11 John Dewey
Dr. Perpetua Miranda
Life Sketch
John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermonton in USA on the 20th of October, 1859. He was the son of a grocer. He was a shy boy who loved reading and was not a very brilliant student. He attended the Public School of Burlington and later entered the University of Vermont in 1875. He graduated in 1879 and taught in a high school for three years. In 1882 he attended the John Hopkins University for advanced studies in philosophy. He came under the influence of George Morris a Neo Hegelian whose thoughts attracted the attention of Dewey. In 1884 he was awarded the Ph.D degree from the John Hopkins University. For a year, i.e. between 1888 and 1889 he was professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota.He then went to be an instructor of philosophy and psychology at the University of Michigan. He spent ten years there and was very involved in studying Hegel and the British Neo Hegelians.
Dewey started to get interested in education while he was in Michigan. He observed through his reading that most schools were following early traditions and did not pay any attention to the latest findings in psychology and to the need for integrating democracy in the current social order. Dewey was searching for a new way, in fact a philosophy of education that would be addressing these needs. In 1894 Dewey left Michigan and became a professor of philosophy and chairman of the Department of Philosophy, Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of Chicago. Dewey became famous here. He gave up the Hegelian theory of ideas and instead took on the instrumentalist theory of knowledge, which conceived of ideas as tools to solve problems encountered in the environment. Dewy believed that man is a product of nature and finds meaning and goals in life here and now. He felt that nature as encountered in ordinary experiences is the ultimate reality.
Dewey’s philosophy was labeled pragmatism. Pragmatists believe that reality is to be experienced. He was most famous for what is called ‘progressive education’ which is a view that emphasises the need to ‘learn by doing’. He believed that one learnt well with a hands-on-approach. He wanted students to interact with their environment so that they could adapt and learn. Dewey wanted students and teachers to learn together. He wanted all the stakeholders to have an equal voice in the learning experience. He helped found the famous laboratory school known as the Dewey School where he tested his psychological and pedagogic hypotheses. His important books are The School and Society (Chicago, 1900) and The Child and the Curriculum (Chicago, 1902). He left Chicago in 1904 for Columbia. At this point in time he had become very famous for his philosophical ideas and educational theories. He remained at Columbia till his retirement in 1930 and gained international prominence. It was through the Columbia Teachers College that Dewey’s educational philosophy spread throughout the world. This institution was a training center for teachers of many countries. Dewey exerted a lot of influence on all whom he lectured to. The years 1919 to 1921 saw him lecturing at Tokyo, Peking and Nanking. He conducted educational surveys of Turkey, Mexico and Russia. He remained active even after his retirement and kept writing till his death.
Educational Paradigm
Dewey showed great interest in social and political issues and also in technical and philosophical studies. He influenced people in all fields. He was very good at expressing his deep hopes and aspirations and possessed great imagination and wit. Dewey saw democracy as an approach that provided great opportunities for personal growth and experimentation .The ideal society for him was one that created conditions for constantly enlarging the experience of all its members.
Dewey preferred the scientific method of investigation. For him experimental methods of modern science were the best ways of approaching scientific problems. He rejected fixed ideas as they stifled the promise of new scientific methods. Dewey’s work in philosophy and psychology were contained in his major interests in educational reform. He relied on the psychological tests applied to children. He saw thought and learning as a way of inquiry from doubt to solution to relieve tension. The key concept in Dewey’s philosophy was experience. He thought of experience as a single, dynamic, unified whole in which everything is ultimately interrelated.
Man is primarily a being who acts, suffers and enjoys. The unit of life has a temporal dimension and a spatial dimension and can undergo internal change and reconstruction. Most of his life consists of experiences which are not primarily reflective. There is more to experience than what idealists tell us. He was of the view that individual experience is the primary unit of life. Experience is all inclusive in the sense that human beings are involved in continuous transactions with the whole of nature, and through systematic enquiry they can come to understand the essential characteristics of nature. An experience or a situation is a whole in virtue of its immediate pervasive qualities, and each occurrence of these qualities is unique.
The specific areas of Dewey’s philosophy can be investigated against the view of experience and nature. He saw education as an experience which has the aim of growth and the achievement of maturity. The educational process must build up the interest of the child and the child must experience thinking and doing in the classroom with the teacher as a guide rather than a taskmaster forcing the child to engage in rote learning only. This would definitely lead to the growth of the child in all aspects and in all its potential. Dewey started the process of opening Laboratory Schools in 1896 and the University of Chicago was noted for its most progressive educational thoughts. Dewey was the head of the institution till 1904.
Dewey’s Pedagogy
Dewey’s ideas affected both American educational theory and practice. His ideas were student centric or child centric and not subject oriented. He placed the emphasis of learning on the needs and interests of the child. Children, he believed should be allowed to explore their environment. He advocated education through activity and was not an advocate of the formal ways of learning. Dewey’s preference was for experimental learning and not for traditional subjects.
