Rediscovering John Dewey: How His Psychology Transforms Our Education [1st ed.] 9789811579400, 9789811579417

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Rediscovering John Dewey How His Psychology Transforms Our Education Rex Li

Rediscovering John Dewey

Rex Li

Rediscovering John Dewey How His Psychology Transforms Our Education

Rex Li G.T. College Tseung Kwan O, Hong Kong

ISBN 978-981-15-7940-0 ISBN 978-981-15-7941-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

To my colleagues at Dewey Center, Fudan University, Shanghai and G.T. College, Hong Kong

Preface

John Dewey: The Best Known and The Least Understood In the widely-acclaimed series of Very Short Introductions by Oxford University Press, a new title on education was released a few years ago (Thomas 2013). In it, the name of John Dewey appeared in the first paragraph of the preface, alongside Einstein, Newton, Darwin and Marx. While Dewey was hailed as “arguably the greatest thinker about education in modern times,” the author conceded that few laypeople are able to “offer anything at all about Dewey” (preface p.1). Why is there a paradox that the best known becomes the least understood? Dewey (1859–1952) started with a Christian faith and was trained under Hegelian philosophy. However, he ended up as an atheist (by cosigning the Humanist Manifesto in 1933) and founded a new philosophy—pragmatism. His writings are as diverse as philosophy, psychology, education, logic and science as well as democracy and local and international politics. His collected works exceeded 8 million words. He is considered “the philosopher of American culture”, who defines “the spirit of America” (Shook and Kurtz 2011: 9). His view on education is such paradigm-setting that most modern education theories start from him. However, his obscure writing style, partly due to his Hegelian-dialectic tradition, deters readers from understanding what he means and says.

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Dewey viewed philosophy as “a criticism of criticisms” (LW1: 298). In the way he criticized Cartesian and Hegelian philosophy, Dewey had been criticized and dismissed in contemporary analytic philosophy, while his ideas are being simultaneously reconstructed (Tiles 1988; Fairfield 2009; Fesmire 2015) and rediscovered (Tanner 1997; Boisvert 1998; Tan and Whalen-Bridge 2008). Whoever studies education and philosophy has something to learn from Dewey, but to evaluate him in light of the new millennium with a global perspective is a most daunting task. During his life time, Dewey had served as President of American Psychological Association (1899), President of American Philosophical Association (1905), Honorary President of American Progressive Association (1928) and Honorary President of National Education Association, USA (1932). A society to the study of his ideas, John Dewey Society, was founded in 1935, and he was honored with numerous honorary degrees. After his death, his face appeared in the Prominent Americans Series on the American postage stamp in 1968. Today, there are centers devoted to studying him, in the USA (Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale), in China (Dewey Center, Fudan University) and in Germany (Dewey Center, University of Cologne). No doubt Dewey is an intellectual giant that deserves serious study, especially for philosophers, educators and psychologists. In the course of my study of John Dewey, I discover that while much has been written about his philosophy and education, his psychology has been largely neglected. Although he had made significant contribution to psychology, Dewey was only briefly mentioned in psychology texts. When I dig deeper in his early life, his ideas in psychology and nineteenth-century milieu, I discover that his theory of psychology grows to become his core concepts in education, which transforms our present-day education practice. This book aims to unveil a true Dewey, what his psychological and educational ideas are as well as his impact. It starts from his early years, his involvement in psychology and philosophy and then his move to education. In summarizing his early works to later works in social and intellectual context, I hope to rediscover a true evolving John Dewey, what

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he says and what he means. Readers will then be able to examine the implications of his ideas in the new millennium and global culture. Rex Li G.T. College Hong Kong

References Boisvert, R. D. (1998). John Dewey: Rethinking Our Time. New York: State University of New York Press. Dewey, J. (1882–1953). The Collected Works of John Dewey. The Early Works, Volume 1–5; The Middle Works, Volume 1–15; The Later Works, Volume 1–17. Illinois: Southern University Press. Fairfield, P. (2009). Education After Dewey. London: Continuum. Fesmire, S. (2015). Dewey. London: Routledge. Shook, J. R., & Kurtz, P. (Eds.). (2011). Dewey’s Enduring Impact: Essays on America’s Philosopher. New York: Prometheus Books. Tan, S. H., & Whalen-Bridge, J. (2008). Democracy as Culture: Deweyan Pragmatism in a Globalizing World. New York: State University of New York Press. Tanner, L. N. (1997). Dewey’s Laboratory School: Lessons for Today. New York: Teachers College Press. Tiles, J. E. (1988). Dewey. New York: Routledge.

Contents

Part I Early Years 3

1

Boyhood and College Years

2

The Lost Years

19

3

Johns Hopkins Years

31

Part II

Psychology

4

Young Dewey and Zeitgeist in Psychology

49

5

A Psychological Manifesto and Philosophic Method

75

6

Psychology, Reflex Arc Concept and the Birth of Functionalism

99

7

Psychological Fallacy, How We Think, and Human Nature and Conduct

135

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CONTENTS

Part III

Education

8

Chicago Years, My Pedagogic Creed and Resignation

173

9

Educational Writings in Chicago Years

199

10

Educational Writings in Columbia Years

237

Part IV

Involvement in Education and Impact

11

Dewey in China

275

12

John Dewey and Progressive Education

309

13

Late Writings on Education

347

References

383

Index

401

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 7.1 Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

7.2 8.1 9.1 9.2

Three strands of psychological research before Wundt Dewey’s three aspects of consciousness The child-candle problem (Source James [1890, vol. 1, p. 25]) A pictorial representation of Dewey’s notion of human nature The centrality of action in Dewey’s notion of human nature How Dewey’s ideas grew into My Pedagogic Creed (1897) Dewey’s self-expression and interest A graphic presentation of Dewey’s ethics

56 113 122 155 162 184 204 211

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 4.1 Table 5.1 Table Table Table Table Table

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 8.1

Table Table Table Table Table Table

9.1 9.2 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4

Table Table Table Table Table

11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 13.1

Dewey’s adolescent crisis and liberation Summary of key concepts and ideas of early philosophers on psychology Comparison of Dewey’s and Hodgson’s ideas on consciousness Chronology of Dewey’s major works on psychology Dewey’s taxonomy of psychology A Chronology of reflex researches (1600–1900) Psychological tasks in the child-candle problem Chronology of Dewey’s resignation from University of Chicago Hypotheses in psychology of elementary education Psychological development and education needs Dewey vs. Rousseau on education Dewey vs. Pestalozzi on education Innovative practices in Schools of Tomorrow Dewey’s former ideas in education and new ideas in Democracy and Education Dewey’s China trip, May–December 1919 Dewey’s China Trip, January–December 1920 Dewey’s China Trip, January–July 1921 Dewey’s lectures and translators (1919) John Dewey’s network of enterprise (1921–1940)

24 57 91 101 112 126 128 190 226 226 249 250 257 264 285 287 289 296 348

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PART I

Early Years

CHAPTER 1

Boyhood and College Years

In Search of Significant Episodes and Ideas This is a book on Dewey’s ideas on psychology and education, not a biography. When I write about his boyhood and college years, I will just give a short account and focus on some issues and background that have had significant impact on the making of John Dewey and his ideas. His Christian faith and his adolescent crisis are, in my mind, significant episodes. Of equal importance are the parent–child relationship and the early influences on his ideas, which include Kant, Hegel, evolution theory and Christianity. Readers interested in a comprehensive biography may refer to the further readings section of this chapter.

Family History and Background As Industrious as a Dewey In the few hundred years of American history, nearly everyone was an immigrant descendant, save the few surviving natives. So was John Dewey. His ancestors were early settlers from Flanders (present-day northern part of Belgium), who escaped from political and religious persecution and came to the new world in the seventeenth century. They settled in Connecticut and Massachusetts and became farmers, traders and artisans, keeping alive the pioneering spirit. Their Christian faith was that of Protestantism, who built their own congregational churches. John Dewey’s great grandfather Parson was said to have fought the © The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_1

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Revolutionary War for American Independence (1776). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Deweys spread across Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland and Vermont. They were known for the proverb “as industrious as a Dewey” (Martin 2002, p: 16). Father John Dewey’s father, Archibald Sprague (1811–1891), was a farmer in Vermont who moved from the countryside to Burlington and started a grocery business there. At the time when John Dewey was born, Burlington was transforming from a village of a few thousand people into a small town of 14,000. The second largest lumber depot of the country and a fishing port, it was growing into the commercial and cultural center of the State of Vermont. The people there, Vermonters, mostly early New Englanders or the old Americans, possessed attributes of a regional character: industrious, shrewd, self-reliant, thrifty, without pretense or show, independent in their thinking, puritanical in their conduct, and deeply pious (Dykhuizen 1973: 1). Though Archibald received little education and stammered in speech, he read Shakespeare and Milton, and enjoyed the play of words, such as the following advertisements he composed; “Hams and cigars, smoked and unsmoked”; cigars as “A good excuse for a bad habit” (Dewey 1939: 5). His pioneering business motto was telling: “Satisfaction (guaranteed or goods) returned” (Martin 2002: 17). A pragmatic and successful businessman who ran the only licensed medical liquor store in town, he later became a director of the American Telephone Company for Northern New England. However, his generosity warranted his care for others more than his own finances. As Deweyan scholars would appreciate, Archibald’s contrast of opposites and pragmatic paradox (licensed liquor in temperance) is not uncommon in John Dewey’s writings. Mother In 1855, Archibald Dewey, already aged 44 and well established in business, married Lucina Rich, aged only 24, who came from a middle-class family in Vermont. Lucina’s family was part of the social and intellectual elites living in Burlington. Her grandfather, Charles Rich, was a congressman in Washington; her father, Davis Rich, was a legislator with the Vermont General Assembly. With the University of Vermont

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founded in 1791 in Burlington, this small town attracted the rich and the educated. The ethos of the Burlington “cultivated society” were: social equality, intelligence, virtue, minimal snobbishness and some good manners (Dykhuizen 1973: 3). Lucina was a pious Christian, who stressed religious morality through personal introspection and social improvement. She was against all frivolity and “vices”—drinking, playing pool, gambling, playing cards or dancing (Martin 2002: 21). She taught Sunday school and was deeply involved in the Church’s mission work and for helping the poor and the unfortunate. Her life goal was to “make Burlington a temperate and moral city, a safe, clean place for young men, a city of virtuous and happy home.”1 As we shall see, Lucina’ evangelical pietism had lasting impact on her children. Siblings and Education at Home The Deweys had four children: John Archibald, Davis Rich, John and Charles Miner. The first child died of a tragic accident in infancy in January 1859.2 John was born in October 1859 as the third child. Jay Martin, Dewey’s twenty-first-century biographer, dug deep in Dewey’s family history to discover that Dewey was seen as a replacement child, to replace the deceased first child. Our philosopher is named John as the first child, but without a middle name “Archibald” taken from the father. A replaced child as the eldest son in the family, Dewey might have felt unspoken family demand, emotional or intellectual, on him, even as a child. When the father was easy-going and humorous and the mother was tense and demanding, both parents cared for their children’s education and their boyhood was surrounded with books: encyclopedia, novels as well as books from the public library and the nearby University of Vermont library. That the Deweys afforded more reading opportunity for their children than other families of their background was a parenting choice: at that time books were expensive and difficult to access. John

1 Based on her obituary in the Adams Mission Monthly. Quoted from Martin (2002: 22). 2 The tragic accident was that the little boy fell in a pail of hot water. When treated with

sweet oil and cotton, it accidentally caught fire, causing death of the child and injuries of the rescuers. See Martin (2002: 5–6).

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and his elder brother Davis became bookworms; they were interested in reading almost everything except their school books! (Dewey 1939: 9).

CHILDHOOD Replacement Child That John Dewey was treated as a replacement child was revealed in many occasions. While he was the third child in the family, he went to the same school and in the same grade with the second child, Davis, who was a year older. Thus John was to speed up and accelerate academically. The two brothers were close to each other throughout their lives, and John even advised on Davis’ further studies plan after his college education. When the younger brother, Charles Miner, had difficulty in schoolwork, he communicated with John, who always gave encouragement and support. Lucina had an intimate and intense relationship with John than the other two children, as evidenced in her frequent lengthy correspondences with John when he was away from home. John was treated as the replaced eldest child: when his father became old and ill, he came to live with John in Ann Arbor before his death in 1891. So did his mother (Martin 2002: 62 and 120). It looks like John Dewey shouldered the family responsibility of the replaced eldest child. Dewey Goes to School and the Farm Both John and Davis grew up as happy, healthy and bookish boys. The three children went to public school in the neighborhood. School was boredom; they were younger than other boys and took little interest in games. They had good grades and a demanding mother. According to Jane Dewey, Dewey’s daughter who wrote and edited Dewey’s biography in 1939, John was “as a young boy, particularly bashful in the presence of girls. As he grew older...... this shyness wore off” (Dewey 1939: 9). In Vermont in the 1870s, life was simple and rural. The children did housework and helped in the farms. They delivered newspapers and tallied lumber. In summer, they went camping, had fishing trips in Lake Champlain or visited their grandfather’s farm. They had direct contact with nature; they learned the skills “to do something, to produce something,

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in the world” (MW1:7), and they enjoyed the creative, productive, independent life of farming. Not surprisingly, these became the ultimate ideal Deweyan life: creative, productive and independent. Archibald was quite modest and pragmatic: he wished one of the boys to become a mechanic, but Lucina, whose brother graduated from college, insisted her sons be the first in the Dewey’s family to go to college. Dewey’s own interpretation of the poor state of his elementary education might have affected his theory of education. In Jane Dewey’s words, The realization that the most important parts of his own education until he entered college were obtained outside the school-room played a large role in his educational work, in which such importance is attached, both in theory and in practice, to occupational activities as the most effective approaches to genuine learning and to personal intellectual discipline. His comments on the stupidity of the ordinary school recitation are undoubtedly due in no small measure to the memory of the occasional pleasant class hours spent with the teachers who wandered a little from the prescribed curriculum. (Dewey 1939: 9)

Parent–Child Relationship On the surface, it appears that Dewey’s father was a busy breadwinner, leaving the child’s education entirely to his wife. The father was distant and detached while the mother was close and attached. Lucia, then, must have had more influence on Dewey than Archibald. However, Dewey in his later life insisted to his second wife, Roberta, that “his father was a greater influence than his mother.3 ” How are we going to reconcile this? There is no doubt that John was very close to his mother, who exerted great influence on him. On the other hand, he longed for the affection from his father, who, for one reason or another, kept John at a distance.4 It may be related to the tragic accident of the family’s first child that Archibald found it hard to face. In fact the Deweys moved to a new house after the tragic accident before John was born. There must be some sense of guilt (tried to save the baby but the cotton caught fire) unspoken about

3 It was reported Roberta told philosopher George Axtelle about this. See Martin (2002: 19). 4 This has been confirmed from the correspondences between Dewey and his father.

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the incident. How did the sense of guilt of either or both parents affect the parent–child relationship we do not know, but it was clear that the mother was intense and the father looked detached. However, Dewey had had pleasant memories of his father: “His bringing back to Burlington sore lotus pods and we used to rattle the seeds in them” (Dykhuizen 1973: 6). The parent–child relationship was reconstructed by Dewey’s biographer a century later: ……the influence of his mother was very strong, so strong that he had to learn how to resist it. Although he was influenced by his mother, he yearned to be affected by his father. He was loved intensely by his mother, but he hungered for his father’s affections. His father’s attempt to influence him was as minimal as his mother’s wish to influence him was great. But while he resisted hers, he would absorb any influence he could get from his father. Because he remembered what he wished for…… choosing to identify with his distant father left him, space to become himself. (Martin 2002: 19)

Adolescent Crisis Dewey’s Christian Faith Dewey’s parents had different temperaments. The father (Archibald) was tolerant, easy-going, brash, action-oriented and pragmatic; he took Christian faith as a Sunday affair; his church going showed little spirit or drive, but as a successful businessman, he helped his church balance its budget (Martin 2002: 20). The mother (Lucina) was thoughtful but strict, intense with missionary zeal; she took charge of the children and insisted equipping the boys with moral purpose and the pursuit of responsibility. She was a devoted “partialist” of the First Congregational Church of Burlington; since the partialist belief was that only part of the people, not everyone, could be saved, she was deeply concerned about the souls of her loved ones. Personal piety, moral commitment and social services were constant themes in the Dewey household. Christianity was daily life: Sunday for congregational school, Monday for prayer meetings, and then constant prayers and introspection. “Are you right with Jesus, John?” were frequent questions Lucina asked that made John feel uneasy (Fesmire 2015: 12). At age 11, John was to admit to the communion. Lucina wrote the declaration and John read,

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I think I love Christ and want to obey Him. I have thought for some time I should like to unite with the church. Now, I want to more, for it seems one way to confess Him, and I should like to remember Him at the Communion. (Dykhuizen 1973: 6 and 329)

Religious Crisis Dewey summarized the character of his religious training: “I was brought up in a conventionally evangelical atmosphere of the more ‘liberal’ sort” (Martin 2002: 25). Evangelicalism is noted with the following characteristics: conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism and activism (Bebbington 2012). The evangelical doctrine stresses the more liberal interpretation of the bible as God’s revelation of humanity and believes in salvation by faith in Jesus Christ’s atonement. Conversion is a “born again” experience of personal revelation and introspection while active sharing of the bible and social action is common. It is understandable that young John pushed himself so much in religious introspection and personal revelation that led to an adolescent crisis. In his late twenties, Dewey wrote with resentment, in The Place of Religious Emotion: Religious feeling is unhealthy when it is watched and analyzed to see if it exists, if it is right, if it is growing. It is as fatal to be forever observing our own religious moods and experiences, as it is to pull up a seed from the ground to see if it is growing. (EW1: 91)

Young John was sensitive, introvert, introspective, self-conscious, moralistic and religious. He took morality and religious faith so seriously that he believed truth, virtue and goodness were genuine feelings unveiled through introspection. This had led to an adolescent crisis, with “an intense emotional craving” for unification. Recalled Dewey 50 years later, ……a demand for unification that was doubtless an intense emotional craving, and yet was a hunger that only an intellectualized subject -matter could satisfy. It is more than difficult, it is impossible, to recover that early mood. But the sense of divisions and separations that were, I suppose, borne in upon me as a consequence of a heritage of New England culture, divisions by way of isolation of self from the world, of soul from body, of nature from God, brought a painful oppression—or, rather, they were an inward laceration. (LW5: 153)

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When the crisis was later resolved, the boyhood imprint was such that his whole intellectual life was devoted to the deepest concern of moral values, religious issues and social improvement.5 The Emerging Personality The sociocultural forces manifest in Dewey’s family life all converged into the making of John Dewey. The characteristics of a “good” student emerged: his teachers found him courteous, well-mannered, conscientious and likeable; his peers found him quiet, reserved but liked fun and participative.6 Obviously he was intellectually gifted and thought deeply about life and religious issues. Embedded in him was the Old England culture and the values of Burlington cultivated society, inherited through his father and mother. It thus came as no surprise when his student, Sidney Hook, wrote about his personality in adulthood as “…… an ingrained democratic bias, …… in his simplicity of manner, his basic courtesy, freedom from every variety of snobbism and matter-ofcourse respect for the rights of everyone in America as a human being and a citizen” (Hook 1939: 5–6). All through the years, Dewey speaks for democracy, liberty and citizenship. He is courteous, well-mannered, but outspoken and pioneering in his intellectual thought.

College Years The University of Vermont Dewey accelerated himself and finished the 4-year high school curriculum in 3 years. He was then 15 and entered a “neighborhood” college—the University of Vermont, neighborhood in the sense that the Deweys lived very near it—Prospect Street (Dewey 1939: 5) In fact that was part of his mother’s plan: Lucina was a Vermont bourgeois, ambitiously committed to the education of her sons (Fesmire 2015: 11). Dewey’s distant cousins were sons of the president of the University of Vermont. When the University of Vermont was founded in 1791, it slowly transformed Burlington into a college town, with homes for the educated 5 For a critical review of Dewey’s religious craving, see Rockefeller (1998). 6 George Dykhuizen, Dewey’s biographer, had done extensive research and interviews

to gain the above impression (Dykhuizen 1973: 328).

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elite and the wealthy. Most of the professors belonged to the same First Congregational Church. Thus the Dewey boys were part of the university community before admission; they all entered the University of Vermont and Dewey graduated in 1879. College Curricula The University of Vermont was a very small college by today’s standard: 8 professors, 100 students, 160,000 books, all-male, no science laboratory. Dewey always earned good grades and ranked second in his graduating class of 18 students in 1879. The curricula of the 4 years were: Year 1–2: Greek, Latin, ancient history, analytic geometry, calculus; Year 3: geography, biology, physiology; Year 4: philosophy, psychology, political economy, international law, history of civilization and classics: (Plato’s Republic, Bain’s Rhetoric, Butler’s Analogy). Dewey’s Reading Interest Jay Martin gave a tenable account of Dewey’s reading interest by tracing the books he borrowed from the University of Vermont library year by year. Dewey was “an omnivorous reader” (Martin 2002: 37) thirst for new knowledge. During his freshman year, Dewey read many books on politics, including Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (translated 1844). In his sophomore year, he read novels as well as academic journals, showing keen interest in new ideas on the intellectual front. Apparently he showed less interest in classics and the least in theology. By his junior and senior year he read Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Psychology (1872 edition), A System of Synthetic Philosophy, as well as books on physiology and science. As his interest in philosophy grew, … His library borrowings in his senior year included books by Richard Hooker, George Berkeley, Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill on William Hamilton, David Hume, Plato, Schwegler’s Handbook of the History of Philosophy, and additional volumes of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (Martin 2002: 41).

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Inspiration from Huxley and Comte Dewey’s interest in philosophy started in his junior year, during which he took a course in physiology, with the text of T. H. Huxley’s Elements of Physiology but without laboratory work. Young Dewey was excited to see the organic unity of life in evolution. In his words, …, I was led to desire a world and a life that would have the same properties as had the human organism in the picture of it derived from study of Huxley’s treatment. At all events, I got great stimulation from the study, more than from anything I had had contact with before; and as no desire was awakened in me to continue that particular branch of learning, I date from this time the awakening of a distinctive philosophic interest. (From Absolutism to Experimentalism, LW5: 148)

Readers will be puzzled to ask: How can evolution theory or physiology awaken Dewey into philosophy instead of science? If Dewey was interested in evolution theory, why didn’t he study STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) instead? My study reveals that Dewey’s philosophical interest was that of morality, truth and Christianity, all related to his upbringing and intellectual issues of new Englanders of his time. In these days, physiology was the precursor and foundation of psychology, which was considered a branch of philosophy. Had there been laboratory work in the University of Vermont, Dewey might have done hands-on scientific research and discovered new neuro-mechanisms in physiology. But his adolescent pre-occupation with morality and religious issues propelled him into philosophy, the higher order of knowledge and humanity. His “great stimulation” was that he found the unity of a world and a life by the support of a new foundation from science. This science supports philosophy and philosophy slowly emerged to become his goal. At a higher level, philosophy is the science of science, a term suggested by Dewey’s later teacher George Morris. At the same time, Dewey read the work of Auguste Comte (1794– 1859), the father of modern sociology. Comte’s positive philosophy posited the disorganization of existing social life and emphasized the social function of science, which enticed Dewey’s concern of scientific understanding of social ills and its eradication.

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Philosophical Influences The Shadow of James Marsh The University of Vermont was not just a neighborhood college. It was a reputable university especially for philosophy, rivaling with the early Ivy Leagues—Harvard, Yale, Brown and Dartmouth. James Marsh (1794– 1842), an eminent American philosopher, was president of the University of Vermont from 1826 to 1833. He was the first to introduce German Philosophy—Kant, Schelling and Herder—to America. As president of the University, Marsh instituted a program of unified study where all seniors had to take a course in philosophy that sought to create a centralized mode of knowledge (Shook 2012). Marsh’s work was edited by Joseph Torrey, whose nephew H. A. P. Torrey became professor of philosophy at the University of Vermont and taught Dewey in 1875–1879. In his early days, Dewey read and was inspired by Marsh’s “Memoir and Remains of James Marsh” and “Aids to Reflection.” When some of Dewey’s ideas could be traced back to Marsh, the philosophical tradition at the University of Vermont also gave him direction for his search of identity: Christianity and morality. Dewey paid tribute to Marsh; when he was 70, in a talk entitled “James Marsh and American Philosophy” (LW5: 178), he considered Marsh an emancipating spirit to him and his generation: They conceived the spirit as a form of life, the essence of life, and they freed belief in the spiritual energies from the doctrines both of the churches and of the Enlightenment: spirit and reflection were the traits of free living; both became intimately associated with actual life and natural being. (LW5: 178)

Building on Marsh In the American Church history, James Marsh was a philosophical theologian and evangelical liberal (McGiffert 1969: 437). He studied in Andover Theological Seminary and was ordained as a congregational minister in 1824. Marsh was an important figure in American thought and philosophy in the second quarter of nineteenth century. During that period, British empiricism under the Lockean tradition and the Scotch School of realism dominated American philosophy. The empirical notion of truth by experience and the Christian truth of God was

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hard to reconcile. Marsh read Samuel T. Coleridge’s work and studied German philosophy, especially Kant and Herder. By introducing Kant’s philosophy onto the American soil, Marsh found ways of anchoring Christianity by German idealism. He “attempted to develop a philosophical basis for American Christianity”, leading to the “emancipation of American philosophy from its complete subordination to theology.” For Marsh, Christianity revealed eternal truths about God, the universe and humanity; God and truth can be directly reached by revelation and intuition, not by church establishments or authority. Through introspection, we could arrive at “rational knowledge of the central and absolute good of all being.” Integrating faith with reason, Marsh’s liberal interpretation was that “Christian faith is the perfection of human reason.” Marsh’s works had inspired the development of American transcendentalism, a religious and cultural movement in 1830s by American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others (Good 2002: v–xvii). Marsh’s impact on Dewey must not be underestimated. First, Marsh translated Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection, and Dewey took it as his “first bible”, “because it showed that one can be both ‘liberal and pious’ at the same time” (Good 2002: v–xvii). Second, Marsh and Coleridge’s religious ideas remained in Dewey for the rest of his life. When asked late in his life about his religious faith, Dewey replied, My ideas on religion have not changed since then; I still believe that a religious life is one that takes the continuity of ideal and real, of spirit and life, seriously, not necessarily piously. Such “common faith” became a commonplace fact for me. But I soon discovered that nobody had much interest either in Coleridge or in my idea of religion, and so I kept quiet about it. (Martin 2002: 43)

Studying Kant Under Torrey In recapitulating his undergraduate study at the University of Vermont, Dewey observed, …, the last year was reserved for an introduction into serious intellectual topics of wide and deep significance – an introduction into the world of ideas. … I have always been grateful for that year of my schooling. (From Absolutism to Experimentalism, LW5: 148)

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In his senior year, Dewey took Torrey’s philosophy class and studied Kant. According to Dewey, Torrey was an excellent teacher with a genuinely sensitive and cultivated mind. As we shall see later, Torrey’s support to Dewey went beyond the University of Vermont. Dewey wrote the following letter in 1883 to thank Torrey: … Thanks to my introduction under your auspices to Kant at the beginning of my studies, …I think I have had a much better introduction into philosophy than could be had any other way. … It certainly introduced a revolution into all my thoughts, and at the same time gave me a basis for my other reading and thinking.7

From Christianity to Philosophy To sum up, Dewey’s intellectual youth was preoccupied with religious issues—the existence of God, truth and morality—rooted in his mother and evangelical family background. His thirst for new knowledge, not old ones, propelled him into a precocious erudite reader; his philosophical interest was inspired by Huxley and guided by Torrey. The ideas of Kant, Comte and Spencer all had impact on him. Bounded by the problem set of Christianity of his time, Dewey found the theological answer from Marsh, though the two were more than a generation apart. Marsh and Coleridge’s position on Christianity, or the Marshian belief system and worldview became the starting point of Dewey. By the time he graduated from the University of Vermont, he was generally well-versed with the history of western philosophy and became one of the best outputs of the University of Vermont’s philosophical tradition.

Further Readings 1. Dalton, T. C. (2002). Becoming John Dewey: Dilemmas of a Philosopher and Naturalist. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Thomas Dalton is a historian of neuropsychology primarily interested in the development of the field in twentieth-century America.

7 Dykhuizen had traced the correspondence of Dewey to Torrey, November 17, 1883, from Henry C. Torrey, H. A. P. Torrey’s grandson. See Dykhuizen (1973: 15–16 and 332).

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His research started from Myrtle McGraw (1899–1988), an accomplished psychologist who was among Dewey’s circle of friends in the 1920s. From there Dalton reconstructed Dewey’s relationship with Myrtle, in which she called him “intellectual godfather”, and Dewey’s activities and relationships with the Neurological Institute of New York. This line of research on Dewey’s personal context threw much new light on his ideas on inquiry, science, mind and naturalism in his late years. 2. Dewey, J. M. (1939). Biography of John Dewey. In P. A. Schilpp (Ed), The Philosophy of John Dewey. New York: Tudor Publishing Company. To understand a person’s ideas, we must get into his life world in social and historical context. Below are some of the most notable titles on John Dewey’s life and works. Each has a unique vista and focus and they can converge to form the multifaceted colorful life of John Dewey. Written by Dewey’s daughter Jane and based on material supplied by John Dewey himself, this biography can be read as Dewey’s autobiography. It was Dewey looking back on himself and outlining what he deemed important in his youthful years. 3. Dewey, J. (1930). From Absolutism to Experimentalism, (LW5: 147– 160). This is the most widely cited paper, considered as Dewey’s intellectual autobiography. 4. Dykhuizen, G. (1973). The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. George Dykhuizen (1899–1987) taught philosophy in the University of Vermont and became acquainted with John Dewey and his family in the 1940s. He wrote about Dewey’s life and work as early as 1959 (Journal of the History of Ideas ), which was later expanded into this indispensible biography for studying Dewey. 5. Fesmire, S. (2015). Dewey. New York: Routledge. A recent scholarly work on Dewey, Steven Fesmire (1967–) presented Dewey’s life and works chronologically in one easy-toread chapter. 6. Hook, S. (1939). John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait (Reprinted 1971). New Jersey: Praeger. Sidney Hook (1902–1989) was Dewey’s doctoral student who became his close friend since the 1920s. Hook’s intellectual portrait

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on Dewey appeared in 1939, the year when Dewey turned 80, and it is a convenient time to summarize his lifelong ideas and achievements. In Chapter 1, Hook gave a chronological account of Dewey’s life up to his defense for Leon Trotsky in 1937. Naturally Hook had much first-hand information and impression to offer. 7. Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey—A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press. Jay Martin is an erudite scholar who has written many biographies. He entered Columbia University in 1952, the year Dewey died but whose ideas and influences were still much alive. He started reading and collecting Dewey’s data for nearly 20 years before working on this biography in summer 2001. It is an admirable penetrating book on Dewey’s life experience, engagement and growth. His library resources and acknowledgments are lengthy. 8. Rockefeller, S. C. (1991). John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism. New York: Columbia University Press. Rockefeller studied Dewey’s Christian faith and traced its changes over time. Naturally the New Englander’s evangelicalism has had significant impact on Dewey’s democratic humanism. 9. Westbrook, R. B. (1991). John Dewey and American Democracy. New York, NY: Cornell University Press. A lengthy, well-documented and well-researched biography, Robert Westbrook put Dewey in the position of a social and political philosopher, relating his life and ideas to the changing epochs from organic democracy (Chapter 2) to the politics of war (Chapter 7) to socialist democracy (Chapter 12). In summary, Dewey kept his common faith (Chapter 14) in the wilderness and the promised land (Epiloque). It is a history of American democracy epitomized in John Dewey’s biography.

References Bebbington, D. (2012). Victorian Religious Revivals: Culture and Piety in Local and Global Contexts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dewey, J. (1939). Biography of John Dewey. In P. A. Schilp (Ed.), The Philosophy of John Dewey (p. 10). New York: Tudor Publishing Company. Dykhuizen, G. (1973). The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

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Fesmire, S. (2015). Dewey. London: Routledge. Good, J. (Ed.). (2002). “Introduction”: The Early American Reception of German Idealism (Vol. 2). Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum. Hook, S. (1971) [1939]. John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait. Hackensack, NJ: Praeger. Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press. McGiffert, A. C. (1969). James Marsh (1794–1842): Philosophical Theologian, Evangelical Liberal 1. Church History, 38(4), 437–458. Rockefeller, S. C. (1998). Dewey’s Philosophy of Religious Experience. In Larry A. Hickman (Ed.), Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a Postmodern Generation (pp. 124–148). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Shook, J. R. (2012). Dictionary of Early American Philosophers. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

CHAPTER 2

The Lost Years

From Lost Years to Greatness In modern academic biography, it is not uncommon to see thinkers went into some kind of a self-discovery journey, or “self-exile,” before they impart into greatness. The most widely cited is Charles Darwin (1809– 1882), whose “Voyage of the Beagle” (1831–1836) provided data and inspiration later for his theory of evolution (The Origin of Species, 1859). So is Edward O. Wilson (1929–), who went on a journey in Papua New Guinea before settling down into the study of ants and contemplation of human nature in Harvard (Wilson 1978, 2004). Another example is Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), a Victorian philosopher-psychologist, who experienced a bashful of ten years in his youth (Durant 1926). As for Dewey, his self-exile is one of self-study that had led him, irrevocably, into philosophy.

The draft of this chapter was presented at the International Conference on Dewey and Pragmatism, August 2015, Fudan University, Shanghai. © The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_2

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No Job, No Route When John Dewey graduated from the University of Vermont in 1879, he was only 19 and had no job, no plan, no path. He excelled academically and was interested in philosophy. But there was no immediate job available for the teaching of philosophy: at that time almost all jobs of philosophy teaching were held by clergymen and theologians. Apparently the only existing route to teaching philosophy was to enroll in a seminary and study theology, with some specialization in philosophy. This route had been taken up by his future teachers at Johns Hopkins University, George S. Morris and G. Stanley Hall. Both were Vermonters interested in philosophy; both studied in Union Theological Seminary, New York; both went to Germany for advanced studies, and both returned to America for a teaching career, one in philosophy and the other in psychology. In fact, one of Dewey’s close cousins and high school companions, John Buckham, did take this route and became a theologian, later teaching at The Theological Seminary in Berkeley (Dewey 1939: 4). Even Dewey’s elder brother Davis, later to become a renowned professor of economics with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had contemplated of studying for the clergy (Martin 2002: 61). So the perplexing question is: Why didn’t Dewey take the viable route from theology to philosophy? We may find hints from Dewey’s adolescence. As a teenager, he went to the First Congregational Church and was seriously committed to his Christian faith. But apparently, he had never experienced revelation that might have called upon his service to God. He had learned intuitional philosophy but was not satisfied with it (From Absolutism to Experimentalism, LW5: 149). He was thirst for new knowledge but not interested in old knowledge, the bible or the creed. Skeptical about intuitionalism whose validity was supposed to lend support for religion, Dewey found it difficult to take the route of philosophy via theology. In fact he was not interested in theology: it could not be his cup of tea. He had learned to be honest and stressed academic honesty all his life (From Absolutism to Experimentalism, LW5: 151). As such he could not deceive himself and turned to be a theologian for the expediency of becoming a philosopher.

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Teaching in Oil City In summer, 1879, Dewey became a Bachelor of Arts. His family had expected him to be independent and self-reliant after graduation. Graduate school was out of the question because of their financial background. Readers may be interested to compare Dewey with his contemporaries, such as William James and James Cattell. Both came from rich families and could afford graduate school: they crossed the Atlantic to Europe for the new knowledge of the time, a common route for the rich elites. To take up high school teaching was a common career path for many of Dewey’s classmates in the University of Vermont. Through his family network, Dewey tried hard to secure a high school teaching job, but his strength worked to become his weakness. A precocious youth finishing college at age 19, he was considered too young to be a high school teacher for he was no older or more mature than many high school kids. Then this bookish intellectual was considered too gentle to handle classroom discipline. The new school year had already begun and only in late September did Dewey finally receive an offer from his cousin, Affia Wilson, principal of Oil City High School, Pennsylvania. Dewey hastily accepted it and started off his teaching journey. Oil City was located at the mouth of Oil Creek in Allegheny River, a convenient transportation location for the booming oil industry in Pennsylvania which started in the 1850s. Banks and warehouses sprang up, barges, flatboats and barrels scattered through the river, steamers transported crude oil to refineries in Pittsburgh, creating the “shanty town” of Oil City. A service economy began to flourish; restaurants, bars, saloons, dance halls and theaters came into being. The Oil Exchange Building was opened in 1878, in the same year when a high school was built, which Dewey began to teach in fall 1879. Oil City High School was a new school with only 45 students. Dewey joined as a teacher and later became the assistant principal. He taught algebra, science and Latin there for two years. For the first time the 19year-old boy was away from home. But life there in Oil City was isolated and difficult. He did not enjoy his teaching; he could not maintain discipline in class; he had no friends; he tried to “work up a little affair” but failed. It looked like a dead end for this intellectually gifted youth.

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Adolescent Crisis Resolved A “Mystic Experience” But it was exactly in this hopeless state that Dewey discovered himself. To begin with, life was in fact exciting and pioneering in the burgeoning Oil City, with new equipment, new workers, new investment and new lifestyle. There were two brokers living with Dewey in the same boarding house. They urged Dewey to take advantage of the booming oil industry and borrowed money to invest in Standard Oil, already a giant oil company. But Dewey did not bother and withdrew himself into his inner self. A joke was told: instead Dewey “borrowed books and used the oil in the lamp” (Dykhuizen 1973: 20). Recall Dewey’s adolescent crisis of “an intense emotional craving” for unity, which he saw “as a consequence of a heritage of New England culture, divisions by way of isolation of self from the world, of soul from body, or nature from God” (From Absolutism to Experimentalism, LW5: 153). The crisis had haunted him since childhood with his mother’s constant question: “Are you right with Jesus, John?” (see Chapter 1: Boyhood and College Years). For years, Dewey was uncertain about his “spiritual sincerity” when he prayed. This crisis, or question, was finally resolved in Oil City. One night in 1880, Dewey suddenly experienced a feeling of harmony with his existence, that his worries of spiritual sincerity were over. He later told his student Max Eastman about this episode of somewhat “mystic experience”: Eastman reported, as “an answer to that question which still worried him: whether he really meant business when he prayed.” The essence of the experience was a feeling of oneness with the universe, a conviction that worries about existence and one’s place in it are foolish and futile. “It was not a very dramatic mystic experience,” Eastman continued. “There was no vision, not even a definable emotion - just a supremely blissful feeling that his worries were over.” Eastman quoted Dewey, “I’ve never had any doubts since then, nor any beliefs. To me faith means not worrying… I claim I’ve got religion and that I got it that night in Oil City.”1

1 Both of Dewey’s biographers, George Dykhuizen and Jay Martin, reported this (Dykhuizen 1973: 20; Martin 2002: 49). The original source appeared much earlier, in Eastman, M. (1941). John Dewey. Atlantic Monthly, 168(673).

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Liberated Thrice Why is there a sudden realization and a “supremely blissful feeling that his worries were over”? Apparently it was the culmination of Dewey’s adolescent crisis and a final liberation. We may summarize the progression below (Table 2.1): Dewey’s adolescent crisis was religious and philosophical in nature. It was not a simple crisis to be resolved by a one-time solution. The crisis had haunted him as he grew. Both Brastow and Torrey had offered important ideas for liberation in two different stages. The inner self of young Dewey was so much immersed in Christian thought that emancipation could only come from the liberal interpretation of the bible, the ideas of Kant, Marsh and Coleridge as much as from an inner feeling. All these complex ideas found its way in the final stage where Dewey liberated himself. In fact, Dewey needs a little space and distance from his mother. He found it in Oil City and resolved his worries and doubts. As biographer Jay Martin put it, “He was right with Jesus because he was right with himself” (p. 49). He tried to find God’s revelation for years and finally he found it in himself! This was an important turning point in Dewey’s life: he must get over from his worries and doubts before he could embark on fruitful academic work.

Getting into Philosophy Self-study and First Article After the tranquilizing experience and resolution of his adolescent crisis, Dewey was on his own thinking for his future. He knew he was genuinely interested in philosophy but he was not sure whether he was suited for a professional career in philosophy. So he tried his skills and abilities by writing an article and submitting it to a professional journal of philosophy. Still teaching at Oil City, he kept reading philosophy and wrote his first philosophy paper entitled “The Metaphysical Assumptions of Materialism” and submitted it to The Journal of Speculative Philosophy in mid-1881. It was published in the April 1882 issue. That proved to be crucial to his future career. Dewey recalled, 50 years later,

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Table 2.1

Dewey’s adolescent crisis and liberation

Age (Location)

Key Issue

Key Liberating Person

Outcome

12–15 (Home)

Religious Faith Dewey had had communion but was uncertain of his faith and church doctrine

Pastor Lewis O. Brastow, First Congregational Church of Burlington

16–19 (The University of Vermont)

Craving for unification How can one unify soul with body, God with life, ideal with real?

Prof. H.A.P. Torrey

Brastow’s “liberal evangelicalism” emphasized human intelligence and “a broadly rational estimate of Christianity,” with its liberal interpretation of the bible and revelation in religious experience. Brastow preached for Christ and redemption in spiritual manhood and perfection (morality) in associate (social) life. He thus helped to relieve Dewey from the conventional church doctrine (Dykhuizen 1973: 7–8) Torrey introduced Dewey to the works of James Marsh, which was “emancipating spirits to him…… The spirit was conceived…… as a form of life, the essence of life…… spirit and reflection were the traits of free living; both became intimately associated with actual life and natural being……” (Martin 2002: 43)

(continued)

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(continued)

Age (Location)

Key Issue

Key Liberating Person

Outcome

20 (Oil City)

Spiritual Sincerity His worries about existence, religion and career.

Himself

He had answered his question of spiritual sincerity. He found sincerity in his present existence. He felt his worries were over and he had no more doubts. “Everything that’s here is here” (Eastman 1941)

…In sending an article I asked Dr. Harris for advice as to the possibility of my successfully prosecuting philosophic studies. His reply was so encouraging that it was a distinct factor in deciding me to try philosophy as a professional career. (From Absolutism to Experimentalism, LW5: 150)

At that time, Dewey had studied Kant but knew little about Hegel. In his first academic writing, he faced a dilemma. On the one hand, he was writing with formal, schematic and logical ideas. On the other hand, he lacked the personal experience and the real world “actual material” to support his arguments. There are two implications. First, Dewey was painfully aware of this: he emphasized upon “the concrete, empirical and ‘practical’ in my later writings” (From Absolutism to Experimentalism, LW5: 151). Second, for Dewey, when it was logical, schematic and expository, “writing was comparatively easy,” but to take into account of concrete experiences, that is, to be able to explain and relate the phenomenon to ones observation and experiences, “thinking and writing have been hard work” and it requires “a sense intellectual honesty” (From Absolutism to Experimentalism, LW5: 151). Such is the origin of pragmatism and intellectual honesty in Dewey’s thoughts. Major Arguments in First Debut In his first debut in philosophy, Dewey must have been thinking hard and writing with sophistication, so that he earned the endorsement of

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W.T. Harris, editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. It takes me a few readings to decipher what Dewey means. Dewey starts with what materialism is and how to substantiate it by considering a few philosophical options: pure subjective idealism, Humian skepticism, Berkeleian idealism, Spencer’s agnosticism, Kant’s mind and consciousness (EW1: 4–5). It appears he makes two points to discredit materialism. First, materialism is an assertion without proof: ……[the] “matter”-molecular-property accounted for and caused the “mind”-molecular-property, but proof, or suggestion of proof, or suggestion as to method of finding proof, all are equally absent. (EW1: 4)

Second, materialism assumes the possibility of ontological knowledge (knowledge of being). However, this is self-destructive. In Dewey’s words, ……that phenomenal knowledge is phenomenal, and that to transcend phenomena there must be something besides a phenomenon. We find materialism, then, in this position. To prove that mind is a phenomenon of matter, it is obliged to assume the possibility of ontological knowledgei.e., real knowledge of real being; but in tat real knowledge is necessarily involved a subject which knows. To prove that mind is a phenomenon, it is obliged to implicitly assume that it is a substance. Could there be anything more self-destructive? (EW1: 6)

Some explanation and interpretation may be necessary here. For the first point, materialism is a working paradigm of “man a machine,” traceable to Descartes and succinctly advocated by Julien de La Mattrie (1709–1751). For several hundred years research has continued to find the physiological basis of mental phenomena. I would say that more and more proofs and evidence have accumulated to the favor of materialism. Today few researchers subscribe to the existence of an immaterial mind. For the second point, Dewey merely defends the notion of a subjective mind and the subjective knowing process. His criticism lies in the assumption that “phenomena cannot go beyond phenomena” (EW1: 5). He believes that a phenomenon cannot become a substance. But present-day science may see a phenomenon, light or heat, for example, as a substance and a process of energy circulation.

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It is clear that Dewey’s thinking in philosophy at that time was under the shadow of Torrey and the influence of Kant. It doesn’t matter whether the article was substantial or not, so long as it got published. What is important is this debut earned Dewey the confidence he so desperately needed to propel himself onto his future academic path. Private Study Under Torrey In fact, before Dr. Harris gave Dewey his encouragement, the young teacher had quit his teaching job in Oil City and returned home in summer 1881. There he ventured into private study of philosophy under the mentorship of his former teacher, Prof. Torrey. But it could lead him to nowhere: no job, no qualification, only ideas. The route to philosophy was audacious and difficult. They had long walks in the woods and subtle talks on German philosophy. Torrey asked Dewey to read Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics . He did and turned out another paper in three months, The Pantheism of Spinoza. Like before, it was accepted by The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Torrey was Dewey’s first mentor. Dewey showed deep gratitude to Torrey, especially for the private tutorship after he quit the Oil City job. In Dewey’s words, I owe to him a double debt, that of turning my thoughts definitely to the study of philosophy as a life-pursuit, and of a generous gift of time to me during a year devoted privately under his direction to a reading of classics in the history of philosophy and learning to read philosophic German. (From Absolutism to Experimentalism, LW5: 148–149)

During that period, Dewey was so eager to work on philosophy that he wrote to Harris, offering to help in proofreading, editing or translation work for the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (Dykhuizen 1973: 24).

Applying for Graduate School In January 1882, Dewey took up another high school teaching job in Lake View Seminary in Charlotte, Vermont. The seminary was set up by the Methodist Church in 1840 and a new building was erected in 1881 after a fire. Dewey was invited to take charge of that high school with about 30 students during the winter term. The townspeople found

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Dewey too inexperienced and lenient to enforce discipline on the rural boys and girls. Recalled a pupil, “how terribly the boys behaved, and how long and fervent was the prayer with which he opened each school day.2 ” Readers can guess why the prayer was long and fervent: Dewey kept his strong sense of morality and Christianity. It was clear that in that period Dewey’s mind was entirely in philosophy. He was writing his third paper Knowledge and the Relativity of Feeling and doing translation on German philosophy. It was a selfpropelled pursuit but it had no vocational prospect so far. To be a gentleman-scholar was out of the question: his family had no financial means and he was trained to be self-reliant. He could only be a daytime high school teacher and a night-time philosopher. Then came the news in early 1882 that Johns Hopkins University was offering twenty graduate fellowships of $500 each. Established in Baltimore in 1876 as a graduate school that modeled after the German universities, Johns Hopkins aimed to, in today’s jargon, attract top-caliber professors and students to become a top-ranking research university at the frontier of knowledge. Dewey applied for the fellowship with a reference letter from Torrey. When his application fell through, Dewey applied again for a $300 Presidential scholarship. When this was again rejected, he borrowed $500 from his aunt, Sarah Rich, and applied the third time. He got his last-minute admission offer and started off to Baltimore on September 4, when the new school term had barely begun.

The Significance of the Lost Years In the three lost years, Dewey searched for his inner self. This soulsearching process culminated to a “revelation” feeling of finding himself. He had finally found his faith and religion in himself by discarding Christian revelation. It was then followed by a period of intensive study of German philosophy of Kant, Hegel and that of Spinoza. A confident young philosopher was born. These three years was a self-directed searching process. There was no established path to proceed nor was there any predecessor. The “intense emotional craving,” his perseverance, diligence, and pioneering spirit, 2 Dykhuizen had followed Dewey’s life and in 1938 interviewed two Dewey’s former pupils of Lake View, Miss Anna L. Byington and Mr. Charles Root, to gain the above impressions (Dykhuizen 1973: 25 and 334).

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pushed him forward. He was not deterred with failure because he had discovered himself and his goal. With perseverance and taking risks, financially and academically, he entered Johns Hopkins. Taking a longer view, Johns Hopkins is not a necessary condition for his future success; it was only a supporting condition and stepping-stone, without which Dewey would still move ahead and make his contribution in philosophy.

Further Readings There is no special book devoted to Dewey’s Lost Years (1879–1882). For fragmented information, readers may consult: 1. Dykhuizen, G. (1973). The Life and Mind of John Dewey (Chapter 2). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dykhuizen had spent considerable time tracking down the information of Oil City High School and Lake View Seminary. One most valuable source was his interview with Lake View graduates in 1938. See pp. 25 and 334. Dykhuizen had also searched information on Brastow (p. 330) and Torrey (pp. 25–26, pp. 334–335). For his research, Dykhuizen had created his own archive papers on Dewey known as George Dykhuizen Papers and Correspondence, Special Collections, Guy W. Bailey Library, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT (Dykhuizen, p. 334). 2. Eastman, M. (1941). John Dewey. Atlantic Monthly, 168(673). This is the original source on Dewey’s not-so-mystical experience in Oil City in 1881. 3. Dewey, J. (1930). From Absolutism to Experimentalism. (LW5: 147– 160) Seen as Dewey’s intellectual autobiography, readers may find that Dewey did see the Oil City years as his turning point to philosophy. 4. Dewey, J. M. (1939). Biography of John Dewey. The two pages devoted to Dewey’s years of high school teaching give a brief account of the period.

References Dewey, J. (1939). Biography of John Dewey. In P. A. Schilpp (Ed.), The Philosophy of John Dewey (p. 10). New York: Tudor Publishing Company.

