John Dewey - Dewey on Education

I T SEEMS the fate of every influential thinker to be much discussed but little read in the years immediately after his death. John Dewey is no exception. His writings have been translated into a dozen different languages; many are still in print; almost all are widely available. Yet contemporary educational discussion is filled with the shoddiest misconceptions of what he said; and disciples and critics alike have purveyed the grossest caricatures of his work. This volume, third in the Classics in Education series, ought to do much to clear the air. Mr. Dworkin has gathered together some of Deweys clearest and most characteristic statements on education, and set them in the stream of American social and intellectual history. In addition, he has indicated some of the rich literature available to those who would probe more deeply into Deweys ideas and the context in which they matured. Most important, perhaps, he has asked his readers neither to worship nor to damn Dewey, but rather to ponder himwhich is, after all, what Dewey himself would most have appreciated.

L AWRENCE A. C REMIN

by Martin S. Dworkin

One hundred years after his birth, John Dewey is a figure of partisan fiction. Extreme disavowals of his importance are countered by passionate assertions of his greatness. Careful reappraisal of his work is itself ridiculed or ignored, either as part of a continuing conspiracy or as unnecessary annotation of explicit scriptures. The images of Dewey created in this kind of clamor may say a great deal about American attitudes at mid-centuryas well as about traditional tendencies to view controversies as epic melodramas of heroes versus villains. But because Dewey played so consequential a part in American life, and had so profound an influence throughout the world, the fictitious figures of denied importance or affirmed greatness only block our view of the stage on which he moved and the drama in which he was a principal. Not only are we hindered in the necessary business of dealing with the many unclarities and unresolved difficulties of his work. We are prevented from seeing clearly the background of events and movements of ideas that we must rehearse and reexamine in order to know ourselves and the world in which we live.

Deweys career was the longest among those philosophers for whom there are substantial and verifiable records. The range and quantity of his writings attest not merely his spirited activity until the very end of his life, but the astonishing vigor of the mind that was at work. His first publication, which appeared when he was But of all his published work, it is his writings on education that have exerted the widest and deepest influences upon life in the United States and other countries. And it is in the area of education that the question of his stature is presently most embattled and directly involved with issues which are among the most vital and urgent facing us today.

Irwin Edman remarked that it was a historical accident that Dewey became widely known as an educator long before he became equally widely influential as a professional philosopher. That accident conformed to Deweys essential intent. dent that is intentional. The paradox, at the least, that is suggested introduces the consideration of the place of Deweys writings on education in the whole of his work. And this consideration leads further to the fundamental problem of the actual nature of his influence upon American education. To what extent, we must ask, was Deweys impact unique, novel, truly innovative? And to what extent was it a product or expression of larger, ultimately determinant forces in American life? In dealing with these questions, more is involved than the inescapable task of understanding Deweys work in order to criticize it. For Deweys responsibility for the form and substance of American education has been one of the most persistent expletives of the bitter brawling over the schools, especially in the last decade. Was Deweys influence accidental? Or was it inevitable? In either case, was it crucial?

We know far more about the background and development of Deweys philosophy than we do about the context within which his educational ideas took on their power. One reason for this is surely the tendency in the genteel tradition of American scholarship to regard the study of education as worth no more than discreet afterthought. This attitude was attacked by Dewey himself as revealing a sadly inadequate understanding of what knowledge is, and an even sadder ignorance of how knowledge is to be made to benefit our lives. In fact, Deweys gradual rejection of traditional philosophy took place during the period when he began to actively concern himself with problems of teaching and learning. It is a naive simplification to say, with many admirers and detractors of Dewey, that he broke with the tradition primarily or principally because of his emerging educational theories. What does appear reasonable, however, in the light of the influences bearing upon his early intellectual development, is that both his reaction against his own earlier philosophical training and his commitment to education were related in their origin.