Dewey, John

WORKS BY DEWEY

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

John Dewey (1859–1952), generally regarded as the most influential philosopher in American history, was born in Burlington, Vermont. After receiving his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1884, he taught at the University of Michigan (except for a year spent at the University of Minnesota) until 1894, when he moved to the University of Chicago.

Dewey was attracted to Chicago because pedagogy there was included in one department with philosophy and psychology. At Chicago he established an experimental elementary school, wrote The School and Society (1899), and became involved with Jane Addams’ Hull House. At this time Dewey was developing his pragmatic approach to the theory of mind and his “instrumentalist” theory of logic: his essay “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,” which had considerable influence on developments in psychology, appeared in 1896, and Studies in Logical Theory, a collection of essays by Dewey and some of his colleagues and students, appeared in 1903. The book was greeted by William James as the signal of the birth of a “Chicago school” of pragmatic philosophy.

In 1904 Dewey resigned his professorship at Chicago because he was displeased with the university administration’s actions toward the experimental school he headed. He moved to Columbia University as professor of philosophy, with additional teaching responsibilities at Teachers College. Dewey taught at Columbia until his retirement in 1929. During the 1930s he produced some of the most ambitious philosophical works of his career. He also continued to take part in a wide assortment of civic and political activities, the most dramatic of which was his service in 1937 as chairman of the unofficial commission that held public hearings in Mexico and found Leon Trotsky innocent of the charges made against him in the Moscow trials.

Intellectual influences. Dewey’s early intellectual attachments were to Hegel’s philosophy. Dewey’s New England upbringing had stressed the radical divisions that exist in man and the universe between body and soul, nature and God, the world and the self. He found these beliefs “an inward laceration.” Hegel’s philosophy, with its dialectical elimination of the presumed antitheses between matter and spirit, nature and the divine, and subject and object, offered release from these oppressive dualisms. Hegel’s influence on Dewey can be seen in Dewey’s lifelong polemic against all forms of dualism in philosophy, in his concept of individuality as a social product, in his tendency to identify freedom with rational self-realization, and in his view that logical and moral principles are not fixed, external standards to be imposed on human inquiry and conduct but are instead evolutionary phenomena that emerge within the actual course of human thinking and acting.

Over a period of fifteen years after leaving Johns Hopkins, however, Dewey drifted away from Hegel’s philosophy and eventually renounced it al-together. The theme that came to seem increasingly important to him was what he called “the intellectual scandal” involved in the separation of science from morals. Hegel’s abstract, metaphysical solution of this problem became increasingly uncongenial to Dewey, who desired to reformulate philosophical problems so that they implied clear alternative programs for social action. What Dewey described as his transition “from absolutism to experimentalism” was further aided by the pioneer work of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) in the development of a pragmatic theory of logic and by William James’s Psychology. Dewey’s own “pragmatism,” or “instrumentalism,” owes relatively little to James’s pragmatism but much to James’s biological approach to the problems of mind. The work of Dewey’s friend George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) also had considerable influence on Dewey’s philosophy. Dewey’s conceptions of the self, and of the genesis and function of such phenomena as “consciousness” and “conscience,” owe much to Mead’s work in social psychology and philosophy. Finally, Dewey’s thought is unintelligible except as a response to the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. Dewey’s theory of mind, his translation of Hegel’s categories into biological and cultural terms, his views on logic and morals, and his conception of the task of philosophy are all efforts to trace the implications of Darwin’s mode of thought.

With respect to the question of intellectual influences on him, Dewey’s own judgment, however, should be emphasized. He believed that most of the significant influences on his intellectual development came not from books but from personal associations and practical experience, particularly in education.

Instrumentalism. Throughout his career Dewey’s central interest was to repair moral and social beliefs and practices by encouraging the application of scientific methods and critical intelligence to them. Dewey believed that one of the principal obstacles to this was the traditional notion, embedded in common sense and defended and enshrined by philosophy, that “theory” is contemplative, passive, and unmarked by practical concerns and that “practice” is by its very nature not susceptible to intellectual formulation or control. The development of a logic of human inquiry that would reveal the underlying unity of “theory” and “practice” was therefore Dewey’s central intellectual enterprise.