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Durant, W. (1926). The Story of Philosophy. New York: Simon & Schuster. Dykhuizen, G. (1973). The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Eastman, H. (1941). John Dewey. Atlantic Monthly, 168(673). Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press. Wilson, E. O. (1978, 2004). On Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER 3

Johns Hopkins Years

The Exceedingly---Stimulating Atmosphere John Dewey’s years in Johns Hopkins University were short and instrumental: one year and nine months for the purpose of earning a doctorate. Discounting the summer break of 1883 when he returned home to write his doctoral thesis, The Psychology of Kant , it was only 15 months. During this period Dewey kept his “bookish habits” (Dewey 1939: 16) but made many important friends and acquaintances there: James McKeen Cattell (1860–1944), later to become a renowned psychologist; Arthur Kimball, a future physicist, Harry Osborn, a future biologist. He even met Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), who later became the 28th president of the USA. His elder brother Davis also joined Johns Hopkins University in John’s second year. Despite Dewey’s short stay, he held high regard of Johns Hopkins University, calling its opening in 1876 as marking “a new epoch in higher education in the US” (From Absolutism to Experimentalism, LW5: 151). Recalled Dewey in his biography, ……President Gilman1 had gathered there a fine band of scholars and teachers with the intention of enabling graduate students, who had been going to Germany to prepare for a life of scholarship, to find what they

1 Daniel Coit Gilman (1831–1908) is an American educator and the first president of Johns Hopkins University.

© The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_3

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wanted nearer home. Every emphasis was placed upon the graduate school. President Gilman constantly urged upon the feasibility and importance of original research. The very possibility of students’ doing anything new, anything original, was a novel and exciting idea to most of these young men …… The atmosphere of the new university was thus exceedingly stimulating …… Many of the students felt that it was bliss to be alive and in such surroundings. The seminar was then practically unheard of in American colleges but was the centre of intellectual life at Hopkins…… (Dewey 1939: 15)

Three Fine Scholars of Philosophy The three fine scholars in the Hopkins faculty of philosophy were: George Sylverter Morris, a renowned Helgelian philosopher, Granville Stanley Hall, a pioneering philosopher-turned-psychologist and Charles Sanders Peirce, a logician-mathematician. They all had had impact on Dewey’s intellectual growth. Let us recount them one by one. George Sylvester Morris (1840–1889) Academic Background George Sylvester Morris (1840–1889) studied for the ministry at Union Theological Seminary, New York, but had a crisis in religious faith. He left the seminary and went on a study tour in Europe for three years. There he learned mediational logic from Friedrich A. Trendelenberg and studied at the University of Halle with Hermann Ulrici. In 1873, Morris established his scholarship in American philosophy by translating Uberweg’s History of Philosophy. In 1870, he began teaching in Michigan University and when Johns Hopkins University was established, Morris was invited to teach one semester there so that he kept his position in Michigan. It appeared Morris read and discovered Hegel in 1880 and saw it as the culmination of modern philosophy that explained everything—all ideas, institutions, science, the world, truth, existence—as God, the absolute self-consciousness. According to Dewey, Morris was a “pronounced idealist” who brought Hegelianism to the American soil. His “substantial idealism” differed from the traditional “subjective idealism” in that he emphasized the organic relations between subjects and objects while the latter took a mechanistic view of the object imprinting “impressions” on the subject. For ontology, subjective idealism lapsed into skepticism and

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agnosticism, but substantial idealism saved it by postulating the existence of the “universal self”, the Hegelian notion of absolute self-consciousness, the IDEE (Dykhuizen 1973: 33). As we shall see, this notion of universal self-consciousness brought Dewey into heated academic debate a few years later. See my elaboration in Chapter 5. Dewey and Morris Dewey studied philosophy with Morris, mostly under the lens of Hegelianism. The coursework was extensive and intensive. There were four courses: Morris lectured “History of Philosophy in Great Britain” for four hours a week, conducted a “Philosophical Seminary” that required students to study and present on Greek philosophy, offered another lecture on “German Philosophy” and a seminar on “Spinoza’s Ethics and Pantheism” (Dykhuizen: 32). Obviously Dewey got what he wanted to satisfy his hunger for philosophy. In fact he got much more; Morris’s impact as a person on Dewey was lasting. Recall that Dewey resolved his adolescent crisis in Oil City where he found his religious sincerity in his present existence. But how was that existence related to his philosophical ideas? Morris supplied the answer from German idealism and Hegel: God, the Absolute, Existence, Ideas are one. They are an integrated whole. This satisfied Dewey’s intense emotional craving for unity. In Dewey’s words, reflecting half a century later: ……There was a half-year of lecturing and seminar work given by Professor George Sylvester Morris, of the University of Michigan; belief in the “demonstrated” (a favourite word of his) truth of the substance of German idealism, and of belief in its competency to give direction to a life of aspiring thought, emotion, and action. I have never known a more singlehearted and whole-souled man — a man of a single piece all the way through; while I long since deviated from his philosophic faith, I should be happy to believe that the influence of the spirit of his teaching has been an enduring influence. While it was impossible that a young and impressionable student, unacquainted with any system of thought that satisfied his head and heart, should not have been deeply affected, to the point of at least a temporary conversion, by the enthusiastic and scholarly devotion of Mr. Morris……(From Absolutism to Experimentalism, LW5: 152).

Morris was more than a mentor to young Dewey. Morris considered Dewey his star pupil, who was aspiring and well-read in the history of

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philosophy. Morris had helped Dewey three times in his early career. First, when Morris was away in the spring semester, he asked young John to substitute and teach the semester on the history of philosophy; suddenly John became a philosophy professor! Then, Morris helped John to secure a fellowship in his second year of study, thus reducing John’s financial burden. Finally, he recommended John, upon earning his doctorate, to be a faculty at Michigan. The two worked together until Morris’s prematured death caused by pneumonia in 1889 at age 49. Dewey named his second son Morris in memory of his mentor-teacher. Granville Stanley Hall (1844–1924)—Psychologist the First Granville Stanley Hall (1844–1924) is an unusually daring and pioneering scholar. He is energetic, ambitious and action-oriented. His academic life is full of firsts, so I label him “psychologist the First.” To quote a historian of psychology, Hall was the first to receive a Ph.D. in the philosophy department at Harvard. He was the first American student, during the first year of its existence, at the first officially accepted psychological laboratory in the world—at Leipzig under Wundt. He founded the first psychological laboratory in America at Johns Hopkins in 1883…… Hall, furthermore launched the first psychological journal in English, the American Journal of Psychology in 1887…… He was the first president of Clark University (1888), where he established a psychological laboratory for advanced research…… he was the first president of the American Psychological Association, virtually its organizer, in 1892 (Roback 1964: 171) (bold type by author)

Academic Route Hall grew up as a farm boy in Massachusetts and was interested in history. After finishing secondary education and teaching for a year in a private school, he was admitted in 1863 to Williams College, a renowned liberal arts college with high academic standing. Hall was interested in evolution and philosophy and excelled in college, very much like Dewey. His reading favorites were J. S. Mill (1806–1873) and the British Associationists (Hall 1923: 157). After graduation, he went to pursue his study of philosophy in Union Theological Seminary, New York in 1867. There in his second year of study in the seminary, he met George S. Morris who had just returned from Germany with a Ph.D. This had inspired

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Hall for his “ardent desire” to “pursue advanced studies abroad” and “to becoming a professor” (Hall 1923: 183–184). It was natural that Hall was doubtful of the Christian faith and, again like Dewey, he did not prefer the career option of becoming a clergyman. Both Hall and Morris found their answer of Christianity after studying in Europe but their routes were wide apart: Morris turned to Hegelianism while Hall turned to psychology and experimental science. Morris’s inspiration came from Hegel while Hall’s came from Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), the father of modern psychology who founded the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig in 1879. Hall Meets Wundt In fact Hall went to Germany twice in his young adulthood. In 1869, he studied in the University of Bonn and later Berlin University, mainly in theology, philosophy and some physiology. Then he returned to Union Theological Seminary in 1871 to get his degree. Afterward, he taught philosophy in Antioch College, Ohio, for a few years before moving to Harvard to teach English in 1876. There he enrolled in the new Graduate School of Harvard, did graduate work in psychology under William James (1844–1910) and earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation on The Perception of Space in 1878. His dissertation was theoretical in nature but he supported his findings through experimental research in the physiological laboratory there. Hall had a strong academic urge that could only be satisfied by returning to Europe. In 1873–1874, Wundt published his Principles of Physiological Psychology, in the German language. Hall, after reading it in America, decided to learn more in Germany. In 1878, Hall landed in Berlin, studied physiology with Hugo Kronecker (1839–1914) and then went to Leipzig. That was how he became the first American subject in the German psychology laboratory. Hall had the unusual opportunities to meet many pioneers of psychology: Wundt, Fechner, Helmholtz and Weber. He was also inspired by the study of education and children then in Germany. Hall Teaches Dewey Hall was recruited to teach philosophy at Johns Hopkins University in 1883. Psychology was a new discipline and there was no psychology department. Hall started the first American psychology laboratory there,

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much to the vision of the university as a pioneering and research institution of higher learning. Dewey and Cattell, among other aspiring students, studied under Hall and did research there. More notably, Dewey took Hall’s course on psycho-physiology and conducted research in the psychology laboratory. Dewey studied with Hall four times a week and designed two early psychological experiments, one on attention and the other on involuntary muscular movements. With the above factual background and biography, how far did Hall influence Dewey in psychology? How was their relationship? Dewey once remarked that Hall was “a fine man and certainly a thorough master of psychology”, but his class was “purely physiological” (Martin 2002: 65). Dewey did not seem to enjoy Hall’s psychology and began to formulate his own framework of psychology, which he called “philosophic method.” Readers will find out what he means in Chapter 5. On the other hand, Hall’s work and research in education, especially his survey in the Boston schools might have ignited Dewey’s interest in education. This I will explain in Chapter 8. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) Charles Peirce was the third fine scholar Dewey met in Johns Hopkins University. Their acquaintance was short because Peirce began teaching logic in Johns Hopkins University in 1879 but was dismissed in Jan 1884, a few months before Dewey graduated. Pierce’s father was a mathematics professor at Harvard. Young Peirce was attracted to logic at age 12 and studied mathematics and chemistry. An accomplished scientist and mathematician, Pierce became a fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1867 and a member of National Academy of Sciences in 1877 before he came to Johns Hopkins University. He visited Europe many times and became friends of many like-minded British mathematicians and logicians. Young Dewey was interested in logic and so took Peirce’s mathematical logic course. However, he found the course too mathematical. “Mr. Peirce lectures, on logic, but the lectures appeal more strongly to the mathematical students than to the philosophical” (Martin 2002: 73).

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Influence on Dewey at Johns Hopkins University Dewey was affected by three teachers—Morris, Hall and Peirce. He identified and followed Morris, learning Hegel and sharpening his idealism with subject-object unity. He attended Hall’s class (four times a week) and did psychology experiments. He attended Peirce’s logic but found it mathematical and irrelevant. Apparently, Dewey developed that way: it was Morris that mentored Dewey most; philosophy on truth and morality. This became Dewey’s cutting edge, strength and route of ascendance. Learning from Hall to do science experiments was new to Dewey. It might need a lot of new skills and it would only yield “grist for the mill”, as Dewey told his mentor Torrey (Martin 2002: 72). As for Peirce’s influence, logic wasn’t Dewey’s strength; apparently different logicians developed different logical systems: mathematical logic and meditation logic were two different systems that Dewey took time to absorb. Jay Martin gave a dynamic sociological account of the power relations between the three scholars within Johns Hopkins University under President Gilman (Martin 2002: 68–74). He came to the conclusion that “Dewey chose Morris, followed Hall, and ignored Peirce” (ibid: 74). While I don’t intend to dispute Martin’s interpretation, my observation, now 130 years later, is that the three scholars were real fine. Each had made unique contribution in their own field or related domains. Morris was no doubt already the greatest Hegelian in America of his time; Hall, teaching at Johns Hopkins University at age 39, was destined to make lasting contribution to American psychology. Aspired to be the “Darwin of the mind,” he was the first genetic psychologist and educational psychologist in America. In fact he had very much the same interest in education theory as Dewey and offered a pioneering scientific account of the human adolescence based on evolutionary principles.2 As for Peirce, he was seen as an aloof, ill-tempered and scandalous man of his times. Only after his death that he is slowly recognized as the father of pragmatism and semiotics as well as making important contributions to the

2 Hall, G. S. (1904). Adolescence: Its Psychology, and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education. New York: D. Appleton and Company.

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philosophy of language and philosophy of science. Hailed as “the philosopher’s philosopher” by Sidney Hook, Peirce’s ideas and contributions are still being evaluated and understood.3 It was in that rich soil of intellectuality that Dewey was nurtured for 15 months. When Dewey recalled that the “Hegelian Deposit” (Morris) was with him for most of his academic life, so was education (Hall) and logic (Peirce) which he tried to make as much contribution as his teachers in his academic life.

Doctoral Dissertation: The Psychology of Kant During the Johns Hopkins years, Dewey wrote a number of papers to expound his ideas on philosophy and psychology. His dissertation was on The Psychology of Kant . Of particular interest was the paper entitled The New Psychology that he delivered to the Metaphysical Club, an interest group in philosophy, before his graduation in May 1884. I will discuss his dissertation here and leave The New Psychology to Chapter 5. The “Missing” Background It comes to my delight to review Dewey’s doctoral dissertation, first to see the intellectual vigor in his early years, and second, to appreciate the standard of academic excellence 150 years ago. Let me begin by constructing his journey of academic production during his 15-month period at Johns Hopkins University. In December 1882, Dewey presented a paper entitled Knowledge and The Relativity of Feeling to the Metaphysical Club at Johns Hopkins, which was later published in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (January 1883) (EW1: 19–33). Then in April 1883, he again presented another paper to the Metaphysical Club, Hegel and The Theory of Categories . The next month he wrote another paper, Kant and Philosophic Method (EW1: 34–47), which was submitted to the University in support of his application for a fellowship. The fellowship was granted. Then in summer, he took his Kant paper home with a view to revising and expanding it to be 3 Peirce’s writings were scattered and voluminous. In the 1930s, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce began to appear. In 1976, the Peirce Edition Project was created to produce the Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. Up to 2015, the project had turned out 8 volumes.

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his doctoral dissertation. By November 1883, he read another paper in front of the Metaphysical Club entitled The Psychology of Consciousness. In the Spring term of 1884, Dewey did research in Hall’s psychology laboratory but he didn’t seem to have written anything about it. Then in April, he submitted his doctoral dissertation, entitled The Psychology of Kant , which was approved in May 1884; thus, Dr. Dewey! There are problems of missing papers during the period: Hegel and The Theory of Categories and The Psychology of Consciousness could not be found. We can only rely on Dewey’s correspondences with his mentors to infer what he wrote. But the worst was that even the doctoral dissertation was missing. Below is the only account we can have based on Dewey’s correspondence with Harris, in which he told Harris his dissertation plan on Kant: ……that is his [Kant’s] philosophy of spirit (so far as he has any), or the subjective side of his theory of knowledge, in which besides giving a general account of his theory of Sense, Imagination &c., I hope to be able to point out that he had the conception of Reason or Spirit as the centre and organic unity of the entire sphere of man’s experience, and that in so far as he is true to this conception that he is the true founder of modern philosophic method, but that in so far as he was false to it he fell into his own defects, contradictions &c. It is this question of method in philosophy which interests me most just at present.4

Based on the above, Dykhuizen argued that the doctoral dissertation covered much the same ground as the earlier essay, Kant and Philosophical Method, reaching very much the same conclusions (Dykhuizen 1973: 37). Dykhuizen supported it further with another correspondence a few years later in which Dewey was quoted saying that the two papers “was in somewhat the same line” (Dykhuizen 1973: 37). Of course that is the best guess after all the meticulous chase. I don’t want to dispute that the two papers “was in somewhat the same line,” but only that Hall, Dewey’s supervisor might not have approved it without substantial corrections. A reading of Kant and Philosophic Method shows it relates nothing to psychology as the word would mean today or in 1880s. It is an evaluation and interpretation of Kant’s thoughts in Hegelian

4 Dykhuizen did a wonderful job tracking this down in the correspondence of Dewey to Harris, January 17, 1884, Hoose Library (Dykhuizen 1973: 37, 335).

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terms. No doubt it will form an important part of the dissertation, but it is plausible that there are other parts. My speculation is that the dissertation may have more; maybe it has integrated three main themes, all from Dewey: Kant and Philosophical Method, The Psychology of Consciousness and something related to physio-psychology or psycho-physics. Only with that would Hall have been satisfied and approved the dissertation. I am sure Deweyan scholars will agree with me that Dewey always did wonderful integrating work. Main Ideas Below is a summary of Kant and Philosophic Method, which could hopefully help readers to have a glimpse of one major theme of Dewey’s dissertation. The paper is an attempt to interpret Kant’s categories of thought in Hegel’s system of philosophy. Let me explain a few terms first. Problems and Approach For philosophic method, Dewey means the method or criterion of attaining truth or knowledge. In relating this issue to Kant, Dewey is discussing Kant’s key concepts of knowledge. In other words, how does Kant approach the problem of truth? How is knowing possible and how can knowledge be substantiated? Put it simply, the criterion of truth for empiricists is verifiable sensations. For rationalists, it rests on synthetic and analytic reasoning. For agnosticists, nothing is certain and truth is never known. For some Christians, it is intuition and revelation from God. Dewey summarizes the empiricist position as the “analysis of perceptions with agreement as criterion” of truth (EW1: 35). It is what is known today as the “correspondence theory of truth.” Dewey challenges this because perceptions and sensations are unreliable. In his words, ……Sensations are purely contingent, accidental, and external in their relations to each other, with no bonds of union. Any agreement is the result of chance or blind custom. Knowledge as the necessary connection of perceptions does not exist. (EW1: 35)

Kant’s position is that there are inborn “categories of thought” so that we can know, think and reason. There are two parts, analytic thought (law of identity and law of contradiction) and synthetic thought (thought with content). According to Kant, pure thought is purely analytic (empty

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without content) and experience gives only particulars without meaning. Knowledge must involve synthesis of the two. Dewey acknowledges Kant’s contribution of synthetic thought: ……And such, is the contribution Kant makes. The material, the manifold, the particulars, are furnished by Sense in perception; the conceptions, the synthetic functions from Reason itself, and the union of these two elements are required, as well for the formation of the object known, as for its knowing. (EW1: 37)

The categories of thought are important because they “have objective validity, ……without them, no experience would be possible” (EW1: 37). It is Kant’s route and criterion of truth. Summarizes Dewey, ……this Kant calls the synthetic unity of Apperception or, in brief, selfconsciousness. This is the highest condition of experience, and in the developed notion of self-consciousness we find the criterion of truth. The theory of self-consciousness is Method. (EW1: 38)

Dewey Criticizes Kant Despite Kant’s contribution, Dewey accuses him of treating perception and experience as “foreign material” without integrating them into thought. The lack of subject-object integration leads to Kant’s difficulty: ……Thought in the previous theories was purely analytic; in Kant’s it is purely synthetic, in that it is synthesis of foreign material. Were thought at once synthetic and analytic, differentiating and integrating in its own nature, both affirmative and negative, relating to self at the same time that it related to other — indeed, through this relation to other — the difficulty would not have arisen. (EW1: 40)

Dewey sees the relation of subject and object as “immanent” (EW1: 41), meaning that they are intrinsic to each other. There is no object without subject and vice versa. Their unity is truth and “the manifestation of Reason itself” (EW1: 41). With that Dewey outlines Hegel’s logic, the negative and dialectic, which leads to the Hegelian ultimate truth: Idea, Reason, Truth, Method, Criterion gets a “happy union” and “happy ending”:

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……Reason goes on manifesting its own nature through successive differences and unities, each lower category is not destroyed, but retained - but retained at its proper value. Each, since it is Reason, has its relative truth; but each, since Reason is not yet adequately manifested, has only a relative truth. The Idea is the completed category, and this has for its meaning or content Reason made explicit or manifested; that is, all the stages or types of Reason employed in reaching it. “The categories are not errors, which one goes through on the way to the truth, but phases of truth. Their completed system in its organic wholeness is the Truth”. And such a system is at once philosophic Method and Criterion; method, because it shows us not only the way to reach truth, but truth itself in construction; criterion, because it gives us the form of experience to which all the facts of experience as organic members must conform. (EW1: 46)

From this perspective, Dewey saw Kant as a transitory figure and turning point in philosophy. ……The criterion of Kant is just this tuning-point; it is the transition of the old abstract thought, the old meaningless conception of experience, into the new concrete thought, the ever growing, ever rich experience. (EW1: 47)

Review and Evaluation An Advancement In this early paper, Dewey daringly ventures into one of the most complex problems in modern philosophy. He is at the heart of the empiricist— rationalist controversy and he tries to examine Kant’s postulates of aprori knowledge and its implications. His strategy is to present Kant’s position within Hegel’s framework. Dewey had studied Kant’s ideas from Torrey since his senior year in the University of Vermont in 1878. Since graduation in 1879, Dewey had had self-study of Spinoza, Spencer and German philosophy under Torrey for three years. Then he was suddenly thrown into Hegel’s system through taking Morris’s class in Johns Hopkins starting September 1882. The paper did show that Dewey digested Kant’s ideas well and the Hegelian influence was most evident. This paper is definitely an advance over his previous papers, The Metaphysical Assumptions of Materialism (1881) and The Pantheism of Spinoza (1882) which are logical, formal, hasty but without much detail. By May

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1883 when Dewey wrote Kant and Philosophic Method, he was elaborating his ideas in a much confident tone, writing at ease and trying to show readers what he thought Kant had meant. He had also absorbed much Hegel from Morris that he was eager to put Kant in a framework he had just learned. If this paper was seen as a self-study exercise of elaborating Kant through Hegel, it was an outstanding output by a graduate student in Johns Hopkins 150 years ago. The outcome was that Dewey got a prize—his fellowship. However, if it is assessed as a philosophical paper postulating truth in Reason and Idea, it is more an assertion than any substantial argument. The only argument, object being incorporated in subject to become knowledge, may not necessarily lead to Hegelian Reason, Absolute or Truth. It may only lead to some integration of the subject and the object, nothing more than that.5 If it was read by Dewey himself two decades later, he would have confessed he had long abandoned the Hegelian “Reason” and “Idea,” in favor of “truth” reformulated in the experience-pragmatist framework. Kant’s Psychology Missing To continue the search of truth, philosophers have turned to logical positivism in 1930s plus other versions such as “language-game”6 or “mirror of nature.”7 Very few philosophers would follow the footsteps of Hegel today. Quite the contrary, Kant’s conceptions of innate capacities and aprori knowledge had enormous impact on psychology in the past two centuries; psychologists today are still working within this Kantian framework, more or less.8 This brings me to the last point: Dewey’s dissertation on The Psychology of Kant . The remaining paper, Kant and Philosophic Method, does not say anything on Kant’s psychology and Dewey’s early ideas on the subject will forever be lost with the dissertation. Readers can be rest assured that Dewey had presented a paper entitled The New Psychology in March 1884, to the Metaphysical Club, just before he was about to earn his Ph.D. 5 Dewey elaborated this integration much more thoroughly in his Psychology See Chapter 6. 6 A term proposed by Wittgenstein (1953). 7 A term proposed by Rorty (1979). 8 For example, twentieth-century psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980) and linguist

Noam Chomsky (1928-), who postulated cognitive structure and language acquisition device, respectively, are within the Kantian framework.

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In it we see some traces of Hegelianism, but not much of the Kantian approach. This I will examine in Chapter 5.

Further Readings A. Johns Hopkins University To know more about the founding and influences of Johns Hopkins University, readers may consult: Hawkins, H. (2002). Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874–1889. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. B. George S. Morris Readers may be interested to read: Wenley, R. M. (1917). The Life and Work of George Sylvester Morris. New York: Macmillan. C. J. Stanley Hall A few books on Hall are illuminating: 1. Hall, G. S. (1923). Life and Confessions of a Psychologist. New York: D. Appleton and Company. This 623-page autobiography was completed a year before Hall’s death. It contains a chapter on Hall’s work in Johns Hopkins University. Hall had taught Dewey but did not have high regard of him (pp. 499–500). 2. Roback, A. A. (1964). A History of American Psychology (Rev. Ed.). New York: Collier Books. Roback wrote about the history of American Psychology and saw Hall as the “firsts.” 3. Boring, E. G. (1950). A History of Experimental Psychology. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc. Boring gave a clear factual account of Hall (pp. 517–523). Of more interest are the notes pages (pp. 545–546) which gave relevant references on Hall from 1880 until after his death.

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D. Charles S. Peirce Readers may consult: 1. Burch, R., “Charles Sanders Peirce”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), https:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/peirce/. 2. Brent, J. (1993). Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. This biography outlined Peirce’s personality and his life experiences as well as his works in philosophy, science and maths. 3. Houser, N., & Kloesel, C. (Ed.). (1992). The Essential Peirce— Selected Philosophical Writings, Vol. 1 (1867 –1893). New York, NY: Indiana University Press. The Peirce Education Project. (Ed.). (1998). The Essential Peirce—Selected Philosophical Writings, Vol. 2 (1893–1913). New York, NY: Indiana University Press. The Essential Peirce in two volumes contain important philosophical writings of Peirce. The introduction written by Houser gives a comprehensive overview of Peirce’s life and works.

References Dewey, J. (1939). Biography of John Dewey. In P. A. Schilpp (Ed.), The Philosophy of John Dewey (p. 10). New York: Tudor Publishing Company. Dykhuizen, G. (1973). The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Hall, G. S. (1923). Life and Confessions of a Psychologist. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press. Roback, A. A. (1964). A History of American Psychology (Rev ed.). New York: Collier Books. Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1953, reprinted 2009). Philosophical Investigations. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

PART II

Psychology

CHAPTER 4

Young Dewey and Zeitgeist in Psychology

Introduction: Dewey and Psychology While John Dewey was best remembered as a philosopher and education theorist, he was intensely interested in psychology in his early years. Trained as a psychologist and who had made important contribution to the field, Dewey’s ideas were not much discussed within psychology. However, he was hailed as the founder of American functionalism in psychology. As we shall see, there are complex circumstances interwoven with Dewey’s ideas that led to this event. My first task, then, is to present the zeitgeist of nineteenth-century psychology and how Dewey traversed in it. Dewey began his acquaintance with psychology during his college years (1875–1879) in the University of Vermont. In his junior year, he read Thomas Huxley’s Elements of Physiology and Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Psychology (1872 edition) and found them stimulating (Dewey 1939: 10). When he did his graduate work at Johns Hopkins University from 1882 to 1884, he studied psychology under Granville Stanley Hall. At the time when Dewey earned his PhD, he published his epochmaking The New Psychology.1 He was then 25. The same year he secured a teaching position in the University of Michigan. Three years later, in 1887 he published his Psychology, a textbook on psychology, which quickly 1 This work was mostly influenced by his teacher Granville Stanley Hall but Dewey kept his Hegelianism.

© The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_4

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brought him fame and recognition in both sides of the Atlantic (Martin 2002: 104–105). Such is the success story of a young budding scholar. How could Dewey attain so much success in such a short time? Was psychology at that time a new discipline easy to conquer by some new ideas or research method? What did psychology look like then? A whole book is warranted to describe the zeitgeist of nineteenthcentury psychology. See, for example, Smith (2013), Simonton (2002), Chadwick (1975), Burrow (2000), Boakes (1984), and Goodwin (2015). For my present purpose, I will tell this story in one chapter, with focus on ideas that had influenced Dewey, directly or indirectly. Interested readers can follow up with the further readings list.

Background: Scientism and Experimentation To start with, science and reason are the underlying conceptions permeating most intellectual pursuits in eighteenth-century enlightenment Europe, and psychology is no exception. Formerly known as “mental philosophy” or “philosophy of the mind,” this emerging discipline evolves to give a scientific and reasonable account of the human mind, where “scientific” generally equates to observable and verifiable while reasonable equates to logical and explicable by reason. From eighteenth to nineteenth century, we saw the discipline moving from mental philosophy to experimental psychology. It would be a mistake to think of mental philosophy as purely armchair speculation. In fact, early mental philosophers such as David Hume (1711–1776), David Hartley (1705–1757) and James Mill (1773–1836) were highly empirical and analytical, proposing numerous laws of association to explain human sensation, perception and attention. Their ambition was to offer a general theory of human mind like the Newtonian theory of motion for planetary movements.2 Of course the human mind and mental phenomenon are complex and hard to pin down. Consciousness as a single unity may have too many underlying dimensions to uncover and discover. When numerous theories and laws were proposed, it was hard to experiment and verify. This was the states of British psychology when Spencer tried 2 This is most evident in the British tradition from James Mill to Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer. A historian of psychology called them “Newtonions of the mind” (Hergenhahn and Henley 2014: 143).

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to unify it by the evolutionary principles. In Germany, Fechner, Weber and Wundt focused on measurement and had to narrow down to single simple measurement only. Here is an example: in 1862, Wundt devised a thought meter and measured the time taken to shift attention from auditory to visual stimulus, which was about 1/8 second (Schultz and Schultz 2008: 90; Fancher and Rutherford 2012: 190). It was hailed as an important discovery which paved the way for a full-fledged development of experimental psychology. On the other hand, this result was anticipated by Spencer’s postulates of seriality of mental processing (see next section). Below I will focus on a few prominent thinkers whose ideas had had clear impact on Dewey as well as the field: Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), Alexander Bain (1818–1903) and Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920). They were about a generation older than Dewey and their works dominated the field, Spencer and Bain in England, Wundt in Germany, during the said period. Dewey read and frequently quoted their work in his Psychology (1887). I will also briefly cover the philosophical development and physiological research of the said period to give a comprehensive picture of the nineteenth-century zeitgeist.

Herbert Spencer and Evolutionary Theory Life and Works Herbert Spencer was the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decade of the nineteenth century (Taylor 1996: ix–x). He was born to a middle-class family in Derby, an industrial town in England. His father, a teacher interested in science and philosophy, took young Spencer to lectures of Derby Philosophical Society where he was exposed to philosophical and political debates. In his teens, Spencer was taught by his uncle but he never went to college.3 At age 17, Spencer entered the job market as a railroad engineer. As railway lines mushroomed into big business, Spencer helped entrepreneurs sell railroad ventures on the drawing board! He also tried to become an inventor, designed and patented many products but failed

3 In nineteenth-century England, university education belonged to the church and the aristocracy. Spencer came from a nonconformist Methodist family and was socially denied the chance of college education.

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to market them. By 1848, he became a journalist with The Economist and started his editing and writing career. It was in mid-nineteenth-century London working with The Economist that Spencer became acquainted with a group of pioneering intellectuals and was exposed to the frontier of ideas. His first book, Demostatics (Social Statics ), published in 1851, was meant to be a scientific treatise of how society and democracy might work to attain happiness. From political theory, Spencer soon turned to psychology. He learned his philosophy and psychology from George Lewes (1817–1878) and his biology from Thomas Huxley (1825–1895): both were his close friends. A self-made scholar aspired to be a Newton in psychology,4 Spencer’s intense self-study for three years on philosophy and psychology led to The Principles of Psychology (1855) which made him known to the field. By 1859, he reached his insight: evolution as a unifying principle explaining everything, the physical world, the biological world, the human world, psychology and society. Thereafter, he launched his Synthetic Philosophy (The System of Philosophy), a 10-volume work including biology, sociology and political theory, which took him 36 years, 1860–1896, to complete. Evolutionary Principles The concept of evolution was in the zeitgeist of Europe long before Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer expounded on it. Its origin may be traceable to Erasmus Darwin (1732–1802), Charles Darwin’s grandfather, who believed that species developed according to natural laws by adaptation to their environment. This idea was further elaborated by JeanBaptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), a French biologist who postulated the theory of “inheritance of acquired characteristics,” i.e., the characteristics favoring adaptation and survival will be passed onto the offspring of the species through reproduction. Already in the first half of nineteenth century, the idea of evolution was in the air and had become popular, and Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest” as early as 1852,5 six years before Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and Alfred Wallace (1823– 1913) read their papers on evolution to the Linnean Society, with the 4 In writing his psychology, Spencer declared, “My private opinion is that it will stand beside Newton’s Principia” (Wiltshire 1978: 56). 5 See Wiltshire (1978: 68). A more detailed description can be found in Francis (2007, Chapter 12).

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former publishing the epoch-making On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859. While Lamarckism stressed acquired characteristics and Darwinism focused on natural selection of the environment, it was Spencer who gave evolution its philosophical and theoretical framework, making it a ubiquitous all-encompassing principle behind every existence. Evolutionary Theory Goes to America One should not underestimate Spencer’s impact on American psychology, John Dewey in particular. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, Dewey read Huxley’s Elements of Physiology (1868) and Spencer’s Principles of Psychology (1872 edition) in his college years. In his Principles, Spencer started with reasoning and perception and ended in life, mind and intelligence. He saw human intelligence as a process of evolution with continuation and progression. His postulates were: seriality of mental processing, one-command center hypothesis and a framework of mental package with memory, reason, feeling, will (MRFI), six laws of intelligence, among others.6 The book had been widely used in American colleges in 1870s and 1880s: William James used it in his first psychology course taught at Harvard (Hergenhahn and Henley 2014: 283). Spencer propounded democracy and liberty, which included economic freedom and laissez-faire. Capitalism was seen as an evolution to perfection through “the survival of the fittest,” thus termed Social Darwinism. His visit to the USA in 1882 was greeted enthusiastically by US businessmen, notably John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie (Schultz and Schultz 2008: 176; Hergenhahn and Henley 2014: 282). Readers should be aware, however, that Spencer was critical of the pecuniary culture and the rise of imperialism. While Dewey did not openly acknowledge Spencer’s influence on him, Spencer’s scientific approach to psychology, his analytical arguments and, most importantly, his evolutionary ideas find their ways deep in Dewey, the ideas of which probably go beyond his psychology.7

6 Readers may scan through Spencer’s Principles of Psychology. You may also refer to my forthcoming book, The Psychology of Herbert Spencer, in press. 7 For Dewey’s view on Spencer’s ideas, readers may refer to The Philosophical Work of Herbert Spencer (MW3: 193–209). See my discussion in Chapter 6 and 7 of this book.

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Alexander Bain and British Association Psychology Bain and the British Tradition Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer were contemporaries and they knew each other. Bain studied in the University of Aberdeen, Scotland and later became a professor there. Like Spencer, Bain was a gifted child from a middle-class family: his father was a manufacturer. Bain showed early intellectual precocity and was admitted to college to study mental philosophy, mathematics and physics. Again like Spencer, he went to London and worked as a freelance writer in more or less the same period, where he got acquainted with an intellectual circle, including J. S. Mill (1806–1873). They became lifetime friends in a mentor-mentee relationship. Bain helped to edit Mill’s System of Logic for publication in 1843, which was an instant success and became a must-read for many decades. In it Mill argued for the possibility of a science of psychology: scientific investigation of human nature, thought, feelings and action can be accomplished. Borrowing the concept of elements and compounds from chemistry, Mill proposed the idea of mental chemistry for the discovery of primary and secondary laws of the human mind. Bain carried Mill’s vision further by his own publication. His two classics, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859), became standard texts in psychology for many decades in England and America. While Spencer’s Principles of Psychology explores the subject from evolutionary principles, Bain’s followed the British empiricist tradition which started from John Locke (1632–1704). British psychology, known earlier as mental philosophy, saw the human mind as an empty slate (Tabula Rasa) with imprint of impressions and senses. This rich tradition has grown from Locke, Berkeley, Hume to James Mill, J. S. Mill’s father; all along the primary focus is on the association of ideas, which can be explained by the laws of association, such as law of contiguity, law of frequency and law of similarity. Bain expanded it to include the law of compound association, where an array of ideas comes into association, and the law of constructive association, which accounts for novel ideas and creativity. Being aware of the development of neurology of his time, Bain studied them in detail and tried to map physiology with psychology, i.e., to show how the physiological and biological processes correlate

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with our mental states or behavior. Thus Bain represents the culmination of the British associationist tradition moving from sensation toward physiological explanation. Bain and Dewey Association being the key conception of Bain’s psychology, his latest version of association found its way a generation later in Dewey’s Psychology, where “habit…… is the result of associative activities” (EW2: 100; Chapter 4, Process of Knowledge). Readers may be interested to note that habit later became a cornerstone concept in Dewey’s theory of human nature. Dewey divided his Psychology into three parts: Part 1, Knowledge; Part 2, Feeling; Part 3, the Will. Quite coincidentally this is similar to Bain’s taxonomy in his two classics. For Bain, the human mind has three components: feeling, volition and intellect. However, this taxonomical similarity should not deny Dewey’s integrating effort and originality. In addition to the fact that Bain was frequently referred to in Dewey’s Psychology, Bain founded Mind in 1876, the first journal of psychology in England, which Dewey contributed to as a budding scholar in the 1880s.

The German Search of the Human Mind Three Strands of Nine Scholars As the standard psychology textbook tells it, modern psychology was born in 1879 in the University of Leipzig, Germany, when Wilhelm Wundt started his psychology laboratory. In the same year, Granville Stanley Hall studied with Wundt, returned to America and established the first psychology laboratory in Johns Hopkins in 1883 where Dewey was trained.8 What Wundt represented was, in fact, the German philosophical tradition and a whole generation of German research on physiology and psychology, leading to the founding of psychology, experimental psychology to be exact, by Wundt. 8 After the first psychology laboratory founded in Leipzig in 1879, Muller founded the second one in Göttingen in 1881, followed by Hall’s third one in 1983 in Johns Hopkins. Before the turn of the century, dozens of psychology laboratories spread throughout the world in 16 countries. No doubt Hall and Dewey are pioneers. See Brysbaert and Rastle (2009: 95).

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Rationalist philosophy

Physiology

Experimental psychology

Leibniz

Muller

Weber

Kant

Helmholtz

Fechner

Herbart

Fritsch & Hitzig

Wundt Fig. 4.1 Three strands of psychological research before Wundt

But the story of German psychology is much more complex. There we see the complex zeitgeist, the daunting intellectual tasks and many important thinkers and researchers pushing the discipline ahead. For conceptual clarity, I try to simplify and present them in three strands with nine important figures, culminating into Wundt’s founding of the Leipzig laboratory in 1879. Let me introduce them to you one by one (Fig. 4.1). The Rational Mind of Leibniz, Kant, Herbart It is generally accepted that German rationalism in philosophy started from Leibniz, who postulated the innateness of the human mind, which was reconceptualized by Kant into synthetic apriori and categories of thought. The idea was further developed by Herbart into the apperception mass and mathematical psychology. Below is a short summary of these eminent and watershed philosophers on pre-psychology (Table 4.1). The Impossibility of Scientific Psychology Interesting enough, Leibniz started with a computational metaphor of the human mind, invented modern calculus and a calculating machine for

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Table 4.1 Summary of key concepts and ideas of early philosophers on psychology Period/Affiliations

Key concepts

Major ideas

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) Court of Hanover, The Academy at Berlin

• Apperception • Monads • Concept of Threshold • Hierarchy of consciousness • Innateness • Potential ideas actualized

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) University of Königsberg

• Noumenal world • Phenomenal world • Transcendental idealism • Synthetic a priori • Categories of thought • Impossibility of empirical psychology

Leibniz postulated the innateness of the human mind, where human disposition, tendencies and natural potentials are innate (inborn). The human mind is active, and experience helps to realize its potentials. Leibniz studied perception and proposed the idea of unconscious perception (petites perception), which can be accumulated to reach a threshold (limen) to become consciousness, thus the notion of apperception. The invention of microscope leads to the discovery of living micro-organisms beyond the naked eye, which inspired Leibniz to believe in a living universe: everything is alive. Leibniz thus proposed the idea of monads, infinite number of life units in the universe. Its realization is in the consciousness of human beings and finally God. Modern readers may appreciate that the embryonic shape of psychology was conceived in theology mixed with eighteenth-century science. In Chapter 5, you will see how this idea was transformed into universal consciousness initially espoused by Dewey. Kant built on Leibniz and postulated two worlds, the noumenal world (things-in-themselves) and the phenomenal world (things-in-appearance). We can never know the former, but we can know the latter through our human mind, with its categories of thought to structure our experience. These categories are: unity, totality, time, space, cause and effect, reality, quantity, quality, negation, possibility, existence. Kant believed these concepts are synthetic a priori, meaning that they have content (synthetic) and meaning and that they exist before (prior) experience. Thus Kant’s signature: “thoughts without content are empty; intuition (sense impression) without concepts are blinda ”

(continued)

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Table 4.1 (continued) Period/Affiliations

Key concepts

Major ideas

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841) University of Göttingen, University of Königsberg

• Apperception mass • Equilibrium • Threshold of consciousness • Battleground of ideas • Mathematical psychology • Unconsciousness

Herbart succeeded Kant as professor of philosophy in the University of Konigsberg in 1809 and wrote Textbook in Psychology (1816) and Psychology as a Science based on Experience, Metaphysics and Mathematics (1824–1825). His program is to mathematize psychology, where his focus is to discover the mathematical formulas governing the emergence, appearance and submergence of an idea or a group of ideas, called apperceptive mass. For Herbart, the human mind is a storehouse and battleground of competing ideas. Picking up the concept of monads from Leibniz, Herbart believed that ideas contain force or energy, like atoms and planetary bodies that obey Newtonian laws of motion. He also picked up the idea of self-preservation in biology and believed ideas tend to preserve themselves. It is easy for readers to dismiss Herbart’s theory as speculation. However, if we substitute Herbart’s concepts with today’s terminologies, such as replacing storehouse with memory storage, competing ideas with mental stickiness, apperceptive mass with mental set, his theory is not at all naive. The following contemporary interpretation of “apperceptive mass of consciousness” will suffice: ……the constellation of connected elementary mental representations that constitute the current object of apperception or focused attention (Greenwood, 2009, p. 297).

a Quoted from Greenwood (2009, p. 183). Readers can also find similar ideas in Scruton (2001): “a

mind without concepts would have no capacity to think; equally, a mind armed with concepts, but with no sensory data to which they could be applied, would have nothing to think about” (p. 35).

multiplication and division. On the one hand, he inspired the development of artificial intelligence three hundred years later, as Walter Pitts (1923–1969) was interested in studying Leibniz and brought logical calculus into artificial neural network in 1943. On the other hand, he mystified the human mind with monads. When Kant built on Leibniz, he rejected the possibility of studying the human mind (consciousness)

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as an experimental science. In other words, psychology cannot be a science. Kant’s view is straightforward: the mind is not a physical object amiable to physical observation like science. Also, the mind (consciousness) keeps moving and changing; once one starts looking into one’s mind by introspection, the content will shift and change. Herbart followed Kant and took the position that despite the impossibility of scientific (experimental) psychology, we can mathematize it. For example, the movements of concepts, their emergence, sinking and suppressions, can be mathematically represented as follows: While the arrested portion of the concept sinks, the sinking part is at every moment proportional to the part unsuppressed. By this it is possible to calculate the whole course of the sinking even to the statical point.   Mathematically, the above law may be expressed: σ = S 1 − e−t in which S = the aggregate amount suppressed, t = the time elapsed during the encounter, σ = the suppressed portion of all the concepts in the time indicated by t. —(1816/1891, p. 395)9

Whether the above equation can be verified, psychology had already taken the shape of a scientific discipline in the early nineteenth century in Germany. Physiological Research: The Science of Mind from Muller to Helmholtz and Fritsch & Hitzig When the British empiricists (Locke, Hume) studied sensation and took it as impressions from the external world, to be “impressed” on the mind, the German rationalists postulated an active mind with categories of thought to structure human sensation and experience. The development of physiology had led to the scientific reformulation of the sensation problem: How is an external stimulus received by the sense organ and central nervous system of an organism? How is that stimulus structured and represented before it leads to response?

9 Quoted from Greenwood (2009: 297).

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Muller Identifying Kant’s Categories Johannes Muller (1801–1858), a pioneer German physiologist with the University of Berlin, proposed the notion of specific nerve energies and adequate stimulation. Under the physical science paradigm where movement of objects was seen as forces and energy, Muller postulated that a specific sense organ (e.g., the ear) with its nerve conduction would receive a specific stimulation (sound wave) of adequate intensity (pitch, tone, etc.). Since different sense organs took up different types of stimulation and formed different pictures, the sense organ, the central nervous system and the cerebral hemispheres all played important parts in sensing. In 1833–1840, Muller published his Handbook of Physiology which summarized the then existing knowledge of physiology. Muller worked on the idea that the central nervous system was the intermediary between physical object and consciousness. He believed that the neurophysiological structure determined sensation and he had found the physiological equivalent of Kant’s “categories of thought.” Helmholtz Measuring Nerve Conduction When Muller believed that nerve conduction was instantaneous, his student Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) did not think so. He challenged the instantaneous view and tried to measure nerve conduction: he found it to be 50–100 meters per second in humans. Trained as a medical doctor and physiologist, Helmholtz was an epoch-making scientist of the nineteenth century. Apart from measuring nerve conduction speed (1849), he had also formulated the principles of conservation of energy (1847), the theory of color vision (1856–1868), the theory of auditory perception, invented the ophthalmoscope, among others (Fancher and Rutherford 2012: Chapter 4). Helmholtz tried to explain how sensation (empirist concern) was turned into perception (rationalist focus) by postulating an active mind, its aprori, with the role of past experience and memory. He explained how outside reality was interpreted and distorted inside through physiological mechanisms by integrating rationalism with empiricism, Helmholtz’s theory of mind is surprisingly modern and can serve as a guide to even today’s understanding of perception through the conscious and unconscious information processing paradigm. In this sense, he represents the best German tradition on the science of mind started from Descartes to Leibniz and Kant. On the one hand, Kant’s categories of thought had guided Helmholtz in his physiological search and research. On the

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other hand, Helmholtz had enriched and substantiated Kant with science and experimentation. His idea of mental distortion and a functional view of mind is still with us today (Hergenhahn and Henley 2014: 227). Thus, Helmholtz was honored for anticipating many theories of cognitive psychology in late twentieth century (Greenwood 2009: 227). Fritsch and Hitzig Discovering Brain Localization Of course, neurophysiological research continued to flourish after Helmholtz. One important discovery was the localization of cognitive functions of the cerebral cortex. On the stimulation side, it had long been shown that nerve conduction was electrical by nature. Gustav Fritsch (1839–1927) and Eduard Hitzig (1838–1907), contemporaries of Wundt, conducted electrical currents to different parts of the cerebral cortex of a dog and found muscular contractions of specific parts of the animal body. It was published in 1870, entitled On the Electrical Excitability of the Cerebrum. Their results excited not only the dog’s brain but also the science community! An even younger British neurologist, David Ferrier (1843–1928), who had a unique background, joined the game. As a medical student, Ferrier worked as a scientific assistant to the already established British psychologist Alexander Bain, who, being aware of the pioneering research in Germany, sent Ferrier to learn the latest techniques in Heidelberg. Upon return and getting his medical degree, Ferrier worked in King’s College Hospital in London. He successfully replicated Fritsch and Hitzig’s results on rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs and even monkeys. The localization of motor functions on the animal cerebral cortex was clear: specific areas of the motor cortex mapped with the specific movement (involuntary muscular contraction) of the body. Ferrier’s watershed work was published in The Functions of the Brain in 1876 (Fancher and Rutherford 2012: 113–114). Measuring Sensation: Weber and Fechner Remember that Kant started with a subjective mind and the British empiricists took the subjectivity of sensation as impression from the real objective world. Now how can scientists objectively study subjective sensation, which is an internal process and inner, personal experience? When we cut open a frog (even a human being), all we see are nerve fibers, sense organs and neural structures. We can identify the process such as nerve conduction speed and the location (cerebral hemisphere),

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but we can hardly find sensation, nor how this subjective sensation is experienced. Philosophers insist correctly that the color red in an object such as a red apple is not the same as the sensation of redness in a human being. The first ominous question for the hard-nose scientist: How can we measure sensation? Is there any way to measure it at all? Weber’s Notion of Just Noticeable Differences Ernest Heinrich Weber (1795–1878) studied and taught in the University of Leipzig. As a physiologist he studied the sensation of touch of the bodily skin in relation to touch, pressure, temperature and pain. Here is how he capitalized on Leibniz’s concept of threshold. He used very fine needles (a compass-like device) to touch two points on the bodily skin and asked the human subject to report when he sensed the difference. In this way, he was able to measure the distance between two points to have sensation. His findings are: the smallest two-point distance (threshold) is on the tongue, about 1 mm, while the largest two-point distance is on the back, about 60 mm. Readers may be interested to read his One Touch: Anatomical and Physiological Notes (1834). Applying this concept to weight lifting, Weber asked a subject to lift a weight, say, 100 gm, and add in a gram to see if the subject would notice or sense any difference. The result: the subject could hardly tell the difference between 100 gm and 101 gm, but could sense the difference between 100 gm and 103 gm! Thus born the concept of just noticeable difference (jnd). In effect, Weber was ingeniously measuring subjective sensation, not objective weights. He had discovered the law of sensation through just noticeable difference, soon known as Weber’s Law. Fechner’s Psychophysics What Weber demonstrated was that subjective mental sensation could be amiable to scientific measurement and treatment. He had opened up a path of experimental psychology. His colleagues at Leipzig, Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), went further. Fechner studied medicine, also in Leipzig, and later became a professor of physics there in 1840. He proposed psychophysics which can be seen as building on Weber and Herbart. Remember Herbart’s idea of apperceptive mass, where ideas were seen as entities possessing energy with force and movement. His system was called “psychic mechanics” and he seriously tried to mathematize

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psychology, i.e., to present the complex mental phenomenon of ideas in a mathematical model. When Herbart’s ambition of quantifying ideas looked like mission impossible in 1824, Weber soon showed success in quantifying and measuring sensation by jnd in 1834. Fechner, laboring through the mind-body problem, tried to find a relationship between body (physical stimulus) and mind (sensation). In his Elements of Psychophysics (1860), he showed that the change of sensation (S) is a log function of the physical stimulus (R): in order for a change of sensation to be noticeable, the change of stimulation has to be enormous. Mathematically speaking, for sensation to increase arithmetically, the stimulation has to be increased geometrically: S = k log R Fechner worked on with his mathematics to construct an absolute threshold and differential threshold to measure sensation. To improve his measurement, he proposed several methods such as the method of limits, the method of constant stimulus and the method of adjustment. Measuring sensation is no more equivocal. Readers may think Fechner’s insights of psychophysics belong to history of nineteenth-century German psychology. Not so. Much research interest in psychophysics has continued in the twentieth century and today it has developed into many state-of-the-art measuring techniques for the study of any sensory system: vision, hearing, touch or taste (Kingdom and Prins 2010: 1). All these techniques are now programmable in software packages.

Wilhelm Wundt Laboring German Experimental Psychology Wundt Apprenticing Under Muller and Helmholtz Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) studied medicine in the University of Heidelberg and graduated summa cum laude in 1855, after which he studied with Muller in Berlin and became interested in experimental physiology. In 1857–1864, he returned to Heidelberg and worked as a dozent (research assistant) under Helmholtz. His duties were to give laboratory work of physiological practicum (such as the conduction of nerve impulse) to graduating medical students. Wundt stayed in Heidelberg

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until 1874, moved to the University of Zurich for a year and then settled in the University of Leipzig in 1875 for his remaining academic career. As outlined above, Wundt drew on the rich German soil of philosophy, physiology and experimental psychology. Muller’s work and the stimulating intellectual atmosphere in Berlin inspired him (Boring 1950: 318). Then he worked in the same laboratory with Helmholtz for 13 years. As early as 1858, he was attracted by Herbart’s work on psychology, who tried to mathematize psychology, consciousness and ideas but rejected the possibility of experimental psychology. Simultaneously, Wundt picked up the methodology and ideas from Fechner’s Elements of Psychophysics, published in 1860, and the notion of scientific psychology. Such was the zeitgeist when Wundt published Contributions to the Theory of Perception (1862), Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology (1865) and later his two-volume seminal work, Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874). To quote a historian of psychology: ……Wundt has told us more of his own thinking. It was about 1858 that Herbart’s Psychologie als Wissenschaft especially engaged him in the days when he was first beginning to lecture on the general principles of natural science. It was then that he came to the conclusion that psychology must be Wissenschaft, but that, als Wissenschaft, it must be dependent upon experiments as Herbart had said it is not. For many years Wundt had to fight the Herbartian tradition, but nevertheless it was Herbart that gave to him, as well as to Fechner, the notion of a scientific psychology…… in 1862, he had had the benefit of much thought and lecturing and of Fechner’s Elemente and could speak easily of an “experimental psychology”. (Boring 1950: 321)

An Active Mind with Will and Volition Kurt Danziger, a researcher on Wundt, pointed out that Wundt was indebted to Leibniz, of whom he made numerous references (1980: 75–76). But as we showed earlier, it is the whole German philosophy tradition—Leibniz, Kant, Herbart—that he should pay tribute to. More specifically, this rationalist tradition postulates an active human mind, which was substantiated with physiology and experiment from Muller, Helmholtz to Wundt. Wundt’s psychology is now termed voluntarism, i.e., human beings have will and volition, leading to selective attention, focus, purpose and even motivation.

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To start with, Muller worked with the nervous system and wanted to show how the categories of thought have transformed sensory information for our understanding. Helmholtz went further and postulated that the past experience of a person may convert a sensation into a perception through abundant information received from the various sense organs. An unconscious inference is going on with our memory. This conception is very much in line with our present-day theory of cognition: much incoming information is discarded while some is processed, matched with our memory, unconsciously and consciously, before it comes into our consciousness. Apparently Wundt built on this sensation-convert-perception thesis and made a distinction between sensation and feeling, perception and apperception, which are mediated and controlled by the will. According to Wundt, sensation has modality, intensity and qualities; feeling has three dimensions on a continuum: pleasantness-unpleasantness, excitementcalmness, strain-relaxation. The intake of sensation from external stimulation, mediated by neural structures and mechanisms (Muller’s idea), becomes perception after mapping with our past experiences (Helmholtz’s idea). The selection of the perceptual field becomes apperception (terms from Herbart and Leibniz). When the will selects attention and acts on it, it is the active mind (Kant’s view) and voluntarism. Experimental Psychology with Introspection For Wundt, the subject matter of psychology is consciousness. His method is to establish experimental conditions where variables can be manipulated and observed in a laboratory. His research program is to start with perception, followed by apperception, i.e., the accumulation of perception into ideas, and then the human will. Despite its scientific outlook, Wundt had to rely on introspection, or internal inspection, i.e., the subjective verbal reports of his subject to use his mind to “observe his own mind.” Note that Wundt delineated his experimental introspection from the British pure introspection. The latter is just free association; an example would be Berkeley’s perception of distance (Hergenhahn and Henley, 2014: 133). Wundt’s version is one with experimental conditions and procedures for measurement; an example would be Muller’s weight-lifting experiment. Wundt made a distinction between Innere Wahrnebmung (internal perception) and Experimentelle Selbstbeobachtung (experimental self-observation) (Brysbaert and Rastle 2009: 88).

