John Dewey (1859–1952) was an American philosopher, educationist, and social critic. The doyen of the progressive education movement, Dewey is arguably the most renowned and influential American philosopher of education.
Born in Burlington, Vermont, Dewey was educated at the University of Vermont. He worked at the universities of Michigan and Chicago before moving in 1904 to Columbia in New York, where he served as a professor of philosophy until his retirement in 1930. During the first half of the 20th century, he was America’s most famous exponent of a pragmatic philosophy that celebrated the traditional values of democracy and the efficacy of reason and universal education.
Working in the pragmatic tradition of William James and C. S. Peirce, he evolved the educational theory that children would train best by “learning by directed living,” which combined learning with concrete activity. His system convinced many American educationalists that it was necessary to develop less structured, less teacher-centered, and more practical schools.
Dewey presented his mature philosophical views in two late works, The Quest for Certainty (1929) and Experience and Nature (1935.)
Dewey was a prolific writer and published over 300 works including, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (1891,) Democracy and Education (1916,) Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920,) Art as Experience (1934,) and Freedom and Culture (1939.)
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Modern life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence for independent effectivenessthe emancipation of mind as an individual organ to do its own work. We naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos.
—John Dewey
To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.
—John Dewey
Topics: Work, Talents, Abilities, Happiness
The result of the educative process is capacity for further education.
—John Dewey
Topics: Education
Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart’s desire.
—John Dewey
Topics: Reality
Skepticism becomes the mark and even the pose of the educated mind. It is no longer directed against this and that article of the older creeds but is rather a bias against any kind of far-reaching ideas, and a denial of systematic participation on the part of such ideas in the intelligent direction of affairs.
—John Dewey
Topics: Skepticism, Doubt
To the being of fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise; it surrounds the present like a halo.
—John Dewey
Topics: Tomorrow, The Future
Creative thinking will improve as we relate the new fact to the old and all facts to each other.
—John Dewey
Topics: Facts
Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself.
—John Dewey
Topics: Education
The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.
—John Dewey
Topics: Progress, Self-improvement
Confidence … is directness and courage in meeting the facts of life.
—John Dewey
Topics: Assurance, Confidence, Life, Courage
We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.
—John Dewey
Topics: Justice, Action, Wealth
For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.
—John Dewey
Topics: Education
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