John Dewey
American philosopher and educator
born Oct. 20, 1859, Burlington, Vt., U.S.
died June 1, 1952, New York, N.Y.
Main
American philosopher and educator who was one of the
founders of the philosophical school of pragmatism, a
pioneer in functional psychology, and a leader of the
progressive movement in education in the United States.
Early life
The son of a grocer in Vermont, Dewey attended the public
schools of Burlington and there entered the University of
Vermont. After graduating from the university in 1879, Dewey
taught high school for three years. In the fall of 1882 he
entered Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, for advanced
study in philosophy. There he came under the influence of
George Sylvester Morris, who was a leading exponent of
Neo-Hegelianism, a revival of the thought of the
early-19th-century German philosopher Hegel. Dewey found in
this philosophy, with its emphasis on the spiritual and
organic nature of the universe, what he had been vaguely
groping for, and he eagerly embraced it.
After being awarded the Ph.D. degree by Johns Hopkins
University in 1884, Dewey, in the fall of that year, went to
the University of Michigan, where, at the urging of Morris,
he had been appointed an instructor in philosophy and
psychology. With the exception of the academic year 1888–89,
when he served as professor of philosophy at the University
of Minnesota, Dewey spent the next 10 years at Michigan.
During this time his philosophical endeavours were devoted
mainly to an intensive study of Hegel and the British
Neo-Hegelians and to the new experimental physiological
psychology then being advanced in the United States by G.
Stanley Hall and William James.
Dewey’s interest in education began during his years at
Michigan. His readings and observations revealed that most
schools were proceeding along lines set by early traditions
and were failing to adjust to the latest findings of child
psychology and to the needs of a changing democratic social
order. The search for a philosophy of education that would
remedy these defects became a major concern for Dewey and
added a new dimension to his thinking.
Philosophical thought
Dewey left Michigan in 1894 to become professor of
philosophy and chairman of the department of philosophy,
psychology, and pedagogy at the University of Chicago.
Dewey’s achievements there brought him national fame. The
increasing dominance of evolutionary biology and psychology
in his thinking led him to abandon the Hegelian theory of
ideas, which views them as somehow mirroring the rational
order of the universe, and to accept instead an
instrumentalist theory of knowledge, which conceives of
ideas as tools or instruments in the solution of problems
encountered in the environment. These same disciplines
contributed somewhat later to his rejection of the Hegelian
notion of an Absolute Mind manifesting itself as a
rationally structured, material universe and as realizing
its goals through a dialectic of ideas. Dewey found more
acceptable a theory of reality holding that nature, as
encountered in scientific and ordinary experience, is the
ultimate reality and that man is a product of nature who
finds his meaning and goals in life here and now.
Since these doctrines, which were to remain at the centre
of all of Dewey’s future philosophizing, also furnished the
framework in which Dewey’s colleagues in the department
carried on their research, a distinct school of philosophy
was in operation. This was recognized by William James in
1903, when a collection of essays written by Dewey and seven
of his associates in the department, Studies in Logical
Theory, appeared. James hailed the book enthusiastically and
declared that with its publication a new school of
philosophy, the Chicago school, had made its appearance.
Dewey’s philosophical orientation has been labeled a form
of pragmatism, though Dewey himself seemed to favour the
term “instrumentalism,” or “experimentalism.” William
James’s The Principles of Psychology early stimulated
Dewey’s rethinking of logic and ethics by directing his
attention to the practical function of ideas and concepts,
but Dewey and the Chicago school of pragmatists went farther
than James had gone in that they conceived of ideas as
instruments for transforming the uneasiness connected with
the experience of having a problem into the satisfaction of
some resolution or clarification of it.
Dewey’s preferred mode of inquiry was scientific
investigation; he thought the experimental methods of modern
science provided the most promising approach to social and
ethical as well as scientific problems. He rejected the idea
of a fixed and immutable moral law derivable from
consideration of the essential nature of man, since such a
traditional philosophical method denied the potential
application and promise of newer empirical and scientific
methods.
Dewey developed from these views a philosophical ground
for democracy and liberalism. He conceived of democracy not
as a mere form of government, but rather as a mode of
association which provides the members of a society with the
opportunity for maximum experimentation and personal growth.
The ideal society, for Dewey, was one that provided the
conditions for ever enlarging the experience of all its
members.
Dewey’s contributions to psychology were also noteworthy.
Many of the articles he wrote at that time are now accepted
as classics in psychological literature and assure him a
secure place in the history of psychology. Most significant
is the essay “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,” which
is generally taken to mark the beginnings of functional
psychology—i.e., one that focuses on the total organism in
its endeavours to adjust to the environment.
Educational theory and practice. Dewey’s work in
philosophy and psychology was largely centred in his major
interest, educational reform. In formulating educational
criteria and aims, he drew heavily on the insights into
learning offered by contemporary psychology as applied to
children. He viewed thought and learning as a process of
inquiry starting from doubt or uncertainty and spurred by
the desire to resolve practical frictions or relieve strain
and tension. Education must therefore begin with experience,
which has as its aim growth and the achievement of maturity.