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However, introspection was seen as a paradox and numerous assaults on its reliability had been staged for the past century. Surprisingly, some latest cognitive scientists of the twenty-first century are now taking introspection more seriously,10 while at the same time more sophisticated measurement tools have been invented to measure sensation without relying on the subjects’ reports.11 Like Wundt and most psychologists of his time, Dewey espoused consciousness as the subject matter of psychology and stressed many times that consciousness is a fact.12 He also approached psychology like Wundt from knowledge (ideas) to the will. However, while Dewey accepted science and experimentation, he was critical of introspection, arguing that “we cannot experiment directly with facts of consciousness” and “there is no such thing as pure observation in the sense of a fact being known without assimilation and interpretation through ideas already in the mind” (EW2: 13). In effect, Dewey was criticizing the British pure introspection. It is clear that the legacies of Kant’s “categories of thought,” Leibniz’s “apperception” and “innate idea” (EW1: 31),13 Herbart’s “apperception mass” were most evident in Dewey’s early thoughts on psychology.

Phrenology, Pseudo-Science and Mysticism The Flourishing “Phrenology Industry” But it is not easy to decide what is science and what is not. An example is phrenology. It was started by an Italian physician and anatomist Franz Josef Gall (1758–1828) who dissected deceased brains. Gall studied the size and shape of the human skull and proposed that the shape of a person’s skull reveals mental characteristics such as conscientiousness, 10 See, for example, Dehaene, S. (2014). Consciousness and the Brain—Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. New York, NY: Penguin Books. 11 See, for example, Eagleman, D. (2011). Incognito—The Secret Lives of The Brain. New York, NY: Vintage Books. 12 Dewey has repeated this many times, such as in Chapter 1 of Psychology (EW 2: 7, 11, 13) and The New Psychology (EW 1: 59). More emphatically, in Psychology as Philosophic Method he wrote “self-consciousness is indeed a fact (I do not fear the word)” (EW 1: 151). 13 Dewey’s PhD Thesis in 1884 was on Kant’s psychology. His book on Leibniz appeared in 1888.

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benevolence and self-esteem. Interesting enough, Gall gained this by his not-so-scientific observation: as a school boy he observed that his classmates with large prominent eyes excelled in memory (Greenwood 2009: 205). Gall’s theory, somewhat revolutionary and evolutionary, is that the budge of an area on the human skull indicates strength and the indentation indicates weak abilities. By 1834, phrenologists proposed 35 affective and intellectual faculties mapped on the surface of the human head! Phrenology became a big business, phrenological societies were formed, phrenology journals and newsletters were published, which became a part of public knowledge of psychology and zeitgeist of nineteenth century. The flourishing “phrenology industry” in Europe and America was clear evidence that the public were most curious and keen to know their own mental capabilities and character traits, in short, their own psychology.14 Mental Phenomena Unexplained In the same vein, it is not easy to distinguish what is psychology proper and what is not. There are numerous psychic phenomena, welded with mysticism, which are hard to explain, by formal psychology. Today we call them parapsychology, which is considered outside the province of respectable academic psychology. Not so a century ago. Leading intellectuals in Europe such as Alexander Bain and Augustine Comte endorsed phrenology. Even William James (1842–1910), a leading philosopherpsychologist at Harvard and close associate of Dewey, enthusiastically embraced parapsychology, founded the American Society for Psychical Research in 1885 and served as its president in 1894 (Pickren and Rutherford 2010: 80; Hergenhahn and Henley 2014: 332). In addition, The American National Spiritual Association was formed in 1893. Parapsychology includes all kinds of unexplained mental phenomena: mesmerism, hypnotism, telepathy, clairvoyance, mind reading (thought transference), trance states, mediumship. It originated in the Victorian enthusiasm for spiritualism, a world of spirits and life after death (Smith 2013: 164). They were later termed psychic phenomena (psi), grouped mostly under extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK). Naturally, with breakthroughs in most domains in natural science in the 14 It is of interest to note that Francis Galton, a British gentleman-scholar, set up an “anthropometric laboratory” in London in 1884 to measure a wide variety of human physical and mental traits. He got nearly 10,000 volunteer subjects.

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second half of nineteenth century, the public were expecting the same in psychology. The invention of x-rays and wireless telegraph is a case in point. Since x-rays and other energy rays with different wavelengths exist but cannot be detected by the naked eye, it is natural for the public to expect psychology to discover some unknown human psychic energy. Telepathy and clairvoyance appears a sensible possibility. This may mean the unleashing of man’s enormous mental and psychical power, the discovery of man’s ultimate mental secret, and the uses of psychological laws for the betterment of humankind. But they rely on psychologists to tell them what is science and what is not, what is possible and what is sheer nonsense. That is why Hugo Munsterberg, a German psychologist who came to teach psychology in Harvard in 1892, was constantly asked to comment on spiritual, mystic or paranormal phenomena (Pickren and Rutherford 2010: 81).

Dewey and Zeitgeist in Psychology After reading this chapter, I hope readers should have had a rough idea of what psychology was like in 1880s when Dewey ventured into the field. I have tried to show you that it was a highly complex field, with keen competition between British and German researchers, plus rampant innovation in ideas and method, not to say the traditional heritage from philosophy, such as Descartes’ mind-body phenomenon, Kant’s categories of thought and Hegel’s Absolute and Reason. There are also blind fad alleys, such phrenology and parapsychology that dominate the public expectation on psychology. And there are dark tunnels that took a century to get rid of the spell, such as introspection and faculty psychology. The field has evolved to very high complexity and it is not easy to conquer by a few new ideas. That Dewey navigated through them and became a known figure is no sheer luck. Nor is he just the right person at the right time. Quite the opposite, he is an exceptionally talented young American scholar whose relentless ardent effort finally pays off. A century has passed and Dewey’s ideas have stood the test of time. Most noticeably, he was ranked as one of the 53 most highly rated important psychologists from 1600 to 1967. The list included most names covered in this chapter: Spencer, Wundt, James, Mill, Helmholtz, Hall, to name just a few. In other words, Dewey is part of psychology’s history.

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The ratings were made by a panel of nine distinguished scholars on a list of 1040 candidates15 (Annin et al. 1968). Of the eleven major thinkers surveyed in this chapter, some have had more impact on Dewey’s thoughts than others. This is to be expected because a person will pick up ideas that he or she deems important and relevant within a zeitgeist. As we shall see in the next few chapters, Dewey is more attuned to the ideas of German philosophy than to German physiology or experimental psychology. Philosophy is a path that he had already picked, consciously or unconsciously, in his college and graduate school years.

Further Readings This chapter dwells on many nineteenth-century thinkers. Readers may find the following reading list useful: Herbert Spencer Francis, M. (2007). Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life. Stocksfield: Acumen Publishing. Mingardi, A. (2011). Herbert Spencer. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Wiltshire, D. (1978). The Social and Political Thought of Herbert Spencer. London: Oxford University Press. The above books are helpful to decipher Spencer’s life and his ideas. Francis’ work is especially illuminating by offering a plausible psychological interpretation on Spencer’s autobiography. Alexander Bain Bain, A. (1855) (Reprinted 1998). The Senses and The Intellect. New York: Thoemmes Press. Bain, A. (1859) (Reprinted 1998). The Emotions and The Will. New York: Thoemmes Press.

15 Curious enough, Alexander Bain was not included. It is clear that Bain is highly important, though not “highly rated.” As a testimony, his two books, The Senses and The Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and The Will (1859) were listed and reprinted in R. H. Wozniak (Ed.) (1998). Classics in Psychology (1855–1914), A Collection of Key Works. London: Thoemmes Press.

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Bain’s two classics summarized the British tradition of associationist psychology of nineteenth century. Gottfried W. Leibniz Dewey, J. (1888). Leibniz’s News Essays Concerning The Human Understanding (LW2: 251–435). Interesting enough, Dewey studied Leibniz in his college years and wrote about him. He published the above in 1888 in a series entitled German Philosophical Classics for English Readers and Students. By reading Dewey’s reconstruction of Leibniz’s ideas, readers can understand more about Leibniz as well as how his ideas influenced Dewey. Immanuel Kant Scruton, R. (2001). Kant: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Scruton gave a short and clear account of Kant’s life and works. Johann Herbart Kim, Alan, “Johann Friedrich Herbart”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), https:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2015/entries/johann-herbart/. Boring, E. G. (1950). A History of Experimental Psychology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc. Kim’s paper offers a comprehensive outline of Herbart’s psychology, ethics and pedagogy. Boring’s Chapter 13 devoted a section on Herbart and is easy to read. Wilhelm Wundt All textbooks today on the history of psychology will naturally cover Wundt. The older generation, such as G. Stanley Hall and E. G. Boring, wrote about Wundt. Readers may refer to the following: (1) Bringmann, W. G., & Tweney, R. D. (Eds.). (2002). Wundt Studies. Göttingen: Hogrefe. (2) Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the Subject, Historical Origins of Psychological Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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(3) Hall, G. S. (1912). Founders of Modern Psychology. New York: Appleton. Psychology & Zeitgeists (1) Simonton, D. K. (2002). Great Psychologists and Their Times: Scientific Insights into Psychology’s History. Washington: American Psychological Association. Simonton is a psychologist whose academic career is devoted to the study of genius, creativity and eminence by histometric methods. This book, an outgrowth of his empirical study in the 100th anniversary of the founding of American Psychological Association in 1992, gave a scientific (empirical) account of the history of psychology by studying the personal characteristics, family, life span, output of eminent psychologists, the zeitgeist and ortgeist. (2) Smith, R. (2013). Between Mind and Nature: A History of Psychology. London: Reaktion Books. In this critical history, Smith tries to tell the story “from the outside.” He starts from Descartes, traces the development of psychology in different European countries and America the “professionalization” of the discipline and the changing social context. (3) Hergenhahn, B. R., & Henley, T. (2014). An Introduction to the History of Psychology (7th ed). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning. It is a comprehensive textbook on the history of psychology. The authors focus less on personality than psychological ideas that grow and change over time. It starts from ancient Greece to present-day postmodernism and readers can easily pick people, periods or ideas that interest them. (4) Fancher R. E. & Rutherford, A. (2012). Pioneers of Psychology, A History (4th ed). New York: W. W. Norton. This textbook starts from Descartes and ends with Ulric Neisser’s cognitive psychology. It contains numerous names of key pioneers and terminologies to guide novices to the discipline. The suggested readings will lead to more in-depth research.

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Phrenology & Parapsychology Of helpful introduction is Roger Smith’s Between Mind and Nature (2015), which offers a short summary on parapsychology with further readings (pp. 163–169). It is amusing to see Smith putting behaviorism, phrenology and parapsychology side by side like buffet dishes in his Chapter 5: Varieties of Science. The following books may give a comprehensive account of the subject: (1) Hartley, L. (2001). Physiognomy and The Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2) Xiong, J. H. (2008). The Outline of Parapsychology. Lanham: University Press of America. (3) Wolman, B. B. (1977). Handbook of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Most textbooks on the history of psychology will cover phrenology. Of particular interest is C. James Goodwin’s book, which gives a close-up on the marketing of phrenology (Goodwin 2015: 65–68). (4) Goodwin, C. J. (2015). A History of Modern Psychology (5th ed). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

References Annin, E. L., Boring, E. G., & Watson, R. I. (1968). Important Psychologists, 1600–1967. Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences, 4, 303–315. Boakes, R. (1984). From Darwin to Behaviourism: Psychology and the Mind of Animals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boring, E. G. (1950). A History of Experimental Psychology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc. Brysbaert, M., & Rastle, K. (2009). Historical and Conceptual Issues in Psychology. New York: Pearson. Burrow, J. W. (2000). The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848–1914. Yale: Yale University Press. Chadwick, O. (1975). The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Danziger, K. (1980). Wundt and the Two Traditions of Psychology. In R. W. Rieber (Ed.), Wilhelm Wundt and the Making of a Scientific Psychology (pp. 73–87). New York: Plenum. Dewey, J. (1939). Biography of John Dewey. In P. A. Schilpp (Ed.). The Philosophy of John Dewey, p. 10. New York: Tudor Publishing Company. Fancher, R. E., & Rutherford, A. (2012). Pioneers of Psychology (4th ed.). New York: W. W. Norton. Goodwin, C. J. (2015). A History of Modern Psychology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc. Greenwood, J. D. (2009). A Conceptual History of Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Hergenhahn, B. R., & Henley, T. (2014). An Introduction to the History of Psychology (7th ed.). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning. Kingdom, F. A. A., & Prins, N. (2010). Psychophysics: A Practical Introduction. London: Academic Press. Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press. Pickren, W. E., & Rutherford, A. (2010). A History of Modern Psychology in Context. Upper Saddle River, NJ: John Wiley. Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2008). A History of Modern Psychology (9th ed.). Boston: Cengage Learning. Scruton, R. (2001). Kant: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Simonton, D. K. (2002). Great Psychologists and Their Times: Scientific Insights into Psychology’s History. Washington: American Psychological Association. Smith, R. (2013). Between Mind and Nature: A History of Psychology. London: Reaktion Books. Taylor, M. (1996). The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Wiltshire, D. (1978). The Social and Political Thought of Herbert Spencer. London: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 5

A Psychological Manifesto and Philosophic Method

Introduction: Dewey the Budding Psychologist All thinkers and their ideas are products of their time and milieu. In Chapter 3, I outline how Dewey was influenced in graduate school by his teachers, Morris, Hall and Peirce. In Chapter 4, I present the Zeitgeist of psychology in Dewey’s formative years. In this chapter, I will examine how Dewey navigated through psychology in 1884–1886 in his three papers, The New Psychology, The Psychology Standpoint and Psychology as Philosophic Method. As we shall see, the first paper, shining with brilliance, had not been taken seriously. The second and third, which appeared on a top academic journal, was greeted with serious criticism. It did not deter Dewey, as he had already been moving on to become a textbook writer of psychology!

The New Psychology A Psychological Manifesto This debut of Dewey’s in March 1884 can be seen as a psychological manifesto but is often neglected and misunderstood.1 At age 25, Dewey was bold enough to take stock of the whole field and spell out his view. In

1 It was published in Andover Review, II (September 1884), pp. 278–289.

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a short masterful passage of less than 250 words, Dewey made numerous points depicting the picture of the human mind: We know better now. …… We see that man is somewhat more than a neatly dovetailed psychical machine who may be taken as an isolated individual, laid on the dissecting table of analysis and duly anatomized. We know that his life is bound up with the life of society, of the nation in the ethos and nomos; we know that he is closely connected with all the past by the lines of education, tradition, and heredity; we know that man is indeed the microcosm who has gathered into himself the riches of the world, both of space and of time, the world physical and the world psychical. We know also of the complexities of the individual life. We know that our mental life is not a syllogistic sorites, but an enthymeme most of whose members are suppressed; that large tracts never come into consciousness; that those which do get into consciousness, are vague and transitory, with a meaning hard to catch and read; are infinitely complex, involving traces of the entire life history of the individual, or are vicarious, having significance only in that for which they stand; that psychical life is a continuance, having no breaks into “distinct ideas which are separate existences”; that analysis is but a process of abstraction, leaving us with a parcel of parts from which the “geistige Band” is absent; that our distinctions, however necessary, are unreal and largely arbitrary; that mind is no compartment box nor bureau of departmental powers; (EW1: 48–49)

This obscure style of nineteenth-century academic English should not conceal the brilliance and richness of Dewey’s ideas, which is summarized below in eight theses for twenty-first-century readers: • That man is not a psychical machine for easy anatomy; • That life exists within society and nation with ethos and norms; • That an individual’s life is connected to his past, education, tradition and heredity; • That man is a microcosm within time and space, with complexity of individual life, psychic and physical; • That consciousness is vague, transitory, complex, involving an individual’s life history of meaning and significance; that psychic life is in continuance, not distinct; • That there are large tracts of unconsciousness; • That mental life is not only logical reasoning; mind is not a compartment box or an executive office with departmental powers;

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• That breaking up mental life for psychological analysis is but a process of arbitrary abstraction. That Dewey’s conception of human mind is pioneering is without doubt. He rejected the idea of treating man as a machine, which started from Descartes. He stressed the societal dimension of consciousness; in fact he arrived at this idea independent of George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), an eminent social psychologist who argued that the human mind arises out of society and social interaction. Mead later became Dewey’s close colleague in Michigan and Chicago. When Dewey suggested that human consciousness is “vague and transitory,” he is ahead of William James (1842–1912), who spelt out of the notion of “stream of consciousness,” which appeared six years later (The Principles of Psychology, 1890). As for the idea of unconsciousness, Dewey spot it before Sigmund Freud (1856– 1939) expanded it into psychoanalysis. At that time in 1884, Freud was still in Vienna studying brain anatomy and believed in the physical explanation of mental disorder. Of course, Dewey did not invent all these terms and metaphors (psychical machine, unconsciousness, stream, executive office): they were all in the zeitgeist and Dewey integrated them to create a picture of modern psychology. The Zeitgeist and Physiological Psychology Dewey started by criticizing old psychology and summarizing existing researches, relating them to eighteenth-century zeitgeist, where “the age of the eighteenth century…… found nothing difficult, which hated mystery and complexity, which believed with all its heart in principles, the simpler and more abstract the better” (EW1: 50). It was the age of enlightenment filled with the sense of progress and optimism, scientism and completion, for example, the French Encyclopedists. By the nineteenth century, the zeitgeist is reason, the “organized, systematic, tireless study into the secrets of nature” (EW1: 51), and we are less naïve to believe we know everything. For the old psychology, he saluted: “[they] did the work well and departed.” (EW1: 49) and “the best we can do is to thank them, and then go about our own work” (EW1: 50). For the new work in psychology, he saw it in physiological psychology. According to Dewey, with the increase of knowledge in the of the nervous system, physiological psychology has “already thrown great light upon psychical matters” (EW1: 52). He endorsed physiological

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psychology “a new instrument, introduced a new method—that of experiment” which “produced a revolution in psychology” (EW1: 53). Through experimentation in physiological psychology, researchers are able to vary conditions and take quantitative measurements. The result: accumulation of psychological “facts” such as the following: This starts from the well-grounded facts that the psychical events known as sensation arise through bodily stimuli, and that the psychical events known as volitions result in bodily movements; and it finds in these facts the possibility of the application of the method of experimentation. The bodily stimuli and movements may be directly controlled and measured, and thereby, indirectly, the psychical states which they excite or express. (EW1: 53)

The new paradigm of physiological psychology has resulted in new conceptions. Formerly, sensation is taken as an ultimate fact or impression by the British empiricists for Locke, Berkeley to Hume. Now it is seen as a process built by color and muscular sensations, and affected by psychical laws of interest, attention, interpretation, judgment, emotion, volitions and so on. Consequently, “our perceptions are not immediate facts, but are mediated psychical process” (EW1: 55). Physiological psychology is to discover these psychological laws and processes. Physiological psychology can do so because the human physiological structure and function can serve as an indirect deduction of the psychical process. It is clear that Dewey has a well grasp of the German tradition of physiological psychology. Dewey quoted attention, perception and memory with breakthroughs by German psychologists (EW1: 55)2 . The deductive method works like this: That is to say, if a certain nervous arrangement can be made out to exist, there is always a strong presumption that there is a psychical process corresponding to it; or if the connection between two physiological nerve processes can be shown to be of a certain nature, one may surmise that the relation between corresponding psychical activities is somewhat analogous. In this way, by purely physiological discoveries, the mind may be led to suspect the existence of some mental activity hitherto overlooked,

2 While Dewey did not name them, he was probably referring to the tradition of Weber, Feshner and Wundt.

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and attention directed to its workings, or light may be thrown on points hitherto obscure. (EW1: 55)

Psychology as the Science of Human Experience On the other hand, Dewey sees the limitation of physiological psychology right from the start. He argues that physiology is not psychology: it is only an indirect means of investigation into the psychical process and activities. In short, the commonest view of physiological psychology seems to be that it is a science which shows that some or all of the events of our mental life are physically conditioned upon certain nerve-structures, and thereby explains these events. Nothing could be further than the truth…… That explanations of psychical events, in order to explain, must themselves be psychical and not physiological. (EW1: 52)

Physiology explains only the physical mechanism, psychology has to explain the whole human experience. Thus Dewey espouses concrete experience and psychic life. He wants “to abandon logical and mathematical analogy and rules” of “preconceived abstract ideas” (EW1: 60). He wants to ground psychology in experience: “logic of fact, of process, of life” (EW1: 59–60). So here is, more or less, the origin of Dewey’s notion of experience. As we understand it, experience is the cornerstone of Dewey’s psychology which he keeps developing and elaborating in his later works. At that moment, however, Dewey’s notion of experience, its method, nature and detail have not been spelt out. New Psychology at the Center of Human Sciences As for the scope of psychology, Dewey sees it all-encompassing and permeating through all human sciences. “All these sciences possess their psychological sides, present psychological material, and demand treatment and explanation at the hands of psychology” (EW1: 57). Even “history in its broadest aspect is itself a psychological problem” (EW1: 58). I would say that, in this Deweyan view, psychology is the center of human and social sciences. From a macro-perspective and explanation, it touches upon myths, customs, ethics, languages, nations, art, morality, etc. From a micro and individual perspective and explanation, it draws upon “facts”

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from the cradle, asylum, prison, children’s mind, feeling, insanity (EW1: 57–58). For Dewey, psychology includes: ……the commonest thoughts of every-day life in all its forms, whether normal or abnormal. The cradle and the asylum are becoming the laboratory of the psychologist of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The study of children’s minds, the discovery of their actual thoughts and feelings from babyhood up, the order and nature of the development of their mental life and the laws governing it, promises to be a mine of greatest value. When it was recognized that insanities are neither supernatural interruptions nor utterly inexplicable “visitations,” it gradually became evident that they were but exaggerations of certain of the normal workings of the mind, or lack of proper harmony and co-ordination among these workings…… (EW1: 58)

In 1884, Dewey called his vision The New Psychology with “undefined topics of inquiry which may be vaguely designated as the social and historical sciences—the sciences of the origin and development of the various spheres of man’s activity” (EW1: 56–57). This early version later became his social psychology in his presidential address of American Psychological Association (1899). Review and Discussion Paradoxes Despite Dewey’s breadth and originality, there are a few paradoxes. First is the paradox of Dewey’s new psychology—with abstract rules, logical boxes, laws and principles. Abstractions are inevitable in doing science. It appears Dewey does not specify what abstractions are acceptable and what are not. Second, Dewey has attacked Hume for his abstractions and “nominalistic thought,” calling it “formalistic intuitionalism” (EW1: 59). This is unjustified because Hume’s contribution to pre-psychology and British associationism is enormous and far-reaching; his insights on human nature, reason and emotion, habits of mind have become part of our intellectual heritage. What a paradox that Dewey’s notions of habit and Experience have been treated extensively by Hume. Third, Dewey may have committed naïve empiricism by asking the reader to “take a look into the actual processes of his own mind, the actual course of the mental life there revealed, and he will realize how utterly impossible were the description, much more the explanation, of what goes there”

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(EW1: 50). In other words, he supports his postulates by appealing to the senses—naïve empiricism—which he is very critical of. Now, how can mind studying mind, where is the limit? This is the most important paradoxical question that he did not follow up. Finally, another paradox on reason and belief is elaborated below. Against Faculty Psychology and Introspection Throughout this article, Dewey attacks faculty psychology and introspection. This is to be expected because Dewey, by his Hegelian philosophical position, is against dualism. He sees the human mind as a unity, not as a compartment of boxes. When phrenology with 35 affective and intellectual faculties of the human mind was discredited, so was faculty psychology. However, unknown to Dewey, faculty psychology has its revival in the second half of twentieth century with Jerry Fodor proposing the modularity of mind3 and Howard Gardner arguing for multiple intelligences.4 As for introspection, Dewey is only criticizing the British armchair speculation of internal inspection. Under the training and influence of G. Stanley Hall, who learnt the trade from Wundt, Dewey in fact supports experimental self-observation. Neglected and Misunderstood The New Psychology shows Dewey’s vision, breath and deep understanding in psychology. It foreshadows his future elaboration on child psychology, social psychology, thinking and its pitfalls, life experience and meaning, existence and consciousness. It is definitely a contribution, though not much recognized and discussed in the field, then and now. Hickman and Alexander’s celebrated The Essential Dewey (1998) did not select it. Fesmire’s Dewey (2015) did not mention it.5 When his sympathetic biographer Jay Martin discussed it, he called it Dewey’s “first important article” (Martin 2002: 79), where he was poised for a “creative leap,” but then he “regressed to dutiful operations of his earliest faiths” (Martin 2002: 80). I think this interpretation is misleading and unjustified. All 3 See Fodor, J. (1983). Dewey espouses scientific psychology with experimental conditions. 4 See Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York, NY: Basics Books. 5 Scanning through Fesmire’s Dewey, there is no mentioning of this epoch-making paper in chronology, life and works nor other chapters.

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through his exposition and analysis, Dewey does not call on God or Christianity to explain the human mind (soul). When he is dutiful of his earlier faith, it is not religion as such, but a sense of religiousness he gained in his the Oil City years (see Chapter 2 of this book). It is a faith in humanity, in human goodness and in himself. For Dewey, psychology is just a scientific discipline, the purpose of which is for the betterment of humankind. Thus, Dewey ends his psychological manifesto by asserting his rational faith, in which there is “no reason which is not based on faith” (EW1: 60). Again, Dewey may be accused of committing another paradox here: combining reason (justified belief) with faith (personal belief). As a final remark, Dewey has proposed a grand vision and I see no regression. While there are paradoxes and shortcomings, his arguments are cogent and all-encompassing. But the irony is that only a small part of his vision—functionalism—was taken and popularized ten years later.

Integrating Psychology With Philosophy Creating a Unicorn After the epoch-making psychological manifesto in 1884, Dewey wrote two more psychology papers in 1885, also of grandiose nature, published in a top academic journal in 1886. In it, he tried to integrate philosophy with psychology, proposing the notion of universal consciousness. From today’s vintage, Dewey is creating a unicorn, something which does not seem to exist. What does universal consciousness mean? How did he come up with such an idea? What are the implications of this idea and what relevance does it bear for today? I try to reconstruct the storyline below. Storyline Reconstructed Still in Johns Hopkins, Dewey presented The New Psychology in March 1884, just before he earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation, The Psychology of Kant . A few months later, with the help of his philosophy teacher, George S. Morris, he landed on a teaching job with the University of Michigan. It was to begin in September 1884 in the Department of Philosophy, teaching philosophy and psychology. Some of the psychology courses he offered were: Empirical Psychology; Special Topics in Psychology: Physiological, Comparative and Morbid, Experimental Psychology; Speculative Psychology; History of Psychology (Dykhuizen 1973: 46). You may well

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remember that Dewey had two teachers in Johns Hopkins: J. Stanley Hall taught him psychology and George Morris taught him philosophy. Dewey had a stronger inclination to work on philosophy than on psychology; that is why he took up the Michigan job of philosophy with Morris instead of taking up a postdoctoral fellowship in Germany on psychology (Martin 2002: 85). Once in Michigan, he realized that he was much more on demand for his psychology than his philosophy. The academic atmosphere was that philosophy was seen as the old, theological, established domain and psychology was looked upon as the new, scientific discipline with a prominent future. Dewey was working on two domains, philosophy and psychology, simultaneously, the former on subject-object unity, nature of experience, idealism and materialism while the latter on physiological psychology, experimentation, psychology laboratory research, perception, volition, will, mind and consciousness. Trying hard to integrate the two domains and bringing new insights into the old discipline of philosophy, he submitted, sometime in 1885, two articles, The Psychological Standpoint , and Psychology as Philosophic Method, to Mind, the then top journal in philosophy of the English-speaking world. It was accepted and published in January 1886 (Mind, xi) and April 1886 (Mind xi 153–173), respectively. The Psychological Standpoint The Issue of Subject and Object In The Psychological Standpoint , Dewey reviewed the development of English philosophy of the past 200 years—the psychology movement from Locke, Hume, Berkeley, to contemporary scholars, such as Green and Bain. Borrowing the term “The Psychological Standpoint” from Green, Dewey saw that: In short, the psychological basis of English philosophy has been its strength: its weakness has been that it has left this basis—that it has not been psychological enough. (EW1: 123)

He saw Locke’s and Hume’s sensation and impression as paving way for the idea of conscious experience. But then it hits the issue of subject and object distinction:

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From the psychological standpoint the relation of subject and object is one which exists within consciousness. And its nature or meaning must be determined by an examination of consciousness itself. The duty of the psychologist is to show how it arises for consciousness…… In this case, it reveals that consciousness is precisely the unity of subject and object. (EW1: 131)

The issue was taken up by Bain, and Dewey quoted him at length, calling it subjective idealism: The totality of our mental life is made up of two kinds of consciousness— the object consciousness and the subject consciousness. The first is the external world, or Non-Ego; the second is our Ego, or mind proper” (Bain: 378). Consciousness “includes our object states as well as our subject states. The object and subject are both parts of our being, as I conceive, and hence we have a subject consciousness, which is in a special sense Mind (the scope of mental science), and an object consciousness in which all other sentient beings participate, and which gives us the extended and material universe (Bain: 669). (EW1: 134)

From Subjective Idealism to Universal Consciousness Dewey dismissed subjective idealism as self-contradictory (EW1: 135), because “it assumes that the standpoint of psychology is necessarily individual or subjective. Why should we be told that the scope of psychology is subjective consciousness and subjective consciousness be defined as the totality of conscious experiences minus the object world…?” (EW1: 137). Dewey wants a “true psychological standpoint” to show “how subject and object arise within conscious experience, and thereby develops the nature of consciousness” (EW1: 137). Dewey thought he solved the subject-object polarity by introducing the concept of universal self and universal consciousness: The case stands thus: We are to determine the nature of everything, subject and object, individual and universal, as it is found within conscious experience. Conscious experience testifies, in the primary aspect, my individual self is a “transition,” is a process of becoming…… the individual self can take the universal self as its standpoint, and thence know its own origin. In so doing, it knows that it has its origin in processes which exist for the universal self…… consciousness has shown that it involves within itself a process of becoming, and that this process becomes conscious of itself. This process is the individual consciousness; but, since it is conscious of itself, it

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is consciousness of the universal consciousness. All consciousness, in short, is self-consciousness, and the self is the universal consciousness, for which all process is and which, therefore, always is. The individual consciousness is but the process of realization of the universal consciousness through itself. Looked at as process, as realizing, it is individual consciousness; looked at as produced or realized, as conscious of the process, that is, of itself, it is universal consciousness. (EW1: 142)

Psychology as Philosophic Method Psychology as Ultimate Science of Reality Whether substantive or speculative, Dewey’s notion of universal consciousness finds its way in Mind (January 1886). Three months later, Dewey published another paper, Psychology as Philosophic Method, somewhat like part two of his thesis, this time reviewing German transcendental philosophy. Decreed Dewey on psychology: it declared consciousness to be the sole content, account and criterion of all reality; and psychology, as the science of this consciousness, to be the explicit and accurate determination of the nature of reality in its wholeness, as well as the determination of the value and validity of the various elements or factors of this whole. It is the ultimate science of reality, because it declares what experience in its totality is; it fixes the worth and meaning of its various elements by showing their development and place within this whole. It is, in short, philosophic method. (EW1: 144)

Here, psychology as the science of consciousness is elevated to the “ultimate science of reality.” Dewey tries to equate psychology with philosophy; he does not subscribe to the view that psychology should gain its independence as a scientific discipline by branching out from philosophy. Instead, Dewey sees psychology, in studying consciousness, as the method to philosophy. His position is against the then received view of his times and the wisdom of today. Title Analysis Present-day readers may be bewildered with Dewey’s title, Psychology as Philosophic Method. Does Dewey mean the scientific and experimental method of psychology? Does he propose that philosophy should adopt an experimental method? Let me offer a title analysis.

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Methods are means to attain some goals. The goal of philosophy is to attain truth and knowledge. So philosophic method is to find a way to attain truth and knowledge. Normally the way is by logic and reason. Dewey is critical of this formal logical method of attaining truth. Since all knowledge and objective truth has to go through the subjective human mind, a subjective-objective problem arises here. It follows that the nature of the human mind and its subjectivity may affect truth. In this paper, Dewey tried to argue that psychology, the scientific study of human consciousness, is the way to attaining truth and knowledge. This is the issue at hand with Dewey, whether his arguments are sound and valid is another issue. Integrating Psychology with Philosophy Dewey took this view to integrate psychology with philosophy because he believed this integration is an organic unity, uniting man with universe. From Kant and then moving to Hegel, post-Kantians and Hegelians assume the existence of universal self-consciousness, seeing self and individual as finite, but his bond and living union with all other objects infinite, thus universal consciousness. To quote Dewey: The other aspect of man is that in which he, as self-conscious, has manifested in him the unity of all being and knowing, and is not finite, i.e., an object or event, but is, in virtue of his self-conscious nature, infinite, the bond, the living union of all objects and events. With this infinite, universal self-consciousness, philosophy deals; with man as the object of experience, psychology deals. (EW1: 146)

To generalize further, Dewey sees psychology as the realization of the universe in the individual consciousness! “[P]sychology is defined as the science of the realization of the universe in and through the individual…” (EW1: 148). Presumably Philosophy is to study totality and Psychology is to study man and his thinking. Without man and thinking, Philosophy will be impossible. Only through man can the totality be known. Therefore, Psychology, not logic, is Philosophic Method. Dewey sees that Philosophy is the Science, “the highest of all sciences,” answering “the nature of all reality” and “only in this whole is categorical truth to be found” (EW1: 158). When philosophy aims at all, truth, ultimate, he believes psychology (to study man and mind) is the method attaining it. He further expects psychology to account for

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the total consciousness, “the wholeness,” the nature of experience. For Dewey, “mathematics, physics, biology exist because conscious experience reveals itself to be of such a nature, that one may make virtual abstraction from the whole……” (EW1: 159). In other words, the human intellect manifests itself in mathematics, physics, biology, and the totality is Psychology. Self-Consciousness, IDEE, Universe and God To examine the relation between psychology and logic, Dewey dwelt on form and matter, content and method. By employing Hegelian dialectic to lump truth, organicity, system and sense together, Dewey explained the content of self-consciousness, or spirit, in IDEE: thought-conditions. He sees it as the “external nature of the universe,” and brings thinking into “thinking what God thought and was before the creation of the world.” He expressed it as “the universe in its unreality, in its abstraction.” In his words, The whole course of philosophic thought, so far as the writer can comprehend it, has consisted in showing that any distinction between the form and the matter of philosophic truth, between the content and the method, is fatal to the reaching of truth. Self-consciousness is the final truth, and in self-consciousness the form as organic system and the content as organized system are exactly equal to each other. It is a process which, as form, has produced itself as matter. Psychology as the account of this self-consciousness must necessarily fulfil all the conditions of true method. Logic, since it necessarily abstracts from the ultimate fact, cannot reach in matter what it points to in form. While its content, if it be true philosophy, must be the whole content of self-consciousness or spirit, its form is only one process within this content, that of thought-conditions, the Idee. While the content is the eternal nature of the universe, its form is adequate only to “thinking what God thought and was before the creation of the world,” that is, the universe in its unreality, in its abstraction. (EW1: 163)

Here IDEE, nature, thought-condition, existent relations, philosophy of spirit and “living human spirit with its individual thoughts, feelings and actions” are all blended into “the incomprehensible and inexplicable point in Philosophy” (EW1: 164). My repeated reading shows Dewey painstakingly points to logic as an abstract system, creating a contradiction between form and content. He said logic cannot reach the actual individual, the actual reality by asserted necessity. So logic as “absolute

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method reveals its self-contradiction by destroying itself” (EW1: 166). Consequently, psychology is the only philosophic method! Integrating Kant with Hegel John Dewey studied Kant (1880–1883) and Hegel (1883–1885) deeply under Torrey and Morris. Psychology as Philosophic Method is an ambitious attempt to integrate Kant and Hegel. Note that the philosophical tradition itself at that time was filled with theology (god). Idealism, Intuitionism and the British Scotch School competed in England while rationalism and materialism competed in Continental Europe. Dewey’s conception of psychology as philosophic method is hard to understand out of the above context. But if we dig deep enough, we can see that he was navigating in psychology and philosophy; he took German physiological psychology as a scientific basis for the study of consciousness and went beyond the prevalent British Bain-Spencer theory of associationism. For Dewey, the individual self is a process of becoming, testifying the existence of universal self. The process is individual consciousness and the product is universal consciousness. My metaphor is that he tried to see philosophy and psychology as two sides of the same coin, the coin of consciousness: psychology as individual consciousness and philosophy as universal consciousness; the former on man and the latter on totality. Only through the former can we understand the latter, therefore psychology is philosophic method. Or, alternatively, psychology is at the heart of philosophy. It is only through psychology, the study of human mind (consciousness), can we attain truth, the goal of philosophy. So far as I can understand it, Dewey is interpreting Kant’s monumental world (things-in-themselves) and phenomenal world (thingsin-appearance) where perception and conception (knowable) and selfconsciousness (unknowable) contradict each other. Dewey argues that this self-consciousness, this “unknown thing-in-itself” is “the ultimate ground and condition of experience” leading to “the impossibility of solving the problem of philosophy” (EW1: 152). I am not sure if Kant takes self-consciousness as an “unknown thing,” but he sees the difficulty of studying self-consciousness: once you try to observe your mind or self-consciousness, it will change its configuration. This is a very sober observation but it can be treated experimentally in twentieth-century psychology.

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Instead of following this path of scientific investigation, Dewey took the Hegelian turn and accused Kant of saying that self-consciousness is the necessary condition of experience which is unknowable and which we can only give negative statement (EW1: 153). From then on, it follows that Hegel solved the problem by postulating “universal consciousness,” an organic notion of “systematic totality” (EW1: 154). A Double Life and an Indeterminate Innovation In Jay Martin’s reconstruction of Dewey’s life in his early Michigan years, he portraits Dewey as “very enjoyable” (Martin 2002: 91), leading a double life (pp. 87–91). Dewey, in his professional capacity, taught scientific psychology; in his private life, he went to church, kept his Christian faith and gave Sunday lectures to Michigan Student Christian Association. One lecture was “The Obligation to Knowledge of God” (EW1: 61–63). Scanning through his Early Works, Volume 1: 1882–1888, we saw such papers written at that time as The Place of Religious Emotion (EW1: 90–92); Soul and Body (EW1: 93–125). According to Martin, Dewey’s underlying motive and belief was that: …… [it] would have been enough for him to demonstrate that science did not conflict with religion, but he wanted to go further and to show that science confirmed religious faith. (Martin 2002: 88)

If Dewey was seen as leading a double life in academic pursuit, he was also venturing in some indeterminate innovation. Who knows there is no such “thing” as universal consciousness? May be it is a very complex “process.” At that period, all researchers in Europe and America were racing for discoveries and innovation, psychology included. A new discovery might be at the corner. Who knows what the future is? Imagine we were back in the 1880s. There is an indeterminacy of future knowledge path. How can we be sure there is no such thing as “ether” or “atom,” there is no unpredictability in quantum physics, there is no “air travel” or “cosmic travel.” With this innovative spirit, Dewey is bold enough to make the claim of universal consciousness. The next issue is, of course, to substantiate it, with experiment. If it does, we may be in another plateau of scientific pursuit. If it doesn’t, let us keep our innovative spirit and try another idea. Seen in this way, Dewey’s notion is not as stupid as it sounds.

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Illusory Psychology Dewey’s Critic I hope I have shown, in the above, the personal and intellectual circumstances of Dewey leading to his indeterminate innovation. It has led to an anti-climax which, as we shall see, benefits Dewey in the long run. Five months after Dewey published his two papers, another paper appeared on Mind XI (October 1886), this time by a critic of Dewey. His name was Shadworth H. Hodgson (1832–1912), a British philosopher of the post-Kantian tradition who was later credited as a forerunner of pragmatism. Hodgson called Dewey’s illusory psychology, the term of which attracted my attention today as much as readers of Mind in the 1880s. Simply put, he disputed Dewey’s notion of universal self and universal consciousness. He satirized it and named it “psychological human and divine,” and soberly observed, No psychologist, I venture to say, in this country considers himself to be busied with the psychology of the Universal Self, or to be trespassing on ground covered by the theological doctrine of the SS. Trinity (EW1: i) I confess I am utterly at a loss to see either how Mr. Dewey justifies on experiential grounds the existence of an universal consciousness, or in what he imagines the relation between the individual consciousness and the universal one to consist. He tells us at p. 140 “that consciousness is the unity of the individual and the universal,” and also that “since consciousness does show the origin of individual and universal consciousness within itself, consciousness is therefore both universal and individual”. But he prudently postpones the question of how this is to a future opportunity. The obvious reason here is, that he does not know. (EW1: xiii)

Unjustified Generalization Hodgson starts from percepts (attributes of a natural object) to concept, based on experience and thought: “The perceptual order of a nature and of experience is modified and moulded by thought into a conceptual order and arrangement” (EW1: xiv). Hodgson is logically and faithfully following Kant’s view of rationalism, where thinking leads to “stream of consciousness.” However, he cautioned Dewey of the impossibility of generalizing individual consciousness into universal consciousness and succinctly pointed out:

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We cannot transcend our own consciousness, however much we may generalize it. Generalizing it alone, therefore, can never land us in the belief, still less in the knowledge, of an universal consciousness different in any respect from our own. Its generalization is merely another way, the logical or conceptual way, of representing its individuality, of what in actual experience is perceptual. (EW1: xvi)

Hodgson and Dewey Compared Hodgson agrees with Dewey that there is individual consciousness, but no matter how you generalize, you cannot get universal consciousness. It is still generalized individual consciousness. Hodgson also agrees that there is universal and universe, but it is not for psychology to study. Common content of all individual consciousness can be studied by metaphysics, the science of universe. In conclusion, English philosophy retains its validity as scientific psychology but drifts away from philosophy, while German philosophy identifies consciousness with a universal being and becomes transcendental. Dewey and Hodgson’s position is summarized below (Table 5.1): Hodgson argues that when Dewey combines the two and studies universal consciousness, it is illusory psychology! Table 5.1 Comparison of Dewey’s and Hodgson’s ideas on consciousness Dewey

Hodgson

Individual Consciousness Universal Consciousness Individual vs. Universal Consciousness

Yes Yes The two “things” are one. They can combine

Method

Psychology = philosophic method

Yes No • Individual consciousness can be abstracted or generalized to become common individual consciousness • There is no universal consciousness psychology = the study of individual consciousness metaphysics/philosophy= the study of the common content of all individual consciousness

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Present-Day Criticism Lapsing into Mysticism Of course, today’s readers will immediately see the irrelevance of relating the origin of human thought conditions to the beginning of universe or to its abstraction. While it is true that everything comes after the big-bang, it is unfruitful to relate everything to it. Of course, without the big-bang, there will be no universe, no stars, no solar system and no humans. But to relate the human existence or our eye blink to the big-bang is unhelpful to our understanding. The route should rather be the evolution of life on earth, from lower species to homo sapiens and to the evolution of individual consciousness. Logic, abstraction and reason, seen from the light of survival value, make more sense than postulating universal consciousness and IDEE. The notion of universal self-consciousness (universal consciousness) does not survive the test of time or science. This is a blind alley because it leads to nowhere but mythical transcendentalism. It is an extension of Hegel’s system of thought from reason (IDEE) to universal consciousness. Few academic scholars today take it seriously; only some mythical-cosmic preachers continue to popularize it for health reasons and for social harmony.6 Like the concept of God, it belongs to Christian theology and the past. Bizarre Combination Dewey is always good at integration, but sometimes it can become a bizarre combination. He tried hard to combine Kant (consciousness, experience, universe), Hegel (absolute, realization) and Christianity (God), but the outcome is the strange concept of universal consciousness and the weird conclusion of psychology as realization of individualized universe. I am sure logical positivists will dismiss it to meaningless:

6 Readers may find a present-day mind-your-reality.com, quoted below:

version

of

universal

consciousness

from

In a nutshell, there is a single consciousness, the universal mind, which pervades the entire universe. It is all-knowing, all powerful, all creative and always present everywhere at the same time. Your consciousness is part of it—it is It.

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In no way can the individual philosophize about a universe which has not been realized in his conscious experience. The universe, except as realized in an individual, has no existence. In man it is partially realized, and man has a partial science; in the absolute it is completely realized, and God has a complete science. Self-consciousness means simply an individualized universe; and if this universe has not been realized in man, if man be not self-conscious, then no philosophy whatever is possible. If it has been realized, it is in and through psychological experience that this realization has occurred. Psychology is the scientific account of this realization, of this individualized universe, of this self-consciousness. (EW1: 149)

In reconstructing Dewey’s psychology for today’s readers, I can appreciate John Dewey’s ardent effort of integrating philosophy with psychology: Morris’ Hegelianism and Hall’s physiology-psychology. That’s why the notion of universal self-consciousness comes into being; universe, universal and unity from Hegel and consciousness from psychology. However, this combination is not a fruitful path. Take the idea of creating a weapon like sword-gun or of combining Jazz music with Chinese calligraphy. Does it make sense or does it work? A sword is for combat within a meter while a gun is for shooting at least a few meters. Music is listening and calligraphy is for visualizing. Admittedly there is individual consciousness, but it is dangerous to generalize it into universal consciousness. The idea of universal consciousness based on Hegel’s realization of reason is a logical extension of Hegelian philosophy, which does not seem to have relevance to the field of individual psychology. Universal vs. Collective Consciousness On the other hand, individual consciousness can be generalized and extended into some kind of social consciousness, such as collective consciousness, class consciousness, national consciousness, social group worldview and so forth. For example, an eminent French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) proposed the term collective consciousness in 1893 to denote shared beliefs and values that serve as a unifying force within a society.7 Georg Lukács (1885–1971), a leading Marxist, developed Karl Marx’s ideas of alienation into class consciousness, asserting the deterministic worldview and beliefs based on ones

7 See Durkheim, E. (1893). Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press. (republished 2013)

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social class.8 They all make sense in sociology for the description of collective social behavior and phenomenon. When a group of people think in a certain way, it creates a zeitgeist and there is nothing “universal” or mystical about it. As for the realization of reason, human behaviors are found to be as much rational as irrational, thus the concept of bounded rationality and procedural rationality.9 The Hegelian notion of seeing everything as realization of reason is as good and as bad as seeing everything as the realization of instinct or human nature. Dewey Outgrowing His Own Ideas It is clear that Dewey intends to combine the two worlds, as the titles of his dissertation and articles reveal. Standing on the frontier and crossroads of the two disciplines, Dewey has the vision that the future of philosophy depends on psychology, and vice versa, instead of seeing psychology as a new scientific discipline gaining independence from philosophy. Lewis Hahn, a Deweyan scholar, aptly summarized Dewey’s academic conviction and approach for this period: To this early period also date his conviction of the intimate relationship between philosophy and psychology and his sense of the importance of a behavioral approach drawing upon the results of biology and the social sciences. The Hegelian and biological concepts of the organism and its environment helped shape his later views of the live creature and its environment. (EW1: Introduction, xxxvi)

It appears that Hodgson’s criticism hit him hard, pushing him to discard Hegelian idealism. In 1886, Dewey was already busy writing and revising his Psychology, a textbook where he dropped the term universal consciousness in favor of the “universal factor” (EW2: 10): he keeps the knower as individual, but the “known” knowledge of the external world as “universal,” thus “psychology is the science…… in the form of individual, unsharable consciousness” (EW2: 11).

8 See Lukács, G. (1923). History and Class Consciousness. Cambridge: The MIT Press. (republished 1971) 9 The term was coined by Herbert Simon (1916–2001) to denote the human decisionmaking process which is only partly rational.

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In replying to Hodgson’s challenge, Dewey submitted a rejoinder to Mind, published in Mind XII (Jan 1887) (EW1: 168–175). Here Dewey acknowledged “psychology as philosophic method” is but one instance where Hodgson’s can be taken as “Metaphysic as philosophic method” (EW1: 169). He did not insist on the existence or conditions of universal consciousness, but proposed “universal factors” and “universality of consciousness”: …… The universality of consciousness stands just where its individuality does. An individuality is “given” in the sense that every consciousness has a unique interest; so universality is “given” in the sense that every consciousness has a meaning . But the experience of the world as a fact, like the experience of the individual stream as a fact, is a constructed product. And the philosophical interpretation of the fact that there is a world of experience is still more remote from being immediate or given. (EW1: 173–174)

In fact, this minor change of the term, from universal consciousness to universality of consciousness, shows a subtle difference in meaning: where universal consciousness is more about the ultimate science of reality in the “realization of reason,” universality of consciousness is more an abstraction and philosophical interpretation of the individual. It is paving way for Dewey to move on to real-life experience, the experience of the world and the individual as a “constructed product.” It is where his future exposition of pragmatism is grounded. In less than ten years, Dewey abandoned Hegelianism and even stopped going to church. It was not that he became an atheist, but that he had become a pragmatist.

Further Readings In this chapter, I outlined Dewey’s early works (1884–1886) and the severe criticism he received from Hodgson. Readers may wish to learn more about Hodgson and the study of consciousness, i.e., psychology of the nineteenth century. A. Shadworth H. Hodgson (1832–1912) Hodgson is a British gentleman-scholar of the nineteenth century and a friend of Herbert Spencer. He is interested in philosophy and psychology and was an instrumental founder of “the Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy” and remained presidency for

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14 years. As a post-Kantian with a Victorian scientific inclination, he was seen as a forerunner of pragmatism and has published: 1. The Theory of Practice: An Ethical Enquiry (1870), Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer. 2. The Philosophy of Reflection (1878), Kessinger Publishing. 3. The Metaphysic of Experience (1898), Longmans and Green. Source http://www.iep.utm.edu/hodgson/ https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Hodgson% 2C+Shadworth+Hollway%2C+1832-1912%22 B. Study of Consciousness of the nineteenth Century In the nineteenth century, psychology was defined as the study of consciousness. A few major thinkers, Bain, Spencer, Wundt and James stood out. The following books may introduce readers into the subject. 1. Rieber, R. W., & Robinson, D. K. (Eds.) (2001). Wilhelm Wundt in History: The Making of a Scientific Psychology. New York: Plenum. A book by several Wundtian scholars, covering Wundt’s early years and the Americanization of his ideas. It also tells the story of how Wundt’s Leipzig laboratory was superseded by Gottingen, and the Wundt Collections in Japan. Wundt’s experimenting and operating characteristics of consciousness can be found in Chapter 4. 2. Young, R. M. (1990). Mind, Brain and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Young’s scholarly work focuses on the story of cerebral localization from Gall to Ferrier, showing how physiological research of the human brain makes progress in the nineteenth century. 3. Klein, D. B. (1970). A History of Scientific Psychology. New York, NY: Basic Books. In this encyclopedic history of over 900 pages, half is on ancient history (Greece, medieval times and Renaissance) and another half is on early modern history, covering backgrounds in Kant, Hume, Mill, Herbart, Lotze and ending in Bain and Wundt. It is an old, useful reference for the more antiquated background of nineteenthcentury psychology. 4. Murray, D. J. (1988). A History of Western Psychology, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Prentice Hall.

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This easy-to-read textbook has clear timeline and period delineation. For readers interested in the period related to young Dewey, please read Chapter 7 (1879 to about 1910: Wundt and his Influence) and Chapter 8 (1879 to about 1910: other Currents of Thought).

References Dykhuizen, G. (1973). The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Fodor, J. (1983). The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press.