According to Dewey the advent of modern experimental science had shown that theory and practice, far from being opposed, are in fact interdependent in successful scientific inquiry. Using such inquiry as a model, he formulated the view that general ideas are instruments for reconstructing “problematic situations.” An idea, in other words, is what is sometimes known as a “leading principle” or an “inference ticket”—a rule directing and regulating the movement of an inquiry or argument from one set of observations to another. The truth of an idea lies in its capacity to reorganize the materials of experience so that the problem that originally provoked reflection is resolved in accordance with the canons of disciplined inquiry. The power of an idea is measured by the novelty and significance for further inquiry of the questions it leads us to ask. Dewey thus rejected, or seemed to reject, the traditional “correspondence theory of truth,” according to which the truth of an idea is simply a matter of its correspondence to the external, independent reality to which it refers.

Dewey’s “instrumentalism” appears to involve, at the least, an overstatement, for if all ideas are simply rules for making inferences, then we are forced to the paradoxical conclusion that there are no general statements in the sciences that refer to anything external to human habits of thought. The emphasis of Dewey’s instrumentalism, nonetheless, was extremely useful in enhancing critical under-standing of science. It presented inquiry as a phase in the continuing readaptation of a social animal to its environment and portrayed general ideas as prescriptions for behavior, mental or physical, and as directives for action on the environment. It thus cast doubt on classic distinctions between theory and practice.

Theory of moral judgment. To establish still further the continuity of science and morals Dewey also undertook to show that moral judgments are subject to the same essential logic of inquiry as that of the sciences. Dewey’s argument, as developed, for example, in Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality (1903b) and Theory of Valuation (1939a), is that moral ideals are properly interpreted as hypotheses proposing that certain courses of action will resolve specified sets of difficulties. Moral ideals, therefore, like the general ideas of the sciences, are instruments for the solution of problems, and their validity is to be determined by a matter-of-fact examination of the consequences of acting on them, analogous to the procedure by which general ideas in the sciences achieve acceptance.

Dewey’s position is frequently criticized on the ground that he erased the distinction between factual statements and value judgments, a distinction on which the very conception of an objective science depends. The force of these accusations is weakened when it is seen that Dewey’s argument entails the denial of the normally accepted view that there is a hard and fast distinction between means and ends. Critics of Dewey frequently ask how, in Dewey’s terms, instrumental moral value can be ascribed to a course of action when he denied that there are in the last analysis any ends that have value for themselves. Dewey, however, rejected this question as irrelevant to the actual conditions under which moral choice takes place, for he believed that moral perplexities arise in specific contexts where certain established values are imperiled but where a host of other values, which might be questioned in other contexts, are not in fact in question. The problem of infinite regress is therefore not relevant to the practical contexts in which moral judgments are made; it implicitly introduces standards of demonstrative certainty that are not appropriate to this domain of thought.

The analyses of moral judgments that Dewey offered in different works were, however, not entirely consistent, and in the eyes of many critics he never successfully refuted the charge that he confused descriptive and prescriptive statements.

Critique of philosophy. Much of Dewey’s work consisted of polemics against “the classic tradition” in philosophy. The major effort of classic philosophy, he argued in such books as Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920) and The Quest for Certainty (1929), had been to give men a sense of surcease from surrounding perils they were helpless to over-come. Accordingly, the usual message of classic philosophy was that behind the everyday world of change and irrationality there is an unchanging and rational world, in the contemplation of which men may gain understanding and serenity. Thus, in Dewey’s view, philosophical “dualism” was essentially an instrument of conservatism and retreat. It was also, he argued, an expression of such aristocratic social prejudices as the distaste for manual labor. Although relatively few scholars accept Dewey’s picture of the history of philosophy, his placing of that history within a social context has been the source of a considerable reappraisal of the Western philosophical inheritance.

Philosophy of education. For Dewey the principal object of education was to instill in students the attitudes and habits conducive to the development of their capacity to solve problems. As he argued in Democracy and Education (1916a), this required that classroom emphasis be placed not on arrays of factual information or on inherited ideas presented as settled and accepted but on the intellectual methods by which such factual information or such ideas are discovered and reliably established. This view was further fortified by Dewey’s belief that objective attitudes toward moral and social questions require the rejection of absolutes and the cultivation of flexibility and tolerance. Moreover, Dewey argued that a democratic culture requires from its members a capacity to adapt to diverse circumstances and to cooperate as equals with men and women of many different sorts. Schools responsive to these democratic imperatives would therefore aim at training students in habits of free and constant inquiry, in capacities to learn quickly, and in attitudes of social fellow feeling and cooperation. In spelling out this prescription, Dewey laid great stress on the atmosphere of the classroom: he opposed rote learning, stressing in-stead the pedagogical desirability of “learning by doing” and of connecting the materials of formal school instruction with the child’s experiences out-side the classroom.

