. 
• Putnam, Hilary. "Dewey's Logic: Epistemology as Hypothesis". In Words and Life, ed. James Conant. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
• Rockefeller, Stephen. John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism. (1994) ^[44] Columbia University Press
• Rogers, Melvin. The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy (2008). Columbia University Press.^[45]
• Roth, Robert J. John Dewey and Self-Realization. (1962). Prentice Hall
• Rorty, Richard. "Dewey's Metaphysics". In The Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays 1972-1980. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982.
• Rud, A. G., Garrison, Jim, and Stone, Lynda (eds.) John Dewey at 150: Reflections for a New Century. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2009.
• Ryan, Alan. John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism. (1995) ^[46] W.W. Norton.
• Seigfried, Charlene Haddock, (ed.). Feminist Interpretations of John Dewey (2001) ^[47] Pennsylvania State University Press
• Shook, John. Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality. (2000) ^[48] The Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy
• Sleeper, R.W. The Necessity of Pragmatism: John Dewey's Conception of Philosophy. Introduction by Tom Burke. (2001) ^[49] University of Illinois Press.
• Talisse, Robert B. A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy (2007) Routledge
• Westbrook, Robert B. John Dewey and American Democracy. (1991) ^[50] Cornell University Press. online edition, the standard scholarly biography
• White, Morton. The Origin of Dewey's Instrumentalism. (1943). Columbia University Press.

See also

• List of American philosophers
• Center for Dewey Studies
• Democratic education
• John Dewey Society
• Inquiry-based science
• Laboratory school
• Learning by teaching
• League for Independent Political Action

References

1. ^ http://www.aacu.org/meetings/ppts/knefelkamppresentation.ppt
2. ^ Alan Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism, (1995) p 32
3. ^ Violas, Paul C.; Tozer, Steven; Senese, Guy B.. School and Society: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. p. 121. ISBN 0-07-298556-9. 
4. ^ Gutek, Gerald L.. Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education: A Biographical Introduction.. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc. pp. 338. ISBN 0-13-113809-X. 
5. ^ Who Belongs To Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Beta Kappa website, accessed Oct 4, 2009
6. ^ bio of Dewey from Bowling Green State University
7. ^ Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A History of Ideas in the United States (New York: Farrar, Staus and Giroux, 2002)
8. ^ New York Times edition of January 19, 1953, page 27
9. ^ Hilda M. Neatby, So Little for the Mind (Toronto: Clarke Irwin & Co. Ltd., 1953), pp.22-23.
10. ^ Biography at Muskingum College
11. ^ InteLex Past Masters series
12. ^ Field, Richard. John Dewey in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Northwest Missouri State University UTM.edu - The University of Tennessee at Martin Retrieved 29 August 2008. 
13. ^ Benjamin, L.T. (2003). "Why Can't Psychology Get a Stamp?". Journal of applied psychoanalytic studies 5 (4): 443–454. 
14. ^ Brucato, G. & Hogan, J.D. (1999, Spring). "Psychologists on postage stamps" The General Psychologist, 34(1):65
15. ^ Zeltner, Philip N.; John Dewey's Aesthetic Philosophy; p. 93 ISBN 90-6032-029-8
16. ^ Good (2006). A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John Dewey. Lexington Books.
17. ^ A Common Faith, p. 42 (LW 9:29).
18. ^ John Dewey, Arthur Bentley, (1949). Knowing and the Known. Beacon Press, Boston.
19. ^ John Dewey, Arthur Bentley, (1949). Knowing and the Known. Beacon Press, Boston, p107-109.
20. ^ John Dewey, Arthur Bentley, (1949). Knowing and the Known. Beacon Press, Boston, p121-139.
21. ^ ^{a b} "The Problem of Logical Subject Matter", in Logic: The Theory of Inquiry 1938
22. ^ Louis Menand. The Metaphysical Club p. 313
23. ^ Early Works, 1:128 (Southern Illinois University Press) op cited in Douglas R. Anderson, AAR, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 61, No. 2 (1993), p. 383
24. ^ Ambedkar, Bhimrao. Annihilation of castes. Critical Quest. pp. 64. ISBN 81-89524-21-6. 
25. ^ Dewey, J. (1897). My pedagogic creed. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books
26. ^ Dewey, J. (1902). The child and the curriculum. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books
27. ^ Dewey, J. (2009). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: WLC Books. (Original work published 1916)
28. ^ Dewey, J. 1927. The Public and its Problems. Henry Holt & Co., New York. pp 126.
29. ^ "John Dewey Chronology" 1934.04.08, 1936.03.12, 1940.09, and 1950.09.11.
30. ^ Italics in the original. "What Humanism Means to Me," first published in Thinker 2 (June 1930): 9-12, as part of a series. Dewey: Page lw.5.266 [The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953, The Electronic Edition]
31. ^ American Institute of Physics
32. ^ "Dewey Commission Report"
33. ^ "Origins of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1949-1950" CIA official web site
34. ^ "Dewey's Political Philosophy" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
35. ^ F. M. Alexander Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1923 ISBN 0-913111-11-2
36. ^ Ryan, John Dewey and the high tide of American liberalism
37. ^ William Paringer, John Dewey and the paradox of liberal reform (1990) p. 13
38. ^ William R. Caspary, Dewey on Democracy. (2000)
39. ^ Baird, Robert B Westbrook (1993). John Dewey and American Democracy. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-8111-2. 
40. ^ Stephen Rockefeller, John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism. (1994) p 13
41. ^ excerpt
42. ^ excerpt
43. ^ excerpt
44. ^ excerpt
45. ^ [1]
46. ^ excerpt
47. ^ excerpt
48. ^ excerpt
49. ^ excerpt
50. ^ excerpt

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Dewey

Wikisource has original works written by or about: John Dewey

Wikiversity has learning materials about John Dewey

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Dewey

• Center for Dewey Studies
  • John Dewey Papers, 1858-1970 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center
  • John Dewey Chronology at Southern Illinois University
• John Dewey Society
• Works by John Dewey at Project Gutenberg
• Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education hypertext from American Studies at the University of Virginia.
• Excerpts from Dewey, Experience and Nature (pdf file)
• Dewey, Impressions of Soviet Russia
• Information about John Dewey and F. Mathias Alexander
• John Dewey: His Life and Work 4-minute clip from a documentary film used primarily in higher education.
• More information about John Dewey and F. Mathias Alexander
• Article on Dewey's Moral Philosophy in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Article on Dewey's Political Philosophy in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Dewey page from Pragmatism Cybrary

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Persondata
Name	Dewey, John
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	October 20, 1859
Place of birth	Burlington, Vermont
Date of death	June 1, 1952
Place of death	New York

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