CHAPTER 6

Psychology, Reflex Arc Concept and the Birth of Functionalism

The Developmental Path of Dewey’s Psychology A Sketch from 1884 to 1933 Dewey’s academic journey with psychology began by showing interest and reading psychology in his college years (1876–1879). Then he received formal training in psychology with Granville Stanley Hall (1883– 1884). His first paper, The New Psychology, was published in 1884. The same year he earned his PhD with a thesis, The Psychology of Kant . He started teaching psychology in the University of Michigan and published a few papers on psychology, notably The Psychological Standpoint and Psychology as Philosophic Method, both in 1886. The next year, his 366page textbook, Psychology, appeared. Dewey continued to publish on psychology, such as The Psychology of Infant Language (1893), The Theory of Emotion (1893) in his Michigan years. In 1894, he moved to the University of Chicago to become the head of the Department of Philosophy, Psychology and Education. His most renowned work in psychology, The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology, appeared in The Psychological Review in the July issue of 1896. The paper was considered one of the most important papers in psychology for the next 70 years as it declared the birth of functionalism in American psychology (Boring 1953: 146). During his Chicago years, Dewey continued to work in developmental psychology, notably Principles of Mental Development as Illustrated in Early Infancy (1899) and Mental Development (1900), which outlines human development from infancy to early adulthood. When he started © The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_6

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the laboratory school there in 1896, he wrote extensively on educational psychology, such as Interest in Relation to Training of the Will (1896), The School and Society (1900) and The Child and the Curriculum (1902). In 1899, he was elected president of American Psychological Association and made a presidential address, Psychology and Social Practice, which signified his interest and shift to social psychology. In 1905, Dewey moved again to Columbia University. Psychology was then slowly moving to behaviorism and Dewey gave talks on behavior and psychology. By 1909, he published How We Think, which was seen as a pioneering work in thinking research as well as educational psychology where Dewey stressed the need for training thought and outlined methods and school conditions (see Chapter 8 for details). Human Nature and Conduct , An Introduction to Social Psychology was a lecture series developed in 1918 and published in 1922. Here Dewey tries to answer the ultimate question of human nature and how society evolves and interacts with human nature. In his later works, Experience and Nature (1925), Dewey examined the nature of human existence and human experience. There he came back to his starting question in psychology, consciousness, and devoted a chapter to it: Existence, Ideas and Consciousness (LW1: 226–265). He substantiates it with A Naturalistic Theory of Sense Perception (1926–1927), Affective Thought (1926–1927) and Qualitative Thought (1930). In his late years, Dewey continued to publish in psychology. He wrote about intelligence, The Naturalization of Intelligence (LW4: 156–177) and tried to relate psychology with human practice, such as Psychology and Justice (LW3: 186–195) and Psychology and Work (LW5: 236–242). In 1933, he revised his How We Think substantially, subtitled as A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Education Process. His works in psychology had spread across half a century (Table 6.1). Where Lies His Focus It is clear Dewey’s focus is on the whole discipline, and not on the minute details of frontline research. He is concerned about the relationship between psychology and philosophy, seeing the former as method to the latter. Since publishing his The New Psychology in 1884, Dewey has ventured into this methodological issue, thus Psychology as Philosophic Method and The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology, bringing the birth of functionalism and pragmatism. Due to his interest in education, Dewey

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Chronology of Dewey’s major works on psychology

Table 6.1 Year (age)

Month

Events/Psychological works published

Progress/Observations

1877 (18)

/

Dewey begins studying psychology, evolution and physiology

1879 (19)

/

1881 (22)

/

1882 (23)

September

1883 (24)

January

Undergraduate study in University of Vermont, Year 3 • Takes a course in physiology • Studies Huxley’s Elements of Physiology • Studies Spencer’s Principles of Psychology (1872) Undergraduate study in University of Vermont, Year 4 • Studies Kant under Torrey • Studies Mill, Hume, Hamilton, Marsh • Quits teaching • Private study of Spinoza under Torrey • Enters Johns Hopkins University • Studies Hegel under Morris • Studies physiological psychology under G. S. Hall • Hegel and Theory of Categories • Kant and Philosophic Methods (EW1: 34–47) • The Psychology of Kant

April

1884 (25)

April

May

1885 (26)

September December

• The New Psychology (EW1: 48–60) • Teaches in Michigan University • A draft of Psychology submitted to publisher (accepted in May 1886) • The Psychological Standpoint (EW1: 122–143) • Psychology as Philosophic Method (EW1: 144–167) • Criticized by Hodgson as “Illusory Psychology”

1886 (27)

January April October

1887 (28)

/

• Psychology 1st edition

1888 (29)

/

• Leibniz’s New Essays concerning the Human Understanding —A Critical Exposition (EW1: 251–435)

Dewey begins to study Kant

Dewey studies Spinoza and Leibniz

Dewey begins to study Hegel Dewey begins to study physiological psychology He tries to integrate Hegel with Kant Dewey tries to integrate Kant with psychology in his Ph.D. thesis. See Chapter 3 for details It is an epoch-making “Psychological Manifesto.” See Chapter 5 for details Dewey is already well-versed with the psychology discipline Dewey tries to integrate psychology with philosophy, with the former as tool and the latter as content. This unity of dynamic idealism was ridiculed as “illusory psychology.” See Chapter 5 for details This textbook brings him fame and recognition. See Chapter 6 for details Dewey writes on Leibniz’s psychological ideas: innate ideas, sensation, experience, impulses and the will. It was published as the first volume of the Series of German Philosophical Classics for English Readers and Students

(continued)

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(continued)

Table 6.1 Year (age)

Month

Events/Psychological works published

Progress/Observations

1889 (30)

/

• Psychology 2nd edition

Dewey revises the section on sensation Dewey writes an introduction to apply psychology to education theory and practice Dewey argues that concepts are ideational with abstract principles. They arise from individual sensuous percepts (perceptions) through realizing the full implied meaning (EW3: 144) He revises over 30 pages A short and useful empirical account of infant language. See review in Chapter 7 This is Dewey’s ambitious attempt to offer a theory of emotion. First he reveals Darwin’s principles (The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 1872) and the James-Lange Theory of Emotion, annotating the survival value of emotion. Then he theorizes that all emotions involve excitement, inhibition and coordination, where “emotional excitement is the felt process of realization of ideas” (EW4: 172), while expressions of emotions are explicable by four principles (EW4: 169). He further proposes a distinction between Affect (emotional disturbance or Gefuhlston) and Interest This watershed paper signifies the declaration of functionalism in American psychology. See Chapter 6 for details Dewey applies concepts of psychology, interest and will to education. His concept of interest, defined as a form of self-expression, foreshadows his later focus on child development and growth. See Chapter 9 for details Widely known as “Dewey School,” Dewey’s interest and expertise in education was established

• Co-authors with James A. McLellan on Applied Psychology 1891 (32)

1894 (35)

1895 (36)

1896 (37)

/

• How Do Concepts Arise from Percepts? (EW3: 142–147)

/ /

• Psychology 3rd edition • The Psychology of Infant Language (EW4: 66–69)

/

• The Theory of Emotion (EW4: 152–188)

/

• Moves to Chicago University • The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology (EW5: 96–110)

/

• Interest in Relation to Training of the Will (EW5: 111–150)

/

• Founds University College Elementary School in the University of Chicago

(continued)

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(continued)

Table 6.1 Year (age)

Month

Events/Psychological works published

Progress/Observations

1897 (38)

Apr

• The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum (EW5: 164–176)

/

• Co-authors with James A. McLellan on The Psychology of Number and Its Applications to Methods of Teaching Arithmetic (published by D. Appleton)

May

• Addresses the Philosophic Union of the University of California with the title, Psychology and Philosophic Method, first published in 1899, later released in 1910 as Consciousness and Experience with minor changes (MW1: 113–130)

/

• Principles of Mental Development as Illustrated in Early Infancy (MW1: 175–191) • Elected president of American Psychological Association (APA) • Psychology and Social Practice

Dewey’s “psychological inquiry” of “interest” leads to the notion of growth and experience, which, he argues, should be the guiding principles of the school curriculum. See Chapter 9 for details A book written for math teachers, Dewey theorizes about numbers, the art of measurement, and language, the act of preservation. With number, valuation becomes possible, a precondition for the growth of civilization Dewey revisits the issue of psychology and philosophical method after 14 years. By keeping his position that the two disciplines should integrate, Dewey criticizes both disciplines and spells out his version of functionalism in psychology. See details in Chapter 7 See below

1899 (40)

1900 (41)

1902 (43)

/

/

• Mental Development (MW1: 192–221)

/

• Interpretation of Savage Mind (MW2: 39–52)

As his presidential address of APA, this paper indicates his move to social and educational psychology. Dewey’s “social practice” is basically the process of education Dewey began teaching educational psychology in 1896 in Chicago. The two articles, Principles of Mental Development as Illustrated in Early Infancy and Mental Development , should be read together, in which Dewey roughly divides child cognitive development into four stages: early infancy (0–3), later infancy (3–6), childhood (7–13) and adolescence (14–24). It clearly shows Dewey is a pioneer and authority of the subject Dewey challenges Spencer’s notion of primitive minds. He joins the debate in genetic psychology and briefly discusses hunting, religion, totemism and death, arguing that the evolution of the savage mind is “the adjustment of habits to ends,” through interaction with the environment, leading to intelligence and emotion

(continued)

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(continued)

Table 6.1 Year (age)

Month

Events/Psychological works published

Progress/Observations

1903 (44)

/

• Psychological Method in Ethics (MW3: 59–61)

Dewey argues that while psychology as a science “does not tell what the concrete ethical ideal is,” it can show specific “conditions of origin” and “qualitative experience” as “a definite intellectual base line” to measure and evaluate ethics (MW3: 61). In other words, psychology is the measuring method of ethics

1905 (46)

/

1906 (47)

/

• Moves to Columbia University • Gives talks on behavior and psychology • The Terms “Conscious” and “Consciousness” (MW3: 79–82)

1910 (51)

/

• How We Think

1912 (53)

/

• Perception and Organic Action (MW7: 3–31)

1917 (58)

/

• The Need for Social Psychology (MW10: 53–64)

1922 (63)

/

• Human Nature and Conduct (MW14: 3–230)

Dewey examines the origins and usage of these two terms and identifies six meanings. He points out the need to state explicitly the prima facie of these terms This pioneering paper on thinking research was published in 1910 and was substantially revised in 1933. See Chapter 7 for details Dewey reviews the ideas of Henri Bergson (1859–1941), a French philosopher known for his book entitled Creative Evolution (1907). Briefly the canons are that perception is a temporal process, it is relative to action and life and consciousness is a choice of perception. It is a part of process philosophy and metaphysical psychology which attracts Dewey’s interest In this address to the American Psychological Association on its twenty-fifth anniversary, Dewey reviews the development of social psychology of the last quarter of a century, quoting works from Tarde, Baldwin, Thorndike and McDougall. It is an essay preceding Human Nature and Conduct , but many of Dewey’s ideas are already in place (MW10: 56). Dewey also mentions the behaviorist movement, social consciousness, the Durkheim School of Collective Mind (MW10: 60) as well as the need of social control (MW10: 62) Dewey’s theory of human nature. See Chapter 7 for details

(continued)

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(continued)

Table 6.1 Year (age)

Month

Events/Psychological works published

Progress/Observations

1925 (66)

/

• Existence, Ideas and Consciousness (LW1: 226–265)

/

• The Naturalistic Theory of Sense-Perception (LW2: 44–55)

1926 (67) 1927 (68)

/ /

• Affective Thought (LW2: 104–111) • Body and Mind (LW3: 25–40)

In his monumental work, Experience and Nature, Dewey re-examines consciousness in light of his latest existential theory In this short paper, Dewey tries to distinguish “perceived spatial relations of perceived things” from “physical” space. The naturalistic view of sense-perception is one of “practical act of reaching” instead of perception as “mental in nature” (LW2: 54). Perception and action are dominated by habit, which is constantly “re-made” and “adapted” for practical life (LW2: 53) See Chapter 7 for details

1929 (70)

April to May

• The Naturalization of Intelligence (LW4: 156–177)

Dewey criticizes dualism for its distinction between mind and body and reiterates his position of mind-body unity “in a unified wholeness of operation” (LW3: 27). While he acknowledges that action can be treated with certain distinction between physical functions and mental ones (LW3: 28), he insists on viewing action in its integrated wholeness (LW3: 30) and attacks behaviorism for its exclusion of longitudinal and historical factors (LW3: 34) In 1929, Dewey delivered the Gifford lectures which were published as The Quest for Certainty. In it Dewey attacked traditional epistemology and science by alluding to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (LW4: 160). A chapter entitled The Naturalization of Intelligence argues that intelligence is instrumental to “reflective knowledge” which is “the only means of regulation” (LW4: 175). For Dewey, intelligence is reflective thinking to solve problems, whether in daily life or in doing science. However, he offers no systematic theory of intelligence nor its naturalization process

(continued)

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(continued)

Table 6.1 Year (age)

Month

Events/Psychological works published

Progress/Observations

1930 (71)

/

• Psychology and Work (LW5: 236–242)

/

• Qualitative Thought (LW5: 243–262) • Rewrites How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process

In this paper, Dewey briefly ventures into industrial psychology, alluding to Hawthorne studies in the USA and workers and shop-committees in Russia (He visited USSR in 1928). He urges for a “real working personnel department” (LW5:241) to collect and listen to the workers’ ideas. At age 70, Dewey no doubt kept himself abreast as we witnessed America moving into the alienated modern mass production and consumption era. See Chapter 7 for details

1933 (74)

/

See Chapter 7 for details

I have scanned through the Collected Works of John Dewey (1882–1953) and listed below 35 papers, articles and books by Dewey which, I think, are his major works in psychology. 17 of these were selected in: Li, R. (Ed). (2017). The Selected Works of John Dewey: Education and Psychology. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press (in Chinese). For a shorter selection, readers may refer to 9 articles picked by: Hickman, L. A., & Alexander, T. H. (1998). The Essential Dewey, vol. 2: Ethics, Logic, Psychology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press

ventures into developmental psychology and educational psychology as well. In his early years, Dewey writes about the psychology of the individual, on subjects such as emotion (1894), interest and will (1895), mental development (1899, 1900) and thinking (1910). But his shift to social psychology has begun as early as 1900 when he was elected president of American Psychological Association. With his papers, Psychology and Social Practice (1900), Psychological Method in Ethics (1903) and The Need for Social Psychology (1917), Dewey is moving onto social psychology, culminating in his Human Nature and Conduct : An Introduction to Social Psychology (1922). It is clear that Dewey’s focus has been on the big issues in psychology: the nature of consciousness, the role of experience and thinking, human beings and society, the method of study, and finally, human nature. It is based on these concerns of Dewey’s that I organize my Chapters 5–7 of this book.

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Psychology Staggering Effort In September 1884, Dewey joined the Department of Philosophy in the University of Michigan, then known as the “Athens of the West” of America (Jay Martin 2002: 85). Psychology was a sub-discipline within philosophy and Dewey taught mainly psychology, with course titles like “Experimental Psychology” and “Empirical Psychology.” His classes were always full: students were eager to learn facts and ideas in this new pioneering discipline. By December 1885, Dewey finished a draft of Psychology, probably based on his tedious lecture notes and voluminous readings, and submitted it to Harper & Brothers. It was accepted and published in 1887 and became an instant best-selling textbook in psychology for many years, revised and reprinted 26 times until 1930. It was later superceded by William James’ The Principles of Psychology (1890). Psychology brought Dewey instant fame in psychology but it came with amazing and staggering effort on his side. Jo Ann Boydston, editor of The Collected Works of John Dewey, meticulously combed through Psychology (EW2) and listed out a total of 331 references.1 It included a substantial proportion published from 1876 to 1886. To quote an example, a very updated psychological experiment by Hermann Ebbinghaus on memory decay (1885) was cited (EW2: xxxiii), which showed Dewey in the frontier of the field. Ebbinghaus’ experiment is now classic. My estimate is that the references would mean a staggering 200,000 pages of academic work. Even if Dewey had read thoroughly only 10% of these titles, it would have been 20,000 pages or 1000 pages per month. Dewey must have read omnivorously from September 1884 to April 1886, synthesizing an unimaginable quantity of ideas into his textbook.

1 Jo Ann Boydston admitted that most references “are now difficult or impossible to locate” (EW1: xxix). She had to ascertain it by sources of library catalog data such as the following: British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books. Ann Arbor: J.W. Edwards, 1946. Bücher-Lexicon. Leipzig: Ludwig Schumann, 1834–1852; T.D. Weigel, 1853–1886. Catalogue général des livres imprimés de la Bibliothèque nationale. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1897–1964.

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British Framework, German Research While Wundt declared the independence of psychology from philosophy in 1879, Dewey took psychology as philosophic method (1886) and believed his textbook will make “psychology a good introduction to the remaining studies of the philosophic curriculum” (LW2: 3). For Dewey, “philosophical implications (are) embedded in the very heart of psychology” (LW2: 3). He did not support the separation of psychology from philosophy. He believed that psychology, in studying the human mind and consciousness, is the method of philosophy, i.e., to attaining truth and ultimate reality. More specifically, readers familiar with nineteenthcentury European philosophy will see that Dewey’s vision of psychology was an outgrowth of German idealism and British empiricism of the human mind. Dewey had tried hard, and generally successful, in synthesizing British psychology with German psychology. The version of British psychology started from John Locke (1632–1704) and had developed for 150 years into Alexander Bain’s version of association psychology and Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary psychology. Dewey took both. In fact, Dewey more or less borrowed Bain’s framework (intellect, emotion, will) and added in Spencer’s evolutionary principles. What was more, he added in German experimental psychology to substantiate and expand Bain’s framework. Scanning through Psychology, I can see the following repeated headings: illustration, experimental evidence, hypothesis, laws, theories, conditions, functions. They came with lots of updated research findings, counterpoints and formulation of laws. Wundt was cited in the references of most chapters, so were many other German psychologists such as Weber, Feshner and Helmholtz, these important figures in German psychology that we discussed in Chapter 4. Almost half of the cited references were in the German language. In addition, the book was not short of physiology: the organ (muscle, eye, ear, tongue, etc.), the stimulus (light, color, sound, smell, touch) and the process (sight, hearing, movement). Moreover, it had moved on to describe higher cognitive process such as memory, imagination and thinking. How Dewey Approaches the Subject of Psychology Most textbook writers will acknowledge the complication of writing an introductory chapter: where should one start with a subject of high complexity. Dewey began his psychology text by clarifying eight terms

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in one short paragraph: ego, self, mind, soul, psychical, subject, object, spirit. Even today’s readers will find Dewey offering a succinct exposition of these confusing terms: Ego is a term used to express the fact that self has the power of recognizing itself as I, or a separate existence or personality. Mind is also a term used, and suggests especially the fact that self is intelligent. Soul is a term which calls to mind the distinction of the self from the body, and yet its connection with it. Psychical is an adjective used to designate the facts of self, and suggests the contrast with physical phenomena, namely, facts of nature. Subject is often used, and expresses the fact that the self lies under and holds together all feelings, purposes, and ideas; and serves to differentiate the self from the object—that which lies over against self. Spirit is a term used, especially in connection with the higher activities of self,……. (EW2: 7)

According to Dewey, “Psychology is the science of the Facts or Phenomena of Self” (EW2: 7). But since “self not only exists, but may know that it exists: psychical phenomena are not only facts, but they are facts of consciousness” (EW2: 7); so psychology studies “the various forms of consciousness, showing the conditions under which they arise” (EW2: 8). The consensus of early-day psychology is that the discipline is to study consciousness, but what is consciousness? Dewey is well aware of the circularity in defining consciousness. Consciousness can neither be defined nor described. We can define or describe anything only by the employment of consciousness. It is presupposed, accordingly, in all definition; and all attempts to define it must move in a circle. (EW2: 8)

Dewey states the three peculiar characteristics of self: being conscious, existing for itself, individual. (EW1: 8). Thus a psychological experience is private; Dewey calls it “a fact of psychology”: a fact of psychology does not thus lie open to the observation of all. It is directly and immediately known only to the self which experiences it. It is a fact of my or your consciousness, and only of mine or yours. (EW2: 8)

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Dewey argues that the knower is individual and the known (knowledge) is universal. It is only through the individual (knower) that universal knowledge can be known. Consequently Dewey defines knowledge as universal elements being given an individual form of existence in consciousness (EW2: 10). A fact of physics, or of chemistry, for the very reason that it does not exist for itself, exists for anybody or everybody who wishes to observe it. It is a fact which can be known as directly and immediately by one as by another. It is universal, in short. (EW2: 8)

Interesting enough, Dewey avoids the term “universal consciousness” here but proposes the notion of “universal factor in psychology” (EW2: 10). Whether “universal factor” or “universal element,” it no more implies the existence of a “universal consciousness” which he postulated in Psychology as Philosophic Method (1886) and which was challenged by Hodgson a year ago (See Chapter 5). Thus the starting point of Dewey’s psychology is Kantian: knowledge has to be understood and interpreted through the human mind and psychology is to discover these laws: knowledge implies reference to the self or mind. Knowing is an intellectual process, involving psychical laws. It is an activity which the self experiences. A certain individual activity has been accordingly presupposed in all the universal facts of physical science. These facts are all facts known by some mind, and hence fall, in some way, within the sphere of psychology. (EW2: 9)

Main Themes in Psychology Dewey’s Three Aspects of Consciousness To start with, Dewey points out that the science of self is the subject matter of psychology (EW2: 7). He then uses “mind” to represent the “intelligent self” with consciousness. There are three aspects of consciousness: cognitive—knowledge, information, understanding; emotional— feeling, subjective state of affection, pleasure-pain; volition—will, purpose to attain an end (EW2: 18–20). Readers may be interested to note that human psychology today keeps this classification, more or less. In child psychology, we study and classify it in cognitive, emotional/affective, social and physical development. In adult psychology, we study motivation

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(will), unconsciousness (feeling), emotion, personality formation, and of course, cognition. Note also the fad of EQ (emotional quotient) of the 1990s.2 Over the past 140 years, psychology has undergone paradigmatic shift with changes in ideas, terms and vocabulary. Today’s readers will find it hard to understand what Dewey meant then, notably the term “volition” and “emotion.” Historically, volition was used by British psychologists to denote the process of a person making up his mind, like what we call decision-making today. Emotion, affection or feelings were used in a much more general sense of the organism being affected, including but not necessarily involving deep emotion such as anger, grief and fear. Dewey generally follows this British usage within the biological stimulusresponse framework. His conception runs as follows: the self is affected by external stimulus and is interested in it. This is called affection/feeling. It directs the mind to attend to the external stimulus. This is called will. The external stimulus is interpreted as something; this is called information or knowledge to be understood. Note that will has two levels: selecting and attending is at surface level and realizing an end, executing it by means of knowledge is at deep level. Feelings have two levels as well: to show interest and to note is the surface level and a vague desire to attend to it and attain something is the deep level. You will find more elaboration in the Table 6.2 of taxonomy. Here Dewey reverts his definition of psychology to include universal content and individual consciousness. It has three aspects, not three kinds nor parts (Fig. 6.1). ……psychology is the science of the reproduction of some universal content in the form of individual consciousness. Every consciousness, in other words, is the relation of a universal and an individual element, and cannot be understood without either. It will now be evident that the universal element is knowledge, the individual is feeling, while the relation which connects them into one concrete content is will. It will also be seen that knowledge and feeling are partial aspects of the self, and hence more or less abstract, while will is complete, comprehending both aspects. (EW2: 22–23)

2 Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence (1995) was a best seller.

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Table 6.2 Dewey’s taxonomy of psychology Cognition

Emotion

Volition

Domain

Knowledge • Awareness • Information and understanding

Will • Activity • Based on importance

Nature

Objective

Feeling/Affection • Personal reference • Interest • Attention of the mind • Pleasant/unpleasant feeling Subjective

Examples

Knowledge is a universal element (EW2: 22) Universal content: Representation of universe and reality Sensation of hunger Sensation of pain

Classification

• • • • • • • • • •

Sensation Perception Apperception Association Attention Retention Memory Imagination Thinking Intuition

Feeling is an individual element Development of self

Pleasure of eating (emotional consciousness) Cut the finger (EW2: 21–22) (feeling) • Sensual feeling -Intensity -Quality • Formal feeling -Present adjustment -Past experiences -Future adjustment • Qualitative feeling -Aesthetic Intellectual Personal Moral

Subjective–objective integration Will is to connect the two elements Activity (universal element gets into individual consciousness) Concrete consciousness to search for food Subjective–objective integration • Sensual Impulses: -General sense impulse -Special sense impulse -Impulse of perception -Impulse to imitation -Identical impulse -Instinctive impulse • Volition -Physical -Prudential -Moral • Desire • Motive

Dewey’s Notion of Impulses Dewey’s notion of impulses is much more sophisticated than how we use the term today. Now we employ the term to denote a person with quick temper, acting without much thought, or acting according to some “internal drive.” The extreme case of “compulsive behavior” is an unrestrained, repetitive behavior to be treated as a mental disorder. In

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knowledge

Fig. 6.1 Dewey’s three aspects of consciousness

will feeling

other words, impulses nowadays are defined in terms of behavior without restraint and thinking. A hundred years ago, Dewey defined impulses in terms of an internal psychological state. It has its physiological side and Dewey called in “sensuous impulse”: Sensuous impulse may be defined as the felt pressure of a state of consciousness arising from some bodily condition to express itself in producing some physical change……For example, the nervous mechanism of the eye is affected by ætheric vibration; the molecular motion conducted to the brain results there in the state of consciousness which we call the sensation of light. But there is also an affection of the self; there is a tendency either to direct the eye towards the light or away from it. (EW2: 300)

To explain impulses, Dewey uses the following physiological terms: nervous mechanism, molecular motion of the brain, sensation of light, energy, pressure, physical stimulus. He is not so much interested in how the brain works (neurology/physiology) as to how the organism and man works (impulse, stimulus). Recall that Dewey’s human consciousness has three aspects: knowledge, feeling, will (impulse). He illustrates how it works with the union of the three aspects in the psychological state of hunger: The sensation of hunger, so far as it gives us information of the state of our body, is the basis of knowledge; so far as it is a pleasurable or painful affection of self, it is feeling; so far as it is the tendency to react upon this feeling, and satisfy it, by bringing about some objective change, it is impulse. (EW2: 300)

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Special Sensuous Impulses, Bodily Autonomous Reaction and Reflex Action Sensuous impulses are tendency to react or act. When there is sound behind a child, he tends to turn his head to hear it. When there is an object reflected by light into the child’s retina, he tends to fix his eyes on it and to explore it. When there is an object out there, a child will try to explore it and touch it with his hands, to “feel” it. “If it is particularly pleasant, the mind acts by an impulse to continue; if disagreeable, ……to take the body out……”(EW2: 302). So sensations are no “mere sensations” but “impulses to action.” By criticizing the traditional British view of pure sensation, Dewey enriches it with the concept of impulses. In his words, If it is particularly pleasant, the mind acts by an impulse to continue it; if disagreeable, to destroy its cause, or to take the body out of its hearing. Were not sensations something more than mere sensations, were they not impulses to action, knowledge would not originate; for there would be nothing to induce the mind to dwell upon the sensation with the accentuating action of attention; nothing to direct the mind to its qualities and relations. (EW2: 302)

By today’s terminology, Dewey’s special sense impulses are bodily autonomous reaction: a stimulus will elicit autonomous reaction from the body. Simple as that. While the above looks like common sense to child psychologists today, they are subtle processes being observed repeatedly and experimentally in the first half of twentieth century. Before that, in late nineteenth century, Dewey tried to clarify these conceptions by proposing the idea of sensuous impulse (autonomous reaction) which is a mediating process between stimulus and response. A stimulus will solicit an autonomous reaction from the body. Dewey called it special sense impulse: the body will interpret it and lead to action of further exploration or withdrawal, depending on the pleasant-pain principle. Dewey is careful here to distinguish reflex action from “sensuous impulse.” The former is unconscious while the latter is conscious with feeling and discharge to relieve pressure. “That is to say, reflex action is the direct and immediate deflection of a stimulus having a sense origin into a motor channel…… Coughing, chewing, swallowing, etc., are other examples of reflex acts. Reflex actions, as such, is a physiological process…… in itself, involves no consciousness

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while the sensuous impulse does…… any feeling may discharge itself in producing physical change, and thus relieve the pressure.” (EW2: 301)

Here is the germinating idea of the famous child-candle problem (see below), challenging the mechanistic stimulus-response framework and leading to the beginning of American functionalism. Will Involves Attention, Planning and Coordination “Will” denotes something much more sophisticated than “willpower” in Dewey’s usage. First, “action arising from an idea and ending in making this idea real… will always unites me with some reality” (EW2: 299). Then Dewey distinguishes content of knowledge and universal content with form of feeling and will as connecting the two through an individual. In this sense, Dewey is giving a scientific account where will equals attention; feeling equals activity. No more elusive ideas untamed by science. Psychological concepts (will, feeling) are now amiable to scientific treatment: It thus connects the content of knowledge with the form of feeling. Or, again, there is no knowledge without attention; but attention is simply the activity of will as it connects a universal content with an individual subject. There is also no feeling except as an accompaniment of some activity. Both knowledge and feeling, therefore, find their basis in will. (EW2: 299)

Dewey gives an example of movement, i.e., our will to stand up and walk to a place. Will is the coordination and mutual regulation of sensuous impulses: so will gets its existence in the co-ordination and mutual regulation of the sensuous impulses; in bringing them into harmonious relations with each other through their subordination to a common end…… The sensuous impulses, in other words, constitute the raw material, the basis of will; they must be elaborated into the actual forms of volition through a process. (EW2: 299–300)

Volition and Desire When will is to denote a whole aspect of human consciousness through attention, intention and action to realize impulses and relieve pressure, volition is to denote the higher-order process of “act of will” with interest,

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desire, motive, plan and action. It is impulse consciously directed to an end, integrating knowledge, feeling and impulse. Volition is impulse consciously directed towards the attainment of a recognized end which is felt as desirable…… A volition or act of will involves, therefore, over and above the impulse, knowledge and feeling. There must be knowledge of the end of action; there must be knowledge of the relations of this end to the means by which it is to be attained; and this end must awaken a pleasurable or painful feeling in the mind; it must possess an interesting quality, or be felt to be in immediate subjective relation to the self…… (EW2: 309)

Note that the process follows a sequence: External stimulus → Impulse (autonomous reaction) → Interest → Desire → Motive → Plan → Action In this process, the impulse (autonomous reaction) to reach out for an object (perception and grasp) may lead to the experience of pleasure or pain. The object now has a positive interest or negative interest for the child. It has meaning and it constitutes desire. Dewey’s subtle view of “perhaps it burns” originates here. It is a subtle analysis of the dynamic change taking place in a child through experience: The child, for example, impelled by a perceptive impulse, grasps for an object. He reaches it, we will say, and it proves soft and pleasure-giving to touch and possibly to the palate. Now, by the laws of apperception, this pleasure and this object are associated together as parts of one experience. Or, it is felt as rough; perhaps it burns; at all events, it occasions pain. This pain and its object are associated. Now this object stands in a certain definite relation to experience, and a relation which is brought, according to the theory of pleasure previously explained (page 248), into intimate and personal connection with the self. The object now has an interest, and becomes a spring to action. This objective interest constitutes desire. (EW2: 310)

Desire is one being conscious of a future state. Apparently Dewey is using the word “desire” to mean more than a conscious or unconscious wish but a clear conscious state of attaining an end, basically for pleasure and satisfying self.

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Pleasure, as we have so often seen, is the accompaniment of the activity, or development of the self,…… a certain activity or realization of self, which is anticipated as pleasurable, since it is a realization…… Desire implies a consciousness which can distinguish between its actual state and a possible future state, and is aware of the means by which this future state can be brought into existence…… it sets before itself the satisfaction of impulse as the form which action may take…… The impulse for food develops into the desire for it. (EW2: 312)

Selfhood and Its Realization Self and selfhood is hard to pin down. It is the human totality. When psychology is to study the consciousness of intelligent self, selfhood is the integration of the three aspects of consciousness: knowledge, feeling and will. Feeling is unique and unsharable (EW2: 215). It cannot be defined but can be felt (EW2: 216). It is “the interesting side of all consciousness” (EW2: 216). Will is the process of attention (attending to interest), intention and action: Feeling, or the fact of interest, is therefore as wide as the whole realm of self, and self is as wide as the whole realm of experience. To determine the forms and conditions of feeling we must know something about self. Self is, as we have so often seen, activity. It is not something which acts; it is activity. All feeling must be an accompaniment, therefore, of activity…… The soul exists for itself; it takes an interest in itself, and itself is constituted by activities…… We have seen before that self is not a mere formal existence,…… but it is a real activity…… The various spheres of experience are only so many differentiations or developments of the real nature of the self. The self, through its retentive activity, is constantly organizing itself in certain definite, explicit forms, and only as it does thus organize itself is it anything more than mere capacity. (EW2: 216)

To start with, the selfhood of a child is empty, but it seeks to fill in content through interaction with environment, a process of action incorporating objects of the external world. In the process, the true self is developing and growing. The self is an end in itself, other objects are means. In Dewey’s words, This real self, which the will by its very nature, as self-objectifying, holds before itself, is originally a bare form, an empty ideal without content. We only know that it is, and that it is the real. What it is, what are the various forms which reality assumes, this we do not know. But this empty form is

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constantly assuming to itself a filling; as realized it gets a content. Through this content we know what the true self is, as well as that it is. It is so in knowledge; it is so in artistic production; it is so in practical action. A man feels there is truth and the feeling impels him to its discovery. (EW2: 319)

Ultimately, there is but one end, the self; all other ends are means…… We begin, then, with physical volition, control of the body; go on to prudential volition, control of purposes for an end recognized to be advantageous; and finally treat moral volition, or the control of the will for itself as the absolutely obligatory end. It alone is absolute end. Every other group is also means. (EW2: 320)

Dewey’s Germinating Ideas in Psychology It is no exaggeration to say that all Dewey’s ideas in psychology can be traced back to this germinating ground in Psychology; important ideas abound that blossom in his later writings in pragmatism and functionalism, in areas of child and social psychology. • Sense organs in active lookout for sensation (EW2: 47); • Mind as selecting significance for attention—apperception (EW2: 78); • Psychic life has meaning, is continuous and integrative (EW2: 79); • Habit as automatic mechanism of the mind (EW2: 101); • Self is constantly organizing itself (EW2: 211); • Self is activity, acts and feeling (EW2: 211); • Sensation comes before knowledge; sensation of physical body affects mind intrinsically (EW2: 218); • Will as co-ordinating and regulating impulse (EW2: 299); • Volition as integrating knowledge, feeling and impulse (EW2: 309); • Volition as impulse consciously directing to an end (EW2: 309); • Desire as realization of self (EW2: 313); • Will is the body, the concrete unity of feeling and intellect (EW2: 328–329).

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Dewey’s Personal Triumph Psychology was not only well-received by Dewey’s own students but was quickly adopted by many American colleges. The second and third editions were released in 1889 and 1891, respectively, and it served as a standard textbook through the turn of the century (Martin 2002: 105). Psychology is a personal triumph of Dewey: he was able to substantiate his philosophic thinking, based on Kant and Hegel, with ideas of modern psychology and experimentation. While Psychology did mention the subjective mind (idealism) and objective existence (metaphysics), its focus was on psychology and scientific experimentation. When Psychology mentioned “soul” here and there, it merely meant “mind” (EW2: 7). It seldom mentioned “God.” When it did, it was a discussion of religious feeling (EW2: 290) and interaction of nature, self and god (EW2: 207– 211). That Psychology is a scientific treatise of human consciousness is without doubt. Thus it surprises me when Steven Fesmire, a Deweyan scholar, recently commented on Dewey’s Psychology. Fesmire explicitly quoted Hall and James’ criticism,3 which accused Dewey of putting psychology as a religious bible to reveal how god created men to glorify God (Fesmire 2015: 16–17). Regrettably that is an uninformed criticism. A thorough reading of Psychology reveals that there is no religious glorification: it is all filled with the latest scientific research in psychology! Apparently, Fesmire misses Dewey’s shining insight and originality on the discipline, plus his effort to integrate psychology with philosophy.

The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology A Founding Father in Parody History is full of ironies and parodies; intellectual history is no exception. In Chapter 5, I describe Dewey’s The New Psychology (1884) as an ambitious psychological manifesto. That Dewey produced this work was more a matter of dedicated effort and deep understanding of the discipline than the sheer luck of the right person at the right time. Nonetheless, the contribution of this manifesto was never recognized, then and now. Next, Dewey expanded his views into a textbook, Psychology, which brought 3 Hall was Dewey’s teacher in Johns Hopkins and the two had never been in good terms. James, who was at that time laboring on his masterful The Principles of Psychology, did not recognize Dewey’s insights until a decade later. See Chapter 7 for details.

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him fame. But he was only one of the many forerunners in American psychology. His psychology teacher, J. Stanley Hall, did not have very high regard of his work. His classmate, James McKeen Cattell (1860– 1944) was moving ahead by measuring reaction time, studying individual differences and constructing mental tests (1890). A more senior William James (1842–1910) was in Harvard publishing his The Principles of Psychology (1890), another well-acclaimed psychology textbook. A lot of exciting innovations and progress were going on in Germany. So it did come as a surprise that twelve years later, in 1896, when Dewey published The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology, he was soon, ironically, hailed as the founding father of functionalism in American psychology! A historian in psychology even called it the “Declaration of Independence for American Functional Psychology”!4 This time it was exactly the right person at the right time in the right place. The episode began in 1894. By then, Dewey had already published three books and numerous papers and was seen as a rising star. He was headhunted to become head of the Department of Philosophy, Psychology and Education in the newly established University of Chicago. There he stayed for ten years with a group of aspiring young minds and philosophers, many of whom were his former colleagues or students at Michigan. They constituted what was later called the “Chicago School of Pragmatism.” In education, Dewey established the “laboratory school,” soon known as the “Dewey School.” In psychology, he established a laboratory and published many papers, the most renowned being The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology (1896). Main Ideas of The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology Psychical Unity vs. Mechanical Conjunction In The Reflex Arc Concept , Dewey kept his Hegelian dialectic and unintelligible style. He reshuffled and repeated his ideas of evolution, organic unity, adaptation, action and function. Like before, he criticized the old mechanistic view of psychology, this time in the form of a stimulus-response framework. Dewey identified the reflex arc concept (sensori-motor apparatus/stimulus-response framework) as a “unifying

4 Boring, E. G. (1953). John Dewey: 1859–1952. American Journal of Psychology, 66, 145–147.

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principle” in psychology, the ideas of which started from Locke in philosophy, growing into physiology and then psychology. He cautions that the stimulus/response (S-R) distinction is misleading, and that S-R are one in action and coordination. “The sensation or conscious stimulus is not a thing or existence by itself; it is that phase of a co-ordination requiring attention……” (EW5: 106–107). In line with the philosophical underpinning of Hegelian unity, Dewey championed for “psychical unity” instead of “mechanical conjunction”: The sensory stimulus is one thing, the central activity, standing for the idea, is another thing, and the motor discharge, standing for the act proper, is a third. As a result, the reflex arc is not a comprehensive, or organic unity, but a patchwork of disjointed parts, a mechanical conjunction of unallied processes. What is needed is that the principle underlying the idea of the reflex arc as the fundamental psychical unity shall react into and determine the values of its constitutive factors. More specifically, what is wanted is that sensory stimulus, central connections and motor responses shall be viewed, not as separate and complete entities in themselves, but as divisions of labor, functioning factors, within the single concrete whole, now designated the reflex arc. (EW5: 97)

The Child-Candle Problem What is illuminating, as well as easy to understand, is that he quotes the example from William James’ textbook, The Principles of Psychology (Vol. 1, p. 25): a child sees a candle (light), reaches out to grasp it, gets burnt and never does it again. Let’s call it the child-candle problem (Fig. 6.2). While James makes use of this example to show “the education of the hemispheres” with four processes and laws of association at work, Dewey reformulates it to challenge the stimulus-response orthodoxy. The standard interpretation is that “the sensation of light is a stimulus to the grasping as a response, the burn resulting is a stimulus to withdrawing the hand as response and so on” (EW5: 97) But Dewey challenges this mechanistic interpretation. Simply put, the same stimulus (light) may not produce the same response again. The initial response is reaching out and grasping. The later response is avoiding, no more grasping. This is a very serious challenge to stimulus-response theorists looking for regularity and certainty of the same stimulus! Of course, every observer understands why the responses are different: the child learns to avoid getting burnt. This puts learning from experience in the forefront. According to Dewey, there is a bigger co-ordination with “seeing-for-reaching purposes” and

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Fig. 6.2 The child-candle problem (Source James [1890, vol. 1, p. 25])

“heat-pain quale” so that “acts fall within a larger co-ordination,” such as co-ordination in “seeing and grasping,” “eye-arm-hand co-ordination.” As a result, “the child learns from the experience and gets the ability to avoid the experience in the future” (EW5: 98). Dewey gave another example of a same stimulus eliciting different responses: If one is reading a book, if one is hunting, if one is watching in a dark place on a lonely night, if one is performing a chemical experiment, in each case, the noise has a very different psychical value; it is a different experience. In any case, what precedes the “stimulus” is a whole act, a sensori-motor co-ordination. What is more to the point, the “stimulus” emerges out of this co-ordination; (EW5: 100)

Dewey tries to explain it by “sensation continuation theory” and argues that “to the biological side,…… the ear activity has been evolved on account of the advantage gained by the whole organism,…… connection with the eye, or hand, or leg,……” (EW5: 101). Here, Dewey shows that he is well-versed with psychological theories of his time, influenced by the Darwinian conception of evolution, and was aware of Wundt’s research paradigm of the “apperceptionist” and structuralism (EW5: 100).

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The Uncertainty of Stimulus-Response with Attention and Anticipation Seeing the child-candle problem in light of a broad framework of coordination, Dewey noted that both stimulus and response are uncertain. It requires attention and anticipation, which transforms an objective stimulus into a subjective sensation. ……But now take a child who, upon reaching for bright light (that is, exercising the seeing-reaching co-ordination) has sometimes had a delightful exercise, sometimes found something good to eat and sometimes burned himself. Now the response is not only uncertain, but the stimulus is equally uncertain; one is uncertain only in so far as the other is…… The sensation or conscious stimulus is not a thing or existence by itself; it is that phase of a co-ordination requiring attention because, by reason of the conflict within the co-ordination…… We must have an anticipatory sensation, an image, of the movements that may occur, together with their respective values, before attention will go to the seeing to break it up as a sensation of light, and of light of this particular kind…… Just here the act as objective stimulus becomes transformed into sensation as possible, as conscious, stimulus. Just here also, motion as conscious response emerges. (EW5: 106–107)

Functionalism as Functional Division of Labor Dewey starts the paper by proposing the idea of functional division of labor in psychology and challenges the reflex arc concept of stimulus and response (EW5: 97). The human experience has created a circuit, not an arc or broken circle: It is that experience mediated. What we have is a circuit, not an arc or broken segment of a circle. This circuit is more truly termed organic than reflex, because the motor response determines the stimulus, just as truly as sensory stimulus determines movement. (EW5: 102)

Dewey interprets stimulus in functional terms. “……sensation as stimulus does not mean any particular psychical existence. It means simply a function……” (EW5: 107). By bringing in human motivation, and a special end or function, Dewey proposes a functional circle:

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To sum up: the distinction of sensation and movement as stimulus and response respectively is not a distinction which can be regarded as descriptive of anything which holds of psychical events or existences as such. The only events to which the terms stimulus and response can be descriptively applied are minor acts serving by their respective positions to the maintenance of some organized co-ordination. The conscious stimulus or sensation, and the conscious response or motion, have a special genesis or motivation, and a special end or function. The reflex arc theory, by neglecting, by abstracting from, this genesis and this function gives us one disjointed part of a process as if it were the whole. It gives us literally an arc, instead of the circuit; and not giving us the circuit of which it is an arc, does not enable us to place, to centre, the arc. This arc, again, falls apart into two separate existences having to be either mechanically or externally adjusted to each other. (EW5: 108–109)

Review and Evaluation A Chronology of Reflex Researches In order to review this century-old reflex arc issue, I have to start by taking readers back to high school biology class of the twenty-first century. Today the reflex arc is seen as a process of involuntary action. It involves a sequence with a number of entities: Stimulus → Receptor → Sensory neuron → Synapses → Spinal cord → Motor neuron → Response The process is fast, without thinking nor consciousness because it bypasses the brain, though the brain will also receive information; speed: 1/30 sec. It explains knee-jerk, burning pain, eye blink, etc. We gained today’s received wisdom through several hundred years of research. It started in the mid-seventeenth century from Rene Descartes who described eye blink as “against our will.” Then Robert Whytt (1714– 1766) showed that a decapitated frog can still produce reflex muscle movements in its leg. By 1833, Marshall Hall decapitated a turtle and proved that “the presence of the medulla oblongata and spinalis is necessary to the contractile function of the eyelids, the sub-maxillary textures, the larynx, the sphincters, the limbs, the tail, on the application of stimuli to the cutaneous surfaces or mucous membranes. It proves the reflex character of this property” (Hall 1833: 645). In other words, Hall proved that reflex action such as eye blink or knee-jerk involves the spinal cord but not the brain (cerebral hemispheres). When the nerve impulse was found to be electrical by nature, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) measured

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it in 1849 and estimated the speed in the range of 25–38 meters per second. In the second half of nineteenth century, Camillo Golgi had a breakthrough in staining technique (1873), leading to Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s discovery of independent neural cells (1889). Conceptions such as dendrites and axons were formed, together with Charles Sherrington’s theory of synapses (1897). See below for a chronology of reflex researches (1600–1900) (Table 6.3): Dewey’s Ideas in Intellectual Context It would be helpful to review Dewey’s Reflex Arc Concept paper in the above intellectual context of scientific discovery. As early as 1833 and 1850, Marshall Hall performed an experiment on decapitated turtle and frog, respectively, to demonstrate the pathway of the reflex arc. Then Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger proposed the four laws of reflex action and coined the words “sensory nerves” and “motor nerves.” Thus the explanation of reflex action which bypasses the brain is already in place long before Dewey brought up the child-candle problem in 1896. In other words, when the child withdraws his hand from the candle flame, it does not involve the brain, consciousness or thinking. Regrettably reflex arc is exactly the opposite of what Dewey would expect. Reflex arc is an arc, as witnessed in knee jerking, eye blinking, heat evading and so on, where stimulus (sensory neurons) and responses (motor neurons) do not pass through the human brain. These are elementary or basic muscle and motor movements unrelated to the mediation of thinking or experience. On the other hand, I would say that Dewey is half correct with the reflex arc in the child-candle problem. He argued that “The motion is not a certain kind of existence; it is a sort of sensory experience interpreted” (EW5: 103). For the lower-order reflex response to heat, it is autonomic and there is not sensory experience interpreted. For the higher-order action of withdrawing the whole finger and hand, looking, examining and crying, it is sensory experience examined interpreted. When Dewey tries to replace the reflex arc with the reflex circuit/circle, his object of analysis is higher-order sensation. His insistence on the mediation of experience is only half correct. As seen from Dewey’s analysis, even the child-candle instance is too complex and may involve at least four gross tasks, each involving different parts of neural organs and the body. I am sure today’s researchers can break each down into more sophisticated sub-tasks (Table 6.4):

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Table 6.3

A Chronology of reflex researches (1600–1900)a

Year of discovery/publication

Researchers

Important discoveries

1649

Rene Descartes (1594–1660)

1664

Thomas Willis (1628–1678)

1751

Robert Whytt (1714–1766)

1786

Luigi Galvani (1737–1798)

1811

Charles Bell (1774–1842)

In Passion of the Soul, Descartes described the eyelid reflex, which “is against our will.” In De Homine, he showed the heat-withdrawal reflex by the drawing of a child moving his left foot from fire. Descartes proposed the idea of “animal spirit,” today termed “nerve impulse” Willis described various parts of the brain and used the term “reflex” to denote involuntary movements Whytt showed in his paper, On the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals, that: (i) the spinal cord is the centre integrating sensory information and triggering motion; (ii) a decapitated frog can still produce reflex muscle movements with its leg. Galvani showed that nerve impulse is electrical by nature: an electric current can produce muscle contraction of a frog Bell found that sensory nerves and motor nerves are distinct: the former enters the posterior (dorsal) of the spinal cord while the latter emerges from the anterior (ventral)

(continued)

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Table 6.3

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(continued)

Year of discovery/publication

Researchers

Important discoveries

1833

Marshall Hall (1790–1857)

1849

Hermann. von Helmholtz (1821–1894)

1853

Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger (1829–1910)

1855

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)

1863

Ivan Sechenov (1829–1905)

1873

Camillo Golgi (1844–1926)

1889

Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934)

In Reflex Function of the Medulla Oblongata and Medulla Spinalis, Hall discovered that the motor system of nerves is independent of sensation and volition. He proposed the notion of reflex arc with two types of nerves: the afferent (sensory) and the efferent (motor) nerves Nerve conduction speed was measured in the range of 25–38 meters/sec Pflüger proposed four laws of reflex action to explain the locus of stimulus of the sensory nerve and the related position of muscle contraction segments In The Principles of Psychology, Spencer theorized the evolution of consciousness from simple to complex, where “reflex action (is) the lowest form of psychical life” and higher complex actions “are governed by simple reflex laws” In Reflexes of the Brain, Sechenov argued that higher mental functions are basically reflexes Golgi invented silver-chromate technique to stain and identify neural cells (Nobel Prize 1906) Cajal proposed the neuron theory that the nervous system is made up of independent neural cells (Nobel Prize 1906)

(continued)

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Table 6.3

(continued)

Year of discovery/publication

Researchers

Important discoveries

1897

Charles Sherrington (1857–1952)

1903

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849–1936)

Sherrington proposed the concept of synapse. He later invented nerve degeneration technique and studied knee-jerk reflex in cats (Nobel Prize 1921) Pavlov worked on conditioned reflexes, the famed bell-food salivation experiment (Nobel Prize 1904)

a This chronology is based on the information gathered from a variety of sources. Please refer to

further readings

Table 6.4 Psychological tasks in the child-candle problem Psychological Tasks

Nature of Responses (neural organs)

Body Organs Involved

Reflex (spinal cord)

Brain Function (cerebral hemisphere)

Seeing-attending-focusing





eye

Perceptual information analysis-attracted-decision-psychomotor movement Autonomic movement of withdrawal





eye, arm, hand, finger





finger

Reinterpreting, changing attitude and experience





brain

From today’s vintage, motor movements are delineated in two categories with different mechanisms: involuntary reflex action involving the spinal cord and voluntary action involving the thinking brain (cerebral hemisphere). This delineation is not so clear in Dewey’s times. Take the position of Herbert Spencer. His evolutionary principles postulate that the complex evolves out of the simple, and higher-order functions evolve

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out of the lower-order ones. Reflex is seen as “the lowest form of psychical life,” which will give rise to higher forms, such as emotion, will and volition. Following this paradigm, Ivan Sechenov believed that “higher order brain functions are basically reflexes.” In retrospect, we can say that reflex arc had served as a model of brain functioning in the second half of nineteenth century for the bulk of researchers (Brysbert and Rustle 2009: 170). Thus it comes as no surprise that Dewey took reflex arc and stimulus-response as a unifying principle and tried to modify it with experience. Dewey’s Impulse-Action Circuit Dewey has always been eager to offer unity in theory and explanation. Consequently it is natural that he criticizes the reflex arc concept and tries to replace it with a circuit. But this is invalid because the reflex action, according to physiology, does not involve the brain. Reflex is the study of how a stimulus elicits response of simple involuntary action. It is really an arc, not a circuit. When Dewey proposes a circuit, it is not a reflex any more. It involves the brain for voluntary action. So instead of calling it reflex circuit, which sounds contradictory, I will call it an impulse-action circuit. Recall in Dewey’s Psychology, he uses the terms will, volition and desire. Will is the coordination and mutual regulation of sensuous impulses. In this child-candle problem, the seeing is the sensuous impulse leading to action, then getting burned and changing the child’s conception to a light candle. To follow Dewey’s line of thought in Psychology, the whole process would be better termed “Impulse-action circuit”: there is a crucial start from the impulse which leads to a chain of actions as outlined in the above psychological stages, which finally leads to the subsequent reinterpretation of experience. It is a circuit. This circuit is a process which involves a feedback loop, a learning process and the reconstruction of experience. Dewey’s problem with psychology is that of the unit of study. At the heyday of psychology, researchers wanted to break things down into small manageable units for study and measurement, thus Wundtian structuralism and elements of consciousness. But Dewey is not satisfied with breaking things up; he and James aim at big things and a total picture, such as consciousness and learning. He insists on the holistic wholeness of man and experience. As such, Dewey had to quit micro-psychology and turn to education, where the unit of analysis is a whole person and a whole society.