Dewey’s theories of education came to be widely adopted, and they were given a variety of interpretations by ardent disciples. In his short book Experience and Education (1938a), written toward the end of his life, Dewey took account of some of the varieties of “progressive education” that had been associated with his name and expressed his serious misgivings about them.

Conception of the social sciences. Dewey provided intellectual support for the view that the logic of inquiry in the natural sciences is applicable in its major features to the study of human affairs. However, although he argued that the social sciences could and should offer objective descriptions of facts, he also stressed that their progress as intellectual disciplines depended on the importance of the subjects they chose for study and on the refusal of social scientists to dodge controversial issues. He argued that adequate social inquiry, like physical inquiry, requires the experimental manipulation of existential conditions. Accordingly, the removal of taboos against social planning, he believed, would greatly aid the progress of man’s social knowledge.

Social outlook. Dewey’s social views, in general, may be characterized as reasonably typical of the so-called progressive era of American thought. His special contributions to progressive thought consisted in his critique of ivory-tower ideals of scholarship, his attacks on such intellectual absolutes as the doctrine of natural rights, and his enlargement of the concept of freedom to include the dimension of personal self-realization, beyond the mere absence of external restraints. Closely connected with this was Dewey’s restatement of the relation of the growth of individuality to environing cultural conditions, a view that led to the emphasis on the role of the school in social reconstruction. In such essays as “Logical Method and Law” (1924), Dewey also applied his instrumentalist approach to questions of jurisprudence, influencing the evolution of American “legal realism”; in The Public and Its Problems (1927), he applied a similar approach to problems of political science, contributing to the progress of “interest group” theory.

The broad ideal behind his social outlook was articulated in several works, most notably, perhaps, in Art as Experience (1934). His critique of the industrial society of his day was based mainly on his conviction that this society reduced men to a state of passive acquiescence in external routines laid down for them. His image of a good society was one in which men are active agents, intelligently setting their own standards and participating freely and equally in the making of their common destiny.

Influence. Dewey’s impact on American philosophy before World War ii was massive, and his impact on educational theory and practice was even greater. His influence on psychology, juris-prudence, political science, and styles of thought in history and economics was also considerable. Even more important, perhaps, was his general influence on the atmosphere of American scholarship. He helped free that scholarship from subservience to genteel conventions and theological modes of thought, and he was one of those principally responsible for the acceptance of the view that the study of human affairs is properly a task of empirical science. By the example of his life, by his activities as a leader of such organizations as the American Association of University Professors, and most of all by his courageous articulation of his conception of philosophy, he contributed as much as any man to the spread of the idea in America that free scientific inquiry, recognizing no limits to the questions it might ask, is the linchpin of a sound society and of all responsible social action.

Charles Frankel

[For the historical context of Dewey’s work, see the biographies ofDarwin; Hegel; James; Mead; Peirce. For discussion of the subsequent development of his ideas, seeEducation; Educational psychology; Learning; and the biographies ofAngell; Beard; Bentley; Merriam; Robinson.]

WORKS BY DEWEY

1896 The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology. Psychological Review 3:357–370.

(1899) 1961 The School and Society, Rev. ed. Univ. of Chicago Press.

1903a Studies in Logical Theory. Univ. of Chicago Press.

1903b Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality. Univ. of Chicago Press.

(1916a) 1953 Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: Macmillan.

(1916b) 1953 Essays in Experimental Logic. New York: Dover.

(1920) 1948 Reconstruction in Philosophy. Enl. ed. Boston: Beacon.

1924 Logical Method and Law. Philosophical Review 33: 560–572.

(1925) 1958 Experience and Nature. 2d ed. La Salle, III.: Open Court.

(1927) 1957 The Public and Its Problems. Denver, Colo.: Swallow.

(1929) 1960 The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action. New York: Putnam.

1934 Art as Experience. New York: Putnam. → A paper-back edition was published in 1959.

1938a Experience and Education. New York: Macmillan.

(1938b) 1960 Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York: Holt.

1939a Theory of Valuation. International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. 2, No. 4. Univ. of Chicago Press.

1939b Freedom and Culture. New York: Putnam.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berkson, Isaac B. 1958 The Ideal and the Community: A Philosophy of Education. New York: Harper.

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

Geiger, George R. 1958 John Dewey in Perspective. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Hook, Sidney 1939 John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait. New York: Day.

Schilpp, Paul A. (editor) (1939)1951 The Philosophy of John Dewey. 2d ed. New York: Tudor. → Contains an extensive bibliography.

