John Dewey

Oh, him. John Dewey. The American philosopher, psychologist, educational reformer. Born in Burlington, Vermont, 1859. Died in New York City, 1952. Ninety-two years. Imagine. He churned out a lot of words. Over 700 articles, about 40 books. A prolific output, I'll grant him that. But quality? That’s a different shade of gray.

Early Life and Education

He started in Burlington, Vermont, a family of modest means, as they say. Archibald Sprague Dewey and Lucina Artemisia Rich Dewey. Four boys. The first John died before this one was even conceived, forty weeks later. A morbid start, wouldn't you say? He attended the University of Vermont, joined Delta Psi, and emerged a Phi Beta Kappa in '79. Smart enough, I suppose. He even studied privately with a Henry Augustus Pearson Torrey, some academic relation. Then off to Johns Hopkins University.

Career

After a brief, and likely dreadful, stint teaching high school in Oil City, Pennsylvania, and then elementary school in Charlotte, Vermont, Dewey decided he wasn't cut out for the kiddie pool. He studied under some luminaries – George Sylvester Morris, Charles Sanders Peirce, Herbert Baxter Adams, and G. Stanley Hall. In 1884, he snagged his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins. His dissertation, sadly lost to the ether, was about Immanuel Kant, a critique from an idealist stance. "The Psychology of Kant." How quaint.

He landed a faculty position at the University of Michigan from 1884 to '88, and again from '89 to '94. Then, in '94, he moved to the freshly minted University of Chicago. This is where his association with pragmatism really solidified. He contributed to Studies in Logical Theory (1904) with his colleagues.

And then, the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. He birthed them. An experimental playground for his pedagogical whims. His first major work on education, The School and Society (1899), sprang from this. Eventually, disagreements with the administration, as they always do, led him to resign. He drifted east, eventually landing a professorship at Teachers College at Columbia University in 1904, where he remained until his retirement in 1930. He even influenced Carl Rogers.

He presided over the American Psychological Association in '99 and the American Philosophical Association in 1905. He was a founder of The New School, alongside historians like Charles A. Beard and James Harvey Robinson, and the economist Thorstein Veblen.

His prolific output included "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896) – the bedrock of his work, apparently. Democracy and Education (1916), his magnum opus on progressive education. Human Nature and Conduct (1922), a look at habits. The Public and its Problems (1927), a counterpoint to Walter Lippmann. Experience and Nature (1925), his most "metaphysical" foray. Impressions of Soviet Russia and the Revolutionary World (1929), a surprisingly positive take on the nascent USSR.

Then came Art as Experience (1934), his dive into aesthetics. A Common Faith (1934), a humanistic study. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938). Freedom and Culture (1939). And Knowing and the Known (1949) with Arthur F. Bentley, outlining his concept of transactionalism.

He apparently rewrote Experience and Nature in its second edition, claiming it presented a "new paradigm." The man loved his jargon. He spoke of "round squares" and "changing significations." Sounds like someone trying too hard to be profound.

A historian, Hilda Neatby, supposedly called him "to our age what Aristotle was to the later Middle Ages." High praise, or perhaps just hyperbole from someone who hadn't read enough.

Visits to China and Japan

In 1919, Dewey and his wife took a sabbatical to Japan. He found their democracy ambitious but weak. He warned of bureaucracy and militarism. While there, he was invited to China by Peking University, likely by his former students Hu Shih and Chiang Monlin. Arriving in Shanghai in April 1919, just before the May Fourth Movement, he stayed for two years.

He lectured nearly 200 times, interpreted by Hu Shih. They called him "Mr. Democracy" and "Mr. Science," even the "American Confucius." His lectures, lost for years, resurfaced in 2015. A young Mao Zedong apparently attended one of his lectures on Bertrand Russell, Henri Bergson, and William James.

Zhixin Su claims Dewey was the "great apostle of philosophic liberalism and experimental methodology" for Chinese educators. Dewey urged them not to import Western models, but to use pragmatism to forge their own. Alas, the national government was too weak, and warlords too prevalent. His ideas were praised nationally but implemented locally, if at all. His influence, however, trickled into Hong Kong and Taiwan. In mainland China, Confucian scholars ignored him, and later, the Marxists denounced him.

Visit to Southern Africa

In 1934, he and his daughter Jane ventured to South Africa for the World Conference of New Education Fellowship. The Minister of Education, Jan Hofmeyr, and Deputy Prime Minister Jan Smuts were present. Other attendees included Max Eiselen and Hendrik Verwoerd, the future architect of apartheid. Dewey’s expenses were covered by the Carnegie Foundation. He also visited Durban, Pretoria, and Victoria Falls. He received an honorary degree from the University of the Witwatersrand. The white governments found his ideas too secular, but the black population and their allies were more receptive.

Personal Life

He married Alice Chipman in 1886. Six children: Frederick Archibald, Evelyn Riggs Dewey, Morris (who died young), Gordon Chipman, Lucy Alice Chipman, and Jane Mary Dewey. Alice died in 1927, weakened by malaria contracted in Turkey and a heart attack in Mexico City. Dewey remarried in 1946 to Estelle Roberta Lowitz Grant. They adopted two children, Lewis (renamed John Jr.) and Shirley.