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A hundred years have passed, sensation is easier to manage now, but consciousness still remains too complex to study though we have made groundbreaking progress in conception and method.5

Founding Functionalism in America The Right Time and the Right Place The time is 1890s and the place is America. Psychology had grown considerably in England since Bain and in Germany since Wundt. Hundreds of young Americans flocked to Europe to learn the trade and returned to start theirs. They occupied major positions in major universities. For example, Dewey’s contemporary and senior, William James studied in Europe in 1867 with Helmholtz and returned to teach physiology in Harvard in 1874. Dewey’s teacher, G. S. Hall studied under Wundt in 1879 and returned to teach Dewey in 1883. Moreover, a few top universities rivaled among themselves and they all wanted to push the discipline forward: William James and Hugo Munsterberg in Harvard; G. S. Hall in Johns Hopkins, later moved to Clark to become University president; Dewey and his student James Rowland Angell in Chicago; James Cattell and Edward Thorndike in Columbia; finally Edward Titchener in Cornell. The time is ripe for these top scholars to have a stake and a say in the discipline. After importing European psychology for a generation, they wanted an American version. Readers may note that America in the late nineteenth century, then called the new world, was open and receptive to new ideas. The ethos favored evolutionary principles, social Darwinism, free enterprises and liberty. Things and ideas were looked upon for how they worked (function) and what their uses were. Numerous new inventions and patents developed that might have new functions to benefit the living of the people. Functionalism in psychology was soon seen as a new vision in rivalry with Wundt’s experimental psychology, which focused on the elements of consciousness, termed structuralism. For the first time, Americans had its own indigenous psychology! With James in Harvard and Dewey in Chicago, functionalism proliferated for a few decades, and Dewey was 5 Readers interested in the study of consciousness in the twentieth century may refer to the list of further readings of Chapter 7.

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credited for giving birth to functionalism because of his Reflex Arc Concept article. He was the right person at the right time in the right place. The parody goes on as functionalism was later replaced by behaviorism, whose founding father, John B. Watson (1878–1958), was again ironically Dewey’s student in Chicago.6

Further Readings In this chapter, we reviewed Dewey’s textbook on psychology (1887) and his paper on reflex arc (1896). Readers can get a deeper understanding from the following: A. Reflex Researches A lot have been done on reflex researches. You may get more details in: 1. Lopez-Munoz, F., Boya, J., & Alamo, C. (2006). Neuron Theory, the Cornerstone of Neuroscience, on the Centenary of the Nobel Prize Award to Santiago Ramon y Cajal. Brain Research Bulletin, 70, 391–405. 2. Clarac, F. (2005). The History of Reflexes Part 1: From Descartes to Pavlov. International Brain Research Organization History of Neuroscience. 3. Clarac, F. (2005). The History of Reflexes Part 2: From Sherrington to 2004. International Brain Research Organization History of Neuroscience. 4. Hall, M. (1833). On the Reflex Function of the Medulla Oblongata and Medulla Spinalis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 123, 635–665. 5. Bennett, M. R. (1999). The Early History of the Synapse: From Plato to Sherrington. Brain Research Bulletin, 50(2), 95–118.

6 When John B. Watson studied psychology in Chicago in 1900–1903, he attended Dewey’s lectures and found it incomprehensible. “I never knew what he was talking about then, and, unfortunately for me, I still don’t know,” Confessed Watson. Quoted from Schultz and Schultz 2008: 298. Apparently his ignorance of Deweyan functional psychology became his impetus for a new behaviorist psychology.

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6. De Carlos, J. A., & Borrell, J. (2007). A Historical Reflection of the Contributions of Cajal and Golgi to the Foundations of Neuroscience. Brain Research Reviews, 55, 8–16. 7. Castro F. D., Lopez-Mascaraque, L., & Carlos, J. A. (2007). Cajal: Lessons on Brain Development. Brain Research Reviews, 55, 481– 489. 8. Grant, G. (2007). How the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Was Shared Between Golgi and Cajal. Brain Research Reviews, 55, 409–498. B. Psychology Textbooks of the Late Nineteenth Century To put Dewey’s ideas and his textbook in perspective, serious readers can compare his writings with his predecessors and contemporaries. The renowned predecessors’ textbooks are: Spencer (1855), Bain (1855, 1859) and Wundt (1874). His contemporaries are: Lotze, R. H. (1886). Outlines of Psychology [1881]. Ladd, G. T. (1887). Elements of Physiological Psychology. James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. Titchener, E. B. (1896). An Outline of Psychology. They are all collected in Classics in Psychology, 1855–1914. A Collection of Key Works, edited by Robert H. Wozniak (1998). Bristol: Thoemmes Press and Tokyo: Maruzen Co. Ltd. C. The Chicago School of Functionalism from Dewey to Angell Most textbooks on the history of modern psychology will cover The Chicago School of functionalism that Dewey founded and Angell succeeded. The treatments are relatively short, but readers can find more about James Angell and his successor Harvey Carr in their autobiographies in the last item. 1. Boring, E. G. (1950). A History of Experimental Psychology. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc [See Chap. 22]. 2. Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2008). A History of Modern Psychology (9th Edition). Boston: Cengage Learning [See Chap. 7]. 3. Greenwood, J. D. (2009). A Conceptual History of Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education [See Chap. 10].

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4. Hergenhahn, B. R., & Henley, T. (2014). An Introduction to the History of Psychology (7th Edition). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning [See Chap. 11]. 5. Murchison, C. (Ed). (1936). A History of Psychology in Autobiography, Vol. III . New York: Russell & Russell.

References Boring, E. G. (1953). John Dewey: 1859−1952. American Journal of Psychology, 66, 145–147. Brysbaert, M., & Rastle, K. (2009). Historical and Conceptual Issues in Psychology. New York: Pearson. Fesmire, S. (2015). Dewey. London: Routledge. Hall, M. (1833). On the Reflex Function of the Medulla Oblongata and Medulla Spinalis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 123, 635– 665. James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (Reprinted 1983). Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press. Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2008). A History of Modern Psychology (9th ed.). Boston: Cengage Learning.

CHAPTER 7

Psychological Fallacy, How We Think, and Human Nature and Conduct

A Father Teasing His Offspring In the last chapter, I outline how John Dewey has become the founding father of functionalism in parody. In this chapter, I will continue to tell the story of how this unwilling father satirizes psychology as “psychological fallacy.” Then I will describe how he relentlessly thinks about thinking for the next three decades. In my last section, you will see how he comes back full circle to answering the ultimate question of psychology—human nature.

Psychological Fallacy Background and Storyline Just before he was elected president of American Psychological Association at the turn of the twentieth century, Dewey made a serious critique on the state of American psychology, calling it “psychological fallacy” (MW1: 118). To make his arguments easier to understand for present-day readers, I present them as a melodrama traversed with Dewey and other major players of psychology as protagonists. Hopefully this metaphorical presentation will help you understand the story better. Dewey’s Work in Psychology in 1899 Dewey was extremely busy and productive in psychology in 1899. First, he traveled to California in May and addressed the Philosophic Union © The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_7

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of The University of California with the title Psychology and Philosophic Method (MW1: 113-130). Six months later, in December, he was elected president of American Psychological Association of 1899–1900 and gave a presidential address in New Haven, the title being Psychology and Social Practice (MW1: 175–191). At about the same time, his paper on child development appeared in Transactions of the Illinois Society for Child Study (4), 1899, entitled Principles of Mental Development as Illustrated in Early Infancy (MW1: 175–191). It was followed by a sequel, Mental Development (MW1: 192–221), which covered childhood and adolescence, published in 1900 by The University of Chicago. All along Dewey busied himself with teaching, lectures and talks, in addition to the management of The University Elementary School and the administration at the Department of Philosophy, Psychology and Education with The University of Chicago. Revisiting Psychology and Philosophic Method after 14 Years 1899 is also the mid-point of Dewey’s academic career in psychology. Recall that Dewey started the debut of his psychology manifesto in 1884. Two years later, in 1886, he proposed, against the tide of psychology striving for independence from philosophy, that psychology should remain in philosophy and integrate with it, where psychology is philosophic method. His critic Shadworth Hodgson accused him of Illusory Psychology, for Dewey brought in the notion of universal consciousness. Dewey responded briefly by changing the term from universal consciousness to universality of consciousness (see Chapter 5 for details). How hard hit Dewey was by the criticism of Illusory Psychology we do not know, but it is clear Dewey continued to keep his view of psychology as method of philosophy. Based on this methodological position, Dewey wrote his textbook, Psychology, published in 1887. He constantly pondered over the individual and universal issues in psychology as well as the relations between the two disciplines. Fourteen years had passed. He wrote a textbook, taught many courses in psychology and wrote numerous articles, including the epoch-making Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology (1896). As his fame grew and his psychological thought came to mature, he revisited the relationship between psychology and philosophy again, interpreting the issue in light of the latest development of the two disciplines. By then, the new vocabulary and framework had become functionalism and pragmatism to supplement evolution.

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The Melodrama of Psychology The Psychological Fallacy Dewey’s criticism of psychology can be retold in the following drama. In the second half of nineteenth century, philosopher-psychologists worked hard to find out about consciousness. Notably Spencer offered evolutionary principles, Bain supplied pleasure-pain principles, associationists gave configuring principles and Wundt worked on elements of consciousness, focusing mainly on attention and awareness. The young generation of American psychologists took all the above and started their own business, branding it as functionalism. To this burgeoning enterprise, Dewey cautioned it with “misplaced fallacy” or “psychological fallacy” (MW1: 118): you psychologists create tools to measure what you can do on an individual, but miss the content of his experience or consciousness, which is dictated on the individual by different societies: “they procure for the individual… different sorts of experience… different impulses… different perceptions…” (MW1: 113). In other words, the psychologist is the creator of all the tools, measurements and data of psychology! More seriously and mistakenly, the psychologist did not work on with ready-made material. Rather, he created and amassed abundant material “developed by his investigation” (MW1: 118). But all these are not directly experienced by the subject. So here comes the “psychological fallacy” of the confusion of experience: “the confusion of experience as it is to the one experiencing with what the psychologist makes out of it with his reflective analysis” (MW1: 118). According to Dewey, psychological fallacy is the confusion between the subject’s concrete experience and the psychologist’s reflective analysis. The outcome is artificial: the subject experiences what the psychologist creates for the experiment, but not what his natural daily experience is. Readers should be aware that Dewey is not the first to coin the term “psychological fallacy.” William James, in his celebrated The Principles of Psychology, has suggested: “The Psychologist’s Fallacy”. The great snare of the psychologist is the confusion of his own standpoint with that of the mental fact about which he is making his report. (James 1890, vol. 1: 196)

Here, the objectivity of the psychologist is called into question for putting his words into the mouth of the subject, coming out as “mental fact.” The

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psychologist, “knowing the self-same object in his way, gets easily led to suppose that the thought, which is of it, knows it in the same way in which he knows it,” thus, “a counterfeit image of itself” (ibid.: 196–197). But Dewey went further; he even challenged the notion of consciousness, indicting the psychologist for creating it, then studying it but missing the method. This is the melodrama on the front stage, like a magician doing a performance in front of an audience without a wand. In Dewey’s words, I conceive that states of consciousness (and I hope you will take the phrase broadly enough to cover all the specific data of psychology) have no existence before the psychologist begins to work. He brings them into existence. What we are really after is the process of experience, the way in which it arises and behaves. We want to know its course, its history, its laws. We want to know its various typical forms; how each originates; how it is related to others; the part it plays in maintaining an inclusive, expanding, connected course of experience. Our problem as psychologists is to learn its modus operandi, its method. (MW1: 117)

Psychology Gets Its Revenge One glaring view of this address was that “…psychology gets its revenge,” as Dewey put it (MW1: 121). This emotive statement can be understood in the melodrama of the intellectual history at the backstage. In the early and middle nineteenth century, the consensus was that psychology was to study consciousness. This domain of psychology was firmly guarded as a legitimate branch of study, in England and Germany, though it was called “mental philosophy.” When Wundt enthusiastically promoted his version of experimental psychology, many philosopherpsychologists believed that psychology, having found its method and direction, had grown mature enough to become an independent, scientific discipline. Here is my metaphor: psychology the child had grown into a young adult and should leave the family, i.e., the house of philosophy. This view was shared among psychologists of the late nineteenth century.1 William James himself is an illustrative example here. He saw that psychology should focus on the scientific and physiological representation of the body and mind with consciousness while philosophy should

1 See Boring, E. G. (1950). A History of Experimental Psychology. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc.

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concern itself with metaphysics. After writing 1400 pages on psychology from the point of view of natural science, he did not summarize any breakthroughs or credulous findings of this new science in his Preface. Instead, he confessed three starting assumptions of psychology which cannot be resolved by itself. Psychology has to seek help from another province—metaphysics: Psychology, the science of finite individual minds, assumes as its data (1) thoughts and feelings, and (2) a physical world in time and space with which they coexist and which (3) they know. Of course these data themselves are discussable; but the discussion of them (as of other elements) is called metaphysics and falls outside the province of this book. This book, assuming that thoughts and feelings exist and are vehicles of knowledge, thereupon contends that psychology when she has ascertained the empirical correlation of the various sorts of thought or feeling with definite conditions of the brain, can go no farther - can go no farther, that is, as a natural science. If she goes farther she becomes metaphysical. All attempts to explain our phenomenally given thoughts as products of deeper-lying entities (whether the latter be named “Soul”, “Transcendental Ego”, “Ideas,” or “Elementary Units of Consciousness”) are metaphysical. (James 1890, vol. 1: vi)

This being his position, James is positivistic about psychology but believes that metaphysics can help to overhaul psychology to move on. A distinction and separation of psychology from philosophy, for James, is both necessary and productive. So here is supposed to be the division of labor: psychology should work on the state of consciousness (SOC) only and should not ask any philosophical question (validity, truth, beauty, good). But the consequence is devastating, according to Dewey. When the psychologist carries on its work, “experience has been reduced to SOC as independent existences” (MW1: 122). It focuses on experiment and the empirical facts of consciousness but loses sight of the whole picture of human life. It cannot move forward because it has no clear grasp of the philosophical meaning of “Course or Process of Experience” (MW1: 122). As for philosophy, it needs psychology to detail what state of consciousness (SOC) is, so that “the subject can… ‘transcend’ itself as to get valid assurance of the objective world” (MW1: 122). In fact, “state of consciousness can be the vehicle of a system of truth, of an objectively valid good, of beauty” (MW1: 122), the metaphysics of logic, ethics and aesthetics.

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Now, the entire fundamental problem of philosophy hinges on SOC, but SOC is hard to pin down, to locate, to describe, let alone to elaborate into truth, goodness and beauty. Consequently, self-transcendence becomes mission impossible, one of a Sisyphean nature (MW1: 122). The outcome of this revenge is that both sides lose. Observed Dewey: Such is the irony of the situation. The epistemologist’s problem is, indeed, usually put as the question of how the subject can so far “transcend” itself as to get valid assurance of the objective world. The very phraseology in which the problem is put reveals the thoroughness of the psychologist’s revenge. Just and only because experience has been reduced to “states of consciousness” as independent existences, does the question of selftranscendence have any meaning. The entire epistemological industry is one—shall I say it—of a Sisyphean nature. Mutatis mutandis, the same holds of the metaphysic of logic, ethic, and aesthetic. In each case, the basic problem has come to be how a mere state of consciousness can be the vehicle of a system of truth, of an objectively valid good, of beauty. (MW1: 122)

The outcome of this revenge appears to be that both sides fall into a trap and cannot get out. Psychology keeps amassing experimental data but fails its mission to understand human life; philosophy keeps searching for self-transcendence but cannot get hold of consciousness, the province of which belong to psychology. The Road Ahead for Psychology Functionalism and Act Psychology When Dewey’s Reflex Arc Concept (1896) was considered the first shot of American functionalism in psychology, Psychology and Philosophic Method gave a clearer outline of functionalism and how consciousness should be studied. According to Dewey, psychologists start with operations, acts and functions. Acts are concrete experiences and function is the point of departure, prescribing the problem and setting limits: The psychologist begins with certain operations, acts, functions as his data…… Acts such as perceiving, remembering, intending, loving give the points of departure; they alone are concrete experiences. To understand these experiences, under what conditions they arise and what effects they produce, analysis into states of consciousness occurs……it is the function

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that fixed the point of departure, that prescribed the problem and that set the limits, physical as well as intellectual, of subsequent investigation. Reference to function makes the details discovered other than a jumble of incoherent trivialities…… States of consciousness are the morphology of certain functions. What is true of analysis, of description, is true equally of classification. Knowing, willing, feeling, name states of consciousness not in terms of themselves, but in terms of acts, attitudes, found in experience. (MW1: 118–119)

For Dewey, SOC is an instrument of inquiring and a methodological appliance (MW1: 119, footnote 4). State of consciousness is not self-existent, it comes into existence because of research. Thus Dewey succinctly states: My contention is that the “state of consciousness” as such is always a methodological product, developed in the course and for the purposes of psychological analysis. (MW1: 120, footnote 6)

Students of psychology will immediately detect the similarities between Dewey’s functionalism and Franz Brentano’s (1838–1917) act psychology. Brentano was an eminent Italian philosopher-psychologist who studied Aristotle and medieval philosophy and put forth the notion of intentionality, to distinguish a mental act (such as thinking, memory, loving) from a mental content (thinking about a woman, remembering her face). His work, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte (Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint ) of 1874, rivaled with Wundt’s Physiologische Psychologie of 1873. Apparently Brentano and Dewey’s concern are different. When Brentano sees psychology as an empirical science for the study of mental or psychical phenomena with immanent objectivity (Boring 1950: 360), thus mental acts and mental content, Dewey takes mental acts as concrete experiences, analyzable and explicable by function. Brentano studied basic human cognitive abilities such as vision and optical illusions in the scientific experimental manner, while Dewey is more interested in the social and cultural content in which human cognition arises and functions. Evolution and Its Implication for Psychology To Dewey, evolution is not an additional law but a stepping stone to the knowledge of process:

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The conception of evolution is not so much an additional law as it is a face-about. The fixed structure, the separate form, the isolated element, is henceforth at best a mere stepping-stone to knowledge of process, and when not at its best, marks the end of comprehension, and betokens failure to grasp the problem. (MW1: 123)

Consequently, evolution is not the discovery of a general law but is the generalization of all scientific method. I tend to summarize Dewey’s conception of evolution in two premises: 1. Evolution is a dynamic process of change in form and content, function and structure. 2. Evolution is a dynamic process of action with adaptation to circumstances. The two premises, due to its abstract terminology, require philosophical explanation and exploration. For example, what is process and change? What is in the real world (noumenal world) for adaptation? What is reason or rationality for its paramount role in action? Psychology, in studying the elementary process of perception and attention, is far far away from answering these big ultimate questions. Even worse, when psychology divorces philosophy, she just loses sight of these issues to guide her to search for human nature, reality and truth. Thus Dewey’s position is that philosophy should help clarifying those terms so that psychology will never lose sight of it. Dewey’s Prescription In conclusion, Dewey offers his prescription for both philosophy and psychology. Philosophy must go to school: be humble to learn method or data from other sciences. Philosophy may not be sacrificed to the partial and superficial clamor of that which sometimes officiously and pretentiously exhibits itself as Science. But there is a sense in which philosophy must go to school to the sciences; must have no data save such as it receives at their hands; and be hospitable to no method of inquiry or reflection not akin to those in daily use among the sciences. (MW1: 129)

Psychology is a transition of science to philosophy:

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There is something in experience, something in things, which the physical and the biological sciences do not touch; something, moreover, which is not just more experiences or more existences; but without which their materials are inexperienced, unrealized. Such sciences deal only with what might be experienced; with the content of experience, provided and assumed there be experience. It is psychology which tells us how this possible experience loses its barely hypothetical character, and is stamped with categorical unquestioned experiencedness; how, in a word, it becomes here and now in some uniquely individualized life. Here is the necessary transition of science into philosophy. (MW1: 129)

How We Think---Thinking About Thinking for Three Decades Developmental Psychology and Thinking Research During his Chicago years, Dewey wrote much on developmental psychology, notably Principles of Mental Development as Illustrated in Early Infancy (1899) and Mental Development (1900). The two papers should be read together, which is the cognitive development from infancy to early adulthood. Here Dewey’s interest in child psychology grew as he ventured into education as well. Readers must be cautioned, however, that Dewey is not an original frontline researcher or experimental psychologist as we know of today. With his philosophical training, Dewey takes the role of a theorist to conceptualize and review research findings. This is most evident in The Psychology of Infant Language (1893) where he reviews the findings of a researcher on 5400 words used by two infants. For his Mental Development , he relies exclusively on the works of his contemporaries, Baldwin, Sully and Chamberlain (MW1: 192). But Dewey appears more original and pioneering in thinking research. How We Think appeared in 1909. The book cited very few references, may be due to two reasons. First, it is more or less an original treatise and not much former research is available. Second, it is written for frontline teachers who need clear guidelines more than detailed research references. The purpose of the book is to help teachers foster among children “the attitude of the scientific mind” (MW6: 179; Preface).

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The Puzzle: Why Revising It After 24 Years Dewey published Psychology (1887), a successful textbook reprinted 26 times from 1887–1946. He did not bother to revise it after 1891 (EW2: xlix–liv; A Note on the Text ). What is so special about How We Think that he has to revise it, calling it a “Restatement” in 1933? Readers can try to solve the puzzle by comparing How We Think (1909) with How We Think (1933). I have done a bit and found something interesting. He had changed the word “thought” in 1909 to “thinking” in 1933. So are the words “means and end” in 1909, which become “process and product” in 1933. For the new edition, he revised the old Chapter 5 substantially, added two chapters in Part 2, and expanded the former Chapter 9 into 2 chapters. Dewey himself admitted increasing it by 25% (LW8: 107). What does that mean? Textual Editors of LW8, Bridget A. Walsh and Harriet F. Simon, had done a meticulous job comparing the two versions (LW8: 376–414). They were able to summarize the substantive revisions like what I did in the preceding paragraph, and described the circumstances surrounding the revised work by quoting Dewey’s correspondence to Joseph Ratner and Sidney Hook (LW8: 386–387) However, they failed to explain why Dewey revised How We Think instead of writing something new. Why was that improvement so important, so long as the basic ideas of 1909 How We Think had been retained, as Dewey assured us (LW8: 108)? The answer cannot be found in How We Think itself but it can be unveiled in a broader context of Dewey’s ideas in evolution. In 1909, Dewey used the words thinking and thought more generally, but in 1933, he singled out “reflective thinking” and emphasized that it must be an educational aim (LW8, Chapter 2), so are there modes of thinking other than “reflective thinking”? The answer is yes. Probably Dewey had thought of it for more than three decades. As early as 1900, Dewey discussed the child’s mind, its inquiry, memory and associations (Mental Development , MW1: 204–5). By 1909, he had formulated his notion of reflective thinking. In the next twenty years, his taxonomy of thinking had evolved and expanded to include: affective thought in 1926 (LW2), practical thought in 1926 (LW2), and qualitative thought in 1930 (LW5).

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Dewey’s Taxonomy of Thinking Reflective Thought—In 1909, Dewey defined reflective thought as “active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends” (MW6: 185) He approached the issue of thinking for truth, knowledge, belief and imagination and considered reflection as most important. Reflective thought is in fact scientific and logical thought. It includes inference (induction and deduction), judgment (interpretation of facts) and meaning (conception of understanding) (Part II of How We Think, 1909) (MW1: 233–301). Affective Thought—In 1926, Dewey mentioned affectivity, “the restless, craving, desiring activity” which “is deep-seated in the organism, and is constantly extended and refined through experience” (LW2: 105–106). He called it affective thought which is more or less distinct for the intellectual, the field of reasoning, the pure intellect. Affective thought is not just emotion. Nor is it just the distinction between science and the arts so that there is scientific thinking in contrast with artistic thinking. It is a “greater differentiation and integration” of experience and is present in the works of art. In other words, Dewey recognized “affective thought” as different from scientific thought and reasoning. Readers would be interested to note Dewey had just finished his monumental classic, Experience and Nature (LW1) in 1925 which has put experience in the forefront of human existence and endeavor, be it intellectual or artistic, individual or social. Qualitative Thought—Carrying his ideas a step further, Dewey proposed “Qualitative Thought” in 1930. Fesmire called it “Dewey’s watershed essay” (Fesmire 2015: 206). Here Dewey argues: “The gist of the matter is that the immediate existence of quality, and of dominant and pervasive quality, is the background, the point of departure, and the regulative principle of all thinking” and “….. the thinking of the artist, his logic is the logic of what I have called qualitative thinking” (LW5: 262). Apparently, Dewey wants to integrate art (feeling) with science (logic) through his theory of experience. When the artists (poets, painters, musicians and the like) experience something and express it, it does have a logic, a complex cognitive component. I hope by now I have shown readers why Dewey revised How We Think in 1933 instead of writing something new. His ideas on thinking have grown so much in the past two decades that reflective thinking is only

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a part of the bigger picture which includes affective thinking, qualitative thinking, even practical thinking. He thus has to limit his scope of revising How We Think to A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process. In other words, it will not touch the affective aspect of thinking nor the qualitative and artistic aspect of thinking, not even practical doings and thinking for living. But reflective thinking is important in the educative process and so Dewey revises it for consumption of the public and the education sector. He also strengthens his arguments in logical considerations (Part II). Generally, it appears that thinking denotes the process and thought denotes the end-product. As Dewey is concerned with the education process, it becomes understandable that he uses the term “reflective thinking” to denote the thinking process going on in the educative process in his 1933 paper. Dewey’s Notion of “Facts” Reflective thinking is defined in terms of “facts.” It involves four collocations of “suggest” in one sentence! Readers are advised to read Dewey’s examples of a cloud and ashes to decipher his definition: (Reflective thinking is) defined as that operation in which present facts suggest other facts (or truths) in such a way as to induce belief in what is suggested on the ground of real relation in the things themselves, a relation between what suggests and what is suggested. A cloud suggests a weasel or a whale; it does not mean the latter, because there is no tie, or bond, in the things themselves between what is seen and what is suggested. Ashes not merely suggest a previous fire, but they signify there has been a fire, because ashes are produced by combustion and, if they are genuine ashes, only by combustion. It is an objective connection, the link in actual things, that makes one thing the ground, warrant, evidence, for believing in something else. (LW8: 120) (bold by author)

Dewey used the term “facts” in contradistinction with “idea”; the former are “data,” “facts of the case” which may or may not be “susceptible of direct observation by the sense” (LW8: 199); the latter may include idle speculations, fantasies, dreams: poetry, fiction, drama or knowledge. Reflective thinking is to review and evaluate the “facts” and to reach a judgment. In this sense, Dewey’s facts/data can be better termed the “raw material of a situation” (facts of the case), but even this is not welldefined: what is and isn’t raw material is hard to decide. Culture and

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evolution are some plausible criteria for accepting, ignoring or creating “raw material.” Where to look at and look for is determined by many background factors. Consequently, Dewey’s reflective thinking is open to multiple means of discourse and is less descriptive than it seems. Five Phases of Reflective Thinking Dewey’s five phases of reflective thinking are: 1. Suggestion—A continuing activity is blocked, awaiting for thought and appraisal of the situation. 2. Intellectualization—The problem and its perplexity is “felt.” 3. Hypothesis (guiding idea)—To confront it, an “insight into the problem connects, modifies, expands the suggestion… (it) becomes a supposition, or stated more technically, a hypothesis” (LW8: 202). 4. Reasoning—Elaboration and deliberation of the hypothesis or guiding idea to see if it works. For Dewey’s examples, they are mostly related to existing knowledge in school and maths (LW8: 204–205). 5. Testing (forecasting)—Testing, or an experiment is conceived: “conditions are deliberately arranged in accord with the requirements of an idea or hypothesis to see whether the results theoretically indicated by the idea actually occur” (LW8: 205). Testing with reference to the future is forecasting. Here Dewey quoted Einstein’s theory forecasting an eclipse of the sun and the famous astronomical expedition of 1919 (LW8: 208). See my review below. Six Steps of Judgment Throughout reflective thinking, judgment can be seen as the decision process based on the facts and ideas pertaining to a hypothesis. Apparently for the easy understanding of teachers, Dewey delineates judgment into six steps: 1. Doubt—The starting point is from doubt and controversy: there is some point at issue for rivaling interpretations. 2. Selection of facts—Relevant facts have to be selected; what is and is not important and evidential has to be decided. 3. Selection of laws/principles—Dewey is concerned about relevant laws or principles and their interpretation. With the evolution of

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conceptions and possible meaning, the selection has to consider “the development and elaboration of the suggested meaning in the light of which they are to be interpreted” (LW8: 214). 4. Decision—A judgment terminates in a decision; it fixes a rule or method and meanings get standardized to become logical concepts (LW8: 215–6). 5. Analysis—An analysis is to clear up, to objectify a quality. Though Dewey does not elaborate in depth he does suggest going beyond “anatomical” and “morphological” method. He is insightful to point out that method and organization is a post hoc discovery (LW8: 217). 6. Synthesis—It means “piecing together,” “in so far as it leaves the mind with an inclusive situation within which selected facts are placed” (LW8: 219). Review and Evaluation Reflective Thinking as an Educational Aim Dewey’s study of thinking is both descriptive and prescriptive. While Dewey starts by saying “no one can tell another person in any definite way how he should think,” nonetheless, “some of these ways are better than others.” The purpose of educational training of thought is “the formation of disciplined logical ability to think” (LW8: 187). It is more effective “in turning a subject over in the mind and giving it serious and consecutive consideration.” This he called it reflective thinking (LW8: 113). To begin with, Dewey is concerned with how we should think, thus the “training of thought” and thinking “must be an educational aim” (Chapter 2). For Dewey, education is for living in freedom and liberty, where “genuine freedom, in short, is intellectual; it rests in the trained power of thought, in ability to ‘turn things over’ to look at matters deliberately, to judge whether the amount and kind of evidence requisite for decision is at hand, and if not, to tell where and how to seek such evidence” (LW8: 186). Consequently, the “training of thought” is an integral part of education to guarantee “genuine freedom.” In other words, Dewey’s study of thinking is not merely a scientific analysis of human thought, but a philosophical treatise of how we should think. It ends up with an ethical and moralistic tone where right thoughts help us solve problems and wrong thought can kill us (lead to harmful beliefs and outcomes) (LW8: 129–130).

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From this ethical perspective, it becomes clear why Dewey is concerned with the training of right thought. While a right thought will be carried out by skilled methods of inquiry such as inference, deduction, logic, analysis and so forth, the attitudes behind it are even more important, which include open-mindedness, whole-heartedness and responsibility. Dewey urges for the union of attitudes and skilled methods (LW8: 136). In his words, “…, attitudes that, in the proper sense of the words, are moral, since they are traits of personal character that have to be cultivated” (LW8: 139). Dewey’s thinking research is the union of moral philosophy and scientific psychology. Moral philosophy is concerned with the cultivation of personal character which fosters positive attitude in thinking. Scientific psychology is concerned with the thinking process of correct inference, as well as faulty reasoning (Dewey called it “bad thinking” LW8:131). Reflective Thinking to Guide Action in Social Groups The value, or goal of reflective thinking, is not to attain truth, but to guide action, Dewey’s pragmatism entails. “It makes possible action with a conscious aim” (LW8: 125). In contrast with animals acting on instincts, human’s reflective thinking “enables us to know what we are about when we act. It converts action that is merely appetitive, blind, and impulsive into intelligent action” (LW8: 125). It also makes possible systematic preparations and inventions, enriches things with meanings. In fact our past thinking was embedded in culture, adding more and more meaning and value to life (LW8: 126–128). The cumulative effect is “a truly human and rational life” of existence (LW8: 129). In other words, truth is not, but action is, the regulating concept of reflective thinking. Wrong thoughts (or wrong beliefs) are harmful to us in that it affects life or even threatens survival. Since we live in social groups, Social conditions also put a premium on correct inference in matters where action based on valid thought is socially important. These sanctions of proper thinking may affect life itself,…… (LW8:130)

Here Dewey puts thoughts and social value together: social conditions lead to valid thought (correct inference) which is socially important. Consequently social values encapsulate thought and truth. Reflective thinking can turn out to be “correct thinking” when it is “socially

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correct” or “politically correct”; it can be “wrong thinking” when it is “socially incorrect” and “politically incorrect.” In Dewey’s times, he may not have envisioned the oppression of the totalitarian state in “correct thinking.” Dewey Pioneering but Superseded Dewey was among the earliest researchers in the beginning of the twentieth century to formalize scientific thinking, proposing five phases of reflective thinking and six stages of judgment. More importantly he popularized these ideas in the American education scene thanks to his writings to teachers and his enthusiastic followers in the education sector. Supposedly he had made a whole generation of American school children more “scientific” in thinking. How We Think has been taken as a starting point for some empirical research, for example, Bruner, Goodnow and Austin (1956).2 In their study of thinking, they applied the idea of hypothesis testing to children’s learning of concepts. Dewey’s notion of suggestion and intellectualization (to feel the perplexity of a problem) was reformulated into problem-solving,3 an important domain of thinking research. Reasoning and inference in his reflective thinking phases were extensively studied by psychologists in the second half of twentieth century. They used componential analysis and reaction time measures to construct computational models.4 In this sense, Dewey can be seen as a pioneer in the field of thinking research. During and after the period (1909–1933) Dewey wrote his How We Think, however, many breakthroughs took place in the field of thinking research, as well as in the philosophy of science. The first was Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) who studied apes and discovered their problemsolving ability in 1927, which set a paradigmic case of problem-solving. The second is Karl Popper (1902–1994), who published, in German, The Logic of Scientific Discovery in 1934, a year after Dewey’s restatement of How We Think. Note that in How We Think Restatement (1933), Dewey revised his old version and mentioned in a line on Einstein’s theory 2 Bruner, J. S., Goodnow, J. J., & Austin, G. A. (1956). A Study of Thinking. New York: Wiley. 3 Most textbooks in cognition will cover this topic. 4 Li, R. (1996). A Theory of Conceptual Intelligence (pp. 100–114). New York: Praeger

Books.

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being confirmed by the Eddington’s expedition of 1919. When Dewey substantiated his testing and forecasting with this example, Popper made a case with Einstein’s theory, showing the demarcation of science from non-science by falsification, not by confirmation or verification.5 Then, a few years later in 1938, Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) introduced the notion of probability in scientific prediction together with his view of logical positivism.6 Moreover, scientific thinking, Dewey’s case of reflective thinking, had developed by leaps and bounds that by 1930s it could, theoretically, be formalized with symbolic logic into computing systems by Alan Turing (1936) and artificial neural network by Warren McCulloch and Walters Pitts (1943). All these ideas and breakthroughs cannot be accounted for or accommodated in Dewey’s framework of reflective thinking. In The New Psychology (1884) Dewey hailed old psychology and proclaimed, “the best we can do is to thank them, and then go about our own work… for our work is in the future” (EW1: 50). The same can be said of Dewey’s research on thinking: today we should thank Dewey because certain roots of thinking research of the twentieth century started from him. Since then, we may need a few volumes to chronicle the development in this field.7

Human Nature and Conduct8 Historical Context Dewey’s conception of human nature should be understood within the historical context of nineteenth-century philosophy and psychology. The two disciplines were trying to answer issues arising from the rise of science, the notion of progress and the changing social order. More specifically, these issues include the debate between science and religion, free will and instinct, rationality and morality, hereditary and environment.

5 Popper earned his PhD by his Logic of Scientific Discovery. 6 Reichenbach, H. (1938). Experience and Prediction: An Analysis of the Foundations of

the Structure of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago. 7 Readers interested in the field may refer to further readings below. 8 This section is based on my paper, John Dewey’s Notion of Human Nature,

presented in the International Symposium on the Centenary of Democracy and Education, October 23, 2015, Hong Kong.

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It is in this context that Dewey formulated his “scientific” view of human nature. I call his view “scientific” in two senses. First, the issue of human nature is not for speculation but for scientific investigation. This investigation may start from the study of the reflex arc, which Dewey did in 1896, and went further into habits and conduct in 1918. Second, Dewey is a believer of science and progress. Therefore, his position is that morality should be based on scientific knowledge. However, Dewey is also critical of science, which makes weapons and wars (He wrote Human Nature and Conduct just after the First World War). So, how should we constrain science? Should morality constrain science or should science constrain morality? This is one of his main concerns. A note on the title. When behavior and behaviorism gained momentum in American psychology during the period, Dewey did not call his book Human Nature and Behaviour. Instead he used the term “conduct” to denote a broader spectrum of human behaviors. As we shall see, it is Dewey’s deliberate choice of words to avoid the narrow vision of unit of analysis in behavioral psychology. The Puzzle of Dewey’s Notion of Habit The book, Human Nature and Conduct (HNC), starts with an introduction on human nature and morality. Then it is followed by three parts: habit and conduct, impulse and conduct and intelligence and conduct, ending with a conclusion. I seem to get in a puzzle box once I started reading Dewey’s notion of habit. In psychology, habit was then defined as a “fixed way of thinking, willing or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience” (Journal of Psychology, pp. 121–149, 1903). Afterward, the concept was gradually replaced by overt behavior and behaviorism in the 1920s and 1930s. We now use it to mean learned and repeated physical stances such as tidiness, cleanliness, courtesy, nail-biting and smile. In addition, popular psychology books try to capitalize on habits of effective people.9 Psychologists also study:

9 Covey, S. R. (1989). The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Free Press. The author takes habits as mind-set and a character ethic.

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Habitual behavior; Mental/thinking/learning habits; Habit formation; Habit-directed vs goal-directed behavior.

But Dewey used the word in an unusual way. Habits are arts—skills of sensory and motor organs. He uses “habit” to mean a lot of things: attitudes, ways of thinking, judgments: doing and their impact. He is using habit to mean thinking habits, mental and physical skills, may be even feelings. It is like everything! (MW14: 15–16). Then there are well-formed habits (MW14: 25), incorrect habit (MW14: 26), old habit (MW14: 38), frustrated habit (MW14: 39), bad habit (MW14: 21–27). He jokingly talked about walking habit (MW14: 29) and even used the habit of eating to illustrate the old question of objectivity and subjectivity (MW14: 38–39). What is more, habit formation is based on the social/environing condition and all virtues and vices are habits based on objective forces (MW14: 44). What does he mean? And how is it related to the big picture of human nature? Clarifying Dewey’s Concept of Human Nature Components It takes me many rounds of reading, determinedly and deeply, to gain a vague understanding of Dewey’s concept. Below can be taken as a reading guide to help interested readers to decipher Human Nature and Conduct . First, let me summarize Dewey’s notion of habit. There are at least ten concepts and seven classes: Concepts

Classes

• • • • • • • • • •

• • • • • • •

Acquired mental and physical skills Learned attitude Ways of thinking Judgment Habit formation is social Will and deed in union is concrete habit Bundle of habit is mind Institutions embody habit Character and conduct in union Motive and act in common

Bad habit Well-formed habit Incorrect habit Old habit Frustrated habit Walking habit Eating habit

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Next, let me review “custom.” Dewey argues that customs are social while habits are personal (p. 35). Examples of customs are: slavery, war, wage-system (MW14: 78). Custom provides machinery and design for war and custom is working out morals (MW14: 78). In this sense, I think custom means human institutions. To move on, we can now get into “impulse” and “conduct.” For impulse, Dewey basically means instincts manifested in acts (see my elaboration below). As impulses cannot always be satisfied and are in conflict with habit, custom and convention, it will lead to change and modification in both the individual and society. Conduct is not reflex nor instinctive behavior. It is an act, or human action, which is constrained by and subject to moral judgment. The Deweyan Picture of Human Nature I try to construct a pictorial representation for your easy understanding (Fig. 7.1). In this Deweyan picture, the boy, a human being, is walking down the road. He is in an environment, with physical and social forces. He possesses human nature, of which the environment interacts to become his conduct. Human nature has three components: intelligence is in his head; his left hand signifies impulse, which conflicts with custom; his right hand signifies habit, which is passed onto him as customs from his parents who stand behind him. In other words, he will be in conflict or in unison with customs, depending on varying situations. Morality is a fetter that impedes his movement. In this picture, habits are learned skills and attitudes; habits are personal while customs are social. Impulses are human instincts. Customs suppress impulses. Customs also work out morality to restrain and control human nature. When impulses conflict with habits, customs or convention, it will lead to change. Finally, intelligence is thinking, reflecting, serving as the go between of habit and impulse. Habit, Impulse and Intelligence The Significance of Habit For Dewey, habit is regulated thought, absentmindedness, stimulusresponse link. It confines the eyes of mind to the road ahead (MW14: 121). When things work out by habit (without using conscious intelligence), we call it absentmindedness (MW14: 121). When we bump into the unexpected, we need consciousness, breaking into a new road

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conduct

Fig. 7.1 A pictorial representation of Dewey’s notion of human nature

(MW14: 122). When we achieve a goal (in a deed, such as brush our teeth), it is just mindless action (MW14: 122). Habits are conditions of intellectual efficiency. They operate in two ways upon intellect. Obviously, they restrict its reach, they fix its boundaries.

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They are blinders that confine the eyes of mind to the road ahead. They prevent thought from straying away from its imminent occupation to a landscape more varied and picturesque but irrelevant to practice. (MW14: 212)

Habit sets negative limits to thoughts. On the other hand, the more habits we have, the more observation, perception, imagination we are capable of (MW14: 123). Habit is however more than a restriction of thought. Habits become negative limits because they are first positive agencies. The more numerous our habits the wider the field of possible observation and foretelling. The more flexible they are, the more refined is perception in its discrimination and the more delicate the presentation evoked by imagination. (MW14: 123)

I think that according to Dewey, habit interacts with environment and provokes thoughts: no need to assume the existence of mind/consciousness/soul/knower. “Habits are the means of knowledge and thought” (MW14: 123). For Dewey, habits do all the cognitive functions of perceiving, recalling, judging, … Consciousness is only functions of habit (MW14: 124). Habits and impulses work together in the real world by doing. Therefore, knowledge lives in the muscles, not in consciousness (MW14: 124). Yet habit does not, of itself, know, for it does not of itself stop to think, observe or remember. Neither does impulse of itself engage in reflection or contemplation. It just lets go. Habits by themselves are too organized, too insistent and determinate to need to indulge in inquiry or imagination. And impulses are too chaotic, tumultuous and confused to be able to know even if they wanted to. Habit as such is too definitely adapted to an environment to survey or analyze it, and impulse is too indeterminately related to the environment to be capable of reporting anything about it. Habit incorporates, enacts or overrides objects, but it doesn’t know them. Impulse scatters and obliterates them with its restless stir. A certain delicate combination of habit and impulse is requisite for observation, memory and judgment. Knowledge which is not projected against the black unknown lives in the muscles, not in consciousness. (MW14: 124)

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How Does Dewey Treat Impulses According to Dewey, there are “definite, independent, original instincts,” manifested in acts of one-to-one correspondence. He listed nine of them (MW14: 104): • • • • •

• • • •

Fear; Anger; Rivalry; Love of mastery of others; Self-abasement;

Maternal love; Sexual desire; Gregariousness; Envy.

All these instincts involve specific bodily organs as well as the whole organism for action asserted Dewey. These are impulses. Among them, sex, hunger and fear are the most prominent ones. Dewey studied psychology and is deeply influenced by the ideas of his time. Some terms are: • Psychoanalysis; • Introspection; • Internal state;

• Libido; • Psychic force; • Feelings/soul;

• Sublimation; • Suppression; • Mental pathology

Basically the discipline is moving away from speculation to observables but Dewey kept the sophisticated analysis in a metaphysical tone. Because of his philosophical background, Dewey criticizes mistaken classification of instincts by psychologists (MW14: 99). For any activity is original when it first occurs. As conditions are continually changing, new and primitive activities are continually occurring. The traditional psychology of instincts obscures recognition of this fact. It sets up a hard-and-fast preordained class under which specific acts are subsumed, so that their own quality and originality are lost from view. (MW14: 108)

Dewey illustrated his point with an example. He insisted there is no single instinct of fear. When fear acts in muscular contraction, withdrawals, evasions and concealments, it must be related to specific objects and environment. Dewey listed them: (fear of dentist, ghost, success, humiliation, bat, bear, cowardice, embarrassment, caution, reverence). He argued that “They all have certain physical organic acts in common—those of organic

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shrinkage, gestures of hesitation and retreat. But each is qualitatively unique” (MW14: 107). Then Dewey brings in fear of air-raid (bombs from the sky). High explosives and the aeroplane have brought into being something new in conduct. There is no error in calling it fear. But there is error, even from a limited clinical standpoint, in permitting the classifying name to blot from view the difference between fear of bombs dropped from the sky and the fears which previously existed. The new fear is just as much and just as little original and native as a child’s fear of a stranger. For any activity is original when it first occurs. As conditions are continually changing, new and primitive activities are continually occurring. The traditional psychology of instincts obscures recognition of this fact. It sets up a hard-and-fast preordained class under which specific acts are subsumed, so that their own quality and originality are lost from view. (MW14: 107–108)

I think Dewey is right to point out different types of fear. The point is to distinguish innate fear (dark) from learned/conceptual fear (dentist, airraid, gun). It really depends on experience. For example, an Afghanistan boy may fear aircraft sound while showing no fear to a dentist chair, and vice versa for a Hong Kong child. Granted that each instance of fear is new and “original,” and many fears are learned in a new environment, the most important issue is to outline underlying and manifested mechanisms in physiological terms. When some classifications of fear may be mistaken, a scientific study must proceed with generalization and classification is the first step of any scientific investigation. To theorize further, Dewey outlines three possible outcomes of impulses: surging, explosive discharge; sublimation—impulse operates as a pivot of re-organization of habit; and suppression—leading to reaction (MW14: 108). Impulse has significant social consequences. When impulse is not handled properly, it will lead to repression, enslavement, corruption and perversion (MW14: 114). The significant thing is that the pathology arising from the sex instinct affords a striking case of a universal principle. Every impulse is, as far as it goes, force, urgency. It must either be used in some function, direct or sublimated, or be driven into a concealed, hidden activity. It has long been asserted on empirical grounds that repression and enslavement result in

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corruption and perversion. We have at last discovered the reason for this fact. (MW14: 114)

They are all impulse in disguise, such as “a rebellious disposition (which) is also a form of romanticism.” (MW14: 114). It will “view institutions as slaveries” (MW14: 115). In other words, impulse may originate rebellion and revolution for social change. Thinking and Intelligence For Dewey, deliberation is thinking, imagination and making choices. It is like scenario thinking, with a start from habit and impulse into various imagined paths. Every object hit upon as the habit traverses its imaginary path has a direct effect upon existing activities. It reinforces, inhibits, redirects habits already working or stirs up others which had not previously actively entered in. In thought as well as in overt action, the objects experienced in following out a course of action attract, repel, satisfy, annoy, promote and retard. Thus deliberation proceeds. To say that at last it ceases is to say that choice, decision, takes place. (MW14: 134)

Deliberation includes choice, unifying, harmonizing competing tendencies, elimination and recombination, imagined circumstances, sensitiveness, feeling and decision. Dewey argues that we do not do “calculation of courses of action on the basis of the profit and loss” (MW14: 139). We deliberate by experiencing the present, not calculating the future. “Future pleasures and pains… are among the things most elusive of calculation” (MW14: 141). Deliberation is to evaluate the present and envisage consequence. Hence the problem of deliberation is not to calculate future happenings but to appraise present proposed actions. We judge present desires and habits by their tendency to produce certain consequences. It is our business to watch the course of our action so as to see what is the significance, the import of our habits and dispositions. (MW14: 143)

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Review and Evaluation The Whole Picture of Human Nature in Summary Piecing together the above concepts, we can arrive at the vista of Dewey’s whole picture of human nature. Impulses are instincts and desires working in the human world without restraint. They are like laws of nature. Borrowing terms from science, Dewey stated the metaphors where motion is to progress as blind spontaneity is to freedom and atom is to individuality. Thus impulses and instincts are unalterable laws of nature. Custom suppresses impulse but may have led to unrestrained expression, for example, war. When we break custom, we release impulse by doing old things in new ways. We can also construct new means and ends (MW14: 118). Impulse affects habit and conduct. Morality is to find ways to manage impulse in its manifestation to balance between custom, tradition, privileges versus present needs. Apparently, tradition, morality, customs and habits belong to the same category of interwoven ideas. Morality is underlying guidelines for customs and habits. Here Dewey insists on the impact of social environment affecting habits and customs. Traditional morality with a transcendental standard creates tension. Impulses can help reorganize habits, leading to new morality. To work it out, we need intelligence (thought) (MW14: 117). Theorizes Dewey: Impulse is needed to arouse thought, incite reflection and enliven belief. But only thought notes obstructions, invents tools, conceives aims, directs technique, and thus converts impulse into an art which lives in objects. Thought is born as the twin of impulse in every moment of impeded habit…… this discovery when once made marks the birth of intelligence. (MW14: 118)

Traditional morality calling upon do-gooders is basically customs. According to Dewey, Western morality from Plato to modern times is based on religion. The belief of religious and transcendental reality of goodness is rejected by Dewey. Consequently, morality, or code of conduct, is in crisis. Where can we anchor it? Dewey’s answer is in pragmatism. Puzzle Solved: From Habit to Action This has long been my working puzzle: how can habit mean so many things and why. After reading Human Nature and Conduct a few times,

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I see that habit and impulse are elaborated deeply. Especially in Part III, Dewey talked about how habit and impulse work together and habit interacts with environment, leading to his theory of perception and action. Then I come across his criticism on utilitarianism with the following lines: … this false psychology consist in two traits. The first, that knowledge originates from sensations (instead of from habits and impulses) and the second, … (MW14: 132)

Sensation, sense data, Tabula Rasa are terms by Hume (empiricism); pure reason, synthetic aprori, are terms used by Kant (rationalism). Dewey wants to go beyond and propose habit and impulse (pragmatism) to anchor knowledge and also to ground morality! Following the tradition of Hume’s empiricism and sensation and avoiding the transcendental “goodness” in morality, Dewey wants to get rid of subjective entities by using two words to cover all: habits and impulses. James proposes stream of consciousness and Dewey rejects an abstract entity (soul) or a separate knower. Therefore, he proposes functional psychology, where Concrete habits do all the perceiving, recognizing, imagining, recalling, judging, conceiving and reasoning that is done. “Consciousness,” whether as a stream or as special sensations and images, expresses functions of habits, phenomena of their formation, operation, their interruption and reorganization. (MW14: 124)

Here, we see the obscure and unique use of the terms by Dewey. First, habits and impulses are terms Dewey used to denote unconscious thought and behavior and instinctual responses, respectively. They are practical to life and living. Second, “knowing how” is the practical function of knowledge and “knowing that” (of, about things) is the reflection and conscious appreciation of the undescribed thing (reality). When habits and impulses fail, Dewey calls in intelligence: Yet habit does not, of itself, know, for it does not of itself stop to think, observe or remember. Neither does impulse of itself engage in reflection or contemplation. It just lets go. Habits by themselves are too organized, too insistent and determinate to need to indulge in inquiry or imagination. And impulses are too chaotic, tumultuous and confused to be able to know even if they wanted to. Habit as such is too definitely adapted to

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an environment to survey or analyze it, and impulse is too indeterminately related to the environment to be capable of reporting anything about it. Habit incorporates, enacts or overrides objects, but it doesn’t know them. Impulse scatters and obliterates them with its restless stir. A certain delicate combination of habit and impulse is requisite for observation, memory and judgment. Knowledge which is not projected against the black unknown lives in the muscles, not in consciousness. (MW14: 124)

In this sense, Dewey’s notion of habit and impulses can be understood within his theory and the intellectual context of his time. He wants to find a term to express human action within a social environment. He wants to show how this action, constrained by our cultural convention and institution (custom), is driven by our underlying instincts (impulse), breaking into a new path with the help of intelligence. Action is central to Dewey’s thought and the following diagram may be helpful (Fig. 7.2).

