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A Century of John and Evelyn Dewey's Schools of To-morrow : Rousseau, Recorded Knowledge, and Race in the Philosopher's Most Problematic Text
Abstract
A century ago, John Dewey and his daughter Evelyn published Schools of To-morrow to nearly universal acclaim. However, over the course of the 20th century, critics of Dewey have drawn upon Schools of To-morrow to accuse him of being an uncritical disciple of French philosopher, Jean Rousseau, of being opposed to the transmission of content to students, and most recently of endorsing a curriculum that patronized Black students. As a result, the text has become John Dewey's most controversial and problematic. In this historical study, we seek to place Schools of To-morrow in its historical, intellectual, and social context. The first part of the study traces the writing and publication of the text, as well as its changing reception over the past century. The second part of the study directly responds to the three criticisms previously cited: that Dewey was a disciple of Rousseau, that Dewey was opposed to the transmission of content knowledge, and that Dewey endorsed the racially segregated school system of Indianapolis depicted in the text. Drawing upon Dewey's other writings, his course syllabi, his personal correspondence, and lecture notes, we argue that the first two accusations are unfounded, but the third is partially accurate, although incomplete. We conclude that Schools of To-morrow is an undervalued text in the Dewey cannon that warrants closer study.
... During this period, Fallace and Fantozzi (2015) also considers that Schools of Tomorrow (Dewey & Dewey, 1915/1980) merits review as the divergent progressive education examples cited portray Dewey's philosophical ideas in action rather than relying on theoretical prescriptions. Furthermore, the more one reads into Schools of Tomorrow (Dewey & Dewey, 1915/1980) the more comprehensive the examples become with the schools of Gary, Indiana (a new steel making city on the southern shores of Lake Michigan) described and discussed in greatest detail (Cremin, 1961). ...
... The remaining descriptive chapters focussing on connections between schools and the communities they serve and with education in democratic settings were most likely written by John Dewey's daughter, Evelyn Dewey. These descriptive chapters contained for the one and only time in John Dewey's writings frequent references to 'learning by doing', a term which subsequently became problematic in capturing the nuances of Dewey's overall theorizing (Fallace & Fantozzi, 2015). ...
This historically-themed critical paper reappraises selective progressive education writings by John Dewey in relation to two questions: firstly, how was physical education organised and taught in the Gary Schools, a programme Dewey widely praised in Schools of Tomorrow and secondly, how might the educational aspirations of Dewey benefit current subject purposes in physical education. This exercise highlights points of disconnection between the ideas of Dewey and areas of practice in the Gary Schools and the modest engagement Dewey's theorizing has had in informing the educational contribution of physical education over the last century. Both points are problematic in pursuing progressive education agendas and the latter point highlights the continuing need for a more convincing educational account of physical education to be advanced. The paper concludes by arguing for a Deweyan and Merleau-Pontian informed account of physical education which is primed by embodied learning and social and moral development.
... Although fully consistent with Dewey's contingent and experimental approach to teaching, Schools of To-morrow nevertheless did far more to confuse contemporaries about Dewey's approach to curriculum than did the heavily documented Dewey School. In fact, the first published attack on Dewey's educational ideas came in the form of an editorial review of the book (Fallace & Fantozzi, 2015). William Bagley (1915) criticized the teachers and schools depicted in Schools of To-morrow as Dewey's "disciples," dismissed their pedagogical ideas as being "nine-tenths Rousseau," and quipped that "[t]he very notion that the child should be asked or required to assimilate the experience of others is repugnant" to Dewey (p. 5). ...
... xv). Bagley's and Hirsch's critiques did not draw upon Dewey's well-documented work at the Dewey School; instead they drew upon Dewey's later works, such as Schools of To-morrow (Fallace & Fantozzi, 2015). ...
Background/Context
Over the last century, perhaps no school in American history has been studied more than John Dewey's Laboratory School at the University of Chicago (1896–1904). Scholars have published dozens of articles, books, essays, and assessments of a school that existed for only seven and a half years.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study
This article reviews the extensive firsthand accounts and historiography of the famed school. In the first section, the authors trace the published accounts of those who experienced the Dewey School firsthand between 1895 and 1904. In the second section, the authors review accounts of the school by contemporaries, reformers, and historians between 1904 and 2014, focusing on three historiographical areas: the events surrounding the closing of the school, the rationale underlying its curriculum, and the impact of the experiment on U.S. schools. In the third section, the authors argue that most accounts of the Dewey School convey one of three historiographical myths: the Dewey School as misunderstood; the Dewey School as triumph, and/or the Dewey School as tragedy.