Dewey was of the view that knowing and inquiring are like an ‘art’ and require active experimentation, manifestation and testing. He developed a new theory of inquiry or experimental logic. When we find ourselves in a difficult situation, we develop the spirit of inquiry because the problem at hand has to be solved. We articulate the problem and then hypothesise on the solution to the problem. The knowledge that we get acquire in a specific inquiry becomes a part of our experience and serves as the background for further inquiry. By studying the types of enquiry that have been successful we can formulate rules and norms for directing future inquiries. Democracy according to Dewey gives space for inquirers which are bold, courageous and open minded. We must constantly submit knowledge to the test of the community so that we clarify, refine and justify this knowledge. All life is and can be artistic. Dewey gave a prominent place to aesthetic quality and said that aesthetic quality is an essential characteristic of all experiences. It can be funded with new meanings, ideas and emotions.
Dewey viewed human life as a movement qualified by experiences. Experience includes integrity and funded aesthetic quality, which Dewey termed as consummation. He was interested in the methods that could be applied to resolve conflict situations and advocated social reform so that all men could have a life of enriched meaning. He believed in an inter-disciplinary curriculum which focused on connecting multiple subjects where the students would go freely in and out of classrooms and construct their own paths for acquiring knowledge. The teacher would be a facilitator, observing the students’ interest and would help develop problem solving skills. In a traditional class the teacher would instruct pupils, convey all the information and then take a written test. In Dewey’s method the teacher would give some background information and then the students would work in groups to explore concepts within the content. There would be a lot of conversation and collaboration. There would be projects, presentations, tests and evaluation.
Dewey is best known for his philosophy of education. He was very critical of the rigid and formal ways in which students were taught in America during the latter part of the 19thcentury. This method regarded the child as a passive person on whom information was dumped .The other extreme of allowing the child to choose what he wanted to study overlooked the fact that the child may be immature. Dewey however, was of the view that the child should move from immature experience to an experience which was based on skills and intelligence. Children by nature explore and are curious. So ‘Learning by Doing’ would benefit them considerably. Thus with proper guidance a child would participate in all types of experiences and would cultivate creativity and would also be unique. Dewey believed in cultivating a proper environment and in the process the moral character of the child would develop. The child would learn values and at the same time learn to appreciate the importance of objectivity. The child would also learn to imagine and have the courage to change his/her mind in the light of experience. Dewey wanted the school to mirror society and its institutions. He believed in a shared experience for democracy and community building.
The School and Society: Being Three Lectures (1899) was John Dewey’s first detailed published work on education. In the lectures included in this initial publication, Dewey proposes a psychological, social, and political framework for progressive education. He argues that the progressive approach is both an inevitable product of the Industrial Revolution and a natural fit with the psychology of children.
Dewey points out how haphazardly the school as an institution had evolved. His view was that different parts of schools have been oddly put together and poorly assembled through several centuries and designed to serve different needs and even conflicting social interests. His opinion was that varieties of specialised institutions were created to support and supplement the ‘official hierarchy of education’. The teachers’ training schools produced teachers depending on the demand that emerged due to the expansion of public education in the nineteenth century. The trade and technical schools turned out skilled craftsmen needed for industry and construction. In Dewey’s opinion, different components and parts of the educational system emerged. He noted that in spite of the growth of multi leveled educational institutions’ there was no single consistent principle or purpose of organisation that unified them all.
Dewey’s efforts were in the direction of evolving this principle. He wanted to provide that unifying pattern by applying the principles and practices of democracy. The three lectures that he presented were initially given as a fundraising lecture series in support of the Laboratory School. The lectures proceed in a pattern, the first dealing with the relation of the school to social progress, the second with the relation of the school to the psychology of the child, and the third with the organisation of the school in accomplishing these aims.
Dewey’s basic argument was that education should be available to every single child in society and this was possible in his view only in a democratic setup. To him in the first place, the schools should be freely open and made accessible to all from kindergarten to college. At a second level, in a democratic educational system children would themselves carry on the educational process, aided and guided by the teacher and in the third phase, children would be trained to cooperate with others by sharing with and caring for one another. Children trained under these circumstances would evolve as creative, well-adjusted citizens who would consider others as their fellow citizens and equals. In Dewey’s words these would “make over American society in their own image”. By taking education on these lines he felt that the “opposition between the old education and the new conditions of life would be overcome. The progressive influences radiating from the schools would stimulate and fortify the building of a democratic order of free and equal citizens”. Dewey’s idea was to integrate the school with society. He wanted this to happen by a process where learning happens with the actual problems of life. This he believed could be achieved by application of the “ principles and practices of democracy”. The school system would be open to all on a completely free and equal basis without any restrictions or segregation on account of colour, race, creed, national origin, gender or social status. Group activity under self-direction and self-government would make the classroom a miniature republic where equality and consideration for all would prevail
Dewey was of the opinion that the new school system would take over the functions of and compensate for the losses sustained by the crumbling of the old institutions clustered around the farm economy, the family, the church and the small town. “The school,” he wrote, “must be made into a social center capable of participating in the daily life of the community . . . and make up in part to the child for the decay of dogmatic and fixed methods of social discipline and for the loss of reverence and the influence of authority.” (George Novak Internet Archive 2005, International Socialist Review, Vol. 21, No. 1, Winter 1960). Children were to get from the public school whatever was missing in their lives elsewhere that was essential for their balanced development as members of a democratic country.