Dewey’s interests were vast, encompassing "commentary on current domestic and international politics, and public statements on behalf of many causes." He even wrote about the "value of displaying art in post offices." A philosopher of the people, I suppose. He also connected with F.M. Alexander, writing introductions to his books. He corresponded with Henri Bergson, William M. Brown, Martin Buber, George S. Counts, William Rainey Harper, Sidney Hook, and George Santayana.

Death

Pneumonia took him on June 1, 1952, in New York City. He was cremated the next day. Ninety-two years. A long time to accumulate so many thoughts, so many words.

Functional Psychology

Back at University of Michigan, he published Psychology (1887) and Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding (1888). These reflected his early flirtation with British neo-Hegelianism. He attempted a synthesis of idealism and science.

With colleagues James Hayden Tufts and George Herbert Mead, and student James Rowland Angell, influenced by William James' Principles of Psychology (1890), they began to reshape psychology, focusing on the social environment's impact on the mind, rather than just physiological processes, as Wilhelm Wundt and his followers did.

By 1894, Dewey, Tufts, Mead, and Angell formed the "Chicago group" at the new University of Chicago. Their psychology was dubbed functional psychology, with a practical bent. Dewey’s 1896 article in Psychological Review, "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," challenged the traditional stimulus-response model. He argued for a "circular" account, where stimulus and response were integrated, enriched by past experiences and modulated by sensory input.

He was president of the American Psychological Association in '99. He also apparently had trouble with music, being amusic. A shame.

Views

Education and Teacher Education

His educational theories were laid out in My Pedagogic Creed (1897), The Primary-Education Fetich (1898), The School and Society (1900), The Child and the Curriculum (1902), Democracy and Education (1916), Schools of To-morrow (1915) with his daughter Evelyn Dewey, and Experience and Education (1938).

The core ideas: education is social, interactive, and a tool for social reform. Schools are social institutions. Students learn best by doing, by experiencing the curriculum. He believed in democracy, not just as a political system, but as an ethical ideal. Education’s goal: not just skills, but self-realization and contributing to the greater good. "To prepare him for future life means to give him command of himself." Noble, perhaps.

He also critiqued the extremes of both curriculum-centered and child-centered approaches. The child and the curriculum are "two limits which define a single process." He championed hands-on learning and experiential education. His ideas influenced Problem-Based Learning.

He believed teachers should be more than instructors; they should be facilitators of inquiry. He saw the traditional education system as cultivating "passive pupils" and discouraging "individual and communal inquiry." Teachers, he argued, needed to cultivate "intelligence, skill, and character" for active participation in society.

Professionalization of Teaching as a Social Service

Dewey argued against the narrow vocational view of education, which simply trained students for specific jobs. He believed schools and teachers had a responsibility to produce "psychological and social goods" for societal progress. Teachers were to cultivate "intelligence, skill, and character" so that democratic communities could be composed of citizens who "think, do and act intelligently and morally."

A Teacher's Knowledge

Successful teachers, for Dewey, possessed a "passion for knowledge and intellectual curiosity." Not just rote memorization, but a genuine love for learning. A teacher might excel in one subject, but that passion would spill over. They also needed to be "students of school room work, of children, of methods." This continuous study was not a sideline but central to the profession. And crucially, they had a "desire to share this acquired knowledge with others." Learning incomplete unless shared.

A Teacher's Skill

The true measure of a teacher's quality was their ability to "watch and respond to the movement of the mind." A keen awareness of student responses. He noted that good teachers often lacked formal training but possessed "a quick, sure and unflagging sympathy with the operations and process of the minds they are in contact with." They understood the complexities of mind-to-mind transfer.

A Teacher's Disposition

Dewey held teaching in high esteem, comparing its social value to the ministry or parenting. But he acknowledged the profession's toll: "careworn teachers," "anxiety depicted on the lines of their faces." Overcrowded classrooms, long hours, meager pay. He stressed that teachers needed the mental fortitude to overcome these stressors, as students could sense a lack of genuine investment. Such negative demeanors could stifle student curiosity.

The Role of Teacher Education

Dewey believed teacher education programs should move beyond mechanical skills and focus on cultivating "professional students of education." These students would have an inherent propensity to inquire about subjects, methods, and the activity of the mind. They would be lifelong learners, driven by a passion for intellectual growth. He drew parallels to law and medicine, professions that demand constant study and intellectual development. He argued against concentrating "intellectual responsibility" at the top, advocating for its distribution among all involved in the work.

His influence extended to institutions like Bennington College, Goddard College, and the experimental Black Mountain College.

Journalism

In The Public and its Problems, Dewey defined "public" in a way that deeply impacts journalism. Public journalism, he suggested, should shift focus from elite control to a civic sphere. A public is a group of citizens affected by indirect consequences of an action, sharing an interest in controlling those consequences. Publics are fluid, constantly forming and dissolving.

