Who Dewey Was

John Dewey is the philosopher whose name is most often attached to the modern child-centred, problem-solving classroom. The school he founded in Chicago in 1896 set the working pattern for progressive education in the United States and abroad. The article traces his unusual career path from a Vermont high-school teacher to the founder of the progressive education movement and the most influential American philosopher of education in the twentieth century.

The early life

John Dewey was born in 1859 in Burlington, Vermont, and died in 1952. He lived through the American Civil War as a child, through the rise of industrial America in young adulthood, through both world wars in his maturity, and into the early years of the Cold War. His ninety-three years cover most of what made the modern United States, and his philosophy is built on the experience of trying to understand a country in continuous change.

He started his working life as a high-school teacher. This is worth noting. Most of the philosophers in this guide came to education from outside the classroom. Dewey came from inside it. He knew what teaching a room of teenagers actually involved before he started writing philosophy about it. The practical knowledge shows in everything he wrote about education.

He went to graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, then the leading research university in the United States. He studied philosophy. His doctoral dissertation was on Kantian psychology. The Kantian inheritance shows up later in his account of education as the formation of fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and fellow human beings. Dewey moved beyond Kant in important ways but never entirely left the Kantian framework behind.

Flashcard

What is unusual about John Dewey's path into the philosophy of education?

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Answer

He came from inside the classroom, having taught high school before becoming a philosopher

Most of the philosophers in this guide came to education from outside the classroom. Dewey knew what teaching a room of teenagers actually involved before he started writing philosophy about it. The practical knowledge shows in everything he wrote. His doctoral training at Johns Hopkins was in Kantian psychology, and the Kantian framework shows up in his later account of education as the formation of fundamental dispositions.

The Michigan years

Dewey’s first academic post was as an instructor at the University of Michigan. The Michigan years were less famous than what came after but were where his commitments started to take shape.

Two interests grew during this period. The first was social, political, and economic issues. Dewey moved away from the abstract philosophical questions of his graduate training toward questions about how societies should be organised, how political life should be conducted, and how economic arrangements should be designed. The progressive era in American politics was beginning around this time, and Dewey was reading and thinking alongside the reform movements of his country.

The second was a struggle with the issues of unity and religion. Dewey had been raised in a religious household but found himself unable to keep his earlier religious commitments as a serious philosopher. The struggle was not anti-religious in any simple sense; Dewey wrote later about the religious as a quality of human experience even after he had set aside the institutional religion of his upbringing. The struggle shaped his account of moral and emotional development in ways that show up throughout his educational writing.

These two interests, social-political reform and the search for a workable account of moral and spiritual life, would meet in his later work on education. Education, in Dewey’s mature view, is the place where individual moral and emotional development and social and political reform come together. A school that takes both seriously can be the engine of a better society and of better lives within it.

Flashcard

What two intellectual interests grew during Dewey's years at the University of Michigan?

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Answer

Social, political, and economic issues; and the struggle with unity and religion

Dewey moved from abstract philosophical questions to questions about how societies should be organised, against the backdrop of the early progressive era in American politics. He also struggled with the religious commitments of his upbringing, eventually setting aside institutional religion while keeping a sense of the religious as a quality of human experience. Both interests met later in his account of education.

Chicago and the Dewey School

The decisive years were the years at the University of Chicago. In 1894 Dewey became head of the department of Philosophy, Psychology, and Pedagogy. The unusual department combined three fields that Dewey would treat as a single connected inquiry: philosophy provided the foundations, psychology supplied the account of how minds develop, and pedagogy was the application of both to the actual work of teaching. The department was Dewey’s first real laboratory for thinking about education in a serious and systematic way.

The bigger laboratory came two years later. In 1896 Dewey founded the University Laboratory School, which became known as the Dewey School. The school was designed as a working experiment in pragmatist education. Dewey and his collaborators worked out ideas, tried them on real children, watched what happened, and revised. The school became the model for an entire generation of progressive schools across the United States.

Experimentalism, Dewey wrote later, became an essential part of his pedagogical philosophy. The Dewey School was the place where the experimentalism was actually practised. The school was not designed to deliver a predetermined Dewey curriculum; it was designed to test Dewey’s ideas alongside the ideas of his colleagues and to use the results to refine the philosophy. Many of the ideas that became famous in Dewey’s books (the school as social setting, learning by doing, the unity of intellectual and practical work) came out of the actual experience of running the school.

Dewey’s most famous methodological commitment, that inquiry was the best way to render human experience intelligent, was a working principle at the school. Children at the Dewey School learned by inquiring into real problems, working out hypotheses, testing them in practice, and refining their understanding through the results. This was the same method Dewey used as a philosopher in his own writing, and the Dewey School was the place where children practised it.

Dewey left Chicago in 1904 over a controversy about the administration of the Dewey School. The controversy was real and lasted years; biographers usually treat it as a turning point in Dewey’s career. He moved to Columbia University in New York, where he would spend the rest of his working life. Columbia at the time was a magnet for educators from around the world, partly because Dewey was there. The newly founded Journal of Philosophy at Columbia became a frequent forum for the discussion of his ideas. The international influence of Dewey’s pedagogy spread from this Columbia base in the decades that followed.

Flashcard

What was the Dewey School, and what role did it play in Dewey's career?

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Answer

The University Laboratory School Dewey founded in 1896 to test his pragmatist education ideas in practice

The school ran from 1896 to 1904 at the University of Chicago. It was designed as a working experiment in pragmatist education. Dewey and his collaborators tested ideas on real children, watched the results, and revised. Many of the ideas that became famous in Dewey’s later books (the school as social setting, learning by doing) came out of the actual practice of running this school. Dewey left in 1904 over an administrative controversy.

Why Dewey matters

Dewey ranks with the greatest thinkers of his age, or any age, in pedagogy, philosophy of mind, epistemology, logic, philosophy of science, and social and political theory. The breadth is unusual. A modern academic philosopher tends to specialise in one of these fields; Dewey wrote serious work in all of them. The fields were connected for him, and the connections shaped his educational writing in ways that purely educational theorists could not match.

The international following for his educational reforms was greater than the following for his instrumentalist philosophy. The distinction matters. Instrumentalism is the technical name for Dewey’s version of pragmatism, the view that ideas are instruments for solving problems and their truth is shown by how well they work. The instrumentalism is the philosophical foundation; the educational reforms are the application. Many educators around the world adopted the reforms without working through the foundation. The result was a worldwide influence on schools that did not always go through the philosophy.

This is part of why a B.Ed. student today still hears Dewey’s name often even where the underlying philosophy is no longer named. Phrases like child-centred education, learning by doing, the school as a community, project-based learning, and democratic classroom all trace back to Dewey, even when the people using them have not read him.

Flashcard

Why is John Dewey's influence on education broader than his influence on academic philosophy?

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Answer

Educators worldwide adopted his reforms without always working through his underlying instrumentalist philosophy

Instrumentalism is Dewey’s version of pragmatism: ideas are instruments for solving problems, and their truth is shown by how well they work. The instrumentalism is the philosophical foundation; the educational reforms are the application. Many educators adopted the reforms without the foundation. Phrases like child-centred education and learning by doing trace back to Dewey even when those using them have not read him.