Dewey therefore urged that manual training, science, nature-study, art and such other subjects be given precedence over reading, writing and arithmetic in the primary curriculum. The problems raised by the exercise of the child’s motor powers in constructive work would lead naturally, he said, into learning the more abstract, intellectual branches of knowledge.
(Children in Washington D.C. learning how a compass works. An example of the experiential learning of the time. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_and_Society. Photo by Frances Benjamin Johnston. (1899).
Although Dewey asserted that activities involving the energetic side of the child’s nature should take the first place in primary education, he objected to early specialised training or technical segregation in the public schools which was dictated, not by individual needs or personal preferences of the growing youth, but by external interests.
Dewey, following his co-educator, Francis Parker, rejected the commercial-minded approach to elementary education. They opposed slotting children prematurely into grooves of capitalist manufacture. The business of education is more than education for the sake of business, they declared. They saw in too-early specialisation the menace of uniformity and the source of a new division into a master and a subject class. But this raised some serious issues of contradictions as to what the immigrants, working and middle classes regarded as education. To them it was not an adornment or a passport to aristocratic culture, but an indispensable equipment to earn a better living and rise in the social scale. They especially valued those subjects which were conducive to success in business. During the nineteenth century private business colleges were set up in the cities to teach mathematics, book keeping, stenography and knowledge of English required for business offices. Mechanics institutes were established to provide skilled manpower for industry.
Dewey’s thoughts on education attracted criticism from those who felt that he was being extremely liberal with students and gave them too much of freedom, which in turn might to teachers losing control over them. But Dewey believed that an education that was student centric was the best way of bringing out their potential and it is this approach which assumes enormous significance in contemporary times when most schools continue to be ‘information suppliers’ rather than instilling in children a sense of curiosity to explore and experiment.
The main tenets of John Dewey’s educational philosophy could be codified thus:
- The conduct of the pupils shall be governed by themselves, according to the social needs of the community.
- Interest shall be the motive for all work.
- Teachers will inspire a desire for knowledge, and will serve as guides in the investigations undertaken, rather than acting as task-masters.
- Scientific study of each pupil’s development, physical, mental, social and spiritual is absolutely essential for the intelligent direction of his/her development.
- Greater attention is paid to the child’s physical needs, with greater use of outdoors.
- Cooperation between school and home will fill all needs of the child’s development such as music, dancing, play and other extra-curricular activities.
All progressive schools will look upon their work as of the laboratory type and will recognise the value of experimentation..
These rules for education sum up the theoretical conclusions of the reform movement begun by Colonel Francis Parker and carried forward by Dewey at the Laboratory School he set up in 1896 with his first wife in collaboration with the University of Chicago. With his instrumentalist theory of knowledge as a guide, Dewey tried out and confirmed his new educational procedures there with children between the ages of four and fourteen.
Dewey’s work was subsequently popularised by the leading faculty members of Teachers College in New York after Dewey transferred from Chicago to Columbia University. From this fountainhead Dewey’s ideas filtered throughout most of the teachers’ training schools and all the grades of public instruction below the university level. His disciples organised a John Dewey Society and the Progressive Education Association and have published numerous books and periodicals to propagate and defend his ideologies on learning, schooling, education system and on values like equality and democracy.
Concluding Notes
John Dewey’s ideas had a profound influence on educational practices in the United States. The progressive elements in the field of education greatly appreciated his student centric approach. His work on democracy influenced one of his students B.R.Ambedkar who went on to be one of the founders of modern India. Dewey is considered the epitome of liberalism by many historians. Some critics however felt that students would fail to acquire basic academic skills in his scheme of things and that the teacher would become redundant. These views apart, the truth remains that John Dewey continues to remain one of the most powerful educational philosophers of modern times.
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References
- Dewey John (1902). The Child and the Curriculum, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- ————- (1913). Interest and Effort in Education. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
- ———– (1909). Moral Principles in Education. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
- ————– (1915). Schools of To-Morrow. New York: Dutton.
- ————- (1934). Education and the Social Order. New York: League for Industrial Democracy.
- ———— (1937). The Teacher and Society. New York: Appleton-Century.
- ———– (1944). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: Macmillan.
- ————- (1976). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, New Delhi: Light and Life Publishers
- Dewey John & Evelyn Dewey (1915) Schools of To-Morrow, New York: Dutton, 1915; London: Dent.
- Edwards Paul (ed.) (1967). The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: The MacMillian Company and the Free Press.
- Warde W. F. (George Novack) (1960). Transcription/Editing: Daniel Gaido. 2005. HTML Markup: David Walters. 2005. Source: International Socialist Review, Vol. 21, No. 1, Winter 1960Public Domain: George Novak Internet Archive 2005.