JOHN DEWEY

A FOUNDER OF
PRAGMATISM
JOHN DEWEY

was born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1859, the

year when Charles Darwins Origin of Species
appeared.

became the leading proponent of Pragmatism

in education. Throughout the twentieth
century, his ideas have shaped philosophy of
education.
 His social philosophy would stress the significance of the
face-to-face community in which people shared common
concerns and problems. When he developed his social and
educational philosophy, his concept of social intelligence
embraced both the concept of the participatory community
and the application of the scientific method.
 He was a social reformer who believed that people had a
mission to make the earth a better place to live, by legislation
and education.

He attended the University of Vermont, where he received

his bachelors degree. He then taught school in Oil City,
Pennsylvania and later in rural Vermont.
 He pursued doctoral studies at Johns Hopkins University,
a graduate institution founded on the German research
model.

After receiving his doctorate, he joined the philosophy

department of the University of Michigan where he taught
from 1889 to 1894.
 In 1894, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago,
which under the leadership of William Rainey Harper, its
president. At Chicago, he served as head of the Department of
Philosophy, Psychology, and Education. This three disciplines,
then jointly organized in a single academic unit, held a special
interest for him, who studied and wrote on each of them. All
three areas focused, in his thought, on the special role of
education.
 His Chicago years, from 1894 to 1904, were especially
significant for his philosophical development and for his
educational experiment at the University Laboratory School.
His association with George Herbert Mead, a colleague in his
department, and his involvement in Jane Addamss Hull
House helped to shape his emerging Pragmatism.
 Among Meads ideas that were shared by Dewey were that:
1. democracy, as an ideal, required a public that was educated
to understand the social duties and responsibilities of political
life; and 2. morality should be applied to the problems of
daily life to personal, political, social, and educational
behavior.
 While at the University of Chicago, he established and
directed the Laboratory School from 1896 to 1904. His
Laboratory School, enrolling children from ages 4 to 14,
sought to provide experiences in cooperative and mutually
useful living through the activity method, which involved
play, construction, nature study, and self-expression.
 These activities were designed to stimulate and exercise
learners active reconstruction of their own experiences.
Through such activities the school would function as a
miniature community and an embryonic society. The
childrens individual tendencies were to be directed
toward cooperative living in the school community.
 True to his Experimentalist philosophy, his Laboratory
School was an experimental school in which theories about
education were tested.

He envisioned the schools function to be that of creating

new standards and ideals that would lead to a gradual
reformation of schooling.
 His experiment emphasized the social function of the
school. As a special social community, the complexity of
the social environment was reduced and simplified.

In 1904, Dewey left Chicago to join the Philosophy

Department at Columbia University, where he taught until
1930. He enjoyed an international reputation as a
philosopher, and he lectured in Japan, China and Mexico.
 He visited schools in Turkey and in the Soviet Union. A
prolific author, he wrote more than 1,000 articles and books
that influenced the course of American educational and social
philosophy.
 DEWEYS MAJOR PHILOSOPHICAL
AND EDUCATIONAL WORKS

The School and Society (1899) commented on industrialisms

impact on schooling and the need for schools to assume a larger
social function.

The Child and the Curriculum (1902) examined the teachers

role in relating the curriculum to the childs interest, readiness,
and stage of development.
 In 1910, his How We Think argued that thinking is
experimental in that it involves a series of problem-solving
episodes that occur as we attempt to survive and grow in an
environmental context.

Democracy and Education (1916) was his most complete

rendition of educational philosophy.
 Individualism, Old and New (1920) rejected the inherited
notion of rugged individualism as an archaic historic
residue.

Art as Experience (1934) he elaborated an aesthetic theory

that asserted that art was properly a public means of shared
expression and communication between the artist and the
perceiver of the art object.
 Although often called the father of progressive education,
his identification with progressive education must be carefully
considered. He agreed with many elements in progressive
education and rejected others especially the nave
romanticism of the Neo-Rousseaueans.
 Publication of many of Deweys educational writings coincided
with the progressive education movement, and similarities existed
between Dewey and the progressive reformers who opposed a static
conception of learning and schooling. Although Dewey and many
progressive educators agreed on the importance of experience,
continuity and the cultivation of the childs interests and needs,
Dewey challenged the sentimental romantic Neo-Rousseauean
progressives who dogmatically asserted child-centered doctrines.
 Experience and Education (1938) criticized progressive
educators for failing to elaborate a positive educational
philosophy based on experience.

Among Deweys other major books were Interest and Effort

in Education (1913), Human Nature and Conduct (1922), and
Freedom and Culture (1939).