Human Nature

AcƟon

Reflex acƟon

Habitual acƟon (absent mindedness)

Habit

SƟmulusResponse acƟon

Intelligent acƟon

Unconscious acƟon

Fig. 7.2 The centrality of action in Dewey’s notion of human nature

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The Genesis of Human Nature and Conduct: Psychology, How We Think and James’s and Freud’s Influences You may be interested to note that traces of ideas of Human Nature and Conduct can be found in Dewey’s own book on psychology he wrote 30 years earlier. In Psychology, Dewey already denoted that habit is a repeated routine; habit formation is through association and habit is automatic, mechanical unconscious action (EW2: 100–104). For impulse, sensuous impulse is pressure to act (example: sensation of hunger), and instinctive impulse is impelled to act (example: infant takes food). There are instincts of expression, with examples such as the cry of pain, laugh, trembling of anger (EW2: 229–306). Finally, for will, it is to construct knowledge beyond impulse and to gain control (EW1: 357–364). To elaborate this point, Dewey wrote How We Think in 1909, arguing that thinking habits and skills can be trained, and that judgment is interpreting facts and meaning. In 1910, Dewey was still wrestling with the ideas of how we think and how we should think. By 1918, he had integrated thinking into his Human Nature and Conduct framework. Intelligence is reflective thinking and his concern is social psychology, not individual psychology. Dewey’s ideas are not developed in a vacuum. Among the milieu of early the twentieth century, two psychologists stand out to have influenced Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct . The first is William James. It is no exaggeration to say that James’ Principles of Psychology (1890) has significant impact on all psychologists of his time. By espousing a scientific psychology, James has proposed the stream of thought, the consciousness of self, a theory of emotion, mind-dust theory, among others. Less known are his notions of habits and instincts, which he devotes an entire early chapter (Chapter 4) on it, signifying the importance of these notions on his psychology. Dewey can be seen as building on James, who stresses the importance of good habits and offers five maxims to develop them (James 1890: 122–127), the ideas of which were traceable to Bain’s “Moral Habits” (p. 122). Dewey, on the other hand, takes habits within the sociocultural context of customs and postulates thinking and intelligence to overcome habits. It is clear that James’ influences on Dewey were immense. In writing his intellectual biography at age 71, From Absolutism to Experimentalism (LW5: 147–160), Dewey openly acknowledged James’ Principles

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of Psychology in which the “stream of consciousness,” substituted for “discrete elementary states.” Dewey applauded that “the advance made was enormous,” “the approach has been…… hardened by James” and that “James’ sense of life was vital” (LW5: 157). Dewey came to know James through reading and citing his work when Dewey wrote his Psychology in 1886. When James published The Principles of Psychology in 1890, Dewey took it very positively and used it in his class (Coughlan 1973: 162). He began corresponding with James, who influenced him and ushered him from German idealism into American pragmatism (Reck 1984). While the two were comrades-in-arms in the founding of pragmatism, Richard Gale (2004) called them “the odd couple” with subtle differences and individualities. Back in 1886, James must have read Dewey’s Psychology with mixed feelings: he himself was commissioned to write a textbook on psychology eight years before and was unable to complete it. He knew the subject so thoroughly that he confided to a friend on Dewey’s psychology, “I felt quite enthused at the first glance, hoping for something really fresh; but am sorely disappointed when I come to read.”10 In other words, he found nothing new in Dewey’s book nor felt impressed with Dewey’s effort integrating philosophy with psychology. However, his views changed and wrote Dewey a “hearty note” when he read Dewey’s Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (1891) (Martin 2002: 120). By the time Dewey dedicated his book, Studies in Logical Theory (1903) to James, he had had such a high regard of Dewey’s work that he praised the book as “splendid stuff, and Dewey is a hero. A real school and a real thought.” Thus James’s famous remarks, “At Harvard we have plenty of thought, but no school; at Yale and Cornell, the other way about” (Martin 2002: 195). Now there is a school of thought in Chicago. James endorsed Dewey: Chicago has a School of thought! - a school of thought which, it is safe to predict, will figure in literature as the School of Chicago for twenty-five years to come. Some universities have plenty of thought to show, but no school. The University of Chicago, by its Decennial Publications shows real thought and a real school.11

10 Quoted from Perry, R. B. (1935). The Thought and Character of William James (p. 516). Boston: Little Brown, and Company, II. 11 Quoted from James, W. (1978). Essays in Philosophy (p. 102). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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The second one is Sigmund Freud, whose influences on Dewey look much more superficial. Freud (1856–1963), a psychiatrist in private practice in Vienna almost unknown to America and the world at the turn of twentieth century, suddenly surged to eminence by his Interpretation of Dreams (1900). His method of psychoanalysis gained such euphoric prominence that by 1908, the First International Psychoanalysis Congress was held in Paris. Freud was invited by J. Stanley Hall to visit the USA in 1909, with speeches published and discussed in American Psychological Association. Freud quickly became an international and American fad.12 That is why Freud’s terms like libido, psychoanalysis, sublimation, repression entered Human Nature and Conduct . To be sure, Freud’s psychosexual theory touches human nature in a deep and insightful way, but Dewey appears to have ignored it. Most hard-nosed functional psychologists working on experimental research chose to reject Freud’s theory altogether and Dewey was no exception. Dewey’s View on the Moral Crisis and the need for Pragmatism Dewey interpreted western moral philosophy by putting them in a dichotomy as two schools of social reform: 1. Spiritual Egotism (Christian Morality) Morality is from within; man knows morality; man has free will and the way is to purify the heart and pursue transcendental goodness, grounded in good and Christianity. With a good heart, there will be position for social and institutional change. 2. Romantic Morality (Social Determinism) Man has no moral freedom. Man is made/product of environment: human nature is malleable. It is hopeless to change people. Left alone he will do whatever to satisfy his desires: greed, killing, fighting. Consequently, we need to change institution directly—by revolution. It is not

12 For a short account of how Freud goes to America, please refer to: Fancher, R. E., & Rutherford, A. (2012). Pioneers of Psychology (4th ed., chapter 11, pp. 491–499). New York: W. W. Norton.

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evolution, but laws of history and violent change. Then human nature can be changed (malleable) by institutions. Dewey is critical of Christian or romantic morality. Human nature can be studied scientifically, thus science and progress. He is against glorification of natural impulse. Morality should be based on scientific knowledge of human nature. Conduct is interaction between human and environment. Freedom can be attained if we take into account of human drive and human nature. Education is to help intelligence to attain and adjust to the environment, or to adjust and change the environment. Dewey is critical of both science and morality, “Disregard of the moral potentialities of physical science” may lead to war. Taking morality as human conscience and ultimate goodness without regard to the scientific understanding of human nature may lead to slavery and human suffering (p. 9). For Dewey, the crisis is that morality becomes unreal and transcendental. Traditional morality presupposes a universe of goodness to measure the existing world. When the existing world and actual experience does not work according to this morality, traditional moralists still insist on a truer reality. Idealism is only an ideal and idea which is not realized. So are other abstract concepts such as justice, equality and liberty. Plato’s idealism (rationalism) is bankrupt, according to Dewey. It is in this philosophical background that Dewey proposes pragmatism to replace idealism, i.e., to ground morality in real-life experience. This needs some clarification. To say what works constitutes goodness is naive and simplistic pragmatism. Dewey insists that in the real-life experience we can reflect, analyze and argue to find out what is good and what works, not just to follow the tradition which he calls “customs.” Even goodness can change and make progress. So is truth. This is more practical and realistic than believing in the religious ultimate good. Pragmatism goes beyond utilitarianism. It may mean that “good” is to work out step-by-step, not the utilitarian calculation or consequentialism. In a sense, working out, doing step-by-step, reflecting and improving are human nature and good conduct.

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Further Readings In the early twentieth century, Dewey’s view on consciousness (1899), thinking (1909) and human nature (1918) was pioneering. So much work has been done in the last century that the following reading list is just an introduction to the related subjects. A. The Study of Consciousness in Twentieth Century 1. Revonsuo, A. (2010). Consciousness: The Science of Subjectivity. New York: Psychology Press. A Swedish professor of cognitive neuroscience who teaches the subject writes this readable textbook. He terms the subject consciousness science and explores the neuropsychological mechanisms and neural basis of consciousness. Philosophical theories are put side by side with empirical ones. 2. Kreitler, S., & Maimon, O. (Eds.). (2012). Consciousness: Its Nature and Functions. New York: Nova Science Publishers. The editors identify ten approaches and invite several dozen scholars to contribute to the subject. Most are microphysiological explanation, such as the neural mechanisms of visual awareness (Chapter 17) and the description of the stream of consciousness by neuroimaging techniques (Chapter 18). The psychological approaches include the formation of meaning system (Chapter 13) and mental dynamics (Chapter 15). Each chapter is short and can be read separately. 3. Dehaene, S. (2014). Consciousness and the Brain—Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. New York: Penguin Books. This popular book written by a French experimental psychologist starts from Descartes and quickly jumps into the exciting neuropsychological researches from 1980s onward. As the Chapter 1 title suggests: consciousness enters the laboratory. Informative, entertaining and written in a personal approachable style. 4. Churchland, P. M. (2013). Matter and Consciousness. Cambridge: MIT Press. 5. Searle, J. R. (2002). Consciousness and Language. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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These two classics were written by two renowned philosophers in 1980s and 1990s, respectively. Churchland is well-known for his materialist/reductionist position while Searle is famed for his Chinese room experiment of AI. 6. Das, J. P. (2014). Consciousness Quest: Where East Meets West: On Mind, Mediation, and Neural Correlates. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd. Das is a psychologist of Indian descent. He compares the concept of consciousness of the east and the west and brings in Indian wisdom (meditation, mindfulness) on the subject. B. Thinking Research Thinking can be seen as one aspect of consciousness. Researchers are now interested in both conscious and unconscious thinking. 1. Li, R. (1996). A Theory of Conceptual Intelligence: Thinking, Learning, Creativity and Giftedness. Westport, CN: Praeger Books. My book has offered a short summary of thinking research from 1930s to 1980s (See Chapter 4). 2. Keane, M. T., & Gihooly, K. J. (Eds.). (1992). Advances in the Psychology of Thinking. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. The editors collected eight papers on thinking research of the 1980s. 3. Eagleman, D. (2011). Incognito—The Secret Lives of the Brain. New York: Vintage Books. Written by a neuroscientist with latest research findings, the book explores the subconscious brain and unconscious thinking in daily life. 4. Brockman, J. (Ed.). (2013). Thinking: The New Science of Decision Making, Problem-Solving and Prediction. New York: Harper-Perennial. Like other books he edited, Brockman invites experts in the field to highlight what’s up for the general public. C. The Study of Human Nature in twentieth Century 1. Stevenson, L., Haberman, D. L., & Wright, P. M. (2013). Twelve Theories of Human Nature (6th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

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Since its first edition in 1970s, Stevenson’s book has gone through 6th edition, and the number of theories has increased from 7 to 12. More importantly, it has included global views in addition to the former western ones. It is a good comprehensive text for graduate seminars. 2. Stevenson, L. F. (Ed.). (2000). The Study of Human Nature: A Reader. New York: Oxford University Press. It is a comprehensive selection of original writings on the subject by great thinkers such as Descartes, Hume, Rousseau, Darwin, Freud, Satre, just to name a few. 3. Wilson, E. O. (1978, 2004). On Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. This Harvard myrmecologist who forefathers sociobiology offers a theory of human nature from biology. The book is now classic. 4. Zenka, K. (1997). The Unwritten Law. Part One, Human Nature. Chicago: Galaxy Press. Zenka called his book “a new philosophical treatise.” While it starts by alluding to Locke and ends by mentioning Nietzsche’s superman, it is more like a self-styled exposition on the human nature with 12 attributes (instinct, self-preservation, mating, child rearing, emotion, love, hatred, fear, self-identity, power, self-respect, intelligence, morality, purpose). Apparently, the author has integrated numerous ideas but whether it can form a consistent system remains doubtful. 5. Ashworth, P. D. (2000). Psychology and “Human Nature”. Pennsylvania: Psychology Press. The author reviews theories from the evolutionary perspective, Freudian psychology to cognitive psychology, behaviorism and postmodernism. The latest challenge is that human nature may be an outmoded cultural presupposition.

References Boring, E. G. (1950). A History of Experimental Psychology. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc. Bruner, J. S., Goodnow, J. J., & Austin, G. A. (1956). A Study of Thinking. New York: Wiley.

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Coughlan, N. (1973). Young John Dewey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fesmire, S. (2015). Dewey. London: Routledge. Gale, R. M. (2004). William James and John Dewey: The Odd Couple. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXVIII , 149–167. James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (Reprinted 1983). Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press. Reck, A. J. (1984). The Influence of William James on John Dewey in Psychology. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 20(2), 87–117.

PART III

Education

CHAPTER 8

Chicago Years, My Pedagogic Creed and Resignation

Introduction---The Years of Irony John Dewey’s Chicago years (1894–1904) is an irony. It starts with a hellish beginning and terminates with an unhappy ending (Mayhew and Edwards 1936: 18). In between, however, he worked so fervently and achieved so magnificently that he put his name in modern intellectual history: in education he became the theoretician and father of progressive education; in philosophy, he became a major founder of pragmatism; and in psychology, he gave birth to functional psychology. I am not writing a comprehensive biography of John Dewey; many details of his Chicago years will be omitted. Instead I will give a brief account, followed by some telescoping of two significant events, one in the beginning and the other at the end. They are important because the first one left a permanent scar in his life experience and the second led to a sharp turn of his career. I hope readers can follow me to explore these episodes and, in the process, gain a deeper understanding of Dewey as a man and a scholar.

The Michigan Link After Dewey had left Michigan for Chicago, he summed up his feelings in October 1894, “Ann Arbor seems to be a shell easily shaken off” (Martin 2002: 142). This sounds like a sensible metaphor but in fact it is in the shell of Michigan that Dewey had his ideas undergone metamorphosis: © The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_8

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he had grown to become what he would be. As we shall see, Dewey’s achievements in Chicago owed so much to his Michigan years. The first and foremost achievement is, of course, education. Dewey wrote extensively in education, but one of his earliest masterpieces is undeniably My Pedagogic Creed in 1897, written during his years in the University of Chicago (1894–1904). From My Pedagogic Creed, his ideas in education were further developed in The School and Society (1899), The Child and the Curriculum (1902), Democracy and Education (1916), Experience and Education (1938). To help readers decipher Dewey in education, my first task is to trace the roots of My Pedagogic Creed and the story began in the University of Michigan. Dewey “in Love” with Education In September 1884, a female student was eagerly expecting the arrival of a young professor of philosophy to teach her psychology. Her name was Harriet Alice Chipman, then a philosophy major interested in both philosophy and psychology. As a young woman with a brilliant mind and receptive to new and scientific ideas, she belonged to the new type of progressive, educated women with “indomitable courage, energy and intellectual integrity” (Dewey 1939: 22). She helped found Collegiate Sorosis, an international intellectual and feminist sorority with a chapter in Michigan (Martin 2002: 93). He was John Dewey, a young PhD from John Hopkins with specialization in psychology and philosophy. While Alice had a “deeply religious nature,” she had “never accepted any church dogma” (Dewey ibid.). Her views and attitudes matched those with John Dewey. More importantly, she had a strong sense of social responsibility and was interested in education, planning to pursue a career in teaching after graduation. They lived in the same dormitory and very soon the two fell in love. The first result: Dewey’s interest in feminism and education grew. In Education and the Health of Women (EW1: 64–68) and Health and Sex in Higher Education (EW1: 69–80), Dewey applied statistics to prove that education did no harm to women’s health. But he pointed out that “the art of taking things easy is not yet mastered by our ambitious young women” (EW1: 73). Dewey also began to study educational theories in Europe and examined curriculum issues of high school and college education. The second result: in fall 1885, John asked Alice

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to prepare lecture notes for his philosophy class!1 That led to the third result: they were engaged in December 1885 and married in summer 1886. Applying Psychology to Education With Dewey in love of education in 1885, it was natural that he applied psychology to examine education. This he did all through his academic career. In 1884–1887, however, he was tirelessly building up his system in psychology before he could put it in education. This he did by the publication of The New Psychology in 1884, followed by his textbook, Psychology, in 1886. See Chapter 6 for details. Now what are some of the major ideas and themes in psychology that Dewey applied to education? Briefly stated, Psychology deals with the adult with a “mind,” a “self” and “consciousness.” Education will mean to apply these ideas to children, often mistakenly seen as young adults. The underlying theme of Psychology is consciousness and the self, in which a few ideas stand out: • Sense organs in active lookout for sensation (EW2: 47); • Mind as selecting significance for attention—apperception (EW2: 78); • Habit as automatic mechanism of the mind (EW2: 101); • Self is activity, acts and feeling (EW2: 211); • Self is constantly organizing itself (EW2: 211); • Will as co-ordinating and regulating impulse (EW2: 299); • Desire as realization of self (EW2: 313). Note the ideas that self is activity and sense organs are in active lookout. This is where Dewey’s pragmatism and concept of education originates: education is living and is activity. Learning is not passive listening but is active engagement and thinking. When will is to coordinate and regulate impulse, Dewey followed this starting point to examine Interest in Relation to Training of the Will in 1897. Habit is another important concept in Dewey’s psychology as well as education. In psychology, he gave a 1 In those days, there were only male professors. When the male professor asked a female student to prepare notes, it amounts to the professor proposing a marriage.

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detailed exposition of habit in Human Nature and Conduct (1918); in education, he analyzed the formation of school habits, “preserved intact” within a school system in Ethical Principles Underlying Education (1897). Even his idea of selecting significance for attention and memory, outlined in Psychology, surfaced in his critique of rote memorization (EW5: 64). Groundwork on Ethics Recall Dewey’s adolescent crisis, with “an intense emotional craving,” which I outlined in Chapter 1. The crisis is religious in nature (truth, God, faith), coupled with moral values in philosophy (goodness, virtue). When this crisis was resolved in his lost years in Oil City (see Chapter 2), it had led to his faith in himself, in humanity and human experience. Gone were the teenage and college days of Scotch philosophy and intuitionalism, in which “all holy and valuable things was supposed to stand or fall with the validity of intuitionalism” (LW5: 149). In Michigan, Dewey still went to church and gave Sunday lectures to the Student Christian Association, but he was building up his ethics in contrary to the church orthodoxy. This he did by offering classes in ethics, Psychological Ethics and The History of Ethical Thought. Again his lecture notes became books: Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (EW3), published in 1891 and The Study of Ethics : A Syllabus (EW4), published in 1894. In the first book, Dewey examined the fundamental notions in ethics: the good, the idea of obligation and the idea of freedom. First he criticized Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian hedonism, a form of hedonistic calculus, which aims at the biggest “pleasure” for the most people. Then he contrasted it with Kant’s “good in the act of will.” Finally he reached a synthesis that ethics are not something added to behavior; ethics are behaviors—meaning that behaviors are good when they coordinate individual aims with the common good. Dewey proposed an “ethical science,” to examine these individual aims in the social historical context for the common good. In the second book, Dewey went further to examine notions such as virtue, love, justice, desire, freedom and responsibility. His ethics is real-life living and acting: “normal and free living of life as it is” (EW4: 221). Dewey’s treatise of ethics brought him recognition from his philosophy peers. Mostly notably, William James sent him a hearty note and George H. Palmer, James’s colleague in Harvard, praised him as “the first man in the country in his subject of ethics” (Martin 2002: 120, 184). Naturally,

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this intellectual support affirmed Dewey’s views and path in ethics, as well as his application of ethics to education. To sum up, Dewey fell in love with education, sharpened his psychology and formulated his ethics in his Michigan years. When psychology is the science of the human mind, ethics is the science of morality. Dewey is critical of morality based on the bible or traditional authority, and proposed an ethics based on modern science. He called it “ethical science” (EW3: 239), with the growth of freedom as a guide to human action in the evolution of democracy. Education, then, is to combine psychology and ethics together, to apply our understanding of the laws of the human mind, for the training of the young mind and for the training of citizenry with democracy and freedom as its core values (The Ethics of Democracy, EW1: 225–249).

Chicago Years in Brief After working in the University of Michigan for almost ten years, Dewey was fed up with the bureaucracy and petty politics there (Martin 2002: 141). In Spring 1894, he was headhunted by William Rainey Harper, President of the University of Chicago, to become the head of the Department of Philosophy. In addition to teaching and research, Dewey, with the support of an ambitious and energetic Harper, planned to start a laboratory school called the University College Elementary School. He was also made the head of the newly established Department of Pedagogy, to manage the laboratory school and to offer teacher training, research and educational experiment for K-12. This promising future did not start well. 1895 was a hellish year for Dewey. In accepting Harper’s offer to move to Chicago, Dewey took advantage of an extra 3-month paid vacation to visit Europe in 1895 with his family. A tragic accident took place in Italy: his son Morris died of diphtheria. The whole family returned to America in June. Despite all the grief, Dewey began his teaching in the University of Chicago, including 6 lectures of Educational Ethics . His paper, Reflex Arc Concept , was published. See more details of the tragedy below. In 1896, we saw the opening of the laboratory school. The Department of Pedagogy sponsored many events and conferences on education, including the 150th anniversary of the birth of Pestalozzi (January 1896) and 100th anniversary of Horace Mann (May 1896). A Pedagogical Club was formed and Dewey regularly attended meetings and presented

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papers (Dykhuizen 1973: 88). In 1896 and 1897, the following important papers were published: Interest in Relation to Training of the Will (1896), A Pedagogical Experiment (1896), The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum (1897), My Pedagogic Creed (1897), Ethical Principles Underlying Education (1897). The laboratory school, soon widely known as Dewey School, brought Dewey fame. Dewey became an international celebrity as some educators from Europe came to learn and get training from his school. He also became a most sought-after speaker which continued throughout his life. 1899 was another significant year for Dewey, this time with psychology. His addresses to the University of California, American Psychological Association and Illinois Society for Child Study later became important published papers. You may wish to refer to Chapter 7 for details. Simultaneously Dewey also gave talks to parents and patrons of Dewey School, which was released as The School and Society. More publications were to follow after the turn to the twentieth century. Of particular significance is The Child and the Curriculum in 1902 and Studies in Logical Theory in 1903, one on education and the other on philosophy. The Child and the Curriculum is a critique of the conventional school curriculum, a set of pre-written subject material which does not take into account of the child’s growing needs. Dewey proposed readjusting the curriculum and pedagogy to match and enrich the child’s experience. Studies in Logical Theory is a collaborative effort of Dewey and his colleagues in the University of Chicago. It is considered a watershed publication with critique of transcendental logic and a reconceptualization of logic as an instrument of inquiry, thus the birth of instrumentalism. During the Chicago years, Dewey’s wife Alice gave birth to three more children, Gordon in 1895, Lucy in 1897 and Jane in 1900.2 More than a housewife, Alice was a working mother and became the principal of Dewey School in 1901, also serving as director of the Department of English and Literature (Mayhew and Edwards 1936: 9). All went well but in 1903 Dewey School underwent merger and restructuring, so that Harper did not intend to renew Mrs. Dewey’s contract in 1904. This led to much indignation of the Deweys and both resigned from the University

2 During the Michigan years, she had given birth to Fred in 1887, Evelyn in 1889 and Morris in 1892.

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of Chicago. Readers may find more about this family as well as public affair below.

The Hellish Beginning I can feel the thrill and anticipation when the Deweys decided to leave Michigan for Chicago. The exciting prospects were: a pay rise, a big city, a pioneering university, and, most exciting of all, the whole family would go to Europe on vacation. In 1894, the Deweys had married for eight years. In their mid-thirties, the young couple had three children; Fred, aged seven; Evelyn, aged five and Morris aged one and a half. The Deweys had always been concerned about the education of their children. In those days, Europe was the center of modern Western culture and the wealthy Americans flocked there to study, to learn European languages and to experience its way of living. The European Trip In negotiating his contract with Harper, Dewey had already been scheduled to teach in the summer and fall semester of 1894 in the University of Chicago, so that he could have a 9-month paid vacation starting January 1895.3 As the family was leaving Ann Arbor in summer 1894, they wanted to start their tour in Europe soon, but it was impossible for the mother alone to take care of two children and one infant in a foreign land. So the family plan was that the mother, Alice, would take the two older children to Europe starting summer 1894, while the father, John, would take care of the infant at home and worked in Chicago. Then John and Morris would set sail to Europe and joined the family in early 1895. This apparently sensible plan took its toll in Dewey, physically, emotionally and psychologically. In July 1894, he landed in Chicago, an unfamiliar place, all by himself with little Morris. He was busy teaching, planning and managing the philosophy department, in addition to his numerous talks and social engagements. While Dewey’s mother Lucina came over to help taking care of Morris for some periods, Dewey himself 3 When Dewey taught in the summer of 1894, it would replace his teaching duties in spring 1895. Together with his paid summer vacation of 1895, it would add up to a period of nine months from January to September 1895.

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was physically involved and strained by the child-rearing duties. The work kept pouring in, and Dewey moaned, “When I think of the lectures I’ve got to give, and the writing I’ve got to finish up…… my hair turns white in a single night” (Martin 2002: 180–181). His overwork had caused him eye strain, which became so serious that he “had to give up all reading for a year” (Martin 2002: 179). Emotionally, his separation from Alice was agonizing. For seven months, they exchanged letters on an average of three times a week. The loving father was also longing for the two other children. In a letter on August 5, John wrote to Alice, “I think yesterday was the bluest day I have ever spent.” It looked like our philosopher was much depressed throughout the summer and fall of 1894. John and Morris But he found comfort by closely attaching to Morris, calling his little angel “the most perfect work of art” (Martin 2002: 160). Our philosopher was a father and a scientist. On the one side, Dewey had so much affection to his son: “he has a genius in language”; he was “distinctly himself”; on the other side, Dewey was a scientist focusing on psychological research on child development and Morris became his subject. The more time he spent with Morris, the closer bonding he built with Morris as he experienced his fatherhood and the psychology of love and attachment. As was planned, John and Morris joined the family in France in January 1895. It was exhilarating: they stayed in Paris for some time while John attended some philosophical lectures at the Sorbonne. Then they traveled to Switzerland, Freiburg, ending in Milan. On the way, the mother, Alice, and two children, Evelyn and Morris caught an epidemic and were admitted to hospital in Milan. When Alice and Evelyn soon got better, Morris deteriorated and suddenly died of “diphtheria” in March 1895. This was probably the hardest blow to both parents, as Dewey’s autobiography reveals: Morris’s death “was a blow from which neither of his parents ever fully recovered” (Dewey 1939: 25). The devastated Deweys returned to America in June 1895. In reconstructing this griefing story, I can feel that Dewey was undergoing the most painful experience of his life. He remarked in a letter, “I believe pain is as much an element in the highest moral experience” (Martin 2002: 183). When our philosopher went through this hellish

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year, he is no more talking about morality and experience but is living through it, in its deepest form. If suffering makes us great, we can find some comfort and meaning in this hellish year of Dewey’s.4

My Pedagogic Creed When Dewey wrote My Pedagogic Creed in 1897, it is a personal statement of his belief in education. One important idea stands out: education is living. So, as a university professor and scholar, how well is Dewey living his life and what are his values in education? I hope the following story can give you some sense. A Principled John and the Moment of Truth “I would rather starve and see my children starve than see John sacrifice his principles,” (Martin 2002: 241). Alice determinedly announced. What are these principles and what is at stake for sacrifice? It was in 1906 and you will soon see the relevance. By then John Dewey had moved from the University of Michigan (1884–1894) to the University of Chicago (1894–1904) and finally ended up in Columbia University (1905–1930). There he was active in public life and social justice, with Alice’s support. In April 1906, a radical Russian writer Maxim Gorky visited America to raise funds for the revolutionary cause in Czarist Russia. He was accompanied by his wife, a famed Russian actress known as Madame Andreieva. As history tells it, progressive Americans used to support overseas revolution by making donation, notably the French (1789), the Chinese (1911), among others. Dewey was in the organizing committee to welcome Gorky, who was scheduled to meet many American celebrities, such as Mark Twain, William Howells and President Roosevelt. In a matter of days, Gorky had already raised US$8000. Then the event turned sour. Rumors circulated that Gorky’s “companion” was not his wife, who was still in Russia with two children. The actress was his mistress! Literally almost everyone turned their back against Gorky. The New York hotels, scandalized by the rumor, threw 4 Readers may be interested to read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Searching for Meaning (1959). Frankl survived the Nazi’s concentration camp and discovered meaning in life after suffering, brutality and despair.

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Gorky and Andreieva out. Not one single hotel dared to accommodate them: flagrant breaches of conventional morality. Where would they stay? Even a White House spokesman announced the President canceling his meeting with Gorky. This became the moment of truth for John and Alice. Would they also desert this revolutionary novelist because of the rumors of conventional immorality? Would they adhere to public opinion or independent thinking? As the story unfolds, they invited Gorky and Andreieva, against all odds, to move into their residence in Columbia, followed by a private party where Andreieva spoke to a group of progressive American women. Interested readers can get more details from The Education of John Dewey (Martin 2002: 238–242) and research into the incident. Freedom and Democracy The principle involved is the freedom of speech, freedom of expression, academic freedom, in short, free thinking and acting. This freedom is essential to the inner working of a democratic society that Dewey believed and cherished. What is at stake is John Dewey’s new job at Columbia. University management, with its religious and theological past, generally took the conservative stand on morality. Peirce was allegedly fired from Johns Hopkins in 1884 because of cohabitation with another woman other than his wife, an act of “moral indecency.5 ” When John Dewey housed Gorky and Andreieva, he was risking his job. This finally brings to my point: ethics, or morality, is the cornerstone of John Dewey’s ideas in education. For Dewey, morality is not only for theorizing but for practice. The couple had a strong sense of morality and was critical of conventional morality. Even in his Michigan years, John Dewey was lecturing and publishing on ethics. How we organize our school system, how to conduct moral training for children and for the betterment of our society, was a recurrent theme in Dewey’s ideas on education. The concern of ethics was deep-rooted in his Michigan years; it developed throughout his academic writings and showed up in all his life and action. In conclusion, Dewey’s educational ideas were traceable to his Michigan years. With a gestation period of ten years based on psychology

5 For a biography on Peirce, please refer to Burch (2014).

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and ethics, Dewey finally began to spell them out when he moved to Chicago in 1894. The Growth of Dewey’s My Pedagogic Creed (1897) I try to chart the growth of My Pedagogic Creed (1897) in two routes. In psychology Dewey published The New Psychology (1884), Psychology (1887), followed by a study on The Psychology of Infant Language (1893), among others. Also noteworthy is The Theory of Emotion (1894). In ethics, Dewey published two books, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (1891) and The Study of Ethics : A Syllabus (1893). All these took place in Michigan. When Dewey moved to Chicago, he taught many classes; of our relevance is Educational Ethics , a course of 6 lectures given in 1895 and Educational Psychology, a course of 12 lectures given in 1896. At about the same time, Dewey published Interest in Relation to Training of the Will in the National Herbartian Society Yearbook of 1895, which built his connection between education and psychology. All the above merged into My Pedagogic Creed (January 1897) with two more important papers published in 1897, one in psychology, The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum (April 1897) and another one in ethics, Ethical Principles Underlying Education (1897). You may go to Chapter 9 for an exposition and review of those ideas (Fig. 8.1).

Dewey’s Life World In his Michigan years, Dewey was a budding scholar and he soon succeeded in establishing himself as a top philosopher-psychologist in America. In his Chicago years, he became the leader of American philosophy and a national figure in education. During his Chicago years, Dewey grew from mid-thirties to mid-forties. His family grew from three children to five and he remained married to Alice (he remained so all through his life until Alice’s death in 1927). The family lived in the university campus and moved a few times from small apartments to bigger ones as Dewey’s salary increased. He was a busy department head, traveled much and gave numerous talks. Below I try to briefly depict his life world; the social world, the organizational and personal life world.

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The New Psychology (1884) EW1: 48-60

1894

Psychology (1887) EW2: 3-366

Outlines of a CriƟcal Theory of Ethics (1891) EW3: 239-390

Theory of EmoƟon (1894) EW4: 152-188

1895

Psychology of Infant Language (1893)

The Study of Ethics: A Syllabus (1893)

EW4: 66-69

EW4: 221-364

Interest in RelaƟon to Training of the

EducaƟonal Ethics – 6 Lectures (1895) EW5: 292-301

Will (1896) EW5: 111-150 (Second Supplement to Yearbook 1895,

1896

NaƟonal HerbarƟan Society)

A Pedagogical Experiment (1896) EW5: 244-246

EducaƟonal Psychology – 12 Lectures (1896) EW5: 304-327

Ethical Principles Underlying

1897

The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum (4/97) EW5: 164-176

My Pedagogic Creed (1/97) EW4: 84-95

EducaƟon (1897) EW5: 54-83 NaƟonal HerbarƟan Society, Third Yearbook (1897)

Fig. 8.1 How Dewey’s ideas grew into My Pedagogic Creed (1897)

Social World: Proletarian Revolution or Social Reform? When Karl Marx (1818–1883) prophesied the proletarian revolution in Continental Europe in 1848, it did not bring immediate success. However, the ripples spread throughout the world and lasted for decades,

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even centuries. It landed on the American soil about 50 years later, when this new world underwent industrialization, where big cities became the battleground between the proletariat and the capitalists. In 1894, Dewey found himself in Chicago, one of these cities. America was in rapid change in the final decades of the nineteenth century. The industrial revolution spread from Europe to America: steam engine, steamships, railroads, mechanized and mass production, oil drilling, mining; all these conquered rural America, turning small towns into big urban cities and creating factories, office buildings, and ghettos. It was the heyday of technology and invention, of entrepreneurship and frontier spirit; huge corporations began to take shape, big finance houses started to flourish. So were social ills. When Dewey arrived in Chicago, he observed, “This place is the greatest stew house on earth” (Martin 2002: 158). He was right. Chicago had just hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition (World’s Fair) in 1893 to commemorate Columbus’ voyage of 1492.6 With its tall modern concrete and steel buildings signifying progress of science and technology and the riches of modern capitalism, Chicago quickly rose to become a world class city. But beneath it were social ills and intense social conflict: urban poverty, exploitation of workers, child labor, industrial strikes, unemployment army, prostitution and government corruption. The widespread Pullman Railroad Workers’ Strike of 1894 awakened Dewey. Before he landed on his job in the University of Chicago, Dewey visited the strikers on their National Day strike and supported their causes with admiration. He had even thought of quitting his job to join the revolution: “I felt as if I had better resign my job teaching and follow him round till I got into life” (Martin 2002: 161). However, Dewey started teaching his summer class in the University of Chicago and did not join the revolution. What he took was a path of social reform, and he did so by teaching in the famed Hull House, a settlement house for the unemployed and new immigrants in Chicago, started by Jane Addams, who was later honored as the “mother of social work,” plus a Nobel Peace Prize of 1931.7 Addams’s positive actions and commitment won Dewey’s admiration, who now saw the possibility of social reform through democracy without antagonism and revolution. Education is now seen as the tool

6 See Lawson (2003) for a comprehensive account. 7 For the life of Addams, see Berson (2004), Davis (1973).

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to achieve social reform, equity and justice. This explains why Dewey, in giving his final word on education, in Democracy and Education (1916) and Experience and Education (1938), puts freedom, democracy and social reform in the forefront. Organizational World—The “Michigan Gang” In September 1894, Dewey became the head of Department of Philosophy. Soon joined the department was his former colleague in Michigan, James Tufts, who later co-authored with him on Ethics (1908). In philosophy, he invited George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), his Michigan colleague to join him. In psychology, Dewey had another former student from Michigan, James R. Angell, who had just returned from the University of Berlin in Europe. He was recruited to teach psychology. Thus the old “Michigan Gang” met again in the new Chicago department and worked together, teaching, talking and collaborating on their philosophy, psychology and sociological ideas. Judged from age and position, Dewey is the big brother leading a team of aspiring young scholars. Of course Dewey had a boss, President Harper, who had a strong ambition to put his department of philosophy on the map of American universities. Harper was an energetic visionary and had a keen interest in education. When Dewey suggested in November 1894 the idea of a laboratory school for research and experiments in early childhood education, Harper responded with eagerness and proposed to establish a new, separate department of pedagogy for teacher training, research and experiments in pedagogy as well as a laboratory school. Soon Dewey was put in charge of the new department of pedagogy. Being the head of two departments and making plans for a new laboratory school, there was no doubt Dewey was already working under stress in the very beginning of his Chicago years. Apart from the University of Chicago, Dewey had other public and organizational engagements. The most important is the Hull House of Jane Addams. He admired the high ideals of Addams in social justice and social reform, seeing her as “the most magnificent exhibition of intellectual and moral faith I ever saw” (Martin, 2002: 167). Dewey gave lectures on social psychology there and later became a trustee of the Hull House. As a tribute to Addams, Dewey named his last child, born in 1900, Jane. To push ahead his work in education and pedagogy, Dewey proactively expanded his organization network. He visited Colonel Francis Parker, a

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leading figure in American education and gave talks in Parker’s teacher training school. Dewey also gave talks to National Herbartian Society, the Illinois Society for Child Study, among others. The Personal World—Family, Friends and Personal Ambition Dewey wore many hats: a famed scholar, a department head, a father of five children and a husband. When he was the big brother in his department, he was also like a big brother in his family, which was quite liberal in child-rearing practices. The family was noisy but happy, and children would roam around or climbed his lap when he was working. It appeared the family slowly got over Morris’s death with the arrival of Gordon in late 1895. All along Dewey worked hard to earn more for the family, for a bigger home, for the increasing family expenditure and for a better education of his children. Dewey’s personal and family friends in his Chicago years were mostly his colleagues in the Department of Philosophy, including the Meads, Tufts, Moores, Angells and Smalls (Dykhuizen 1973: 106). Mrs. Helen Mead, who was particularly close to Mrs. Alice Dewey, had connection in Hawaii, so that Dewey went there to preach his education gospel in summer 1899. Mrs. Helen Mead came from Hawaii’s prominent business family, which wanted a “Parker-Dewey” type kindergarten and elementary school in Hawaii. They invited Dewey to give talks and training there through the University of Hawaii’s Extension Division. Dewey’s presence in summer 1899 was greeted as a “Great High Priest” (Martin 2002: 202–203). The Deweys were also close to Jane Addams, who arranged a memorial service at Hull House for Gordon’s death. When Dewey went to church in Michigan, he abandoned Christianity and stopped going to church altogether in Chicago. Yet he kept his religious faith and experiences. For Dewey, religious experience provides aspirations to values and the realization of values in social life. God is to denote the unity of the ideal and the actual. Simply put, Dewey believes in man, humanity, the experience of community and friendship, in short, love. He kept his religious faith for the rest of his life, an outline of which can be found in A Common Faith (1934). As a pioneer and leader in philosophy, psychology and education, Dewey had his personal motives and ambitions. In philosophy, his ambition was to create America’s own philosophy. He noted that Tufts, Mead and Angell all studied in Europe and had brought back the best to

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America, so that the University of Chicago could be the center of the philosophy in America; students could come to Chicago to study philosophy. He once remarked, “…… going to Germany to study philosophy is, objectively viewed, the most ridiculous joke conceivable — when a man can come to Chicago” (Quoted from Martin 2002: 143). In fact, he succeeded in creating the Chicago School of Philosophy within a decade. Dewey’s another ambition was to lead in pedagogy. He saw it as a golden opportunity for the University of Chicago to excel because the field was a virgin land. “I…… firmly and honestly believe that Chicago is the most ripe place in America for undertaking this work” (Martin 2002: 178). With the setting up of the laboratory school, Dewey’s ambition was slowly realized as many educators in America and Europe came to his school to learn and for exchange. Soon, Dewey and Chicago was leading in pedagogy until his sudden departure in 1904. Finally in education, Dewey’s motive is social justice and reform. Education is for living, and living in freedom and in a just and democratic society is Dewey’s personal goal. Education is the means to achieve this goal. He spelt out many of his education ideas during his Chicago years, notably in The School and Society (1899) and The Child and the Curriculum (1902). His ideas and ambition had inspired the movement of progressive education that changed the landscape of American education.

The Unhappy Ending The Resignation Puzzle At age 45, Dewey was steadily advancing to the top of his academic career. He was one of the shining stars at the University of Chicago. Then without any early sign or indication, this eminent scholar tendered his resignation to President Harper in April 1904. This was a surprising move that had affected the Dewey School he founded and the trajectory of his future career. What happened? Why was he leaving? What politics and challenges did he face? Or, had he got another job offer? May I share my investigation below with you. Here is the background. Dewey had been doing so well and achieved so much in the past nine years. He was the head of two departments. He kept giving talks, writing and publishing, the latest being Studies in Logical Theory (1903). With that he established the “Chicago School” of

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philosophic thought. In psychology, he was seen as the founder of functional psychology and honored as the president of American Psychological Association (1900). In education, the Dewey School that he founded in 1896 had bought him fame. While the school was in red, there were lots of social support as well as financial support from trustees. Dewey’s work and duties kept expanding. By then, he had got used to administrative duties. With the sudden death of his education comrade, Colonel Francis Parker, in 1902, Dewey was further put in charge of the Chicago Institute, renamed as the School of Education of the University of Chicago. By 1903, Dewey was in charge of four schools. In addition to John’s hefty extra remuneration, Alice also became the paid principal of Dewey School in 1901. The couple was an enviable high flyer in the University of Chicago. Why did he suddenly quit, even against Harper’s repeated begging?8 A Reconstruction—A Chronology of Major Events Leading to Dewey’s Resignation Pearl Hunter, Dewey’s secretary, once remarked, “Mr. Dewey left Chicago because of [the president’s]…… mistreatment of Mrs. Dewey” (quoted from Martin 2002: 213–214). How was Mrs. Dewey mistreated by the president? How was she related to her husband’s resignation? Let me offer a chronology.9 Plausible Reasons Such is the chronology of events and circumstances. Readers would easily infer that John, in support of his wife Alice, resigned as a protest against the University of Chicago when President Harper refused to renew Alice’s contract as principal. However, Dewey violently objected to this accusation; he was dissatisfied with President Harper’s management for many instances, but not exactly for the contract with his wife. Wrote Dewey to Harper after the resignation: 8 That Harper begged Dewey to stay is without doubt. See Martin (2002: 210–213), Dykhuizen (1973: 112–115). 9 My chronology was based on secondary sources: Martin (2002), Dykhuizen (1973), and Mayhew and Edwards (1936). It is a good research attempt for you to dig deeper in Dewey’s archive (Table 8.1).

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Table 8.1

Chronology of Dewey’s resignation from University of Chicago

Year

Month

1894

November

1896

January

1897–1900

/

1899

/

1901

/

1902

March May

September

Dewey proposed to Harper to establish a laboratory school. Harper responded by creating a separate Department of Pedagogy to run teacher training, research and a laboratory school. Harper further suggested that Mrs. Dewey could run it (Martin 2002: 207) The University College Elementary School (UCES) opens; later known as Dewey School Dewey’s fame in education grew. He felt the stress in his administrative work in the University of Chicago; he was busy writing memos, selling his projects and soliciting funds from trustees International Harvester Company, through its heir Mrs. Emmons Blaine, donated one million dollars to found Chicago Institute to implement Colonel Francis Parker’s ideas on progressive education and teacher training: (1) Chicago Institute, with its kindergarten and elementary practice school (Parker School), was incorporated into the University of Chicago as its School of Education. Parker was appointed director and his associate Wilbur Jackman appointed Dean of the School (2) The Department of Pedagogy under Dewey changed its name to Department of Education (3) With further acquisition of South Side Academy and Chicago Manual Training School, the University of Chicago expanded its teacher education and Harper appointed Dewey to be supervisor of the two secondary schools. Dewey’s duties increased further (4) Dewey appointed Alice as principal of UCES. The trustees approved it as a one-year contract Parker’s health deteriorated and suddenly died Dewey was nominated by Chicago Institute and endorsed by the University of Chicago to be the new head of School of Education. He now oversaw two departments, managed a school of education and supervised four schools. Jackman remained the Dean The University administration intended to merge Dewey School and Parker School to avoid redundancy, but parents of Dewey School and prominent educators of the community opposed to it. They wanted an independent stand-alone Dewey School. Consequently the University administration accepted it reluctantly but would review it on a year-to-year basis

(continued)

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Table 8.1 Year

CHICAGO YEARS, MY PEDAGOGIC CREED AND RESIGNATION

(continued) Month

1902–1903 1903

1904

191

February

March April 5 April 6 April 11 Late April May 2

In academic 1902–1903, it was decided that the merger would take place in Fall 1903 More consolidation was carried out: (1) The Department of Education was abolished; its work was transferred to School of Education (undergraduates) and Department of Philosophy (graduates) (2) Chicago Manual Training School and South Side Academy merged to become Secondary School of the School of Education (3) Alice became the principal of the merged elementary school for a one-year contract. There were conflicts between the Dewey School clique and the Parker School clique (4) Jackman wrote to Harper about the problem of School of Education and the UCES. Some teachers threatened to resign Harper advised Dewey that Alice’s contract was for one year only. Wrote Harper, “It was against the university hiring policy for ‘the employment of the wife of a professor in an administrative or definite position in the university” (Martin 2002: 208) Alice Dewy met Harper face-to-face but did not resolve the issue Alice Dewey resigned from the principalship of UCES John Dewey resigned from the directorship of School of Education John Dewey resigned from the post of Department Head of Philosophy News of Dewey’s resignation began to spread The University of Chicago trustees accepted Dewey’s resignation

In presenting my resignation to the Board of Trustees, and in recommending its acceptance, I request you to make it clear to the Board that the question of the alleged failure to reappoint Mrs. Dewey as Principal of the Elementary School is in no sense the cause of my resignation, and that this question had never been discussed between us till after our resignations were in your hands. Your willingness to embarrass and hamper my work as Director by making use of the fact that Mrs. Dewey was Principal is but one incident in the history of years. (Quoted from Martin 2002: 214)

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So what are “the history of years” of Harper hampering Dewey’s work? Whatever they were, there must be numerous. But most important of all, his biographer summarized Dewey’s feelings at the moment of resignation: “To his surprise, he realized that as soon as he had decided, he felt tremendous relief, not anger at Harper” (Martin 2002: 209). Why was Dewey relieved and what was wrong with his relationship with Harper? Let me try to give some plausible reasons. Dewey Overworked Probably Dewey had very much over-stretched himself in the past nine years, from one department to two departments, from one school to four schools, plus the newly created School of Education. He was constantly under tremendous stress, from holding meetings, giving talks, writing memos, traveling, to writing academic papers, meeting parents, planning and selling his projects and ideas. In 1902 when Parker died and Dewey took up the post of director of School of Education, he was already the most renowned educationalist in America. He took up the job mainly to perpetuate Parker’s vision, not to enhance his personal career or ambition. But he was displeased with the interference of his boss President Harper. Disgruntled Dewey wrote to his mentor W. T. Harris shortly after he made his decision to resign: ……with which I will not trouble you. But the gist of it is simply that I found I could not work harmoniously under the conditions which the President’s methods of conducting affairs created and imposed. So it seemed to be due both him and myself that I should transfer my activities elsewhere. I resigned, however, without having anything in view. (Quoted from Dykhuizen 1973: 114)

Harris was shocked, but he gave a sober, objective observation: How could President Harper possibly let Dewey go? It must be his own decision, responded Harris: I am of course very much astonished. I do not think it possible that the President of Chicago University can be persuaded to accept your resignation, but if you force it on him by accepting another call he cannot help himself. (Quoted from Dykhuizen 1973: 115).

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As I dig deeper, I believe that the underlying causes are that Dewey had overworked and had long-time discontent with Harper’s management style: bureaucratic, pushy and demanding achievement and sacrifice. Dewey must have been tired with his work and fed-up with the demands from Harper that his resignation brought him immediate relief. “Mistreatment of Mrs. Dewey” Now back to Hunter’s accusation: “Mr. Dewey left Chicago because of [the president’s]…… mistreatment of Mrs. Dewey” (Martin 2002: 213– 214). This prevailing view was stated in the general history of the Dewey School: …… certain members of the administrative staff of the elementary school would be eliminated at the close of the first year after the merger. Mr. Dewey had been entirely ignorant of these assurances, found himself unable to accept them and resigned……. (Mayhew and Edwards 1936: 17–18)

This reason is valid only in that it is the last straw that breaks the camel. When Alice’s contract of principalship was not renewed in April 1904, it merely served as a trigger point in the ongoing conflict and politics in the School of Education. Shortly after Dewey was made director of the School in 1902, he was having fights with the incumbent Dean Jackman, who later wrote to Harper and complained against Dewey: • Dewey rarely consulted his dean; • He took little personal interest in the students in the School of Education; • He was rarely present in parents’ meeting; • He did not call enough faculty meetings; • He had no plans to consolidate the two schools. Jackman further demanded that there should be “no dismissal of teachers” and “principalship should not be ‘a family affair’” (Dykhuizen 1973: 111–112).10 There was accusation that the strong-headed Alice was ready to dismiss teachers she found incompetent.

10 Dewey School was jokingly called “Mr. and Mrs. Dewey School” by some faculties in the School of Education.

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It was under these circumstances that Harper tactfully suggested to Dewey that Alice leave when her one-year contract of 1903–1904 ended. Harper saw it as straightening out administrative issues but Dewey took it an issue of injustice. He knew Alice had put extra effort and sacrificed much to serve as the principal of Dewey School but which was not appreciated nor trusted. In fact he felt disappointed and betrayed when teachers did not speak candidly about his wife’s appointment. Reported Blaine on her interview with Dewey in late April 1904: I said to him [Dewey] that the Trustees had not felt at liberty to bring to him the facts of the disagreement with the plan [to appoint Mrs. Dewey principal], on the part of the teachers…… Mr. Dewey was greatly surprised at the opposition of Miss [Zonia] Baber and Miss [Emily] Rice [teachers, respectively, of geography and history and literature-]. His main feeling in this interview was the injustice which he felt had been done him by not having their position made known to him before on the question of the Principalship…… (Quoted from Martin 2002: 212)

Review at a Distance A century has passed and Dewey’s bitter resignation became part of his life history. I hope to be at a distance to understand it, not to pass judgment. As my chronology reveals, Parker’s death and Dewey’s increasing role in the School of Education paved way for his final departure. As always, university politics is fierce, and merger and acquisition bring causalities as rival cliques jockey for positions and avoid redundancy. Seen in this way, Alice is just one of the causalities. Complex Motives Converged I hope to have shown the complex motives behind the incident. Dewey was fed up with the politics and stress from Harper that quitting would give him relief. Harper, on the other hand, wanted Dewey to stay badly that he kept pushing, which led to Dewey’s complete resignation from the University of Chicago. Alice was “a woman of extraordinary dignity” (Harper’s words) and could not be compromised. Mrs. Blaine wanted to save the situation but she brought disappointment and a sense of betrayal to Dewey. Jackman was a bureaucrat from the former Chicago Institute and wanted to protect his interests and his former colleagues. Their

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motives converged into a picture of social relationship, the result of which was Dewey and his wife’s departure from the University of Chicago. Dewey’s Leadership Dewey’s resignation calls into question his leadership. It can be seen that Dewey was a successful leader in his academic departments but not so in the School of Education. In the departments, he had good teamwork with his colleagues and close relationship with his students. He was the big brother who practiced participatory democracy. He motivated his colleagues and students, with ideas and vision, fostering a research environment for the creation of Chicago school of philosophic thought and functional psychology. In the newly created School of Education, however, he was unable to exert his influence: he was too busy. For the four elementary and secondary schools under him, he had a good start with UCES in 1896 which he could look after for a few years, but then he had limited time and control of the other schools. Especially after the merger, personnels of Dewey School and Parker School were in conflict and he was unable to resolve them. Participatory democracy, which Dewey practiced successfully in his departments, did not seem to work there. He was in constant disagreement with his dean. He wanted an open and democratic discussion in the appointment process of the principal, but the persons he consulted, Ms. Baber and Ms. Rice, did not speak out their objection. Dewey was disillusioned with a sense of betrayal and injustice. His poor leadership in the School of Education was attributed either to his lack of time or to his lack of personnel management skills. A candid and sincere Dewey is not a shrewd human resources director. Ethical Principles Dewey’s resignation can be seen as an ethical decision too. He holds his virtues and principles high—personal integrity, participatory democracy and justice. He found it unjust that his wife’s contract was not renewed for objections that he was kept in the dark. On the personal side, Alice had worked hard and sacrificed so much to the school but was treated with suspicion in the merged school. She even became a scapegoat when some teachers threatened to resign and actually did. To uphold his principles and to support his wife, he found it necessary to resign. In this sense, Dewey the philosopher is a man of his own ethical principles.