Thayer, Horace S. 1952 The Logic of Pragmatism: An Examination of John Dewey’s Logic. London: Rout-ledge; New York: Humanities.

White, Morton G. 1943 The Origin of Dewey’s Instrumentalism. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.

John Dewey

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)

America's foremost philosopher of education, John Dewey grew up in rural Vermont, earned his doctorate at The Johns Hopkins University, and taught at Michigan, Chicago, and Columbia universities. Dewey was one of the founders and the leading philosopher of Progressive education, an important late-nineteenth-century and twentieth-century movement for school reform that emphasized meeting the needs of the whole child–physical, social, emotional, and intellectual. In addition to his work in developing a new philosophy of education, Dewey, along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, created a uniquely American approach to philosophy–Pragmatism.

Dewey developed his educational philosophy when he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1894 and added a department of pedagogy to his responsibilities. Aided by his wife, Alice, he founded the university's Laboratory School to test scientifically his ideas for improving schooling.

As a philosopher who was profoundly affected by the English naturalist Charles Darwin's thinking, Dewey believed that in a post-Darwinian world it was no longer possible to envision life as a progress toward fixed ends. His reading of Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) convinced him that the only constant in life was change or growth (the term Dewey preferred). Therefore, Dewey held that the purpose of formal education was not to prepare children for any fixed goal, but rather that schools should be devoted to encouraging children to grow and to prepare them to continue to grow and develop as adults in the uncertain future that they would face. Childhood was not merely a prelude to adulthood; it was a stage of development that was important and valuable in its own right. Accordingly, schooling should be based on meeting the needs of children, as children, rather than only striving to prepare them for adulthood.

Dewey faulted contemporary schools for regarding children as empty vessels to be filled with intellectual content. Schools treated pupils as passive learners. Dewey argued that children were naturally curious and that outside of school they learned through activities. They came to school with many interests, which he classified in his 1899 publication The School and Society as "the interest in conversation, or communication; in inquiry, or finding out things; in making things, or construction; and in artistic expression." These, he maintained were "the natural resources, the uninvested capital, upon which depends the active growth of the child" (1956, pp. 47–48). The role of the teacher, Dewey argued, was not merely to give pupils the freedom to express these impulses, but rather to guide them toward the learning they needed. As he noted in his 1902 work The Child and the Curriculum, this would not ignore traditional learning. "It must be restored to the experience from which it has been abstracted. It needs to be psychologized ; … translated into the immediate and individual experiencing within which it has its origin and significance" (1956, p. 22). Progressive teachers, therefore, should construct a curriculum based on both the interests of the pupils and knowledge of the subject matter that children should master.

Influence

Dewey was the most significant educational thinker of his time and he influenced educational discussion for a century. His followers took his ideas in many directions. Dewey's disciples, most notably William Heard Kilpatrick, emphasized one part of Dewey's philosophy–the need to appeal to the natural interests of the child–at the expense of consideration of the importance of the traditional fields of study. For Kilpatrick, subject matter was not important. Moreover, some of Dewey's followers extended the idea of relying on the natural curiosity and interests of children to define the curriculum in the upper grades and in secondary schools. This conflicted with Dewey's philosophy: "The new education is in danger of taking the idea of development in altogether too formal and empty a way…. Development doesnot mean just getting something out of the mind. It is a development of experience … into experience that is really wanted…. What new experiences are needed, it is impossible to tell unless there is some comprehension of the development which is aimed at … adult knowledge" (1956a, p.19). Dewey maintained that the study of traditional subjects was important because "they represent the keys which will unlock … the social capital which lies beyond the possible role of … limited personal experience" (1956b, p. 111).

Dewey did agree with Kilpatrick that one of the ultimate goals of education must be social reform. For Dewey the ideal society was thoroughly democratic and the school should be organized as an "embryonic community…. When the school introduces" children "into membership within such a little community, saturating … [them] with the spirit of service, and providing … [them] with the instruments of effective self-direction, we shall have the deepest and best guaranty of a larger society which is worthy, lovely, and harmonious" (1956b, p. 29).

During the Great Depression Progressivism's social reform impulse turned increasingly into a critique of the capitalist system that was blamed for the economic disaster. This, in turn, helped fuel a strong reaction against Progressive education during the anticommunism of the post—World War II period. In addition, in the 1950s Progressive education was increasingly blamed for the academic shortcomings of American students. In this setting, Dewey's reputation waned. The movement toward establishing rigid standards that began with the Reagan administration's 1983 report, A Nation At Risk, regarded Dewey's ideas as not only wrong but harmful. The states joined in a movement to establish knowledge standards and a schedule of rigid testing to see if the children met those standards. Teachers increasingly taught to the test–an educational program that neglected Dewey's ideas of relying on children's natural curiosity and interests.