Research Design
A historiographical essay is a narrative and analytical account of what has been written on a particular historical topic. Following this methodology, the authors are less concerned with establishing what happened at the Dewey School, than they were with how the school was analyzed and interpreted by contemporaries and historians over the past 120 years.
Conclusions/Recommendations
The authors analyze each myth to conclude that Dewey only subscribed to the myth of the Dewey School as misunderstood, while the other two were historiographical constructions created by Dewey's contemporaries and historians.
... Schools of To-Morrow was referenced as a primary rationale for reform in the 1916 National Education Association bulletin "The Social Studies in Secondary Education" (Dunn, 1916), the document credited for "launching the field" of progressive education (Fallace & Fantozzi, 2015, p. 130). Additionally, the Deweys' work was (and continues to be) cited historically as a sort of guidepost for progressive education movements throughout the 20th century (Fallace & Fantozzi, 2015). John Dewey himself has been hailed as a "father" of progressive education. ...
The 20th century brought about the development of an increased climate of capitalist influence on every aspect of American life, including and especially on higher education. Simultaneously, as more and more purposes of higher education have come to reflect values of capitalist culture, a movement towards new ways of teaching and
learning has begun to emerge in the academy. These new ways of teaching and learning value relationship, introspection, and inquiry based on critical reflection. Many of them have their roots in the contemplative traditions of Asia. Guided by the framework of Paulo Freire and Parker Palmer's broad visions for the purpose of education, this multiple-case study, focused on six participants, explored the influence of traditionally trained Tibetan Buddhist teachers on American faculty members in American higher education. The study's findings illustrate this influence in the form of three major themes: Care For (Even Love) Your Students; Think Critically; and There Is Value in Authentic Voices from Other Traditions. This study informs practice for stakeholders in teaching and learning in higher education.
... In a previous paper, I appraised the writings of John Dewey in relation to how physical education was organised in the Gary Schools (Thorburn 2017) and found disconnections between Dewey's ([1915] 1980) reporting and that of Hammer (1918). Part of the problem was due to the thinness of the observation-based reporting from Evelyn Dewey who completed the descriptive chapters in Schools of Tomorrow (Fallace and Fantozzi 2015). By contrast, the theoretical chapters that John Dewey wrote in Schools of Tomorrow Dewey [1915] 1980) were more detailed about the benefits of fully connecting physical and mental growth as the object of learning. ...
This historical-themed critical paper utilises selective education writings by John Dewey to review how constructions of participatory social democracy might benefit conceptions of contemporary physical education which are informed by social interaction and personally relevant learning. After defining the boundaries of enquiry, the review focuses on Dewey’s early ethics writings which considered that society functioned best when collective moral purposes merged with individual freedoms in a context where one should be alert to the marginalising influences of laissez-faire liberalism. The paper then briefly reviews why previous attempts to engage with Dewey’s theorizing in the United States of America in the early to mid-twentieth century failed to result in sustained progress. Using this analysis, the paper then reviews whether a greater interest in meaningful and activist forms of participation could be enhanced further by establishing clearer Deweyan-informed links to democracy and learning. In conclusion, it is argued that physical education is best equipped to withstand the ramifications of advanced capitalism if students experiences are continuous and interactive, and with a degree of responsibility and control over the pace and direction of learning. If effective, this is likely to develop improved levels of reasoning, active deliberation and decision-making.
O presente artigo apresenta um estudo introdutório da obra Schools of To-morrow (1915) de John Dewey em coautoria com Evelyn Dewey. O objetivo deste estudo é ampliar o referencial teórico da pesquisa sobre o ensino das Artes Visuais a partir de uma das obras de John Dewey. O texto foi desenvolvido a partir da seleção dos princípios: ajustment (ajuste), movimento, experiência, liberdade, disciplina e learning by doing (aprender fazendo) para apresentar alguns apontamentos sobre o ensino das Artes Visuais nos dias atuais. Como resultado apresentamos a importância dos conceitos selecionados da obra para outras perspectivas do processo de apreciação, observação, investigação e prática orientada no ensino das Artes Visuais. A conclusão desse estudo é que os princípios destacados podem ser aliados na articulação do ensino das Artes Visuais e aprendizagem em conexão com a vida.