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Further Readings Dewey School The University College Elementary School (Dewey School) that Dewey founded in 1896 ended and changed name when the Deweys left Chicago in 1904, but it had left immeasurable legacy and inspiration to education up to today. You may wish to dig deeper through the following books and papers: 1. Mayhew, K. C., & Edwards, A. C. (1936). The Dewey School. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. When Alice Dewey left UCES (Dewey School) in 1904, she took a lot of records and papers with her. She had all the intention of writing the school’s history but it was never materialized because of her ill-health. Upon her death in 1927, John Dewey requested Katherine Camp Mayhew and Anna Camp Edwards, Alice’s close associates in UCES, to finish the work, which was published in 1936. Mayhew was the vice-principal and Edwards was a history teacher in UCES. They documented the curriculum and practices of the school from its inception in 1896 to its end in 1903, plus personnel, organization and evaluation. Dewey wrote a short introduction and contributed a paper to it, entitled The Theory of the Chicago Experiment. It is the official and authoritative account of Dewey School. 2. Lageman, E. C. (1996). Experimenting with Education: John Dewey and Ella Flagg Young at the University of Chicago. American Journal of Education, 104, 171–185. Ella Flagg Young (1845–1918) was a pioneer American educator who later studied under John Dewey and earned her PhD in 1900. She joined the Department of Philosophy and Pedagogy in University of Chicago in 1899 and was appointed supervisor of instruction of UCES. During the years that followed, Young was one of the major leaders in Dewey School and advised Dewey on school administration and curriculum matters. This paper examined how the two worked together in those pioneering years. 3. Tanner, L. N. (1997). Dewey’s Laboratory School: Lessons for Today. New York: Teachers College Press.

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The author is a professor of education and curriculum studies. She reviewed Dewey School nearly a century later and drew lessons from it: the ideal, the school as a social community, a developing curriculum, its administration and approach to discipline. No doubt Dewey School helps keeping Dewey’s vision and practices alive. 4. Durst, A. (2010). Women Educators in the Progressive Era: The Women behind Dewey’s Laboratory School. New York, NY: Palgrave. The author dug into the archives for personal papers of four Dewey School teachers—Anna Camp, Katherine Camp, Althea Harmer and Mary Hill—and reconstructed the story. She took us into the classrooms, the teachers’ meetings and showed how the school operated in innovation, vision, trial and error and communal responsibilities. Note that two teachers, Anna and Katherine, were authors of The Dewey School (1936). 5. Knoll, M. (2014). Dewey as Administrator: The Inglorious End of the Laboratory School in Chicago. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47 (2), 203–252. Knoll, M. (2016). John Dewey’s Laboratory School: Theory Versus Practice, Catholic University Eichstaett, Germany, ISCHE Conference. The author, a German educator, examined the sudden ending of UCES and found Alice Dewey an incompetent principal and John Dewey a poor administrator. By reconstructing the historical details of the Dewey-Harper conflict and the bitter politics subsequent to the merger in 1901, the author reached the same conclusion I did independently on the plausible reasons of Dewey’s resignation.

References Berson, R. K. (2004). Jane Addams: A Biography. California: Greenwood. Burch, R. (2014). Charles Sanders Peirce. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter). Davis, A. F. (1973). American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dewey, J. (1939). Biography of John Dewey. In P. A. Schilp (Ed.), The Philosophy of John Dewey (p. 10). New York: Tudor Publishing Company. Dykhuizen, G. (1973). The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

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Lawson, E. (2003). The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. New York: Vintage Books. Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press. Mayhew, K. C., & Edwards, A. C. (1936). The Dewey School. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

CHAPTER 9

Educational Writings in Chicago Years

Introduction In Chapter 8, I offered an outline of John Dewey’s Chicago years, focusing on facts, events and some of his personal feelings. I did not go deep into his ideas, albeit my brief outline of the genesis of My Pedagogic Creed (1897). In this Chapter, I will discuss Dewey’s educational writings one by one. It starts from Interest in Relation to Training of the Will (1896), moving into Ethical Principles Underlying Education (1897),The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum(1897), and My Pedagogic Creed (1897), finally ending in The School and Society (1899) and The Child and the Curriculum (1902). For each piece of writing, I will give an overview, identify the intellectual origins, examine Dewey’s key concepts and web of ideas, and finally offer a present-day review and evaluation. In the process, I make extensive direct quotes to help readers follow through Dewey’s obscure ideas.

Interest in Relation to Training of the Will Change of Terms Over Time Interest in Relation to Training of the Will is Dewey’s first debut in education. It is his first theoretical treatise of applying psychology to education, which appeared in National Herbart society, second supplement to the Herbart year book for 1895, in 1896. Readers today may be puzzled with © The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_9

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title and find it hard to understand what “training of the will” meant a hundred years ago. Here is the history. In 1859, Alexander Bain published The Emotions and The Will, in which emotion is abroad concept to include feelings, perception and interpreted sensations. For him, will means more than willpower; it includes internal psychological state for action. By 1890s, one major component of emotion—interest—was extensively discussed to contrast with effort, or self-discipline. The concepts continue to evolve; today we use the term curiosity and persistence or motivation instead. In the late nineteenth century, it is customary to speak of training, a rather didactic term. Later it was replaced with “education” or “nurturance” when we talk about young children. So you may substitute “training” with “nurturance” and “will” with “effort” and the phrase “nurturance of children’s effort” can convey a more or less similar meaning of today. Throughout the article, Dewey uses the term “effort” much more often than “will.” The Controversy Between Interest and Effort The issue of interest and effort had been a controversy in education. Here Dewey tries to contrast interest with effort and brings into light the controversy in the principles of teaching: should we focus on nurturing children’s interest or nurturing children’s effort, later termed self-discipline in learning? Dewey presents the views of both sides, like a court case of “plaintiff and defendant” (EW5: 114) and after along deliberation in psychology, rules that the two sides are not really contradictory but are the two opposing ends of an action of a unitary human organism. Dewey brings in the concept of action, self, self-expression in support of interest, and in the process the learner “assimilates material to reach its end, does not find it necessary to oppose interest to effort” (EW5: 121). In Dewey’s words, ……Genuine interest in education is the accompaniment of the identification, through action, of the self with some object or idea, because of the necessity of that object or idea for the maintenance of self-expression. Effort, in the sense in which it may be opposed to interest, implies a separation between the self and the fact to be mastered or task to be performed, and sets up an habitual division of activities…… But when we recognize there are certain powers within the child urgent for development, needing

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to be acted upon, in order to secure their own due efficiency and discipline, we have a firm basis upon which to build. Effort arises normally in the attempt to give full operation, and thus growth and completion, to these powers…… (EW5: 121)

Dewey’s Psychology of Interest In Dewey’s descriptive account of interest, it has three characteristics: first, it is active and dynamic; second, it is objective with an end, an aim and an objective; third, it is subjective, for its internal realization, feeling and emotion. Accordingly, interest is the instrument for “organic union” between the subject (the child) and the object (the toy, for example). Dewey further elaborates by the three phases of interest: Active phase—“Impulse and the spontaneous urgencies or tendencies” discharge and act. Spontaneous impulse is “the basis for natural interest.” When it is excited to act, it is active, not passive. Objective phase—Impulse or interest needs an object to bring it to consciousness. For example, canvas, brushes and paint help to realize an artist’s existing artistic capacity. The object gives impulse content to realize itself. Emotional phase—The subjective value of feeling of its worth. When the activity is felt valuable and worthwhile, it will continue. To summarize, interest is “a form of self-expressive activity.” It is “self finds itself,” “reflecting itself in felt value”: An interest is primarily a form of self-expressive activity—that is, of growth through acting upon nascent tendencies. If we examine this activity on the side of the content of expression, of what is done, we get its objective features, the ideas, objects, etc., to which the interest is attached, about which it clusters. If we take into account that it is self-expression, that self finds itself, is reflected back to itself, in this content, we get its emotional or feeling side. Any account of genuine interest must, therefore, grasp it as outgoing activity holding within its grasp an intellectual content, and reflecting itself in felt value. (EW5: 125)

Up to now, it is clear to me that Dewey applies Hegelian ideas of subjectivity—objectivity—unity—spontaneity into psychological

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concepts, sharpening and reorganizing them into a system: interest, impulse, self, effort, pleasure, emotion, will. As before, his philosophical analysis of concepts clarify the issues, but there is no psychological research, experiment or evidence, only the employing of some psychological concepts such as memory, mental imagery, divided attention, external situation. His theory of interest and will is based on German philosophy operating on the prevailing elusive psychological concepts. While his whole theory makes good sense, it is hard to put to scientific verification. The Core Concept: Self-Expression At this point, readers may be bewildered with a new concept, selfexpression, which defines interest. So what does self-expression mean to Dewey? Read the following quotes: Self-expression in which the psychical energy assimilates material because of the recognized value of this material in aiding the self to reach its end, does not find it necessary to oppose interest to effort. Effort is the result of interest, and indicates the persistent outgo of activities in attaining an end felt as valuable; while interest is the consciousness of the value of this end, and of the means necessary to realize it. (Archambault 1964: 269)1

In Dewey’s words, self-expression may mean a child “to be himself” (Archambault 1964: 265). A child has “his demand for self-expression,” which “cannot by any possibility be suppressed” (EW5: 119). In self-expression, “the psychical energy assimilates material because of the recognized value of this material in aiding the self to reach its end.” Self-expression may mean the natural tendency of the child, her self-progression to growth and development. It has some similarities with Piagetian assimilation and accommodation. Self-expression is selfassimilating material to reach its end—but what is the end? Dewey does not say explicitly and in general terms what it is. My guess is that, it is survival, stability, physical and mental growth to maturity. 1 In quoting Interest in Relation to Training of the Will , I use Dewey’s Collected Works

as much as I can, but they do not always match with Archambault’s (1964) John Dewey on Education, Selected Writings based on National Herbart Society Third Yearbook, 1897. It is likely there is some minor re-editing by Dewey himself. When I cannot locate the quotes from the Collected Works, I will resort to quoting Archambault. On the whole, all quotes and ideas form a consistent picture of Dewey’s thoughts.

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Self-Expression Directs Interest: A Diagrammatic Presentation Dewey employs numerous terms to explain self-expression: immediate interest, mediate interest, pleasure, emotion, volition, effort. He even states that “Both desire and effort are phases of self- expression” (Archambault 1964: 276). These in fact are elaboration of the objective and the subjective phases of interest mentioned earlier: At this point, it is necessary to distinguish two typical phases into which the one activity of self-expression, at the basis of all interest, differentiates itself, as this differentiation gives us also two types of interest. These two types of self- expression arise according as the end and means of expression do, or do not, coincide in time. In the former case we have immediate interest, in the latter mediate. It is all important to carry our analysis over into an examination of these points, because it is in the matter of mediate interest that the one-sided theories arise, which, on one side (isolating the emotional phase), identify pleasure with interest; or, on the other (isolating the intellectual or ideal phase), deny interest and identify volition with effort. (Archambault 1964: 272)

I have painstakingly tried to clarify what Dewey means by Fig. 9.1. The Process: From Interest to Effort (Will) A child possesses inner capacity and impulse, which propels him from a state of tension to future satisfaction. The impulse (interest) of action gives pleasure. It grows with a desire to move from existing situation to the ideal situation. It continues with a struggle for completion, which is will (effort). For Dewey, emotion is agitation and disturbance, leading to tension (EW5: 131). He thus brings in functional analysis of emotion; how emotion creates tension and stirs up the organism to cope with novel situations. In Dewey’s words, The result is tension between habit and aim, between impulse and idea, between means and end. This tension is the essential feature of emotion…… It is obvious from this account that the function of emotion is to secure a sufficient arousing of energy in critical periods of the life of the agent…… The function of emotion is thus to brace or reinforce the agent in coping with the novel element in unexpected and immediate situations. (EW5: 131)

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Fig. 9.1 Dewey’s self-expression and interest

Desire is impulse made conscious for an end. It is pleasurable as it brings into consciousness the end of self-expression. In Dewey’s words, When the agent is in the condition known as desire, he is conscious of some object ahead of him, and the consciousness of this object serves to reinforce his active tendencies. The thought of the desired object serves, in a word, to stimulate the means necessary to its attainment. (EW5: 131– 132). There can be no doubt that desire is always more or less pleasurable. It is pleasurable in so far as the end of self-expression is present in consciousness. For the end defines satisfaction, and any conception of it awakens, therefore, an image of satisfaction, which, so far as it goes, is itself pleasurable. (EW5: 132–133)

Review and Evaluation Readers familiar with Dewey’s Psychology (1887) will not find it too difficult to understand Interest in Relation to Training of the Will . When

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he elaborates on emotion, readers are drawn to his earlier Theory of Emotion (1894) where Dewey argues that action comes before emotion and that “emotional excitement is the felt process of realization of ideas” (EW4: 172). In that paper, Dewey has already made a distinction between interest and effort. Two years later, in 1896, Dewey moved to elaborate interest further for education. Interest-Arousal Theory Dewey’s theory of interest and effort can be seen as the precursor of an interest-arousal-tension-reduction theory later developed into Clark Hull’s (1884–1952) theory of learning. It has a subjective and active part that a child’s attention is drawn and interest is aroused. Then it has again another subjective and internal part urging for tension reduction. It is the prevalent paradigm of emotion and consciousness based on Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Dewey’s theory can be seen as an elaboration of this paradigm. Dewey is in support of this interest-arousal-tension-reduction theory because he has trust in man and consciousness. He believes that men are not savage animals but with consciousness and then conscience. He sees desire and volition positively. At the same time, he is against pleasurepain theory of conduct (against utilitarianism). His psychological theory of action hopes to support a self-expression theory of conduct. Description vs. Prescription Now I will challenge John Dewey on confusing a theory of fact with a statement of prescription. First he theorizes how impulse and desire work, with interest as representing “emotional force aroused” for functioning. This is his “arousal theory.” Then he suggests controlling desire to be “calmed and studied,” which is “interest in the end” (Archambault 1964: 280). But this is a prescription, not a description of the state of affair. Dewey gives the example of a young hunter too eager to shoot while an experienced hunter keeps his interest “to accomplish his purpose,” one acting with impulse and the other with interest (ibid.: 281). Throughout the paper, Dewey is prescribing interest and controlling impulse for a “proper balance” (ibid.: 279). His aim is a prescription for education than a description of a scientific theory.

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Unverifiability John Dewey as a leading psychologist of his time sets the problem of interest in such a way that it is hard to verify or refute, even for today. The terms are hard to define, the concepts are difficult to delineate from one another and there are few testable statements to experiment on. It is therefore natural that his conceptions and theories are largely abandoned and ignored by experimental psychologists. The philosophical tone, especially that of Hegelian dialectics, may have some substance in subject-object transformation, growth and unity but it is as distant as the revolving moon to give direction: the light is dim. In summary, Dewey’s theory does not add much to our understanding except for the clarification of the philosopher himself. Rather today’s readers may expect scientific research on effort such as: duration, intensity, nature of task and focus. At the turn of the twentieth century, Wilhelm Wundt and many experimental psychologists were working in the lab on human restlessness, anxiety, excitation and arousal but Dewey’s own research interest is not in experimentation. He is interested in one grand whole theory, not the numerous details. Dewey has witty and deep arguments to capture readers in the beginning pages, but when it gets into “dialectic” psychology, few can follow his line of thought. Fortunately, his conclusion is simple: interest and effort are the two sides of the same coin!

Ethical Principles Underlying Education The Centrality of Ethics in Education Five decades ago, Deweyan scholar Reginald Archambault pointed out that for Dewey, “Ethics is central to the educational enterprise” (Archambault 1964: xxi). He was right, as my outline on Dewey’s early writings reveals. He further pointed out that for Dewey, ethics is the …basis for determining the ends of education, the relation of means and methods to those ends, and a general classification of educational values. Dewey’s total approach to these problems is controlled by the ethical principles. (ibid.: xxi)

Ethical Principles Underlying Education (1897) is an important piece published around the time My Pedagogic Creed was released. As an ethical treatise, readers may legitimately expect some underlying principles on

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virtues, the good, obligation, freedom, and so on, in short, some prescription of moral conduct at school. As these issues were treated in his Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (1891), Dewey was supposed to elaborate here on how this can be carried out in a school setting or be applied to education. Puzzles of Ethical Principles Underlying Education Surprisingly, this is not the case with his paper. Instead, it is a critique of the school system: the school’s wrong focus of rote memorization, while “the social spirit is not cultivated” (EW5: 65) in school; “fear is a motive,” “fear of failure” and “emulation and rivalry” is prevalent; “the child is prematurely launched into the region of individualistic competition” (EW5: 65) resulting in “person…… isolated…… selfish in quality” (EW5: 65). What is this paper about? What is Dewey proposing here for the ethical principles underlying education? Bewildered readers may find comfort when Dewey points out that the school is primarily a social institution with a purpose and its ethical aim is to turn out moral and responsible citizens: ……The ethical aim which determines the work of the school must accordingly be interpreted in the most comprehensive and organic spirit. We must take the child as a member of society in the broadest sense and demand whatever is necessary to enable the child to recognize all his social relations and to carry them out. The child is to be not only a voter and a subject of law; he is also to be a member of a family, himself responsible, in all probability, in turn, for rearing and training of future children, and thus maintaining the continuity of society. He is to be a worker, engaged in some occupation which will be of use to society, and which will maintain his own independence and self-respect. He is to be a member of some particular neighborhood and community, and must contribute to the values of life, add to the decencies and graces of civilization wherever he is…… (EW5: 58)

If this sounds cliché today, it may not be so in 1890s when public schooling began to take shape in America. What, in the broad sense, should schools do? Dewey’s above passage outlined an ideal industrial American society that education could help to shape and create. When Dewey criticized the prevailing school system, he was simply pointing to their failure to achieve these aims.

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Dewey’s Line of Thought Ethical Principles Underlying Education is Dewey’s earliest exposition on the subject. He starts by arguing that ethics for school and for society are one. This serves as a good reminder for some educators who preach high morality at school but breach all moral standards in society. Ethics, or conduct, has two sides: the psychological (individual) side and the social side, the how and the what of conduct. It should be integrated as one in school and for the child. For Dewey, moral and intellectual education should be an integrated whole. Remember Dewey’s notion of ethical science. He is against god-sent rules prescribed by the church orthodoxy. Instead, he proposes to ground ethical rules by scientific inquiry, by criticizing and evaluating these rules in their daily use in society. In other words, an ideal school should not prescribe and just follow conventional rules. It should nurture children with a critical mind for the scientific evaluation of these rules. Dewey utilizes again his bag of psychological concepts (instinct, impulse, habit) and philosophical concepts (form, content, mean, end) to elaborate on ethics. In this paper Dewey’s thought begins to take shape by integrating the sociological dimension (a school is a social institution) with the individual (a child to be educated to be a member of society). There are abundance of rules in society that a child must learn to follow. Do these rules suffocate a child’s development? It is not a simple yes or no answer. Dewey sees that there is social interaction that leads to the evolution of morals over time. Education is the union of the individual (impulse) and the social (rules) in the nurturance of children, so that they can grow up to be morally responsible citizens for the “rearing and training of future children, and thus maintaining the continuity of society” (EW5: 58). It is not the rigid imposition of the existing specific rules or values but the realization of a child’s inner capacity for freedom and discipline that matters. In other words, a child should learn to be critical and creative, and to make judgment so that they can create new rules for the future. Moral Habits at School and Character Formation I mentioned earlier that Ethical Principles Underlying Education is a critique of the existing values in practice at school: rote memorization,

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rat-race competition, selfishness, fear. But not all moral training at school are faulty. There are positive moral habits as well: ……in the school are habits which are created, as it were, ad hoc. Even the habits of promptness, regularity, industry, non-interference with the work of others, faithfulness to tasks imposed, which are specially inculcated in the school, are habits which are morally necessary simply because the school system is what it is, and must be preserved intact. (EW5: 63)

In addition, Dewey prescribes the training of character, or character formation: “Stated in psychological terms, it means that there must be a training of the primary impulses and instincts, which organizes them into habits which are reliable means of action” (EW5: 78). Dewey enumerates three features: force of character, good sense and judgment, and empathy and recognition of others’ needs. In his words: The individual must have the power to stand up and count for something in the actual conflicts of life. He must have initiative, insistence, persistence, courage and industry. He must, in a word, have all that goes under a term, “force of character.”…… On the intellectual side we must have judgment—what is ordinarily called good sense…… Good judgment is a sense of respective or proportionate values. The one who has judgment is the one who has ability to size up a situation…… ……the material of ethical knowledge is related to emotional responsiveness…… that which is sympathetic, flexible, and open…… we count upon it to accomplish more in the end by tact, by instinctive recognition of the claims of others, by skill in adjusting, than the former can accomplish by mere attachment to rules and principles which are intellectually justified. (EW5: 78–80)

Reconstruction and Evaluation Democracy Interesting enough, Dewey did not explicitly mention democracy here but he was depicting a modern democratic society. Dewey’s idea of democracy started as early as 1888. In The Ethics of Democracy (EW1: 227–249), Dewey suggested that:

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…… democracy is an ethical idea, the idea of a personality, with truly infinite capacities, incorporate with every man. Democracy and the one, the ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonyms…… (EW1: 248)

Dewey’s ideas grew from The Ethics of Democracy (1888) to Ethical Principles Underlying Education (1897). When the paper was revised to become Moral Principles in Education (1909), the main ideas remained, to be further elaborated in Democracy and Education (1916). But democracy is more than a form of government. It is a way of living, in which “the growth of freedom” is the underlying value, the guide to moral development and basis of moral choice. In the Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (1891), Dewey had already examined the idea of freedom, which he later contrasted with the idea of responsibility and discipline. When ethics are behaviors and ethics is “normal and free living of life as it is,” the same idea was transplanted into education a few years later to become Dewey’s signature, “education is living.” Love In The Study of Ethics : A Syllabus (1894), Dewey tries to contrast “justice” with “desire,” leading to love. He points out that love is a virtue, and love is the unity of freedom and responsibility. Love is justice brought to self -consciousness; justice with a full, instead of partial, standard of value; justice with a dynamic, instead of static, scale of equivalency. Psychologically, then, love as justice is not simply the supreme virtue; it is virtue. It is the fulfilling of the law— the law of self. Love is the complete identification of subject and object, of agent and function, and, therefore, is complete in every phase. It is complete interest in, full attention to, the objects, the aims of life, and thus insures responsibility. (EW4: 361)

Let me sum up his ideas with a graphic presentation on the core value, meaning, methodology, and context of his ethics (Fig. 9.2).

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Fig. 9.2 A graphic presentation of Dewey’s ethics

Social Justice It is quite understandable that Dewey would develop his ethics in this path of thought. First he was concerned with morality because of his family upbringing. Then he studied philosophy and examined ethical issues. With the impetus of psychology and experimental method, it was natural that he would question existing customs and rules. Slowly moving away from Hegelianism, he went beyond existing theories and proposes ethical science. Our philosopher experienced love, which becomes the core value of his ethics. His concern slowly moved from personal virtue

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to social justice by the end of his Michigan years. In Chicago, he applied these ideas to education, seeing the centrality of ethics in it with his acquaintance of Jane Addams and the Hull House. The social justice in an industrial world was his social context. Then love, democracy and social justice merged to become his ethics in education.

The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum Background Earlier I mentioned that Dewey’s ideas on education arose from two strands: psychology and ethics. When Ethical Principles Underlying Education relates philosophy (ethics) to education, Interest in Relation to Training of the Will is Dewey’s link from psychology to education. His ideas did not go unchallenged, however. Notably in psychology, his notion of interest was criticized by W. T. Harris, Dewey’s mentor-friend, himself a Hegelian philosopher and a pioneer educator. The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum (April 1897) is a response to this challenge. Harris’s Challenge Harris’s challenge is simple. He argues that psychology is comparatively worthless for “fixing educational values,” only a need for the “formal training of certain distinct powers called perception, memory, judgment” (EW5: 165). Harris prefers effort over interest. “It requires a sheer effort of will power to carry the mind over from its own intrinsic workings and interests to this outside stuff” (EW5: 166). Interest, or intrinsic motivation, is “degraded to a very low plane.” He takes interest to mean amusement, episodes to avoid boredom of learning, or “tricks” and “certain sugar coating in the ways of extrinsic inducements termed ‘arousing of interest’” (EW5: 171). Harris’s teaching method was summarized as: ……the doctrine of interest interpreted to mean the amusing, and hold that the actual work of instruction is how to make studies which have

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no intrinsic interest interesting—how, that is, to clothe them with factitious attraction, so that the mind may swallow the repulsive dose unaware. (EW5: 166)

You may wish to note that in curriculum studies, there is an important theory called “mental discipline.” It stresses that the most important objective of teaching is to train up a child’s mental “muscle,” such as memory, perception, association and recall. Examples are mental arithmetic, rote memorization, rapid recall, etc. Teaching content is relatively unimportant so long as the child’s mental “muscle” is trained up.2 Dewey’s Response: Education as Reconstruction of Experience Dewey’s response is to uphold the primary importance of interest in learning and see it in the light of growth and experience. He starts with a critique on curriculum dualism, i.e., seeing teaching materials and teaching methods as two separate domains. As expected, he dissolves it by arguing that curriculum is never fixed: the selection of facts is based on social and human interest. Psychology can throw light on teaching method by discovering laws of learning and the growing experience of the children, thus Dewey’s signature phrase of “the reconstruction of experience.” ……Then we may see what both subject – matter and method of instruction stand for. The subject-matter is the present experience of the child, taken in the light of what it may lead to. The method is the subjectmatter rendered into the actual life experience of some individual. The final problem of instruction is thus the reconstruction of the individual’s experience, through the medium of what is seen to be involved in that experience as its matured outgrowth…… (EW5: 174–175)

Building on Criticisms My reading is that Harris’s challenge is in fact productive to Dewey’s thinking. Harris and his colleagues had been in the field of education and curriculum for more than a decade before Dewey joined in 1895. In fact,

2 For an overview of mental discipline, please see Thorndike, E. L. (1924). Mental Discipline in High School Studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 15(1), 1–22.

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Dewey took Harris’s stand as a starting point, that education is social life, for human civilization. Dewey was quoted stating Harris’s position as: In substance, we are told that a study is the gathering up and arranging of the facts and principles relating to some typical aspect of social life, or which afford a fundamental tool in maintaining that social life; that the standard for selecting and placing a study is the worth which it has in adapting the pupil to the needs of the civilization into which he is born. (EW5: 167)

Dewey succinctly states: “I do not question this statement, so far as it goes, on the positive side” (EW5: 167). He merely wants to build a theory of curriculum by adding in psychology. With a growing child and her impulse and intrinsic interest, Dewey puts forward these at the dawn of educational psychology: I repeat, therefore, that the first question regarding any subject of study is the psychological one, What is that study, considered as a form of living, immediate, personal experience? What is the interest in that experience? What is the motive or stimulus to it? How does it act and react with reference to other forms of experience? How does it gradually differentiate itself from others? And how does it function so as to give them additional definiteness and richness of meaning? We must ask these questions not only with reference to the child in general, but with reference to the specific child—the child of a certain age, of a certain degree of attainment, and of specific home and neighborhood contacts. (EW5: 170)

Summary and Review Simply put, when Dewey moved from psychology and philosophy to education, he was confronted with the issue of curriculum and teaching. Naturally he brings in his former knowledge to it, notably “interest,” “impulse,” “action,” “will,” “emotion,” etc. The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum is to elaborate “interest” further to become “growth.” In applying psychology to the school curriculum, Dewey proposes “a psychological inquiry” of “interest”: “Our study is to find out what the actual interests of the child are” (EW5: 172). Dewey puts the child’s growth and experience in the fore front. Teachers must observe and reflect on the children’s attention, focus, interest and experience to make education meaningful to her:

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We have first to fix attention upon the child to find out what kind of experience is appropriate to him at the particular period selected; to discover, if possible, what it is that constitutes the special feature of the child’s experience at this time; and why it is that his experience takes this form rather than another. This means that we observe in detail what experiences have most meaning and value to him, and what attitude he assumes toward them. We search for the point, or focus, of interest in these experiences…… We ask what habits are being formed; what ends and aims are being proposed. We inquire what the stimuli are and what responses the child is making. We ask what impulses are struggling for expression; in what characteristic ways they find an outlet; and what results inure to the child through their manifestation…… (EW5: 171–172)

In this paper, Dewey raised more questions than gave answers. He had a research direction and approach but he had no research details. In the next few years, Dewey would study and write about child development. What is more, Dewey is a philosopher of action. He started Chicago University College Elementary School to put his education and curriculum in action. From a historical perspective, it is not sheer luck he becomes the best-known figure in American education in the following decade and beyond.

My Pedagogic Creed A Passionate Vision and Personal Declaration When The New Psychology (1884) is Dewey’s psychological manifesto, My Pedagogic Creed (1897) is his educational manifesto. It summarizes and outlines Dewey’s views on education after he founded, in 1896, the Chicago University Elementary School. My Pedagogic Creed is by far Dewey’s most widely read educational writing. So much has written on this piece that I choose here to introduce it by quoting Martin Dworkin, who wrote 60 years ago in his Dewey on Education: Selections: Among the hundreds of books, essays, and other works Dewey produced in his long career, the educational credo he wrote in 1897 is uniquely significant. In its style and content, it may most clearly exemplify the reformist fervor of his Chicago period. Here is Dewey passionately, even flamboyantly, confident of his vision of the nature, purpose, and inevitable progress of education. At once a personal declaration and a revolutionary manifesto, it dispenses with supporting arguments or documentation. The resulting

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clarity, succinctness, and even eloquence have offered incomparable opportunities for interpretation, to both disciples and critics. (Dworkin 1959: 19)

The Five Articles and Their Origins My Pedagogic Creed is not written for professional philosophers or psychologists. Here Dewey is appealing to the public, teachers, educators and parents. His writing is short and simple (4113 words/12 pages). He even tries a new style by enlisting five articles with 73 statements. Each statement is a short paragraph of one to a few sentences to make his points clear and precise. Nearly all ideas are traceable to the writings we discussed above. Article 1:

Article 2:

Article 3:

Article 4:

Article 5:

Education is living. It has two sides, psychological and sociological. (traceable to Ethical Principles Underlying Education) The school is a school institution. The teacher is a facilitator. (traceable to Ethical Principles Underlying Education) Education is the reconstruction of experience. (traceable to The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum) Teachers should observe children’s interest. (traceable to Interest in Relation to Training of the Will and The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum) Education is the fundamental method of social progress.

When the ideas of Articles 1–4 are traceable to earlier writings, Article 5 is a more recent view. Readers will quickly see the connection with Chicago and Jane Addams. By then, Dewey’s system of education is already in place: that education, for him, has a social and personal meaning—education is for social reform, social progress and democracy. Education is the shaping of individual’s power into social resources for humanity. Dewey sees education as empowering the individual. Education is living and is an end in itself.

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The Five Articles in Summary Article 1: What Education Is For Dewey, education is a socialization process, which he elaborates in psychological terms. He sees the two sides: psychological and sociological, where the child’s psychological capacities are the starting point of all education, to be matched under the existing conditions for “an organic union of individuals” (EW5: 86). Dewey is well aware of the advent of democracy and modern individual conditions, that any training and preparation will be obsolete in 20 years. He therefore suggests nurturing a child to his own command and developing his capacities: ……shaping the individual’s powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, training his ideas, and arousing his feelings and emotions……this educational process has two sides—one psychological and one sociological…… Of these two sides, the psychological is the basis. The child’s own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education…… (EW5: 84–85) ……the individual who is to be educated is a social individual and that society is an organic union of individuals…… Education, therefore, must begin with a psychological insight into the child’s capacities, interests, and habits. It must be controlled at every point by reference to these same considerations. These powers, interests, and habits must be continually interpreted—we must know what they mean…… (EW5: 86)

Article 2: What the School Is Dewey points out that a school is a social institution, that it should represent and simplify life. The school is a form of community life and moral values are instilled through “a unity of work and thought” (EW5: 88). The teacher should be facilitators to guide children, not to impose their own ideas on children. “Exams are of use only as far as they test the child’s fitness for social life” (EW5: 88). ……the school is primarily a social institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life……the school must represent present life—life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground…… (EW5: 86–87)

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……moral education centres about this conception of the school as a mode of social life, that the best and deepest moral training is precisely that which one gets through having to enter into proper relations with others in a unity of work and thought…… (EW5: 88) ……The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences…… (EW5:88)

Article 3: The Subject matter of Education As a philosopher traversing through all types of human knowledge, science, literature, history, geography and language, he wants to unify them in education with a few ideas: social life, growth, social activity, communication and critique of values, in short, the “continuing reconstruction of experience” (EW5: 91). Dewey does not believe in the compartmentalization of knowledge in a “purely objective form,” but that it should be “treated as a new peculiar kind of experience which the child can add to that which he has already had” (EW5: 90). He puts cooking, sewing, woodwork, even factory work in the school curriculum because it is part of a productive social life. The concept of science, mathematics, geography, literature is to be integrated with these social activities. To quote Dewey: ……the true centre of correlation of the school subjects is not science, nor literature, nor history, nor geography, but the child’s own social activities. (EW5: 89) I believe that this gives the standard for the place of cooking, sewing, manual training, etc., in the school……not for relaxation or relief……rather that they represent, as types, fundamental forms of social activity. (EW5: 90) If education is life, all life has, from the outset, a scientific aspect; an aspect of art and culture and an aspect of communication. (EW5: 91) I believe finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing. (EW5: 91)

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Article 4: The Nature of Method Dewey as a philosopher is always concerned with method. The method of teaching, for Dewey, is to be based on “the order of development of the child’s powers and interests” (EW5: 91). In other words, a child grows with successive stages, as detailed in twentieth-century developmental psychology, and teaching is to facilitate the development of these inner powers of the child. In this article, Dewey intentionally lists three postulates: The active child, the imagery child and the interesting child. The first one, the active child, is in full accord with the underlying Kantian view of nineteenth-century German psychology. Dewey espouses it in his philosophy which would later become pragmatism. The imagery child is of particular interest: Dewey may be accredited with being a pioneer in image learning, albeit his giving no details.3 As for interest, Dewey is just repeating his planned research program of child development with interest as a unifying concept: ……the active side precedes the passive in the development of the child nature; that expression comes before conscious impression; that the muscular development precedes the sensory; that movements come before conscious sensations; I believe that consciousness is essentially motor or impulsive; that conscious states tend to project themselves in action. (EW5: 91) ……the image is the great instrument of instruction. What a child gets out of any subject presented to him is simply the images which he himself forms with regard to it……the child’s power of imagery and in seeing to it that he was continually forming definite, vivid, and growing images of the various subjects with which he comes in contact in his experience. (EW5: 92) ……interests are the signs and symptoms of growing power. I believe that they represent dawning capacities. Accordingly the constant and careful observation of interests is of the utmost importance for the educator…… (EW5: 92)

3 Readers may be interested to note that Oswald Külpe (1862–1915), a contemporary of Dewey in Germany, proposed imageless thought and mental set.

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Article 5: The School and Social Progress Dewey starts this article by asserting, “I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform” (EW5: 93). Surely he has high hopes for education, believing that education can direct the purposes of a society and organize its resources. A school is an organ of community life where morality can be nurtured. It is a union of “the individualistic and the institutional ideals” (EW5: 94). ……education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness…… in the ideal school we have the reconciliation of the individualistic and the institutional ideals……through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move. (EW5: 93–94) ……the school as the primary and most effective instrument of social progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize what the school stands for…… (EW5: 94)

Review and Evaluation: Dewey’s Ideals and Creed Such is the high ideals of Dewey on education. A century has passed and the course of events teaches us to be less naïve. When Dewey wrote The Pedagogic Creed, he never realized that education soon became a battleground between the capitalists and the socialists, the former demanding schools to train up skilled labor for production and the latter championing to spread class consciousness for revolution. By the middle of twentieth century, education was looked upon with suspicion for being the tool of indoctrination and maintaining of the status quo in some countries. Dewey is a grand theorist and he gives formidably grand visions. This is understandable when an epoch-making scholar is reviewing the whole system of knowledge. Remember that in his psychological manifesto of 1884, Dewey proposed that The New Psychology is at the center of human sciences because it touches upon all realms of human sciences (see my elaboration in Chapter 5). Thirteen years later, in 1897, Dewey proposed that education “marks the most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience” (EW5: 94) and that the growth of social science (psychology included) supplies knowledge to “the formation of the proper social life” (EW5: 95). In other words,

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education offers “the most genuine springs of human conduct” and “best service that human nature is capable of guaranteed” (EW5: 95). It is easy to discern the continuity of a grand vision, that knowledge can be put to the service of mankind, that education is the method of social betterment. It may be this intellectual vision and inspiration that keeps Dewey going and makes him great. What struck me most is the term “creed.” Wasn’t education, as applied psychology, a science? Wasn’t pedagogy, developed from Johann Herbart (1776–1841) and later refined in Europe and America, a science of instruction? Wasn’t ethics taken by Dewey to become “ethical science”? Why did the scientifically-minded Dewey suddenly turn from a science of education to a creed, a term synonymous to an attitude, a biblical and belief system? My guess is that Dewey was probably well aware of the meaning of the term. While he is a supporter of science, it may take time for him to spell out the whole science of education, which he did in his later years. For the time being, he was contented that education and teaching must be taken as a commitment, a devotion, some kind of a faith on humanity with a personal appeal. This committed personal belief is what is behind My Pedagogic Creed.

The School and Society Background John Dewey’s education project started from his ideas in psychology— interest and will (1895), materialized in the founding of The Chicago University Elementary School (1896) and articulated in My Pedagogic Creed (1897). The school, which was a pioneering project for a university and a scholar, attracted national attention and even international visitors. It was a laboratory school in the sense of trying out scientific experiments in education, a novel concept borrowed from psychology. Apparently, Dewey’s vision attracted top caliber teachers who worked whole heartedly, professionally and passionately to put his ideas into practice with spectacular results and publicity. The school was real interactive, idealistic, humanistic, community-spirited, learning by doing, drillingfree, teachers as facilitators offering worksheets and chronicles. You can get an overview by reading Dewey’s Three Years of the University Elementary School (MW1: 57–66).

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In April 1899, Dewey gave three lectures to “parents and others” interested in the University Elementary School. His lectures were about the “New Education” needed in light of larger changes in society (MW1: 6). Joe Burnett (1974), who wrote an introduction to John Dewey’s Collected Works, Middle Works, Vol. 1: 1899–1901, summarized that “industrialization, urbanization, science and technology have created a revolution” (MW1: xix). This social change leads to educational change, thus Dewey’s famous phrase of “Copernican Revolution in Education,” a shift from teacher-centered to child-centered education (MW1: 23). See my elaboration below. The talk was so successful that it was published and reprinted several times within a year for a total of 7500 copies (Jackson 1990: xi). Together with other essays, the book was entitled The School and Society (1899). The School and Society can be read as Dewey’s collection of essays on education from 1899 to 1900, covering a wide variety of topics: social change in America, new education for a progressive society (Chapter 1), curriculum and teaching in University Elementary School, subject planning (Chapter 2), University Elementary School progress and report (Chapter 4), history of the school system (Chapter 3), theories of child development and learning (Chapters 5, 7, 8), review of Froebel’s ideas in education (Chapter 6), etc. You can find Dewey’s penetrating insights here and there: he has moved from an outsider of education to an insider, applying psychology to create a new education for theory and practice. The University Elementary School’s success is in part due to the relentless effort of Dewey’s elaborating and promoting his vision in education. Main Ideas Social, Industrial and Intellectual Revolution Dewey is no sociologist by training, yet his insight of the rapid and sweeping social change in America from 1860 to 1900 was succinctly penetrating. Let us revisit this history retold by Dewey. I quote in length to give my readers a sense of history a century ago: The change……is the industrial one—the application of science resulting in the great inventions that have utilized the forces of nature on a vast and inexpensive scale: the growth of a world-wide market as the object of production, of vast manufacturing centres to supply this market, of cheap and rapid means of communication and distribution between all its parts.

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Even as to its feebler beginnings, this change is not much more than a century old; in many of its most important aspects it falls within the short span of those now living. One can hardly believe there has been a revolution in all history so rapid, so extensive, so complete. Through it the face of the earth is making over, even as to its physical forms; political boundaries are wiped out and moved about, as if they were indeed only lines on a paper map; population is hurriedly gathered into cities from the ends of the earth; habits of living are altered with startling abruptness and thoroughness; the search for the truths of nature is infinitely stimulated and facilitated, and their application to life made not only practicable, but commercially necessary. Even our moral and religious ideas and interests, the most conservative because the deepest–lying things in our nature, are profoundly affected…… Back of the factory system lies the household and neighborhood system. Those of us who are here today need go back only one, two, or at most three generations, to find a time when the household was practically the centre in which were carried on, or about which were clustered, all the typical forms of industrial occupation. The clothing worn was for the most part made in the house; the members of the household were usually familiar also with the shearing of the sheep, the carding and spinning of the wool, and the plying of the loom. Instead of pressing a button and flooding the house with electric light, the whole process of getting illumination was followed in its toilsome length…… At present, concentration of industry and division of labor have practically eliminated household and neighborhood occupations. (MW1: 6–8)

With the above change, “the monopoly of learning” and “a highpriesthood of learning” (MW1: 16–17) belonged to the past. The invention of printing, cheap intercommunication, easy travel and freedom of movement resulted in an intellectual revolution with a change of attitude in the people and for the school. Dewey elaborates: The result has been an intellectual revolution. Learning has been put into circulation……Knowledge is no longer an immobile solid; it has been liquefied. It is actively moving in all the currents of society itself. It is easy to see that this revolution, as regards the materials of knowledge, carries with it a marked change in the attitude of the individual. Stimuli of an intellectual sort pour in upon us in all kinds of ways……all this means a necessary change in the attitude of the school, one of which we are as yet far from realizing the full force. (MW1: 17)

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Dewey’s Vision of Education Reform The above social and intellectual revolution necessitates a change in education. Dewey is highly critical of the existing education system, “which is highly specialized, one-sided and narrow”, “an education dominated almost entirely by the mediaeval conception of learning” (MW1: 18). Worst still, Dewey is well aware of the big picture of competition and hurrying through schooling: Hardly one per cent of the entire school population ever attains to what we call higher education; only five per cent to the grade of our high school; while much more than half leave on or before the completion of the fifth year of the elementary grade…… by far the larger number of pupils leave school as soon as they have acquired the rudiments of learning, as soon as they have enough of the symbols of reading, writing, and calculating to be of practical use to them in getting a living. (MW1: 18–19)

Dewey’s vision is an education based on modern child psychology: “our impulses and tendencies to make, to do, to create, to produce, whether in the form of utility or of art” (MW1: 18). He wants the school “to become the child’s habitat, where he learns through directed living,” thus Dewey’s signature phrases of “a miniature community, an embryonic society” (MW1: 12). Dewey’s vision: ……development of social power and insight. It is this liberation from narrow utilities, this openness to the possibilities of the human spirit that makes these practical activities in the school allies of art and centres of science and history. (MW1: 12–13)

In practice, it would mean the following reform programs, which he termed “social evolution”: The introduction of active occupations, of nature study, of elementary science, of art, of history; the relegation of the merely symbolic and formal to a secondary position; the change in the moral school atmosphere, in the relation of pupils and teachers—of discipline; the introduction of more active, expressive, and self-directing factors—all these are not mere accidents, they are necessities of the larger social evolution. It remains but to organize all these factors, to appreciate them in their fullness of meaning, and to put the ideas and ideals involved into complete, uncompromising possession of our school system. (MW1: 19)

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Impulse and The Fourfold Interests of a Child In just three years of observation and experimentation in the University Elementary School, Dewey was able to enrich his concept of impulse and interest. He now knows that a child “simply like(s) to do things,” and “has not much instinct for abstract inquiry.” To the observant Dewey, a child has no conceptual distinction between “experimental science” and carpentry! Dewey distinguishes the fourfold interest of a child: The child’s impulse to do finds expression first in play, in movement, gesture, and make-believe, becomes more definite, and seeks outlet in shaping materials into tangible forms and permanent embodiment. The child has not much instinct for abstract inquiry…… not for the purpose of making technical generalizations or even arriving at abstract truths. Children simply like to do things, and watch to see what will happen. But this can be taken advantage of, can be directed into ways where it gives results of value…… (MW1: 29) Now, keeping in mind these fourfold interests—the interest in conversation or communication; in inquiry, or finding out things; in making things, or construction; and in artistic expression—we may say they are the natural resources, the uninvested capital, upon the exercise of which depends the active growth of the child. (MW1: 30)

The Psychology of Elementary Education: Three Hypotheses and Two Stages In his essay, The Psychology of Elementary Education, Dewey proposes three working hypotheses in the University Elementary School, a laboratory school of applied psychology to test out laws in educational psychology. These hypotheses center around the human mind and the structure of the intellect. For easy understanding, I list them as hypotheses of contemporary psychology to contrast with “old psychology” and traditional curriculum (Table 9.1). Based on the above working hypotheses of new/contemporary psychology, Dewey needs the support of a laboratory to scientifically test out the conceptions, materials, method, proportion and arrangement at a given time (MW1: 72). His findings can be summarized in two stages of growth plus relevant educational support (Table 9.2).

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Table 9.1 Hypotheses in psychology of elementary education Contemporary psychology

Old psychology

Hypothesis 1 MW1: 69–79

Mind is social • The human mind is a function of social life • Human thought as humanity • Social heredity • Childhood as socially acquired inheritance

Mind is individual • A subject vs. an external world • Physical stimuli of light, sound, heat • Mind to fill in external facts

Hypothesis 2 MW1: 70–71

Intellect is intermediary • Function and action • Between cognition and impulse

Hypothesis 3 MW1: 71–72

Mind is a process • A growth process • Nothing is fixed • Sense of continuity of life

Traditional view of curriculum

• Instruction of external facts in geography, arithmetic, grammar, etc. • Subjects unrelated to real life or social needs Intellect is based on • Emphasis of sensation and ideas abstract ideas, • Hypothesis of generalization innate mental and reason faculty • Neglect of interest and life of practice • Subject matter Mind as ready-made as with logically faculties arranged facts • Growth of quantity and principles only • Boy as little man • Studies broken with little mind up into bits, to be taught by year

Table 9.2 Psychological development and education needs Psychological development in stages

Curriculum and educational support

Stage 1 (age 4–7) • Direct social and personal interest • Motor outlet of impulse • Unity of life

• The subject matter should be in social form—in play, games, occupations, miniature industrial arts, stories, pictorial imagination and conversation (EW1: 73) • Relate to family life and neighborhood setting Dewey gives abundant examples in American history, geography, science, physics and the arts to match this stage (EW1: 76)

Stage 2 (age 8/9–11/12) • Possibility of permanent objective results • Thinking of mean-end relationship

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Review and Evaluation Dewey’s Oral History The School and Society is a masterpiece that won Dewey’s leading position in American education. I cannot but marvel at his attempt to depict, especially in his first lecture to parents of the University Elementary School (Chapter 1), the abrupt social change in American life from 1860 to 1900. It is all based on his personal life experience coupled with keen observation and penetrating analysis. It is like an oral history by an eminent scholar. If it inspires our historical imagination, a hundred years later, I challenge my readers to compare it with other descriptions of industrial revolution: Karl Marx’s revolutionary Europe (1848),4 Charles Dickens’s British child labor,5 George Elliot’s Victorian London (1850s).6 Chinese readers may gain insight from novelist Lu Xun’s The True Story of Ah Q (1921–1922) of pre-industrial imperial China,7 among others. This exercise will help us reach a global perspective of how industrial revolution changes the whole world and human destiny. Our rural-boy-turned-philosopher embraces this social revolution with enthusiasm. In a sense, he represents the American pioneering spirit in participation of this rapid social change. He moved from Vermont to Michigan, then to Chicago and later to New York City. No doubt Dewey witnessed all these upheaval changes, had to adapt to it and might even take advantage of it. In the early days of American industrialization, Dewey had high hopes and optimistic conviction, that the new society is a positive one, a progressive society realizing human potentials and emancipating human powers. Apparently, Dewy has no regrets to say good bye to the old rural days of making candles from animal fat for light, which was now replaced by electric light of simply pressing the button (EW1: 7). In character formation of children, we lose some but we gain many. What Dewey misses in this modern world is the community spirit, the sense of household cooperation, neighborhood support and team play.

4 Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1848) (Reprinted 2017). The Communist Manifesto. London: Pluto Press. 5 Dickens, C. (1838) (Reprinted 2010). Oliver Twist. London: William Collins. 6 Elliot, G. (1860) (Reprinted 2003). The Mill on the Floss. London: William Blackwood

and Sons. 7 Lu, X. (1960). The True Story of Ah Q . Peking: Foreign Languages Press.

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That is why Dewey urges for an education reform, to turn the outdated mode of instruction into the fostering of community spirit. A Revolutionary and Optimistic Vision Dewey’s vision of education is revolutionary in his times. He demands a child-centered education, not a teacher-centered or knowledge-centered education. He decrees an education of doing, not listening. He proposes subject integration, classroom interaction and cooperative learning. All these pioneering ideas are taken as a standard departure of our discourse in education today, but it was innovative back in 1900. The following humorous passage of Dewey shopping for school furniture suffices as an example: ……Some few years ago I was looking about the school supply stores in the city, trying to find desks and chairs which seemed thoroughly suitable from all points of view—artistic, hygienic, and educational—to the needs of the children. We had a great deal of difficulty in finding what we needed, and finally one dealer, more intelligent than the rest, made this remark: “I am afraid we have not what you want. You want something at which the children may work; these are all for listening.” That tells the story of the traditional education. (MW1: 21)

With an optimistic assumption of a future progressive society, Dewey never believes that the future capitalistic society can be repressive with alienation, that the state can turn into bureaucracy and iron cage,8 that power relations can deteriorate into new slavery and dependence, that socialism does not solve economic problems, that capitalism creates ecological disaster.9 The lesson, then, for the study of Dewey today, is to see where he was, show where we are and chart where we are heading to.

8 Weber, M. (1905) (Reprint 2010). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Oxford University Press. 9 Empson, M. (2018). Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capitalism, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. Monthly Review, 69(11), 56–61.