While a distorted version of Dewey's educational philosophy had weakened the curriculum, especially in secondary schools, a proper understanding of the kinds of schools that Dewey wanted to establish is still regarded as relevant by a dissenting minority who believe that schools need to meet the broader needs and interests of children.

See also: Child Development, History of the Concept of; Education, United States.

bibliography

Cremin, Lawrence A. 1962. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Cremin, Lawrence A. 1988. American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876–1890. New York: Harper and Row.

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

Dewey, John. 1954 [1910]. "The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy." In American Thought: Civil War to World War I, ed. Perry Miller. New York: Rinehart.

Dewey, John. 1956a [1902]. The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Dewey, John. 1956b [1899]. The School and Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Dewey, John. 1966 [1916]. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: The Free Press.

Dewey, John. 1967–1972. The Early Works, 1882–1898, 5 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Dewey, John. 1976–1983. The Middle Works, 1899–1924, 15 vols., ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Dewey, John. 1981–1990. The Later Works, 1925–1953, 17 vols., ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Ravitch, Diane. 2000. Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Westbrook, Robert B. 1991. John Dewey and American Democracy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Zilversmit, Arthur. 1993. Changing Schools: Progressive Education Theory and Practice, 1930–1960. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Arthur Zilversmit

DEWEY, JOHN 1859-1952

Philosopher, educator

Background

John Dewey was an American philosopher, educator, and psychologist whose widely hailed work provided the basis for much of the teaching practice in the United States in the early twentieth century. He had been a prominent national figure since receiving his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1884, and his growing reputation was marked by his election as president of the American Psychological Association in 1899 and president of the American Philosophical Association in 1905. His distinctive educational philosophy began to take shape in 1896 when he founded an experimental school at the new University of Chicago. This laboratory school, officially called the University Elementary School, blended and utilized many of the new trends in educational thought and practice at the elementary-school level; it especially encouraged constant experiment and inquiry as the principal learning methods for its children. Dewey consciously intended this Chicago school to be an educational laboratory that could serve as a model for other schools, if its practices were found effective; and the school, which tested educational theories in a real-life setting, became Dewey's first major contribution to the profoundly influential progressive education movement. In later years, especially when he was teaching at Columbia University (1904—1930), Dewey's influence and impact on the American educational establishment reached their height.

Functional Psychology

His How We Think (1910) demonstrated his theory of functional psychology, which viewed stimulus and response as the functional and correlative means of organic coordination and direction; in the book he explained how the theory worked in the context of educational and social interactions. Dewey believed that thought arises from efforts to solve problems; when thoughtful action is directed at solving those problems, the learner then uncovers "truth." He wrote extensively on this theory in Essays in Experimental Logic (1916). His conception of thinking, known as "instrumentalism," was closely related to the philosophy of pragmatism expounded by William James and Charles Peirce, the philosophy that dominated this era.

Democracy and Education.

Dewey's philosophy of thought was eventually translated into specific curricular practices, most notably through the work of his colleague at Columbia, Professor William Heard Kilpatrick. But Dewey's greatest contribution to American education was probably his 1916 volume Democracy and Education. In this book he argued forcefully for an American public education system that turned the "ideal of equality of opportunity into reality." Dewey insisted that it was fatal for a democracy to permit the formation of fixed economic classes, to have one system of education for the upper and middle classes and another for children of wage earners. "Over-bookish education for some and over-practical for others brings about a division of mental and moral habits, ideals, and outlooks, he suggested, commenting on the prevailing system of trade-training programs for some versus exclusively academic programs for others. Dewey felt that all children should be exposed to both types of education: "Academic education turns out future citizens with no sympathy for work done with the hands and no training for understanding social and political difficulties. Trade training turns out future workers who may have greater immediate skills than without training, but no enlargement of mind and no insight into scientific and social implications of the work they do." Dewey warned that trade training would never prepare pupils to adjust if the trade they pursued became obsolete. Dewey had great faith in the American public school system, which he called the "only fundamental agency for good." Predicting that the great accumulation of wealth at one social extreme and the conditions of dire necessity at the other in 1916 would make democracy even more difficult in the years to come, Dewey believed that only a system of education that allowed the downtrodden to forge ahead in life could truly support a democracy.

Schools of Tomorrow.

