By John Dewey, A Pennsylvania State University Electronic Classics Series Publication

The distinguished author of books on psychology, ethics, and politics, John Dewey specialized in the philosophy of education. In this landmark work on public education, Dewey discusses methods of providing quality public education in a democratic society. First published close to 90 years ago, Democracy and Education sounded the call for a revolution in education, stressing growth, experience, and activity as factors that promote a democratic character in students and lead to the advancement of self and society.

John Dewey: A philosopher and educational reformer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a philosopher, Dewey followed pragmatism, and its practical orientation carried over into his educational ideas, which became the basis of progressive education.

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About the Author:

John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thoughts and ideas have been greatly influential in the United States and around the world. He, along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophical school of Pragmatism. He also is known as the father of functional psychology; he was a leading representative of the progressive movement in U.S. education during the first half of the 20th century; and he was a contributing editor of the Encyclopeadia for Unified Science, a project of the logical empiricists that was organised by Otto Neurath.

Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont of modest family origins. He received his PhD from the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in 1884. From 1904, he was professor of philosophy at Columbia University. While at Columbia, he had a brief clandestine affair with the much younger Anzia Yezierska, who went on to become a prominent novelist.

Along with the historian Charles Beard, economists Thorstein Veblen and James Harvey Robinson, Dewey is one of the founders of The New School for Social Research. Dewey's most significant writings were "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896), a critique of a standard psychological concept and the basis of all his further work; Human Nature and Conduct (1922), a study of the role of habit in human behavior; The Public and its Problems (1927), a defense of democracy written in response to Walter Lippmann's The Phantom Public (1925); Experience and Nature (1929), Dewey's most "metaphysical" statement; Art as Experience (1934), Dewey's major work on aesthetics; A Common Faith (1934), a humanistic study of religion; Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), an examination of Dewey's unusual conception of logic; and Freedom and Culture (1939), a political work examining the roots of fascism. While each of these works focuses upon one particular philosophical theme, Dewey wove in all of his major themes into everything he wrote.

In 1937, Dewey chaired a Commission of Enquiry which cleared Trotsky of the charges brought against him by Stalin. (From Wikipedia)

External Links:

• Center for Dewey Studies
• Democracy and Education (WikiSource)
• Works by John Dewey at Project Gutenberg
• Excerpts from Experience and Nature (pdf file)
• Impressions of Soviet Russia
• a website dedicated to the transactional view of Dewey and Arthur Bentley
• Information about John Dewey and F. Mathias Alexander
• Otter Valley Experiential High School -- A Brandon, Vermont high school based on Experiential Learning
• The Children's School of Oak Park - A Progressive Education elementary school in Oak Park, Illinois
• City & Country School located in NYC, for children ages 2-13, founded in 1914 by the pioneering educator, Caroline Pratt.

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