He argued against Walter Lippmann's "transmission model," where elites and experts provided information for a passive public. Dewey saw politics as the work of individuals, with knowledge generated through interaction. Journalism’s role: to foster conversation, explore alternatives, choices, and consequences, and improve knowledge generation. "Communication can alone create a great community."

Logic and Method

Dewey found paradox in contemporary logic. While proximate subjects were advanced, ultimate ones sparked controversy. He questioned whether logical operators were mere abstractions or connected to their objects. He engaged with logical positivism, appreciating their focus on "sentences" and "words" but cautioned against narrowing the scope of symbols to exclude gestures and diagrams. He felt traditional logic, based on "qualitative objects" being "existential in the fullest sense," clashed with modern conceptions of existence and knowledge.

Critical Thinking

Dewey was instrumental in emphasizing experience and problem-solving for critical thinking. In How We Think, he defined reflective thinking as "active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends." Thinking is not passive; it's an active process of questioning and transforming experiences. He advocated for interactive classrooms, fostering independent thought and application of learning. The term "critical thinking" appeared in the first edition of How We Think, though it didn't originate with him. He detailed the sub-processes of skepticism and investigation within reflective thought.

Aesthetics

Art as Experience (1934) was his major work on aesthetics. He viewed art as embedded in culture and experience. He admired the collection of Albert C. Barnes at the Barnes Foundation. Dewey himself claimed to be "allergic to music." A peculiar affliction for a philosopher.

Philanthropy, Women and Democracy

He founded the laboratory school at Chicago, supported settlement houses, particularly Jane Addams' Hull House. They influenced each other's theories of democracy. Stengel argued Addams "discerned the shape of democracy as a mode of associated living," while Dewey "analyzed and classified the social, psychological and educational processes Addams lived."

Dewey's views on democracy:

It's an ethical ideal, not just political.
Participation, not representation, is key.
Harmony between democracy and the scientific method: communities of inquiry.
Extend democracy from politics to industry and society.

He believed a woman's place was shaped by environment, not just biology. "Think of them as human individuals for a while." He supported the women's suffrage movement. Critics, however, claimed he lacked concrete strategies for his ideals. He was aware of "entrenched power" and the "intricacy of the problems facing modern cultures," but was criticized for not doing enough to fix them.

He also noted that "Persons do not become a society by living in physical proximity any more than a man ceases to be socially influenced by being so many feet or miles removed from others." A rather obvious point, but there it is. His work influenced B. R. Ambedkar.

Religion

His childhood included attendance at the Congregational Church. As an adult, he was neutral on theology in education, advocating for meliorism, scientific humanism, and reform. He was an atheist and secular humanist later in life, signing the Humanist Manifesto. He saw humanism as an "expansion, not a contraction, of human life, an expansion in which nature and the science of nature are made the willing servants of human good."

Pragmatism, Instrumentalism, Consequentialism

He sometimes called his philosophy instrumentalism, distinct from, yet related to, pragmatism and consequentialism. He defined validity by "the function of consequences as necessary tests... provided these consequences are operationally instituted and are such as to resolve the specific problem." He was meticulous about definitions, as seen in Knowing and the Known. He also discussed the definitions of pragmatism used by Peirce and James, noting Peirce’s emphasis on "empirical consequences" and James’s idea that notions must "cash in."

Epistemology

Dewey and Bentley argued that terminology problems in epistemology and logic stemmed from imprecise use of words reflecting three levels of organization:

Self-Action: Pre-scientific view of inherent powers.
Interaction: Newtonian balance of action and reaction.
Transaction: Modern systems describing action without attributing ultimate entities.

Social and Political Activism

1894 Pullman Strike

He closely followed the Pullman Strike while at the University of Chicago. He wrote to his wife about the "higher classes" and their "capitalistic" institutions, including the university. He saw Eugene Debs as unfairly maligned.

Pro-war Stance in First World War

He supported US involvement in the First World War, a stance criticized by Randolph Bourne, a former student, who attacked Dewey's instrumentalist pragmatist philosophy.

International League for Academic Freedom

A proponent of academic freedom, he was involved with the International League for Academic Freedom and co-edited articles on the Bertrand Russell Case.

Dewey Commission

He led the Dewey Commission in Mexico, which cleared Leon Trotsky of Stalin’s charges. He also marched for women's rights.

League for Industrial Democracy

He was president of the League for Industrial Democracy, an organization focused on educating students about the labor movement. The student branch later became the Students for a Democratic Society. He also opposed communist takeovers of unions and was involved with the nascent National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Concepts

He was an avid supporter of Henry George's land value tax proposal. He considered acquaintance with George's work essential for an educated person.

Academic Awards and Honors

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1910) and the American Philosophical Society (1911). He received honorary doctorates from several universities.

Honors

He was featured on a U.S. postage stamp in 1968. Various institutions, including John Dewey High School and Dewey University, bear his name.

Publications

His bibliography is extensive, covering a wide range of topics from psychology and logic to art and politics.