Russell and Dewey on Education: Similarities and Differences

RUSSELL AND DEWEY ON EDUCATION: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES Tim Madigan State University of New York at Buffalo John Dewey and Bertrand Russell were two of the premier philosophers of the Twentieth Century. During their long lives (each lived to be over 90), their paths crossed on several occasions. While cordial enough when in each other's presence, the two men were definitely not on the best of terms. Sidney Hook, who knew and admired them both once said that there were only two men whom Dewey actively disliked: Mortimer Adler and Bertrand Russell. Russell, for his part, never tired of making disparaging remarks about the pragmatists in general, and Dewey in particular, which irked Dewey immensely. Still, the two men shared many philosophical traits: an internationalistic outlook, a high regard for the scientific method, a concern for social matters, and a suspicion of dogma, especially religious dogma. In this paper, I will focus upon their educational theories, and the curious fact that each of them, for a short period of time, ran their own elementary schools. That the Dewey versus Russell debate is still going on can be seen in the Winter 1990 issue of The Wilson Quarterly, which contains a letter from Alan Ryan (author of a book on Russell's political philosophy) commenting upon a previous article which ran in that magazine entitled John Dewey: Philosopher in the Schoolroom. Ryan, comparing the two men, writes that: The similarities, of course, are many and obvious: both were ardent defenders of an education in which the child learned by doing, both began by doubting the need for any authority in the classroom other than the discipline of the subject matter itself, and both came to think, in Hobbes' memorable words, that children 'are born inapt for society.'1 But Ryan goes on to say that the differences between them are even more striking, and that an absolute barrier divided them: namely, Dewey's pragmatism. To quote again from Ryan: For Russell, at any rate, pragmatism was a sort of secular blasphemy. 3 Th« University of iowa LIBRARIES With God gone and most ethics shaky, all mankind had left was a concern for the truth - not a concern for what it would 'pay to believe,' but a concern for how things really were. By bringing philosophy back into the market-place, Dewey closed the breach that Russell had opened between the concerns of the intellectual and the duties of the plain man . . . Dewey's passion for closing all gaps and rejecting all dichotomies is ultimately less true to life than Russell's insistence on the tragic dimension of everyday life. A strong sense of the uselessness of truth and its unrelatedness to human affairs still strikes many of us as an indispensable element in the psychology of the serious philosopher.2 Ryan spells out quite well the bone of contention between the two men: the meaning of truth. But Russell was perhaps not as hesitant to bring philosophy into the marketplace as Ryan suggests. For Russell and Dewey are noteworthy in the annals of educational philosophy for attempting to practice what they preach: each of them, at different times, started their own schools for children. Russell, too, was - for at least a short while - a philosopher in the schoolroom. The University Elementary School, popularly known as "The Laboratory School," was set up by the Department of Pedagogy of the University of Chicago and headed by John Dewey from its inception in 1896 to his resignation in 1904. The term "Laboratory School" was no accident, for according to Dewey the school had two aims: "To exhibit, test, verify, and criticize theoretical statements and principles, and to add to the sum of facts and principles in its special line." 3 In this way, he felt that it would do for pedagogy what similar laboratories did for biology, physics and chemistry: it would provide an opportunity for experimentation. The school eventually grew to 140 students, aged 4 to 15. Russell opened the Beacon Hill School in 1927, over 20 years after Dewey' experiment in education had ended. It originally had 12 boarders and 5 day students, aged 5 to 12. The school was run...