Dewey’s writings on education, notably his The School and
Society (1899) and The Child and the Curriculum (1902),
presented and defended what were to remain the chief
underlying tenets of the philosophy of education he
originated. These tenets were that the educational process
must begin with and build upon the interests of the child;
that it must provide opportunity for the interplay of
thinking and doing in the child’s classroom experience; that
the teacher should be a guide and coworker with the pupils,
rather than a taskmaster assigning a fixed set of lessons
and recitations; and that the school’s goal is the growth of
the child in all aspects of its being.
Among the results of Dewey’s administrative efforts were
the establishment of an independent department of pedagogy
and of the University of Chicago’s Laboratory Schools, in
which the educational theories and practices suggested by
psychology and philosophy could be tested. The Laboratory
Schools, the original unit of which began operation in 1896,
attracted wide attention and enhanced the reputation of the
University of Chicago as a foremost centre of progressive
educational thought. Dewey headed the Laboratory Schools
from 1903 to 1904.
Dewey’s ideas and proposals strongly affected educational
theory and practice in the United States. Aspects of his
views were seized upon by the “progressive movement” in
education, which stressed the student-centred rather than
the subject-centred school, education through activity
rather than through formal learning, and laboratory,
workshop, or occupational education rather than the mastery
of traditional subjects. But though Dewey’s own faith in
progressive education never wavered, he came to realize that
the zeal of his followers introduced a number of excesses
and defects into progressive education. Indeed, in
Experience and Education (1938) he sharply criticized
educators who sought merely to interest or amuse students,
disregarded organized subject matter in favour of mere
activity on the part of students, and were content with mere
vocational training.
During the last two decades of Dewey’s life, his
philosophy of education was the target of numerous and
widespread attacks. Progressive educational practices were
blamed for the failure of some American school systems to
train pupils adequately in the liberal arts and for their
neglect of such basic subjects as mathematics and science.
Furthermore, critics blamed Dewey and his progressive ideas
for what the former viewed as an insufficient emphasis on
discipline in the schools.
Career at Columbia University
Disagreements between President William Rainey Harper of the
University of Chicago and Dewey led, in 1904, to Dewey’s
resignation of his posts and to his acceptance of a
professorship of philosophy at Columbia University in New
York City. Dewey was associated with Columbia for 47 years,
first as professor and then as professor emeritus of
philosophy. During his 25 years of active teaching, his fame
and the significance of what he had to say attracted
thousands of students from home and abroad to his classes,
and he became one of the most widely known and influential
teachers in America. Dewey’s influence extended even further
after he taught and lectured in countries such as Japan
(1919), China (1919–21), Turkey (1924), Mexico (1926), and
the Soviet Union (1928).
Dewey’s scholarly output at Columbia was enormous; one
bibliography devotes approximately 125 pages to listing the
titles of his publications during these years. His thought
covered a wide range of topics, including logic and theory
of knowledge, psychology, education, social philosophy, fine
arts, and religion. Major works dealing with each of these
fields appeared over the years and clearly established Dewey
as the foremost philosopher in America and as one of the
nation’s most productive scholars. His Experience and
Nature, published in 1925, brings together in a systematic
way the more important aspects of his philosophy and is
generally regarded as his magnum opus.
His interest in current affairs prompted Dewey to
contribute regularly to liberal periodicals, especially The
New Republic. His articles focused on domestic, foreign, and
international developments and were designed to reach a wide
reading public. Because of his skill in analyzing and
interpreting events, he soon was rated as among the best of
American commentators and social critics.
Dewey also gave his time and energy to the support of
organizations and causes in which he believed. In 1895 he
was a founding member of the National Herbart Society
(renamed the National Society for the Study of Education in
1902), and he served two terms as chairman (1903–05) of the
National Society of College Teachers of Education, which he
had helped establish in 1902. Dewey became one of the
founders and the first president of the American Association
of University Professors in 1915, and the next year he
became a charter member of the first teachers’ union in New
York City. He helped found the New School for Social
Research in 1919 and the University-in-Exile in 1933,
established for scholars being persecuted in countries under
totalitarian regimes. In 1937, at age 78, he headed a
commission of inquiry that went to Mexico City to hear Leon
Trotsky’s rebuttal of the charges made against him in the
Moscow show trials of 1936 and 1937.
Dewey retired from the Columbia faculty in 1930, after
which he concentrated on public affairs while continuing to
write. Among his books on psychology and philosophy are
Psychology (1887), Ethics (cowritten with James Tufts;
1908), Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), Human Nature and
Conduct (1922), The Quest for Certainty (1929), Art as
Experience (1934), Logic, the Theory of Inquiry (1938), and
Freedom and Culture (1939). His chief later writings on
education are Democracy and Education (1916) and Experience
and Education (1938).
George Dykhuizen
Clarence Henry Faust