Recensé: Réponse à la recension de « John Dewey – Écrits sur les religions et le naturalisme. Recueil de textes traduits et introduits par Joan Stavo- Debauge » par Émir Mahieddin
The book introduces John Dewey to scholars in communication studies by presenting new material and interpretations from his works, lectures, and correspondence. Going beyond received histories in communication, it documents his role beginning at the University of Michigan in 1884 until his death in 1852 in establishing a view of communication as the means by which associated life and adaptation to the environment is possible. So integral is communication to his philosophy that Dewey is best seen as having a philosophy with communication, not of it. By reviewing Dewey's history of work relevant to communication, technology, and culture, previous assumptions by communication scholars are challenged. A fresh history is presented of his relations to key figures and his significance to the development of speech, rhetoric, journalism mass communication research, and public relations. Because of his concerns about power, participation, identity, and knowledge, his work remains relevant to contemporary scholars.
John Dewey was a progressive theorist, a pragmatist, a philosopher, and arguably the most influential American educator of the twentieth century. Yet, despite extensive documentation about John Dewey's philosophies of education and democracy, there is limited research and no consensus about Dewey's views about race and racism. I use a combination of primary sources, secondary sources, and archival data to explore the John Dewey's ideas about progressivism, racism, and schooling. I assert that Dewey, despite an expressed commitment to full and equal rights for African American students, normalized the experience of White students and implicitly endorsed accommodationist education reforms for African American children.
This chapter engages with the history of pedagogic practices by focusing on affect and embodiment and exploring ways that we might use the text and images included John and Evelyn Dewey’s 1915 Schools of To-Morrow as an entry point into understanding social practices historically. I specifically focus on the Dewey’s discussion of Marietta Johnson’s “school of organic education” located in Fairhope, Alabama and argue that a re-reading and a re-viewing of text and image opens up insights into the structuring of affective experience in early-twentieth-century American progressive education.
American educators have been pulled in different directions by two twentieth-century legacies: E. L. Thorndike is often portrayed as a proto-behaviorist who created a top-down technocratic view of modern educational administration. In contrast, John Dewey is seen to be promoting a fundamentally social, discovery-based, hands-on construction of knowledge. Dewey was prescient about the ways in which the hierarchical, corporate nature of educational bureaucracies can deaden the excitement of self-directed growth. Thorndike wanted to reform education in the Progressive era by promoting accountability through science; in so doing, he left a positive modern legacy of educational research. This historical chapter aims to unearth the subtleties in both men’s work that have often been overlooked by casting them in opposition to one another.
Abstract John Dewey’s willingness to endorse a remedial form of education for African American students offers us a rare glimpse of the racial assumptions underlying Dewey’s educational philosophy. By considering a variety of clues — Dewey’s silences on racial equality, his understanding of race and racial progress, and his respective prescriptions for European American and African American students — Frank Margonis offers in this essay a speculative case suggesting that the visionary child-centered education for which Dewey was most well-known was intended for European American students and not African American students. Because of the racial assumptions operative in Dewey’s educational philosophy, Margonis suggests, Dewey’s fundamental conceptions of the “student” and “classroom community” would best be abandoned by educational philosophers hoping to write philosophy that serves all students.
Background/Context
Most people who study the history and philosophy of education have heard of essentialism, but few people know the story behind how, when, and why the movement came to exist. This paper tells this story for the first time.
Purpose/Conclusions
This essay has three purposes. First, it provides an introduction to the life and career of William Chandler Bagley, a prominent professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University, from 1917 until his retirement in 1939. Following an introduction to Bagley's life, this work describes the founding of essentialism by drawing upon numerous primary and secondary sources to place this movement within the social and historical context in which it developed. The author pays careful attention to the story of how and why the founding of essentialism took place on the same day that John Dewey delivered his “Experience and Education” lecture at the 12th biennial convocation of Kappa Delta Pi. The paper then argues that what came to be known as essentialism represents a forgotten tradition in American educational history, one that is much richer than contemporary calls for “standards and accountability,” which grew out of the economically driven “A Nation at Risk” report of 1983. To conclude, the essay calls for more substantive attention to liberal education, purpose, moral philosophy, and curriculum for teaching teachers, all of which were at the heart of essentialist educational thought, but are now forgotten in an age obsessed with economic efficiency. The author calls upon contemporary leaders in American education to reconsider essentialism as a powerful philosophy that has great potential for the future of the teaching profession.
Research Design
This paper is written from the perspective of history and is based upon the long-established methodology from the field of historiography.
Background/Context
Determining John Dewey's exact influence on civic and social education during the early 20th century has been one of the most vexing issues facing curriculum historians. Generally speaking, interpretations of Dewey's work and influence have been plagued by four recurring methodological limitations: First, historians tend to interpret Dewey's work philosophically rather than historically. Second, they use their philosophically constructed Dewey to judge the fidelity of past educators against the standard of Dewey's “true” vision. Third, historians assume that because they have read all of Dewey's major and obscure works on education, the reformers of the past must (or should) have done so also. Fourth, historians assume rather than demonstrate Dewey's direct influence on others.