Although not as monumental a volume as Democracy and Education, Dewey's 1915 book Schools of Tomorrow, written in collaboration with his wife, Evelyn, clearly expressed his philosophy of education. It was these tenets that helped clarify the Progressive Education Association's core beliefs in 1919. Dewey wrote, "Conventional education trains children for docility and obedience; the careful performance of imposed tasks because they are imposed regardless of where they lead is suitable only for creating a society in which there is one head to care for and plan the lives and institutions of the people." This training, the Deweys argued, interferes with the successful conduct of society and government in a democracy. "If we train our children only to take orders and fail to give them the confidence to think and act for themselves, we are putting almost insurmountable obstacles in the way of overcoming the defects of the present system and establishing the truth of democratic ideals." As for the curriculum itself, the Deweys insisted that for the great majority of students whose "major interests are not abstract ideas and who must pass their lives in some practical occupation," schools needed to develop a method of education to bridge the gap between the purely intellectual and theoretical side of life and the students' preparation for future occupations. Dewey sharply criticized some vocational training for dispensing with the essential cultural and historical grounding he believed necessary for liberal education in a democracy.

Dewey's Influence

In civic organizations and in national affairs, Dewey was an activist and even a leader in many liberal causes. He served as a trustee for Hull House, the settlement house founded by Jane Addams to serve Chicago's immigrants, and assisted in 1916 with the foundation of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), a teachers' union within the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Dewey's educational ideas were first put into practice in schools such as the Laboratory Schools, founded by Dewey himself, at the University of Chicago, and the Walden School in New York City, founded by Margaret Naumberg in 1915. Dewey served as the first president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and was a charter member of the American Civil Liberties Union. With the eminent historian Charles A. Beard, he was a founding member of the New School for Social Research in New York City. During his long and prolific career, Dewey's influence on educational thought and the entire American educational establishment was multifaceted and profound. His philosophy of instrumentalism and his numerous books on educational method provided the principal intellectual foundations of progressive education, the influence of which can be traced through the century to the liberal education policies of the 1960s. Significant among his later writings were Human Nature and Conduct (1922); Liberalism and Social Action (1935); Freedom and Culture (1939); and Problems of Men (1946).

Sources:

John Brubacher, A History of the Problems of Education (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1947);

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

Dewey and Evelyn Dewey, Schools of Tomorrow (New York: Macmillan, 1915);

George Dykhuizen, The Life and Mind of John Dewey (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973);

Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).

Dewey, John (1859–1952), philosopher, educator, reformer.Over a long and diverse career, John Dewey established himself as the most significant American philosopher of the first half of the twentieth century and a leading voice among reformers struggling to extend democracy at home and abroad. At the heart of his thinking lay an expansive moral vision of democracy as not merely a political ideal but a wider way of life. As a philosopher, he sought compelling arguments for his democratic ideals, while as an activist he tried to give these ideals practical expression in the school, the workplace, and the polity.

Born in Burlington, Vermont, the son of a storekeeper, Dewey graduated from the University of Vermont in 1879. Among the first graduate students in philosophy in an American university, he received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1884, and began his college teaching career at the University of Michigan. In 1894 he moved to the recently founded University of Chicago. While at Michigan, Dewey gained prominence as a proponent of neo‐Hegelian idealism, but at Chicago he moved toward Darwinian naturalism and pragmatism. Adopting the functional psychology of William James's Principles of Psychology (1890), Dewey developed an instrumental view of human intelligence that saw it not as the repository of transcendent reason or a mere receptacle of sense impressions but as the means by which a uniquely purposive creature addressed the problems that confronted it in a struggle for a fruitful existence.

Chicago was also the site of Dewey's earliest ventures into educational reform. Recognizing the pedagogical implications of his new philosophy and psychology, he established a Laboratory School, in which to test his ideas. In the curriculum of this school, as well as in such widely read books as The School and Society (1899), The Child and the Curriculum (1902), and later Democracy and Education (1916), Dewey called for a pedagogy that would build on the inherent interests of children, while leading them to the accumulated wisdom of adults embodied in the established subjects. He urged teachers to structure the classroom as a cooperative community of inquiry, thereby fostering in children both the skills of scientific investigation and the character essential for a democratic society.

