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).