Purpose
To overcome these limitations, this historical study traces the influence of John Dewey on the discourse of civic and social education during the formative years of the progressive education movement by focusing on the received Dewey. By examining the specific ways in which Dewey's ideas were used by his contemporaries and peers, the author demonstrates that Dewey's words were often employed in various and conflicting ways to support a number of different curricular agendas. Specifically, the author argues that divisions between proponents of social justice and social efficiency, which play such a central role in the historical literature on progressive education, were not necessarily apparent to Dewey's contemporaries who cited him. In fact, Dewey's philosophy was often used specifically to assuage the gaps between these seemingly conflicting educational goals and objectives.
Research Design
The author focuses his inquiry specifically on the curriculum materials and discourse of secondary social and civic education. He focuses qualitatively on the various ways in which Dewey was cited and used by leading and lesser-known civic and social educators during the formative years of the American curriculum, with particular focus on uses of Dewey to support social efficiency and social justice. In the tradition of historiography, the findings are reported in a chronological narrative.
Findings/Conclusions
Although the evidence presented is merely suggestive, a few summative assertions regarding Dewey's influence on educators during the first half of the 20th century can be made. First, Dewey was often used by contemporaries to reconcile positivistic social science with pragmatic philosophy. Second, although Graham (1995) identified Democracy and Education as “the Bible of the educational reform movement then emerging,” there were in fact numerous Dewey texts cited, often without any reference to others. Third, Dewey's philosophy was used to support reform agendas aimed at social control and social adjustment as well as social reconstruction and social justice. To say that Dewey was used primarily in support of just one (or none) of these goals is a misrepresentation.
James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters. Initially, ex-slaves attempted to create an educational system that would support and extend their emancipation, but their children were pushed into a system of industrial education that presupposed black political and economic subordination. This conception of education and social order--supported by northern industrial philanthropists, some black educators, and most southern school officials--conflicted with the aspirations of ex-slaves and their descendants, resulting at the turn of the century in a bitter national debate over the purposes of black education. Because blacks lacked economic and political power, white elites were able to control the structure and content of black elementary, secondary, normal, and college education during the first third of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, blacks persisted in their struggle to develop an educational system in accordance with their own needs and desires. |James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters.
This article offers a critical review of the historical literature on the National Education Association’s (NEA) 1916 Committee on Social Studies (CSS) report, the document generally believed to have launched the social studies movement in American secondary schools. The review begins with a critical analysis of the four most pervasive interpretations of the report. Drawing upon these interpretations, the author suggests that there are three central issues at the heart of these disputes. The first is over the ideological origins of the report; the second, its institutional origins; and the third, its epistemological position. It is argued that the influence of John Dewey is the key to overcoming these disagreements by suggesting that the members of the Committee agreed upon a core of shared beliefs that reflected his philosophical ideas.
• Reviews the book, Studies in Secondary Education, II by the Faculty of the University High School of the University of Chicago (1925). This second monograph on the Chicago University High School carries forward and further particularizes the account of what has been going on there since Dr. Henry C. Morrison became Superintendent of the Laboratory Schools in 1919. There are 10 reports this time, contributed by 12 members of the faculties of the high school and the school of education. The first six deal with pupil-progress accounting, and the last four, with experiments in curriculum organization and administration. There is valuable material in this volume for the classroom teacher, the supervisor, the counselor, the measurement expert, the curriculum maker, and the administrator. As in the first volume of these reports, the discussions are restrained, clear, and concretely illustrated. One receives again the strong impression of a well integrated institution dominated by a clear-cut philosophy of learning, which each year finds more specific, more confident, and more pervading expression in both administration and teaching. One may quarrel with this philosophy and its application if he wish, but he cannot but regard very highly such intelligent and conscientious experimentation with it as the reports of this monograph disclose. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
• Reviews the book, Studies in Secondary Education, II by the Faculty of the University High School of the University of Chicago (1925). This second monograph on the Chicago University High School carries forward and further particularizes the account of what has been going on there since Dr. Henry C. Morrison became Superintendent of the Laboratory Schools in 1919. There are 10 reports this time, contributed by 12 members of the faculties of the high school and the school of education. The first six deal with pupil-progress accounting, and the last four, with experiments in curriculum organization and administration. There is valuable material in this volume for the classroom teacher, the supervisor, the counselor, the measurement expert, the curriculum maker, and the administrator. As in the first volume of these reports, the discussions are restrained, clear, and concretely illustrated. One receives again the strong impression of a well integrated institution dominated by a clear-cut philosophy of learning, which each year finds more specific, more confident, and more pervading expression in both administration and teaching. One may quarrel with this philosophy and its application if he wish, but he cannot but regard very highly such intelligent and conscientious experimentation with it as the reports of this monograph disclose. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Reprint of chapter II from Dewey's book "The Education Situation," published in 1906, wherein he identifies and discusses five groups of problems related to secondary education and offers some solutions thereto. The groups include the educational system, preparation for college and life, adjustment to work, the school's social environment, and the curriculum. (PKP)
Why is John Dewey still such an important philosopher today? Writing from the perspective of the Cologne Program of Interactive Constructivism, Stefan Neubert tries in what follows to give one possible answer to this question. Neubert notes that Cologne constructivism considers Dewey in many respects as one of the most important predecessors of present-day constructivism and regards Deweyan pragmatism as one of its most important dialogue partners in contemporary discussions about pragmatism and constructivism in philosophy and education. Among the many aspects in which Dewey's works still speak powerfully to us today, Neubert highlights in this essay one theme that is at the heart of Dewey's philosophical approach: the relation between democracy and education.