Dewey left Chicago for Columbia University in 1904, following a bitter dispute with university president William Rainey Harper (1856–1906) over control of the Laboratory School Dewey had founded, and he remained at Columbia for the remainder of his career. Prior to World War I, he devoted much of his energy as a philosopher to the defense of pragmatism from its idealist and realist critics, while urging his fellow philosophers to turn their attention from the epistemological conundrums that philosophers had created for themselves to the ethical “problems of men.” In the major books of his later phase—Experience and Nature (1925), The Quest for Certainty (1929), Art as Experience (1934), and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938)—Dewey himself pursued this project by developing a philosophy designed to provide the moral ideals of democracy with what he termed “an encouraging nod.” At the same time, in his only work of formal political theory, The Public and Its Problems (1927), he offered a vigorous, if ultimately wistful, defense of participatory democracy against critics such as Walter Lippmann, who were eager to shrink government by the people to minimal dimensions.

Beginning with his strong support of American intervention in World War I, Dewey also functioned as a public intellectual, speaking out on a wide range of controversial issues not only in the United States but in Japan, China, Turkey, Mexico, and the Soviet Union. He played a leading role in the Outlawry of War movement in the 1920s, radical third‐party politics in the 1930s, and anti‐Stalinist agitation in the 1940s. A long‐time critic of capitalism, Dewey advanced his own brand of democratic socialism in Individualism Old and New (1930), Liberalism and Social Action (1935), and Freedom and Culture (1939).

Dewey's posthumous reputation went into eclipse among academic philosophers increasingly preoccupied with technical problems of analysis, as well as in a political culture inclined to the kind of skeptical “realism” about the possibilities of democracy that he had spent his life combating. The final years of the twentieth century, however, which witnessed the emergence of schools of “neopragmatism” in philosophy, literature, and legal theory, brought a rekindled interest in Dewey's philosophy, if not a revitalization of his extraordinary democratic hope.
See also Bourne, Randolph; Education; Evolution, Theory of; Intelligence, Concepts of; Liberalism; Progressive Era; Rorty, Richard.

Bibliography

George Dykhuizen , The Life and Mind of John Dewey, 1973.
Neil Coughlan , Young John Dewey, 1975.
Steven C. Rockefeller , John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism, 1991.
Robert B. Westbrook , John Dewey and American Democracy, 1991.
James Campbell , Understanding John Dewey, 1995.
Alan Ryan , John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism, 1995.

Robert B. Westbrook

DEWEY, JOHN 1859-1952

Educational philosopher and professor

Pioneer

John Dewey was an innovator in the fields of education, psychology, and philosophy, His theories of education were radically different from those previously employed in America and brought him to the forefront of the movement known as "progressive education." Dewey's influence was not limited to America, for at various times during his life he served as educational consultant to Japan, China, Turkey, and Mexico. He believed that research as well as teacher training should be part of the mission of any university's education department. In addition, Dewey was one of the most prominent moral philosophers of the twentieth century.

The Laboratory School

After graduating from the University of Vermont in 1879, Dewey taught high school for three years before entering Johns Hopkins University, where he received his doctorate in philosophy in 1884. After ten years at the University of Michigan, he became head of the department of philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy at the newly founded University of Chicago. In 1896 he organized the University Elementary School, better known as the Laboratory School. Here Dewey could test his pedagogical innovations as well as his more general philosophical principles. While in Chicago he formed personal and professional relationships with philosophers William H. Mead and James H. Tufts and reformer Jane Addams. In 1903 the Laboratory School was merged with the Francis W. Parker School. This merger precipitated to a series of disputes with University of Chicago president William Rainey Harper that ultimately led to Dewey's resignation in April 1904. In less than a month he had been hired by Columbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler. For the rest of his life Dewey was associated with Columbia, first holding a primary appointment in the department of philosophy and then a joint appointment at the Teachers College.

Progressive Education

Dewey was heavily influenced by the pragmatism of William James and developed it into a scientifically oriented theory of education known as "instrumentalism." Based on his research, Dewey saw education as the accumulation and assimilation of experience. He contended that a child learns through his or her experiences and activities, thereby developing into a balanced personality aware of many things. This theory changed the philosophy of children's education from an emphasis on lecture, memorization, and drill to a focus on students' becoming more actively involved in the learning process; this concept could be described as "learning by doing."

Moral Philosopher

Dewey's theories also stressed the moral aspects of education, and he bemoaned the separation of the moral and the intellectual in traditional educational systems. In many of his works Dewey outlined and defined his conception of the moral life. These works include Ethics (written with Tufts, 1908), Democracy and Education (1916), and Human Nature and Conduct (1922). He was a founder of the New School for Social Research (1919). In addition to his research and teaching duties, Dewey was the first president of the American Association of University Professors and was a charter member of the American Civil Liberties Union, the League for Industrial Democracy, and the League of Independent Political Action.

