The Education of John Dewey

The Education of John Dewey
Author: Jay Martin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 585
Release: 2003-01-23
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0231507453

During John Dewey's lifetime (1859-1952), one public opinion poll after another revealed that he was esteemed to be one of the ten most important thinkers in American history. His body of thought, conventionally identified by the shorthand word "Pragmatism," has been the distinctive American philosophy of the last fifty years. His work on education is famous worldwide and is still influential today, anticipating as it did the ascendance in contemporary American pedagogy of multiculturalism and independent thinking. His University of Chicago Laboratory School (founded in 1896) thrives still and is a model for schools worldwide, especially in emerging democracies. But how was this lifetime of thought enmeshed in Dewey's emotional experience, in his joys and sorrows as son and brother, husband and father, and in his political activism and spirituality? Acclaimed biographer Jay Martin recaptures the unity of Dewey's life and work, tracing important themes through the philosopher's childhood years, family history, religious experience, and influential friendships. Based on original sources, notably the vast collection of unpublished papers in the Center for Dewey Studies, this book tells the full story, for the first time, of the life and times of the eminent American philosopher, pragmatist, education reformer, and man of letters. In particular, The Education of John Dewey highlights the importance of the women in Dewey's life, especially his mother, wife, and daughters, but also others, including the reformer Jane Addams and the novelist Anzia Yezierska. A fitting tribute to a master thinker, Martin has rendered a tour de force portrait of a philosopher and social activist in full, seamlessly reintegrating Dewey's thought into both his personal life and the broader historical themes of his time.

Democracy and Education

Democracy and Education
Author: John Dewey
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 456
Release: 1916
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN:

. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.

John Dewey and the Decline of American Education

John Dewey and the Decline of American Education
Author: Henry Edmondson
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2014-05-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1497648920

The influence of John Dewey’s undeniably pervasive ideas on the course of American education during the last half-century has been celebrated in some quarters and decried in others. But Dewey’s writings themselves have not often been analyzed in a sustained way. In John Dewey and the Decline of American Education, Hank Edmondson takes up that task. He begins with an account of the startling authority with which Dewey’s fundamental principles have been—and continue to be—received within the U.S. educational establishment. Edmondson then shows how revolutionary these principles are in light of the classical and Christian traditions. Finally, he persuasively demonstrates that Dewey has had an insidious effect on American democracy through the baneful impact his core ideas have had in our nation’s classrooms. Few people are pleased with the performance of our public schools. Eschewing polemic in favor of understanding, Edmondson’s study of the “patron saint” of those schools sheds much-needed light on both the ideas that bear much responsibility for their decline and the alternative principles that could spur their recovery.

John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education

John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education
Author: J. Garrison
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2012-09-06
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1137026189

John Dewey is considered not only as one of the founders of pragmatism, but also as an educational classic whose approaches to education and learning still exercise great influence on current discourses and practices internationally. In this book, the authors first provide an introduction to Dewey's educational theories that is founded on a broad and comprehensive reading of his philosophy as a whole. They discuss Dewey's path-breaking contributions by focusing on three important paradigm shifts – namely, the cultural, constructive, and communicative turns in twentieth-century educational thinking. Secondly, the authors recontexualize Dewey for a new generation who has come of age in a very different world than that in which Dewey lived and wrote by connecting his philosophy with six recent and influential discourses (Bauman, Foucault, Bourdieu, Derrida, Levinas, Rorty). These serve as models for other recontexualizations that readers might wish to carry out for themselves.

John Dewey and Our Educational Prospect

John Dewey and Our Educational Prospect
Author: David T. Hansen
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0791480941

2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title These original essays focus on John Dewey's Democracy and Education, a book widely regarded as one of the greatest works ever written in the history of educational thought. The contributors address Dewey's still powerful argument that education is not a preparation for life, but rather constitutes a fundamental aspect of the very experience of living. The authors examine Dewey's central themes, including the dynamics of human communication, the nature of growth, the relation between democracy and education, and the importance of recognizing student agency. They link their analyses with contemporary educational concerns and problems, offering ideas about what the curriculum for children and youth should be, how to prepare teachers for the profession, what pedagogical approaches make the most sense given societal trends, and how to reconstruct the purposes of school. This first book-length study of Dewey's extraordinary text attests to the continued power in his work and to the diverse audience of educators to whom he has long appealed.

