Abstract
No individual ever fully “represents” a wider social and intellectual movement. The ideas that infuse a particular intellectual milieu are always appropriated and transformed, to one extent or another, in the mind of any single writer. But while I make reference to other collaborative progressives, I have nonetheless chosen in this chapter and the next to focus on the work of a single thinker: John Dewey. While every progressive intellectual would not have agreed with every one of Dewey’s conclusions, overall Dewey’s voluminous works contain the most complete and sophisticated formulation of the collaborative progressive perspective. If Dewey’s particular vision has limitations, therefore, one is likely to find these same issues in the writings of his compatriots. Because Dewey was deeply involved in intellectual debates over democratic practice throughout his long life, his works also contain responses to the range of criticisms that emerged across the first half of the twentieth century. The fact is that almost no one over this long period could avoid framing their perspectives around these issues without engaging, explicitly or implicitly, with Dewey’s vision. With respect to education, in particular, this choice seems obvious, given the enormous influence his ideas continue to have in the field.
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Notes
John Dewey, cited in Jay Martin, The Education of John Dewey: A Biography (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), xi.
James A. Good, A Search for Unity in Diversity: The “Permanent Hegelian Deposit” in the Philosophy of John Dewey (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 101.
Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 4.
Alan Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 36.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
Laurel Tanner, Dewey’s Laboratory School: Lessons for Today (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997), 200.
John Dewey, “Human Nature and Conduct,” in The Middle Works, 1899–1924: Vol. 14, 1922, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976), 70, 112.
John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Columbus, OH: Swallow Press, 1954), 188.
John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 18.
John Dewey, “Time and Individuality,” in The Later Works 14: 1925–1953: Vol. 14, 1939–1941, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 112.
Jim Garrison, “John Dewey’s Theory of Practical Reasoning,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 31, no. 3 (1999): 291–312.
Katherine Camp Mayhew and Anna Camp Edwards, The Dewey School: The Laboratory School of the University of Chicago 1896–1903 (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1936), 300, 306, 406.
John Dewey, “School and Society,” in The Middle Works, 1899–1924: Vol. 1, 1899–1901, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), 104.
Laura Runyon, The Teaching of Elementary History in the Dewey School (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1906).
John Dewey, “The Aim of History in Elementary Education,” Elementary School Record 1, no. 4 (1900): 203.
C. Wright Mills, Sociology and Pragmatism: The Higher Learning in America (New York: Paine-Whitman Publishers, 1964), 378.
John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Minton, Balch and Company, 1934), 29.
Steven C. Rockefeller, John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 539.
Spencer J. Maxcy, “Ethnic Pluralism, Cultural Pluralism, and John Dewey’s Program of Cultural Reform: A Response to Eisle,” Educational Theory 34, no. 3 (1984): 301–5.
Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 189. See also Shelton Stromquist, Reinventing “The People”: The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006);
Susan Curtis, A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991);
David W. Southern, The Progressive Era and Race: Reaction and Reform, 1900–1917 (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2005).
Mills, cited in Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 126.
Emily Robertson, “Is Dewey’s Educational Vision Still Viable?” Review of Research in Education 18, no. 1 (1992): 335–81, notes a few examples where Dewey appears to leave open the possibility of social conflict.
Also see Dewey, “The Teacher and the Public,” in The Later Works: 1925–1953: Vol. 11, 1935–1937, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 161, where he argues that teachers and others should join together against “their common foe.” These are among only a very small number of exceptions.
John Dewey, “Nationalizing Education,” in The Middle Works: 1899–1925, Vol. 10, 1916–1917, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980), 207.
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© 2010 Aaron Schutz
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Schutz, A. (2010). John Dewey’s Conundrum. In: Social Class, Social Action, and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113572_3
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