In this essay Michael Eldridge maintains that Frank Margonis has in a recent article ill-advisedly speculated about John Dewey's pedagogy, suggesting that his “racialized visions” of students and classroom communities involve a “false universalism” that is problematic for our multicultural society. Based on this understanding, Margonis concludes that we need to seek an alternative to Dewey's educational philosophy. Eldridge strongly disagrees with this conclusion, arguing that assessing Dewey's philosophy and pedagogy is not a matter for speculation but should instead be based on the extensive documentation and research that is readily available. Eldridge focuses in this essay on documenting Margonis's speculations regarding Dewey's theory and pedagogy, and then offering an alternative reading of Dewey's writings as well as scholarship about Dewey's life and work. Ultimately, Eldridge argues that a wholesale abandonment of Dewey's educational approach is unnecessary and would be misguided.
Despite the vast literature on Dewey and his laboratory school, most scholars have failed to contextualize Dewey's pedagogical ideas in the intellectual currents of the period, particularly the historicist concept of social development known as recapitulation and/or correspondence theory. In this article, the author explores how and why history was taught at Dewey's laboratory school at the University of Chicago (1896–1904). To do so, the author traces how Dewey's approach to teaching history not only emerged out of pedagogical disputes, but also out of 19th-century historicist theories of evolutionary anthropology and genetic psychology. From this context, the author argues that Dewey's history curriculum was based entirely upon his own interpretation of the anthropological-sociological-psychological theory of recapitulation, which suggested that the stages of child development corresponded with the development of Western civilization. Drawing on Dewey's professional correspondence, course syllabi, and book reviews in addition to his published essays, the author suggests that this ethnocentric theory of recapitulation served as the foundation for the entire curriculum at the laboratory school, guiding both theory and practice.
This edition brings Dewey's educational theory into sharp focus, framing his two classic works by frank assessments, past and present, of the practical applications of Dewey's ideas. In addition to a substantial introduction in which Philip W. Jackson explains why more of Dewey's ideas haven't been put into practice, this edition restores a "lost" chapter, dropped from the book by Dewey in 1915.
by John Dewey. At head of title: National Child Labor Committee. "Reprinted from the Child labor bulletin, vol. 1, no. 4, February, 1913."
Estudio introductorio del pensador norteamericano John Dewey (1859-1952) a la psicología social, publicado originalmente en 1922 y en el que plantea un equlibrio entre la naturaleza humana innata y el medio ambiente social como factores incidentes en el comportamiento. Así, la moral -entendida en un sentido amplio, como un campo abarcante de todas las disciplinas sociales respecto a su vínculo estrecho con la vida del hombre y a su influencia en los intereses de la humanidad- es para Dewey una función resultante de la acción recíproca de esas dos fuerzas.
John and Evelyn Dewey “Schools of Tomorrow
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Educational survey. School and Home Education
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New schools for old: The regeneration of the Porter School
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Address to National Negro Conference
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Vol. 4. The middle works (pp. 157-158). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Review of "Schools of Tomorrow
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Letter from John Dewey to Clara I. Mitchell
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Dewey: Vol. 1. 1871-1918. (3rd ed.), Rec 00272 [CD-ROM]. Charlottesville, VA: InteLexe.
Review of “Schools of Tomorrow
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