Teachers, Leaders, and Schools: Essays by John Dewey

General Introduction: John Dewey and His Educational Writings

1 General Introduction: John Dewey and His Educational Writings WHY, YOU MAY BE THINKING, should I study the ideas of John Dewey? Dewey was probably the most prominent educational thinker in the Western democracies of the twentieth century, and his influence in the twenty-first century continues. The reasons for his being thought-provoking to many teachers, administrators, researchers, curriculum developers, and others are numerous, and at least some of them are related to his ideas and questions about (a) what kinds of teachers should we prepare and employ, (b) which kinds of curricula should students study, (c) which qualities should educational leaders develop and manifest, (d) how do we know when we have a good school, and (e) in what ways are teachers, curricula, leaders, and schools related to a democratic society? Indeed, what is the purpose of education, and what are the means to becoming educated? These questions are posed implicitly and explicitly in the five sections of this book: Part 1, The Classroom Teacher; Part 2, The School Curriculum; Part 3, The Educational Leader; Part 4, The Ideal School; and Part 5, The Democratic Society. In this general introduction, we hope to give readers a better perspective on why Dewey continues to be relevant to those who are interested in education. If you are an aspiring or practicing teacher, we particularly recommend you read “To Those Who Aspire to the Profession of Teaching ” (LW13), the second Dewey essay in part 1. Current and future educational leaders are urged to take up “Democracy and Educational Administration” (LW11), the second essay in part 3. In order to understand the background for Dewey’s writings about education , it helps to have an acquaintance both with his historical and intellectual biography and with the ways his educational writings have been interpreted by others. Here, however, we can offer only a short introduction to how Dewey was raised, educated, and thought, noting a few highlights and some of the 2 General Introduction interpretive challenges facing the reader. The reader is encouraged to access the rich and growing literature on these themes for a fuller appreciation of the context in which Dewey lived and constructed his ideas. The “Reflection and Discussion Questions” that follow the chapter introductions point out some of the ways his and our schools and worlds were both alike and quite different and how these similarities and differences may or ought to influence our thoughts, decisions, and actions as educators. The Historical Context Dewey was born on 20 October 1859, to Archibald Sprague Dewey and Lucina Rich Dewey in Burlington, Vermont, and into a country that was on the verge of sweeping intellectual, social, and political changes. That was the year people in the United States and much of the world were challenged in their core beliefs by the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. These events would have influenced Dewey’s early, informal education through his mother’s evangelical (Congregationalist) religious views and values. That same year, the abolitionist John Brown attacked the federal arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Five months after the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860, eleven Southern states seceded from the United States, and the American Civil War began with the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861. In part, Dewey grew up in a military family, for his father served as a quartermaster in the Union army. In the later war years, Dewey and his mother traveled south to be with him for a short period in northern Virginia. One can only speculate about what the young Dewey saw and how this experience influenced his thinking. Dewey understood that one’s life and thinking were shaped by early experiences , and he developed a concept of experience as an ongoing interaction and transaction in and with the environment that became central to his views of teaching and philosophy. In addition, he claimed that living in Burlington gave him an understanding of both the existing rural/agrarian and emerging industrial worlds. Burlington had a bustling timber industry employing many local and Canadian lumberjacks, and his grandparents’ farm introduced him to life in a rural community. In these settings, then, he learned early that education was more than formal schooling, and that the world around him was teeming with educative and miseducative forces. These ideas he later combined in the compact book Experience and Education (LW13). As a child and young man, Dewey was a serious student...