Influence

Dewey retired from Columbia and was named professor emeritus in 1930 but continued writing and consulting. His theories drew criticism from realists as being too vague and from theists for being too naturalistic. However, despite these charges Dewey had more influence on the direction of American education than any other theorist in the twentieth century.

Sources:

John Dewey, Experience and Nature (Chicago: Open Court, 1925);

Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology (New York: Holt, 1922);

Dewey, My Pedagogic Creed (Washington, D.C.: Progressive Education Association, 1929);

Dewey, The Philosophy of John Dewey (New York: Holt, 1929);

Dewey, The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relationship of Knowledge and Action (New York: Minton, Balch, 1929);

Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York: Holt, 1920);

Martin Dworkin, Dewey on Education (New York: Columbia University Teachers College Press, 1959);

George Dykhuizen, The Life and Mind of John Dewey (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973).

John Dewey 1859–1952, American philosopher and educator, b. Burlington, Vt., grad. Univ. of Vermont, 1879, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1884. He taught at the universities of Minnesota (1888–89), Michigan (1884–88, 1889–94), and Chicago (1894–1904) and at Columbia from 1904 until his retirement in 1930. His foreign consultancies included two stints at the Univ. of Beijing and a report on the reorganization of the schools of Turkey.

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).

Dewey, John (1859–1952), Vermont‐born philosopher and educator, graduated from the University of Vermont (1879) and Johns Hopkins (Ph.D., 1884). He taught at the universities of Minnesota, Michigan, Chicago, and after 1904 at Columbia. While director of the University of Chicago's School of Education he founded the Laboratory School to test new educational techniques. His influence on education and thought came also from his books, teaching, and leadership of many learned societies, connection with the Socialist party, and work as adviser to foreign governments. His most important writings on education, following his Psychology (1887), include The School and Society (1899), The Child and the Curriculum (1902), Moral Principles in Education (1909), Interest and Effort in Education (1913), Experience and Education (1938), and The Public Schools and Spiritual Values (1944). Problems of Men (1946) is a collection of his essays. In these works he emphasizes the changes in educational needs due to the industrial revolution, the democratic point of view, and the concept of man as a biological entity required to adjust himself to his environment and the complex structure of modern society. His scientific realism, the basis of this attitude, springs from pragmatism, of which Dewey was the leading exponent after the death of William James.

Shifting the emphasis of pragmatic thought from religion and the will to believe to practical problems of social reconstruction, Dewey called his philosophy “instrumentalism,” and in it he holds that, since reality changes and grows, truth consists in the success with which ideas, hypotheses, and beliefs are framed for the achievement of set purposes. The only reality is experience, and knowledge is necessarily functional, not abstract or theoretical. The natural sciences have advanced through devotion to observation, experiment, and revision in light of experience; the great need is for social sciences to advance to a commensurate point, at which they may direct all knowledge to human ends, enabling intelligence to control the human and extra‐human environment. These ideas have been developed in Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (1891), Studies in Logical Theory (1903), How We Think (1909), The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy … (1910), Essays in Experimental Logic (1916), Democracy and Education (1916), Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), Human Nature and Conduct (1922), Experience and Nature (1925), The Quest for Certainty (1929), Individualism, Old and New (1930), Philosophy and Civilization (1931), Art as Experience (1934), A Common Faith (1934), Liberalism and Social Action (1935), Logic, the Theory of Inquiry (1938), and Freedom and Culture (1939). A scholarly edition of his works began publication in 1967.

Dewey, John (1859–1952) Over a long life spanning nearly a century, Dewey was one of America's leading philosophers, responsible for developing and refining philosophical pragmatism. Rejecting much of classical European and essentialist philosophy, Dewey stressed the importance of linking theories to active participation in the world, and to practical problem-solving (instrumentalism). His work exemplifies the North American approach to problem-solving and it has been especially influential in progressive theories of education. For example, in Democracy and Education (1916) Dewey stressed the importance of child-centred learning, where the experiences of the child are seen as valuable in establishing problems, and where thoughtful continuity of such experiences allows the child to exert increasing control over his or her life.

Dewey, John (1859–1952) US educator and philosopher. Influenced by pragmatism and utilitarianism. Dewey proposed a philosophy of instrumentalism. He regarded intelligence as an instrument to overcome practical problems. In Democracy and Education (1916), Dewey emphasized the importance of experimentation and practical application in education and was leading figure in the development of progressive education.

Dewey, John (1859–1952), American philosopher, one of the leaders of the Pragmatist school.