John Dewey

John Dewey
(1859 - 1952)
Dr.S.Prakash
Principal
Thiagarajar College of
Preceptors
Madurai.

General Information
John Dewey was born in the United States of
America on October 20, 1859.
American philosopher, psychologist and educational
reformer whose ideas have been influential in
education, philosophy, and psychology.

General Information…..
known best for his publications about
education, but he also wrote about other
topics such as experience, nature, art,
logic, inquiry, democracy, and ethics.
Major representative of populist
philosophies of schooling during the first
half of the 20th century in the United
States of America

Time Line
 On October 20, 1859 John Dewey was born in
Burlington, Vermont, from a modest family. He was
married twice and had six children.
 In 1879 he graduated from the University of Vermont
(Phi Beta Kappa). Then, he worked as a high-school
teacher in Pennsylvania and as a elementary school
teacher in Vermont. So, after studying philosophy
independently, he entered the graduate program in
philosophy at Johns Hopkins University to receive his
Ph.D.
 From 1884 to 1894 he had a faculty position at the
University of Michigan.
 In 1894 Dewey joined the University of Chicago where
emerged his Pragmatic Philosophy.

 In 1903 Dewey also set up the “University of Chicago
Laboratory Schools” to actualize the pedagogical beliefs
that provided material for his first major work on
education, “The School and Social Progress” (1899).
 In 1899, Dewey was elected president of the American
Psychological Association.
 From 1904 until his retirement in 1930, he was professor
of philosophy at both Columbia University and Columbia
University's Teachers College.
 In 1905 he became president of the American
Philosophical Association.
 Years later, the United States Postal Service honored
John Dewey with a Prominent Americans series 30¢
postage stamp.
 Nowadays, Dewey is considered one of the founders of
The New School.

Writings
Major Dewey's educational theories were
presented in these writings:
My Pedagogic Creed (1897)
The School and Society (1900)
The Child and the Curriculum (1902)
Democracy and Education (1916)
Experience and Education (1938)

Dewey’s Writings
• His writings emphasize the dynamics and
continuously changing characters of life.
• In other words, It may be said that there are no
fixed ideas and any ideas and any idea is to be
tested only by its practical significance.
• Ideas are therefore to be changed accordingly in
the course of lifetime
• This kind of philosophical view is popularly
known as pragmatism.

Dewey’s Theories and Beliefs on
Education
 Experiential education: Dewey focused his concept of
“instrumentalism” in education on “learning by doing or
hands-on learning”, which means to learn not only by the
theory, but also by the practice. “Instrumentalism” is a
theory of knowledge created by Dewey in which ideas
are seen to exist primarily as instruments for the solution
of problems encountered in the environment.
 The school’s role: Dewey stressed the importance of
education in school not only as a place to gain content
knowledge, but also as a place to learn how to live. The
purpose of education should be the realization of
everybody’s full potential and the ability to use any skills
for the greater good.

Dewey’s Theories and Beliefs on
Education
The educational process’ role: Dewey advocated
for an educational structure that makes a
balance between the child and the curriculum,
that is to say, delivering knowledge while also
taking into account the interests and
experiences of the student.
The teacher’s role: The teacher’s role should be
that of facilitator and guide since the teacher
becomes a partner in the learning process who
leads students to independently discover
meaning within the subject area.

The Dewey School
• In January of 1896, Dewey opened the doors of
the Experimental University of Chicago with the
idea of setting up an “Experimental School” by
his own.
• The program core of the studies of the Dewey
School figured what he denominated
“occupation”, in other words, “a form of activity
done by the children that reproduce a type of
work done in social life or that is parallel to it.

The Dewey Teaching Method
Age Activity
4-5 years old Cook, Carpentry, needlework
6 years old They built a farm of wood, planted wheat and cotton; they sold
their products in the market.
7 years old They studied pre-history in caves made by themselves
8 years old They studied navigation like Marco Polo, Colon, Magallanes
and Robison Crusoe.
9 years old Local history and geography
10 years old They studied the Colonial History
11-12 years old Anatomic experiments, electromagnetism, political economy
and photography
13 years old They built a building for their debate club.

• Dewey wrote: “the child goes to school to
make things: to cook, to sew, to work the
wood, and to make tools through acts of
simple construction; and in this context,
and like consequence of those acts it
articulates the studies: reading, writing,
and calculus.

• The Dewey pedagogical key consisted in
providing the children with “experiences of first
hand” about conflictive situations, most of the
time based on personal experiences. In his
opinion, “the mind is not completely free until the
right conditions are created to make the children
participate actively in the personal analysis of
his/her own problems, and participate in the
methods to solve them, at the price of multiple
tries and mistakes.

• Even though he didn’t expect that the
Experimental School method were
followed in a strictly way in other places,
he kept the hope that his school served as
a source of inspiration to whom pretended
to transformed the public education.

The End of the Dewey School
• The precursor community of Dewey lasted too
short. Its end was caused by the people who
worked with Dewey in the Experimental school.
They all wanted to have the control of the
school, since the school didn’t belong to Dewey,
in fact, it belong to the Chicago’s University.
• The lost of the Experimental school left an
opened room to others to understand, apply,
and even deform Dewey’s pedagogical ideas.

Quote
“ Education is not preparation for life;
education is life itself. Education,
therefore, is a process of living and not a
preparation for future living.”
John Dewey

Conclusions
• Dewey considered schools and civil society as
two fundamental elements and major topics that
need attention and reconstruction to encourage
experimental intelligence and plurality in order to
improve our life and environment.
• Dewey strongly believed that students must be
active learning perceivers and critical thinkers
rather than passive believers and receivers of
information.

Conclusion…
• Dewey’s theories have been a great influence
on 20th-century thought. His writings on
educational theory and practice have been
widely read and accepted because he showed
that the disciplines of philosophy, pedagogy, and
psychology should be understood as closely
interrelated. For that reason, Dewey's ideas
have remained at the center of much
educational philosophy in the United States and
in many countries around the world.

John Dewey

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