Love, Justice, and Education

Love, Justice, and Education
Author: William H. Schubert
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1617352578

Love, Justice, and Education by William H. Schubert brings to life key ideas in the work of John Dewey and their relevance for the world today. He does this by imagining continuation of a highly evocative article that Dewey published in the New York Times in 1933. Dewey wrote from the posture of having visited Utopia. Schubert begins each of thirty short chapters with a phrase or sentence from Dewey's article, in response to which a continuous flow of Utopians consider what is necessary for educational and social reform among Earthlings. Schubert encourages the Utopians, who have studied Earthling practices and literatures, to recommend from their experience what Earthlings need for educational and social reform and how they can address obstacles to that reform. The Utopians speak to myriad implications of Dewey's report by drawing upon a wide range of philosophical, literary, and educational ideas - including many of Dewey's other writings. Their central message is that loving relationships and empathic dedication to social justice are necessary for educational reform that responds wholeheartedly to learner needs and interests. True to Dewey's original position, such education must be built upon social reform that works to overcome acquisitive society based on greed: the principal impediment to realizing human potential, democratic society, and educational relationships that enhance it. To overcome the debilitating acquisitiveness that plagues Earth is the challenge for educators and all human beings who seek to involve the young in composing their lives and cultivating a world of integrity, beauty, justice, love, and continuously evolving capacities of humanity.

Democracy and Education

Democracy and Education
Author: John Dewey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 456
Release: 1916
Genre: Education
ISBN:

"The following pages embody an endeavor to detect and state the ideas implied in a democratic society and to apply these ideas to the problems of the enterprise of education. The discussion includes an indication of the constructive aims and methods of public education as seen from this point of view, and a critical estimate of the theories of knowing and moral development which were formulated in earlier social conditions, but which still operate, in societies nominally democratic, to hamper the adequate realization of the democratic ideal. As will appear from the book itself, the philosophy stated in this book connects the growth of democracy with the development of the experimental method in the sciences, evolutionary ideas in the biological sciences, and the industrial reorganization, and is concerned to point out the changes in subject matter and method of education indicated by these developments." --

John Dewey and Education Outdoors

John Dewey and Education Outdoors
Author: John Quay
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 118
Release: 2013-04-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 946209215X

In this book we take the reader on a journey through the various curriculum reforms that have emerged in the USA around the idea of conducting education outdoors – through initiatives such as nature-study, camping education, adventure education, environmental education, experiential education and place based education. This is a historical journey with an underlying message for educators, one we are able to illuminate through the educational theories of John Dewey. Central to this message is a deeper understanding of human experience as both aesthetic and reflective, leading to a more coherent comprehension of not just outdoor education, but of education itself. Whether we knew it or not, all of us interested in the field of education have been waiting for this book. John Dewey and Education Outdoors is the tool we need to help understand and explain experiential education in general and outdoor education in particular. This is an expertly researched and written account of how and why outdoor education has developed, and been such a vital feature in exemplary educational practices. Because of this work I will no longer have to stumble through some inadequate explanation of the history and philosophy of outdoor education, I can now simply point to this book and suggest that everyone read it. —Dr. Dan Garvey, President Emeritus, Prescott College, Former President and Executive Director, Association for Experiential Education. John Dewey and Education Outdoors is a well-researched book that explores the tenets of Dewey within the contexts of progressive reforms in education. The authors provide detailed explanations of Dewey’s thoughts on education while exploring the historical intersections with outdoor education, camping, and environmental education. While situated within a historical perspective, this book provides insights relevant for today’s discussions on new educational reform possibilities, learning focused on the whole child that includes out-of-school time experiences such as camp, and the development of 21st century skills needed to navigate our global society. —Dr. Deb Bialeschki, Director of Research, American Camp Association.