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The Child and the Curriculum Background At the time when Dewey was busy teaching, managing his department in the University of Chicago and overseeing his visionary school, he was also engaged in psychological research. The outcomes were Principles of Mental Development as Illustrated in Early Infancy (1899, MW1: 175–191) and Mental Development (1900, MW1: 192–221). By then, Dewey’s view on children’s inner spontaneous needs to grow was further articulated, and he was very critical of the curriculum as a set of prewritten subject material. The Child and the Curriculum is probably Dewey’s last major writing in education during his Chicago years. Let me quote here Martin Dworkin’s introduction on The Child and the Curriculum: His pamphlet The Child and the Curriculum further elucidated the emphasis upon the present experience of the child that was central in the philosophy and practice of the School. Nowhere is Dewey’s opposition to the “old” subject-centered curriculum—or to the extremes of the “new” child-centered approach—stated more clearly. One of Dewey’s last writings on education while at Chicago, it is also one of the most widely reprinted and translated. (Dworkin 1959: 91)

Dewey Formulates His System of Educational Thought A Short but Original Work The Child and the Curriculum is short, a pamphlet of only 7262 words, but I have a discovery. I found a paragraph in the first few pages which indicates that our psychologist-philosopher has, alas, formulated his system of thought in education! In 1884, in The New Psychology, Dewey was concerned with the vague and transitory consciousness, the complex but active human mind. He saw psychology as the science of human experience. By 1887, Dewey detailed in Psychology the cognition, emotion and volition of the human mind, seeing impulse and will as the impetus in the realization of selfhood. Then in 1896, he championed “psychical unity” and the pivotal role of experience, proposing functional psychology in The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology. This was his line of thought in psychology and the science of the human mind. In philosophy, Dewey is concerned with the unity of subject and object, content and method,

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the nature of knowledge, fact, meaning and value. He sees logic as the method of scientific inquiry. With these tools and ideas, Dewey ventured into education. In Interest in Relation to Training of the Will , in 1896, he immediately identified interest and affection as the key to the growth and learning of a child. Action, activity and personal experience is the starting and growth point of a child. Naturally, it stands in contrast with the curriculum, a pre-set logical system of knowledge. When My Pedagogic Creed (1897) is just his belief in education, his augmentation finally came in The Child and the Curriculum, in 1902, when his psychology and philosophy were placed into a system of thought for education. (For the child), (t)he vital ties of affection, the connecting bonds of activity, hold together the variety of his personal experiences. The adult mind is so familiar with the notion of logically ordered facts that it does not recognize—it cannot realize— the amount of separating and reformulating which the facts of direct experience have to undergo before they can appear as a “study,” or branch of learning. A principle, for the intellect, has had to be distinguished and defined; facts have had to be interpreted in relation to this principle, not as they are in themselves. They have had to be regathered about a new centre which is wholly abstract and ideal. All this means a development of a special intellectual interest. It means ability to view facts impartially and objectively; that is, without reference to their place and meaning in one’s own experience. It means capacity to analyze and to synthesize. It means highly matured intellectual habits and the command of a definite technique and apparatus of scientific inquiry. The studies as classified are the product, in a word, of the science of the ages, not of the experience of the child. (MW2: 275)

Signature Terms and Three Premises When I analyzed the above paragraph I can find many familiar and signature terms of Dewey’s: affection, activity, personal experiences, facts, direct experience, principle, wholly abstract, interest, objective, meaning, one’s own experience, analyse, synthesize, intellectual habits, technique, apparatus, scientific inquiry. Now they are put together, which can be presented in three premises: • A child is born and grows with impulse, affection, activity and subjective personal experience. • The curriculum is adult knowledge, objective reformulated facts with scientific principles.

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• Education (in the sense of teaching) is to guide a child, through his impulse, interest in and meaning of his own experience, into a growth path for matured intellectual habits: analysis, synthesis, apparatus of scientific inquiries. ‘Psychologizing’ the Curriculum Dewey satirized the prevalent view of curriculum as “subdivide each topic into studies; each study into lessons; each lesson into specific facts and formulae. Let the child proceed step by step to master each one of these separate parts, and at last he will have covered the entire ground” (MW2: 276). It did not work because the facts and ideas are out of the experience of the child. Dewey proposed “psychologising” the material, i.e., “turned over, translated into the immediate and individual experiencing within it has its origin and significance” (MW2: 285). In Dewey’s words, ……When the subject -matter has been psychologized, that is, viewed as an outgrowth of present tendencies and activities, it is easy to locate in the present some obstacle, intellectual, practical, or ethical, which can be handled more adequately if the truth in question be mastered. This need supplies motive for the learning. An end which is the child’s own carries him on to possess the means of its accomplishment. But when material is directly supplied in the form of a lesson to be learned as a lesson, the connecting links of need and aim are conspicuous for their absence…… (MW2: 287)

Thus, a Deweyan teacher will be concerned with a child’s development of experience more than the prescribed material: ……As a teacher he is not concerned with adding new facts to the science he teaches; in propounding new hypotheses or in verifying them. He is concerned with the subject-matter of the science as representing a given stage and phase of the development of experience. His problem is that of inducing a vital and personal experiencing…… He is concerned, not with the subject-matter as such, but with the subject-matter as a related factor in a total and growing experience. Thus to see it is to psychologize it…… (MW2: 285–286)

A Dynamic View of Continuous Reconstruction In The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum (1897), Dewey sees education as a reconstruction of experience (EW5: 174–175). The same is

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noted in My Pedagogic Creed (EW5: 91). By 1902, Dewey develops this notion further, seeing that everything is growing and nothing is fixed. The subject matter, or human knowledge is growing, not fixed; the child’s experience is also growing, “fluent, embryonic, vital” (MW2: 278). In Dewey’s words, Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child’s experience; cease thinking of the child’s experience as also something hard and fast; see it as something fluent, embryonic, vital; and we realize that the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process. Just as two points define a straight line, so the present standpoint of the child and the facts and truths of studies define instruction. It is continuous reconstruction, moving from the child’s present experience out into that represented by the organized bodies of truth that we call studies. (MW2: 278)

Child-Centered Education? Is Dewey proposing a child-centered education? Proponents say so and have quoted Dewey in The Child and the Curriculum. “The child is the starting point, the centre and the end. His development, his growth, is the ideal” (MW2: 276). He was found saying, “Moreover, subjectmatter never can be got into the child from without. Learning is active. It involves reading out of the mind. It involves organic assimilation starting from within” (MW2: 276). A careful reading will show otherwise. In a preceding paragraph, Dewey is putting forth the position of a subject-centered curriculum; then in this paragraph he is setting up the position of a child-centered curriculum. As always, he dissolves the two extremes by proposing a middle ground. It is the same here. While Dewey is sympathetic to child development and leans toward a child-centered curriculum, his position is more on guiding and directing a child to a growth process. He is against “Indulge and spoiling” a child. By this, he means that we should not keep looking and indulging in a child’s present interest as achievements. The child needs to grow and move on to a higher plane: “Appealing to the interest upon the present plane means excitation; it means playing with a power so as continually to stir up without directing it toward definite achievement” (MW2: 281). In other words, Dewey supports guiding

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and directing a child by “selecting appropriate stimuli for instincts and impulse.” Development does not mean just getting something out of the mind. It is a development of experience and into experience that is really wanted. And this is impossible save as just that educative medium is provided which will enable the powers and interests that have been selected as valuable to function. They must operate, and how they operate will depend almost entirely upon the stimuli which surround them, and the material upon which they exercise themselves. The problem of direction is thus the problem of selecting appropriate stimuli for instincts and impulses which it is desired to employ in the gaining of new experience. (MW2: 282–283)

Such are Dewey’s views on child development and the role of the curriculum. As you will see later, Dewey’s views have been misunderstood and misinterpreted, unfortunately though understandably, throughout the twentieth century.

Conclusion Dewey’s ideas in education did not develop in a vacuum. It was based on his philosophy—the Hegelian ideas of wholeness and organicity, and his psychology—an active mind with impulse, emotion and volition. In his Chicago years, he continued his research on child psychology, writing and teaching educational psychology and mental development. In his department, he was in close association with Herbert Mead and Albion Small and learned about their sociological perspectives. At the same time, his interest in education brought him in contact and collaboration with Francis Parker and William T. Harris. The former had brought European pedagogy and psychology to America, notably the ideas of Frobel and Pestalozzi, while the latter was a Hegelian concerned with morality and discipline, seeing the school curriculum as an organized study of human civilization. In the background was the received wisdom of Herbert Spencer’s idea that education is to prepare for future living (Spencer 1860). Dewey was an original thinker with immense integration capability. Based on his philosophy and psychology he began to formulate his theory of education. First he dissolved the problem of interest and effort by his psychology and dialectic argument. Then he insightfully picked growth

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and self-expression as the core concept in child development. Together he integrated ideas in ethics and sociology, seeing school as a social institution and turning Spencer’s idea upside down: education is for living, not to prepare for future living. The hows of education become a psychological problem of “psychologizing the curriculum.” Such are Dewey’s ideas in education during his Chicago years. Readers would be amazed that Dewey also published in psychology and philosophy during this most productive period of his academic career. How could he have achieved so much? Trained as a philosopher and psychologist, Dewey had a 10-year incubation period in Michigan. His ideas evolved into a few unifying concepts: growth, experience, wholeness. He then applied them in all subject areas. Summarizes Jay Martin, his biographer, Whether Dewey wrote or lectured about logic, education, psychology, ethics, conflicts between labor and capital, or social change, underpinning these and all that he thought and did were a few unifying concepts— wholeness, growth, and experience. When he considered social issues, this meant the search for justice; if he reflected on education, it took the form of interest in knowledge; in psychology, the watchword was the ever expanding circuit; in logic, the indissoluble engagement between idea and reality; in all, the primacy of inquiry…… Only by achieving a focus and confidence in his basic convictions was Dewey able to do so much during the ten years following his arrival at Chicago. The work that he accomplished in any one field would have sufficed for most person’s decade…… (Martin 2002, pp. 197–198)

To the above, I will also add action and meaning. Action and “to be active” is a psychological state that Dewey sees as fundamental: the human eye is always on the active lookout. This concept moves from psychology to philosophy, where action transforms the subject and object into an integrated whole and brings about dynamic change. Meaning is the higher-order human value created by human existence. It starts from basic needs of survival value such as food, shelter, safety and grows into meaning, customs and culture. These and the above key unifying concepts permeate in Dewey’s thoughts from his Chicago years and beyond.

Further Readings See reading list in Chapter 13.

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References Archambault, R. D. (1964). John Dewey on Education: Selected Writings. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Burnett, J. R. (1974). The Collected Works of John Dewey: The Middle Works, Volume 1 Introduction (pp. ix–xxiii). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Dworkin, M. S. (1959). Dewey on Education: Selections. New York: Teachers College Press. Jackson, P. W. (1990). John Dewey’s The School and Society: The Child and The Curriculum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press. Spencer, H. (1860). Education: Intellectual, Moral and Physical. New York: A.L. Burt Company.

CHAPTER 10

Educational Writings in Columbia Years

Introduction When John Dewey quit Chicago and landed on Columbia University in February 1905, he was 46 years old. Columbia was his last stop in institutional affiliation, in which he stayed for 34 years, from 1905 to 1939. This chapter will focus on his first 14 years which comes to a convenient stop in 1918. In that year when the First World War came to an end, Dewey took a sabbatical leave and taught in California, which was followed by his two-year visit and lecturing trip in Japan and China. In these 14 years, we see Dewey undergoing a metamorphosis. First he shrank from education and moved inward, retreating himself to philosophy. When he slowly returned to education, he was concerned more with the issues of social justice, equality and democracy than with pedagogy, curriculum and teaching. His social activism and personal rendezvous with the New York Avant-Garde (Dalton 2002: Part Two) slowly forged him to transform from an academic scholar into a public intellectual. Dewey continued to stay in Columbia after his return from China in 1921. He retired from Professor Emeritus in 1930 but was still active in politics, education, social issues and academic work well through the Second World War. I will tell his story of involvement in progressive education movement and his visit to China in the next two chapters.

© The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_10

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Early Columbia Years in Brief (1905–1918) Another Move, Another Blow Dewey’s Appointment with Columbia When Dewey submitted his resignation letter to the University of Chicago on April 11, 1904, he had no job offer. A week later, he wrote to his confidants, William James, James McKeen Cattell and W. T. Harris. Cattell, his fellow classmate of Johns Hopkins, now professor and head of Department of Philosophy with Columbia University, responded immediately. He spoke to President Nicholas Murray Butler, who saw a golden opportunity of hiring a star philosopher to strengthen his department. The offer was $5000 for the professorship. When Dewey accepted it, the Columbia trustees proudly announced the appointment on May 5. “Professor Dewey is one of the two or three most distinguished students and teachers of philosophy now living” (quoted from Dykhuizen 1973: 117). No doubt, Dewey was the top most and a pricey philosopher in demand. The Tragedy Mockingly and not uncoincidentally, this hefty job offer repeated the tragedy in Dewey’s family history. Recall that when Dewey moved from Michigan to Chicago in 1894, the Dewey family took advantage of the holiday break for a long vacation in Europe. The tragic result: their youngest son Morris died of diphtheria. Ten years had passed; the Deweys had raised five children, Fred, 16; Evelyn, 14; Gordon, 8; Lucy, 6 and Jane, 4. Again the father was moving onto another job with another paid-holiday break. Again the family set sail to Europe. This time, the third child, Gordon fell ill on the vessel and was diagnosed as having “food poisoning”. When the ship reached Liverpool, England, Gordon was rushed to hospital while the other children were taken care of by Dewey’s friends. Sadly Gordon was said to have caught typhoid and died on Sept 11 in the arms of both parents. How unsurmountable this tragedy was that Dewey wrote, “The light went out,” and “how much harder and emptier it gets all the time.” Our philosopher confided to William James, “I shall never understand why he was taken from the world” (Martin 2002: 231). The Mourning Period and Compensation In this mourning period, Dewey began his teaching duties in Columbia in spring 1905 while Alice continued the trip in Europe with the four

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children. John stayed alone in the dormitory, waiting for letters from his wife and children in Europe. All told, he had interest only in visiting colleagues who had children (Martin 2002: 232). In times of grief and solitude, he turned inward and kept his hectic teaching load going. Now in New York City, he had daily walks along the Hudson River, at sunset, with lights on the water, palisades, floating ice, and his own melancholy. He was alone and in depression. Meanwhile in Europe, Alice and the children toured through France, Germany and Italy. The only comfort was that Fred and Evelyn were old enough to take care of the younger ones. Fred even took time to study German in Jena. When they ended up in Italy, the father, with his spring duties hastily finished, set sail to meet them. As the family toured from Rome to Venice, they met a poor young Italian boy, about Gordon’s age. The Deweys boldly approached the boy, Sabino, fed him and met his mother. Within days, they concluded the adoption of Sabino; he was taken back to America and, raised in the Dewey family!1 Dewey’s Family Drama Such is the Dewey family drama, a drama of replacement child. When John Dewey’s parents mourned for the loss of their first son in 1859, John was born ten months later, as the third child, more or less like a replacement child. A generation had passed. John got married with Alice who gave birth to their third child Morris in 1892. Tragically, history repeats itself. Morris died in the family’s first European trip two years later. The next year, Gordon was born, somehow as a replacement child to ease their parents’ grief. Eight years later and again in another family European trip, Gordon was taken away. To face this unpredictable fate, the only intentional human effort was for the Deweys to adopt Sabino as the latest replacement child.

1 Sabino left for America when he was eight and returned to Italy in his twenties to rediscover his roots, meeting his brothers and sister. As was told, Sabino was good at work with his hands and became a farm manager in Long Island, New York. For firsthand information, see Sabino Dewey interview, Sabino Dewey Papers, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University. A brief account can be found in Martin (2002: 330–333).

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Retreating to Philosophy Turning Inward What a dramatic change for Dewey’s life in 1905. In early 1904, he was still busy overseeing four schools in Chicago and managing his department. By early 1905, he was alone in the Columbia dormitory, walking the Hudson River sunset. He was bitter about university politics and both he and his wife, disillusioned with the University of Chicago, left UCES that Dewey founded. Most devastating of all, Gordon’s death was a tragedy he could never overcome. Despite his seeming success, he had lost many things he valued: his school, his close friends in Chicago and then his son Gordon. It was natural that Dewey turned inward in depression. He had no interest in people, in meetings or in research. He just carried on with his busy teaching schedules and moved onto something he found comfort in—philosophical reflection. With the reunion with his family and adoption of Sabino in mid-1905, he slowly got better but he did not show much interest in education or psychology. He taught mainly in the Department of Philosophy in Columbia and took up little administrative duties. When he occasionally offered lessons in Teachers College, he did not involve himself in teacher education as much as he did before in Chicago. With the abrupt ending of his education enterprises in Chicago, he was not in the mood to start over again in Columbia, at least for the time being. “Comfort Zone” In his “comfort zone” of philosophical discourse, Dewey faced challenges that he didn’t have before. In his Michigan years, he was working under George Morris in the shadow of Hegel. When he moved to Chicago, he was the big brother in the Department of Philosophy he established, taking lead in philosophical question formulation and creating the Chicago School of Philosophical Thought. Now in Columbia, a mature Dewey was to face challenges from other accomplished philosophical colleagues, notably F. J. E. Woodbridge, Felix Adler, William P. Montague, George Stuart Fullerton, and Wendell T. Bush, among others. Naturally Dewey faced his critics graciously. He did so all through his life. In 1905 and 1906, he turned out many philosophical papers to formulate his position on experiences, knowledge and pragmatism: Reality as Experience (1906, MW3: 101–106), The Experimental Theory

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of Knowledge (1906, MW3: 107–127), The Realism of Pragmatism (1905, MW3: 153–157) and The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism (1905, MW3: 158–167). When William James announced the founding of pragmatism in his watershed lecture, Pragmatism: A New Name for an Old Way of Thinking (1907), Dewey offered a review and supported it in What Pragmatism Means by Practical (1908, MW4: 98–115). At about the same time, Dewey co-authored with James Tufts Ethics (1908, MW5: 3–540), a textbook of moral philosophy, which sold very well for two decades until its revision in 1934. Social Activism and Public Intellectual Social Activism Another equally important development for Dewey in Columbia was his social activism and role of public intellectual. To begin with, Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism was one of action and progress, freedom and morality. In Chicago, he founded a school aimed at educational reform and social progress. He was involved with Jane Addams, Hull House for the social justice of new immigrants. Now in New York, he saw the need for social reform through active political participation. Formation of social groups and unionization was a step to muster more political power and to move toward democracy. To promote equality and human rights for the blacks, Dewey became, in 1909, the founding member of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In support of woman suffrage which his wife Alice championed, Dewey gave a lecture entitled Woman’s Suffrage in 1912 and joined a march down Fifth Avenue in New York City (Dykhuizen 1973: 150). He appealed to teachers to form professional organizations to have a voice in education policy. In his address to the League of New York Teachers in February 1913, he urged for “professional spirit, permeating the entire corps of teachers and educators” (Dykhuizen 1973: 146). He foresaw “the development of a strong professional spirit, and to the intelligent use of their experience in the interest of the public……for training children for citizenship in democracy” (Martin 2002: 246). In the same spirit, Dewey planned and promoted, with Arthur O. Lovejoy and others, for the founding of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and became its founding president in 1914. Two years later, he helped found the American Union Against

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Militarism (AUAM), which later evolved into American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Readers may appreciate that Dewey was the first generation of American human rights activists. He was the champion of participatory democracy and he became his own living example. Public Intellectual Dewey wrote not only for publication in academic journals but he also wrote with the public in mind, so that his writings appeared on Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic and other popular magazines. He was frequently interviewed by New York Times and top newspapers in America. Slowly Dewey emerged as a public intellectual, in times when the First World War began in Europe and the USA was wavering on whether to join the war. The nation was divided on the pro-war camp and anti-war (pacifist) camp. Dewey’s position was to fight the war against Germany, seeing it as a war between democracy and autocracy. He held a strong belief that democracy would prevail, with the hope of ending future wars and creating a League of Nations for long-term peace. Naturally, Dewey became an opinion leader and a public intellectual who spoke on public and political issues ever since. In 1914, Dewey was bitterly criticized by pacifists. When US President Woodrow Wilson, Dewey’s classmate at Johns Hopkins, finally convinced the houses to declare war on Germany in 1917, pacifists were silenced as any anti-war voices were treated as subversion. In fact, some outspoken anti-war professors in Columbia, notably James Cattell and Henry W. L. Dana were fired in fall 1917 (Martin 2002: 271–272). Dewey immediately jumped to their defense in support of freedom of speech in a democracy.2 Mid-life “Crisis” and Resolution During his early Columbia years, Dewey faced some personal crises. It took place when he was well over 55, so it is not a typical mid-life crisis. As it turned out, he was successful in resolving these problems.

2 For Dewey’s wartime activism, readers may refer to Chapter 7, The Politics of War in Westbrook, R. B. (1991). John Dewey and American Democracy, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. You may also refer to Dykhuizen (1973: Chapter 9).

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Physical Fatigue and Alexander Technique Except for the first few years when Dewey withdrew himself, he was sociable, proactive and open to new ideas. This led to his rendezvous with the New York Avant-Garde (Dalton 2002: Part Two). He met many young aspiring intellectuals, among them Wesley Mitchell and his wife Lucy. Wesley was an economist who came to Columbia in 1912 while Lucy was an energetic visionary who would soon learn from Dewey and contribute much to child development and education. The Mitchells settled in Greenwich Village in New York City and their homes became the saloon of avant-garde ideas in social sciences, arts and literature. There Dewey got acquainted with a wide spectrum of intellectuals and one of them was Frederick Matthias Alexander. Frederick M. Alexander (1869–1955) is an Australian actor and a self-made physiotherapist who developed the “Alexander Technique,” through which he coached his patients (he called them students) to correct their poor posture which caused them physical pain and psycho or behavioral tension.3 Note that Dewey, all through his Chicago and Columbia years, had been suffering from neck pain and eye strain. Always ready to try new things, Dewey took Alexander’s lessons in 1916. Within months, his physical conditions had substantially improved. With his improvement of physique, Dewey was able to become more energetic in his physically declining years. That Dewey endorsed Alexander and his technique was attributed to the same underlying theoretical approaches the two held.4 Alexander believed that physical pain and tension resulted from physical posture, not something “psychological” to be discovered by Freudian psychoanalysis, a fad of 1910s. He developed a sequence of steps for the conscious control of human physical postures. These steps could be learned and it could be used to deliberately override existing “poor” postural habits that caused back pain and tension. Dewey, advocate of conscious, reflective thought, might not have thought of applying it to one’s own physical body. To Dewey, Alexander Technique is not only a painkiller, but is evidence of conscious thought in action. When Dewey supported Alexander, he 3 Frederick M. Alexander had a very colorful and legendary life. His “Alexander Technique” is still alive today. 4 For Dewey’s acquaintance with Alexander, see Eric McCormack, Frederick Matthias Alexander and John Dewey: A Neglected Influence (Ph.D thesis, University of Toronto, 1958) (quoted from Dalton 2002: 311).

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was in fact supporting his own theory of psychology. Consequently, Dewey threw his weight on Alexander and wrote lengthy introductions to Alexander’s book5 (Dalton 2002: 97–101, 118–120). Emotional Engagement with Anzia Yezierska and Resolution Dewey’s emotional engagement in 1917–1918 with Anzia Yezierska, a novelist of Polish decent, was short-lived. By that time, Dewey was a famed scholar and a social activist. His class and lectures attracted students worldwide and people of all walks of life. Yezierska enrolled in one of his classes and intentionally called on Dewey in December 1917. With his usual compassionate and helpful personality, Dewey read Yezierska’s work and tried to find her a job, first in teaching and later in publishing. Dewey’s network landed her on major publishers and one of her short stories was selected to be the best of the year in 1919. Some of her short stories were then collected in 1920 in Hungry Hearts, published by Houghton Mifflin and soon became a successful silent film. Back in 1918, Dewy came in close contact with Albert Barnes, an art collector and philanthropist, who admired Dewey’s Democracy and Education and wanted to apply Dewey’s ideas of democracy in an immigrant community. He initiated the Polish Experiment, which was a social survey plus an immigrant integration program in the Polish community in Philadelphia. The experiment started in spring 1918; Dewey became the principal investigator and Yezierska was hired as a typist. The two got closer and exchanged letters and poems. Dewey’s emotional discharge and engagement with Yezierska were deep and intense. In Dewey’s poems, it could be seen that he described himself as “Joyless, griefless” and full of “duties.” He felt her compassion but had to remain restrained and aloof. By September 1918, Dewey ended this emotional engagement, not at all an extra-marital relationship, and did not see Yezierska any more. His puritanical morality forbid any sexual relationship; the social web—wife, children, family, friends, position—disallowed any office romance. Dewey as a renowned professor and a faithful husband could not accept any public scandal. Probably, it was upon his reflective thought that he stopped the relationship consciously. As Dewey’s future life unfold, this event did not result in any damage to his image as a scholar or public intellectual. Ironically, however, it was his 5 Alexander’s book, Men’s Supreme Inheritance, was first published in 1910 in London. It was substantially revised and published in 1918 in the USA.

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deep emotions plus his immense fame that had attracted Yezierska and ignited the whole event.6

Major Educational Writings: An Overview After moving to Columbia, Dewey turned himself to philosophy, becoming President of the American Philosophical Association (1905– 1906). He turned inward and withdrew himself from education, teaching mainly for Columbia’s Department of Philosophy and only occasionally for Teachers College. Though he wrote commentary on education from time to time, his focus was more on ethics and philosophy, producing notable works, such as Ethics (1908) with James Tufts and The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy (1909) and “Introduction” to the Essays in Experimental Logic (1916). His Moral Principles in Education (1909) was a mere expansion of the main ideas in Ethical Principles Underlying Education (1897). His How We Think (1910) is more a psychological treatise than an educational one. At the same time, he tried to ground education in his new philosophical pragmatism. This he did in The Bearing of Pragmatism Upon Education (1909). Dewey started with intelligence: “According to pragmatism, intelligence or the power of thought is developed out of the struggles of organic beings to secure a successful exercise of their functions” (MW4: 178). Then he went on to explain the growth of the human mind and knowledge by pragmatism: ……Now the pragmatic view of mind and knowledge agrees with this latter account in that it regards mind as a development and lays a great stress upon the relation between organism and the environment. But it regards the evolution of mind as a growth out of the constant tendency of life to sustain and fulfill its own functions through subordinating environment to itself rather than by passively accommodating itself to a coercion working from without. It does not regard intelligence, therefore, as merely a result of evolution, but as also a factor in guiding the evolutionary process; for it regards intelligence as an evolution of the functions of life to the point at which they can be performed most effectively. Similarly, knowledge, on 6 When Dewey’s early biographer George Dykhuizen wrote Dewey’s biography in 1973, he did not seem to be aware of the Yezierska’s affair. It was told in 1977 by Jo Ann Boydston, ed., The Poems of John Dewey (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), pp. 4–5. Subsequent interest and studies on the affair flourished in the 1980s.

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this view, is not a copy whose truth is to be judged by its fidelity to an original; it is an instrument or organ of successful action…… (MW4: 180)

Clear-minded readers would easily discern that the above ideas are no new discoveries: growth, organism and environment, function, action, evolution were repertories of Dewey’s psychology. What was new was when it was applied to education—the training of mind. Here the fallacy of traditional education is severely acute: “……it developed mental dependency and submissiveness. Docility, or obedient absorption of material presented by school teacher and text-book, has been the traditional and conventional virtue of the schools……” (MW4:182) To remedy the situation, Dewey proposed a reconceptualization of education method, subject—matter, social and moral aims of schools. The end was, of course, Deweyan and ethical: to bring about “social sympathy, co-operation and progress” (MW4: 191). The most important works in education that Dewey produced during that period were: Schools of Tomorrow (1915) and Democracy and Education (1916). For the first work, Dewey established himself as the promoter and spokesman of progressive education movement. On the second, it was his most significant work that epitomized Deweyan education, in which he offered a final and comprehensive system of thought in education. Before these two books, Dewey also contributed to A Cyclopaedia of Education (1911–1914). It was written as entries to a cyclopaedia on terms and names in education, for example (art in education, individuality, idealism and realism), philosophy (humanism and naturalism, hedonism, hypothesis) and psychology (imitation, accommodation). Altogether Dewey made 120 entries of one to a few paragraphs each, but it is not a systematic treatise of the subject.

Schools of Tomorrow Background and Writing Style It 1914, a major publisher, E. P. Dutton, wanted to start a series on progressive schools and invited Dewey to write the first volume, with a proposed title of “Schools of Tomorrow.” Dewey’s hands were full and he asked his daughter Evelyn to help. At that time, Evelyn was already a grown-up young lady, aged 26, having graduated from Smith College. Their collaboration was that John would write the theory

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part and Evelyn would supply information and write the practical side. In other words, she would go on field trip to visit notable progressive schools and interview principals, teachers, parents and students to describe the progressive education movement then in America. So off she went to collect information from Mrs Johnson’s School in Fairhope Alabama (Chapter 2), Professor J. L. Meriam’s Elementary School of the University of Missouri, Columbia (Chapter 3), the kindergarten of the Teachers College of Columbia University (Chapter 5), the school district in Gary, Indiana (Chapter 10) and many more schools. In each chapter, John Dewey substantiated it with education theories from Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Frobel, Montessori, and of course his own.7 Schools of Tomorrow is collected in Dewey’s Middle Works Volume 8, with an introduction by Sidney Hook, one of Dewey’s students and later close associates. Writing in 1976, Hook pointed out that Schools of Tomorrow was in fact describing something very pioneering: student tutoring, the open classroom, the classroom without walls, collaborative learning, etc. (MW8: xxxii). In sharp contrast with Dewey’s other scholarly writings, School of Tomorrow is written in a journalistic style; it is an investigative reporting of progressive schools, trying “to show what actually happens when schools start out to put into practice” their own new ideas (MW8: 207). These schools are dreamed schools that the book will chronicle, because: …… all of them (are) directed by sincere teachers trying earnestly to give their children the best they have by working out concretely what they consider the fundamental principles of education. More and more schools are growing up all over the country that are trying to work out definite educational ideas. It is the function of this book to point out how the applications arise from their theories and the direction that education in this country seems to be taking at the present time. We hope that through the description of classroom work we may help to make some theories living realities to the reader…… (MW8: 207–208)

In the preface, Dewey points to the common features of these schools: “…… tendencies towards greater freedom and an identification of the child’s school life with his environment and outlook; and, even more

7 Dykhuizen gave an anecdote of how this book was commissioned, written and revised (Dykhuizen 1973: 369).

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important, the recognition of the role education must play in a democracy……” (MW8: 208) Dewey is writing in such plain English style that even in the theory part, it is directly addressed to the public (parents, teachers, educated readers) instead of philosophers. It is like an oral transcription by a stenotypist, probably Evelyn or someone from Dutton. John Dewey on Major Education Theorists It is of particular interest that Dewey reviewed major education theorists in this book. In fact, they were the most prominent thinkers of modern education before him. Here we saw a confident Dewey interpreting and evaluating these thinkers, seeing through the lens of American pragmatism he helped founded as he built up his own theories. While Dewey endorsed all these modern theorists, he held different opinions on them with his personal preference: he disliked and satirized Rousseau, admired and trusted Pestalozzi, sympathized with but challenged Frobel, and supported Montessori with some reservation. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Rousseau is a French philosopher of the Enlightenment, whose ideas in The Social Contract and Discourse on Inequality became the cornerstone of modern political thought. Himself more a political and social theorist than an educator, his Emile (1762) nonetheless became a classic: his romantic inclination of human nature necessitates a natural unfoldment thesis, which becomes the starting point of modern child psychology and education. However, he never intended to be an educator. His contribution is to rid of the traditional conception of children as “little adult,” but his problem is idealizing self-expression and self-development which are not scientifically substantiated. His ideas appear simple today: education is natural development and so don’t push children into an adult world or adult mode of thinking or preference. “Ripening takes time; it cannot be hurried without harm” (MW8: 213). When Dewey made flirtation on Rousseau (“Rousseau did many foolish things” (MW8: 211)), he endorsed Rousseau’s idea of natural unfoldment and built on it. Below is a short comparison between Rousseau and Dewey, or more accurately, Rousseau in Dewey’s eyes and

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Table 10.1 Dewey vs. Rousseau on education

Learning

Growth

Mental training

Rousseau (romanticism)

Dewey (pragmatism)

Learning is necessity, a process of self-preservation and growth (MW8: 212) Learning is to let children grow naturally. “Ripening takes time” (MW8: 213)

Learning is a necessity in dealing with real situations (MW8: 212)

Stresses physical and mental training, the training of senses for judgment (MW8: 215, 218)

• Teaching is to guide natural growth (MW8: 218) • To give children typical experiences (MW8: 218) • To help them master the tools of learning (MW8: 221) • “Senses…… as necessary adjustments of human beings to the world around them” (MW8: 217) • Correction of error by experience (MW8: 218)

Dewey himself. You will see that Dewey is formulating his pragmatic experiential theory of education and moving a step forward from romanticism (Table 10.1). Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) Pestalozzi is a Swiss writer and pioneer educator. He was inspired by Rousseau’s Emile and The Social Contract and started a school for the education of farmers and the poor in Neudof in 1777. Note that at that time education and private tutoring were mostly the exclusive privilege of the nobility. By operating an orphanage in Stans in 1798 and a school in Burgdorf in 1800, Pestalozzi successfully taught 5- and 6-year-olds to read, write, draw and do simple maths. It attracted visitors all over Europe and brought him fame. His book, The ABC of Sense Perception (1803), Lessons on the Observation of Number Relations (1803) and The Mother Book (1813) were among the earliest treatises on pedagogy and child development. In Schools of Tomorrow, Dewey outlined Pestalozzi’s ideas and praised his contribution to curriculum and teaching. More specifically Pestalozzi had proposed a few important ideas that Dewey interpreted, endorsed and developed further (Table 10.2).

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Table 10.2 Dewey vs. Pestalozzi on education

Education and social relations

Presentation of subject material

Pedagogy

Pestalozzi (as interpreted by Dewey)

Dewey’s own ideas

Dewey quoted Pestalozzi saying: “Nature educated man for social relations, and by means of social relations. Things are important in the education of man in proportion to the intimacies of social relations into which man enters” (MW8: 249). Dewey interpreted it as “The more closely and more directly the child learns by entering into social situations, the more genuine and effective is the knowledge he gains” (MW8: 249) Pestalozzi believes “there are certain fixed laws of development” and object-lessons must be the “presentation of things to the senses.” Since “the order of nature consists in going from the simple to the complex,” it is “his endeavour to find out in every subject the ABC of observation” “the simplest elements…. put before the senses” (MW8: 250–251)

Dewey endorsed Pestalozzi’s idea and went further, seeing education as living in society, entering in to social relations and participating in community life (My Pedagogic Creed, EW5: 84–86)

Dewey interpreted Pestalozzi’s pedagogy, as “Pestalozzi himself called it the psychologizing of teaching, and, more accurately, its mechanizing…… We must, therefore, take care, in order to avoid confusion and superficiality in education, to make first impressions of objects as correct and as complete as possible” (MW8: 251–252)

While supporting Pestalozzi’s view, Dewey is more concerned with children’s personal experience and “purposeful activities.” The implication for “the progressive way of teaching” is that “if we can enlarge the child’s experience by methods which resemble as nearly as possible the ways that the child has acquired his beginning experiences, it is obvious that we have made a great gain in the effectiveness of our teaching” (MW8: 254) Dewey himself proposed “psychologizing the curriculum,” i.e., organizing the curriculum based on child psychology and children’s capacity of understanding (MW2: 285)

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Table 10.2 (continued)

Learning by doing

Pestalozzi (as interpreted by Dewey)

Dewey’s own ideas

Though Dewey does not quote it in Schools of Tomorrow, Pestalozzi has a famous motto: “Learning by head, hand and heart,” where “hand” means learning by doing

According to Dewey, students learn “not by reading books or listening to explanations…… but…… by doing things” (MW8: 254). Interesting enough, “learning by doing” has become the defining characteristic of progressive education (MW8: 261)

Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel (1782–1852) Fröbel is a pioneering German educator and is considered the father of early childhood education. He coined the word “kindergarten” which refers to play centers for young children. Fröbel studied in the University of Jena in 1799 and worked at Pestalozzi’s Institute in Yverdon-les-Bains in 1808–1810. In 1826, he published The Education of Man and a Weekly magazine, The Educating Families. Ten years later, he founded Play and Activity Institute and started manufacturing play materials for children, which he termed “gifts.” By 1840, the Royal Families of the Netherlands began to use his “gifts.” Fröbel died in 1852, and his kindergartens were banned by the Prussian Government for its “destructive tendencies in the areas of religion and politics.”8 When the ban was lifted in 1867, Fröbelian teaching flourished in Germany and all over the world. Today Fröbel’s legacy is manifest in Fröbel eV, Fröbel Town, Fröbel Diploma, Fröbel Academy and so forth. The first Fröbelian Kindergarten in the USA was founded by Fröbel’s student Margarethe Schurz in Wisconsin in 1856. Fröbel’s principles are: free work (games) with singing, dancing, gardening, and the like, i.e., self-activity and “gifts.” In Schools of Tomorrow, Dewey gave a sympathetic

8 It appears the ban was a confusion made by the Russian government between the two names, Friedrich Fröbel and his nephew Karl Fröbel, who advocated female colleges and kindergartens. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Fr%C3%B6bel.

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and positive introduction of Fröbel. In Dewey’s words, “Fröbel showed himself a true prophet of what has been accomplished in some of the schools such as we are dealing with in this book” (MW8: 277). Dewey acknowledged Frobel’s contributions but criticized his metaphysics: The efforts to return to Froebel’s spirit referred to above have tried to keep the best in his contributions. His emphasis upon play, dramatization, songs and story telling, which involve the constructive use of material, his deep sense of the importance of social relations among the children—these things are permanent contributions which they retain. But they are trying with the help of the advances of psychological knowledge since Froebel’s time and of the changes in social occupations which have taken place to utilize these factors directly, rather than indirectly, through translation into a metaphysics, which, even if true, is highly abstract. (MW8: 276)

That Dewey criticized Fröbel’s metaphysics may require some elaboration. According to Dewey, Fröbel is a philosopher trying to discover “laws” of development for children. These laws show correspondence between the inner mind of the child and the external world, based on the belief of the absolute. Dewey interpreted it like this: While Froebel’s own sympathy with children and his personal experience led him to emphasize the instinctive expressions of child-life, his philosophy led him to believe that natural development consisted in the unfolding of an absolute and universal principle already enfolded in the child. He believed also that there is an exact correspondence between the general properties of external objects and the unfolding qualities of mind, since both were manifestations of the same absolute reality. (MW8: 275–276)

Note that Fröbel himself is a pious Christian and believes that these universal laws manifest the existence of the absolute (God), and “they symbolize some Law of universal being” (MW8: 276). Even the children gathering in a circle is taken to mean “the circle is a symbol of infinity which will tend to invoke the infinite latent in the child’s soul’ (MW8: 276). Dewey called this “mystical metaphysics” (MW8: 275). You may recall Dewey’s rebuttal to Shadworth Hodgson on universal consciousness in 1886 (see Chapter 5 of this book). Then a Hegelian Christian, Dewey defended the existence of universal consciousness but by his Chicago years he had abandoned this “mystical metaphysics” himself and

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founded pragmatism. To keep up with his own views, he was criticizing Fröbel’s universal being and absolute reality in 1915. Despite Fröbel’s shortcomings, Dewey endorsed Fröbel’s emphasis of play, for “schools all over the country are at present making use of the child’s instinct for play, by using organized games, toy making, or other construction based on play motives as part of the regular curriculum” (MW8: 277). As always, Dewey enriched others’ concepts by adding his own. This time, Fröbel’s concept of play was “value-added” with interest, experience, social relations and problem-solving. Dewey illustrated the case with children playing dolls: the children’s instinctive activities were linked up with social interests and experiences. The latter centre, with young children, in their home. Their personal relations are of the greatest importance to them. Children’s intense interest in dolls is a sign of the significance attached to human relations. The doll thus furnished a convenient starting point. With this as a motive, the children have countless things they wish to do and make. Hand and construction work thus acquired a real purpose, with the added advantage of requiring the child to solve a problem. (MW8: 280)

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) A shining and flamboyant modern pioneer in early childhood education, Maria Montessori was a pediatrician-turned-educator who left a legacy of successful early childhood education enterprise. In 1890, Montessori studied natural sciences and medicine in the University of Rome, specializing in pediatrics and mental retardation. In 1907, she was asked by a charitable institution to work on children aged 3–7 for low-income families in Rome. She found that the method of the mentally retarded child could be adapted for the normal child and published her findings in Italian in 1909.9 The English edition appeared in 1912: The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in the Children’s Houses. Montessori’s success attracted international observers. In 1909, she was already training up teachers with her method. In 1912, Montessori schools were opened in Paris. By 1913, the first international training course was held in Rome and more than 100 Montessori schools sprang up in the USA.

9 The title in Italian was: II Metodo della Pedagogia Scientifica applicato all’ educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini (1909).

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Montessori took America by storm when she traveled there in 1913 and 1915 to offer training courses. Thousands of visitors looked behind glasses on her demonstration classroom. The Montessori fad did not go without controversy. William H. Kilpatrick, then an Associate Professor with Teachers College and a former student of Dewey, was highly critical of her work. He wrote The Montessori System Examined (1914) and challenged her in that “She generalizes unscientifically as to the condition of contemporary educational thought and practice from observation limited, it would seem, to the Italian schools” (Kilpatrick 1914: 3).10 In Schools of Tomorrow, Dewey devoted the whole Chapter 6 on this famed female contemporary of his. In sharp contrast with Kilpatrick, Dewey in fact faithfully summarized and endorsed her work. Judging from its tone and style, I suspect that his chapter might have been written by Evelyn but the ideas must have been reviewed by John himself. Montessori’s ideas were presented in such as way in Schools of Tomorrow that Dewey and Montessori seemed to share many similar views. For example, both advocated that “freedom and liberty are necessary for the child’s work” (MW8: 300). When Montessori stressed that “liberty is activity” and “activity is the basis of life” (MW8: 300), it is another way of saying “learning by doing” and action transforms life and reality in Dewey’s pragmatism. Montessori never punished students, just “quietly told” them to respect others (MW8: 301), much as Dewey rejected authoritarian discipline in a conventional classroom because it would only make docile and passive learners. Most significantly, Dewey started theorizing education in 1896 by postulating the importance of the child’s interest to growth, learning and self-expression (Interest in Relation to Training of the Will , 1896). This was operationalized in Montessori’s method, where “little children…… select the didactic materials in which they show themselves to be interested” (MW8: 303). You may recall that Dewey satirized the mechanical conventional curriculum as “subdivide each topic into studies; each study into lessons, each lesson into specific facts and formulae” (MW2: 276). Montessori overcame this by inventing self-corrective “didactic material” which could go without fixed order: “the normal child is allowed 10 It appears that Kilpatrick’s criticism had a serious negative impact on Montessori’s fad in the USA. However, other “native” progressive kindergartens continued to flourish, such as Caroline Pratt’s Play School, the kindergarten of Teachers College. Montessori Schools had a comeback in the USA after the Second World War.

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complete liberty in its use just “to exercise powers that the child is using constantly in all his daily actions,” and “to develop the faculties of the child” (MW8: 304). In the above fundamental ways, then, the two were alike. The only criticism that Dewey waged against Montessori was that her method might be less intellectually free than it seemed, and that “there is no freedom allowed the child to create. He is free to choose which apparatus he will use, but never to choose his own ends, never to bend a material to his own plans.” Since it did not present real-life problems and material, it might not “represent truly the conditions they (children) have to deal with out of school” (MW8: 309). You may appreciate that Dewey did not support the notion of “innate faculties” in psychology, but tried to replace it with “impulse.” Apparently, the theoretical difference between the two was stated below: A child is not born with faculties to be unfolded, but with special impulses of action to be developed through their use in preserving and perfecting life in the social and physical conditions under which it goes on…… the educators of this country differ with Montessori as to the existence of innate faculties which can be trained for general application by special exercises designed only for training…… (MW8: 311–312)

As a final remark, Dewey’s criticism of Montessori was not typical of his own style. In his usual way of presenting an academic problem, Dewey would polarize the two positions and then propose a middle ground. In this case, he would have elaborated innate personal faculties in sharp distinction with the position of social relations. Then he would have criticized the underlying assumptions of both, showing their similarities or differences. Finally, Dewey would have settled for a middle ground. But it is not the case here as the arguments did not follow this pattern. Instead, it was just a brief commentary and observation. My guess, then, is that it is not John’s own writing but is a transcription of both John’s and Evelyn’s ideas by Evelyn herself.

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Evelyn Dewey11 on Major Educational Innovations Parents and educators today must be amazed with the innovations in these progressive schools a hundred years ago, though they accounted for only a very small proportion of all the then American schools. They surely were “schools of tomorrow,” ahead of their time. How far we can achieve or excel them today remains an intriguing question. Their innovations are so many that I can only chronicle eleven major and relevant ones for your interest reading. Let me outline these education principles and make direct quotes of related innovative practices in Table 10.3.

Democracy and Education Life After Death John Dewey died in 1952, but his ideas survive up to today. This is most evident in the interest of his monumental work in education, Democracy and Education, which attracted reviews, talks, and symposiums ever since its publication in 1916. Below is a short note on more recent publications. Ninety years have passed and David T. Hansen, a professor with Teachers College, Columbia University, published John Dewey and Our Educational Prospect: A Critical Engagement with Dewey’s Democracy and Education (2006). Hansen served as chairman of John Dewey Society (2003–2005) and the book is collection of presentations in the society’s annual symposium together with the American Educational Research Association. In the same vein, Patrick H. Jenlink of St. Edward’s University, Austin, Texas edited Dewey’s Democracy and Education Revisited: Contemporary Discourses for Democratic Education and Leadership (2009). Jenlink gathered teacher educators, public school administrators and college professors to focus on democratic leadership in schools. He challenged educators for “the transformation of public schools into public spaces of democratic practice, which is a new vista of teachers and school leaders as public intellectuals, as critical agents of democracy” (Jenlink 2009: 393).

11 Evelyn Dewey went on with her education career and published New Schools for Old (1919) and The Dalton Laboratory Plan (1922), the latter of which crossed the Atlantic and made an impact on British education. See Cowan, S., & McCulloch, G., The Reception and Impact of Democracy and Education: The Case of Britain, in Higgins, S., & Coffield, F. (2016). John Dewey’s Democracy and Education: A British Tribute (pp. 7–29).

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Table 10.3

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Innovative practices in Schools of Tomorrow

Education principles

Innovative practices

Joyful learning (Fairhope School)

Joyful learning is not new in America. A hundred years ago in Fairhope School, the children liked school and learned unconsciously: “The ability of a child to put all his native initiative and enthusiasm into his work; the power to indulge his natural desire to learn; thus preserving joy in life and a confidence in himself which liberates all his energies for his work. He likes school and forgets that he is “learning”; for learning comes unconsciously as a by-product of experiences which he recognizes as worth while on their own account.” (8: 228) When we are paying lip service to “teachers as facilitators” today, Fairhope School and Montessori School were practicing this ideal of teachers as helpers and observers: “At Fairhope the children do the work, and the teacher is there to help them to know, not to have them give back what they have memorized.” (8: 228) “Where the teacher’s role has changed to that of helper and observer, where the development of every child is the goal, such freedom becomes as much a necessity of the work as is quiet where the children are simply reciting.” (8: 98) Small group teaching and learning probably started one hundred years ago in America: “Division into groups is made where it is found that the children naturally divide themselves…… The work within the group is then arranged to give the pupils the experiences which are needed at that age for the development of their bodies, minds, and spirits……” (8: 225) Below you can find the earliest form of peer learning and collaborative learning in America: “……the pupils were conducting the recitations themselves whenever there was an opportunity. One pupil took charge of the class, calling on the others to recite; the teacher becoming a mere observer unless her interference was necessary to correct an error or keep the lesson to the point. When the class is not actually in charge of a pupil, every method is used to have the children do all the work, not to keep all the responsibility and initiative in the hands of the teacher. The pupils are encouraged to ask each other questions, to make their objections and corrections aloud, and to think out for themselves each problem as it comes up.” (8: 258–259) It appears that individual differences slowly emerged as an important issue in education by the turn of the century and some schools, such as Fairhope, are working on it: “The school has provided conditions for wholesome, natural growth in small enough groups for the teacher (as a leader rather than an instructor) to become acquainted with the weaknesses of each child individually and then to adapt the work to the individual needs.” (8:235)

Teachers as facilitators (Fairhope School) (Montessori School)

Small group learning (Fairhope School)

Peer learning and collaborative learning (Public School #45 Indianapolis)

Catering for individual differences (Fairhope School)

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Table 10.3

(continued)

Education principles

Innovative practices

Education for a happy and fulfilling life (Elementary School of the University of Missouri)

Nowhere has this purpose of education been succinctly stated than was in here. We educators today have so much to learn from their far-sighted vision: “The purpose of the experiment is not to devise a method by which the teacher can teach more to the child in the same length of time, or even prepare him more pleasantly for his college course. It is rather to give the child an education which will make him a better, happier, more efficient human being, by showing him what his capabilities are and how he can exercise them, both materially and socially, in the world he finds about him. If, while a school is still learning how best to do this for its pupils, it can at the same time give them all they would have gained in a more conventional school, we can be sure there has been no loss.” (8: 247) We saw the work on the education of the gifted here, even earlier than Lewis Ternan in Stanford and Leta Hollingworth in Columbia: “Pupils are classified…… as “rapid”, “average” and “slow” workers. Rapid pupils finish 12 years of school at about 16 years of age……” (8: 330) “……The rapid child moves as quickly as possible from grade to grade instead of being held back until his work has no stimulus for him, and the slow worker is not pushed into work before he is ready for it…… the children are happy and interested; while from the point of view of the teacher and educator, the answer is even more positively favorable, when we consult the school records.” (8: 332) Most parents must have had the headache of asking children to listen. In fact listening is a skill that can be trained. In the lesson, children take turn to read stories to each other and listen: “Every child likes to be listened to, and they soon discover they must tell their story well or they will get no audience. Some stories they tell by acting them out, others by drawing.” (8: 241) Dewey’s ideas of school as a community were expanded to become a workplace for students. Going to school is like going to work. Examples abound in Gary Schools: • Boys of fifth grade take entire charge, keep records, order and distribute school supplies • Older students study stenography, typing or bookkeeping and go “to school office and do an hour of real work, helping one of the clerks.” (8: 334–335) • To run the school canteen, the girls do all the menu, planning, buying, keeping accounts. Some students serve tables. Both boys and girls do cooking • Boys make furniture: tables, cupboards and book shelves. Girls do sewing and make clothes • Pupils become estate managers and maintenance workers. (8: 342–344)

Education of the gifted (Gary Public Schools, Indiana)

Learning to listen (Elementary School of the University of Missouri)

School as a workplace (Gary Public School System, Indiana)

(continued)

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(continued)

Education principles

Innovative practices

Learning by doing (Interlaken School Indiana, The Public School District 45, Indianapolis)

Dewey notion of learning by doing is transformed into authentic learning by real-life doing here. With the education experiment going on, Schools of Tomorrow chronicles many stunning real-life doings that amaze even today’s educators: • Pupils are not only learning carpentry; the picture shows they are building the school houses by measuring and making windows (Interlaken School Indiana) (8: 264) • Pupils are not only studying gardening. The Public School District 45, Indianapolis, bought a large plot of land and the picture shows students are clearing up land and making a garden. (8: 270) “The school has also bought the local newspaper from the neighboring village and edits and prints a four-page weekly paper of local and school news. The boys gather the news, do much of the writing and all of the editing and printing, and are the business managers, getting advertisements and tending to the subscription list. The instructors in the English department give the boys any needed assistance.” (8: 265) The ultimate ideal of Deweyan education is to foster social reform. This can be realized step-by-step by first opening the school plant for the neighborhood center, then organizing civic clubs to improve community services, such as cleaning up streets and even “mock elections” and “self governments” (MW8: 352). Dewey states his high hopes: “The Gary schools and Mr. Valentine’s school have effected an entire reorganization in order to meet the particular needs of the children of the community, physically, intellectually, and socially. Both schools are looking towards a larger social ideal; towards a community where the citizens will be prosperous and independent, where there will be no poverty-ridden population unable to produce good citizens. While changes in social conditions must take place before this can happen, these schools believe that such an education as they provide is one of the natural ways and perhaps the surest way of helping along the changes. Teaching people from the time they are children to think clearly and to take care of themselves is one of the best safeguards against exploitation.” (8: 351)

Schools for civic societies (Gary Public Schools, Indiana, Mr. Valentine’s School)

2016 marked the centenary publication of Democracy and Education. Many International conferences were held to commemorate this event, notably in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Cambridge. In Hong Kong, the Gifted Education Council hosted the International Symposium on the Centenary of Dewey’s Democracy and Education in 2015 with scholars from Germany, China, USA and Hong Kong. In Shanghai, the Dewey Center of Fudan University started the John Dewey Lectures Series in 2016. In the UK, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain and the history of Education Society brought together a collection of

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papers, which was edited by Peter Cunningham of Cambridge University and Ruth Heilbronn of UCL Institute of Education, in Dewey in Our Time: Learning from John Dewey for Transcultural Practice (2016). In the same year, Steve Higgins of Durham University and Frank Coffield, a retired UK educator, edited John Dewey’s Democracy and Education: A British Tribute. It was clear that Dewey’s ideas have travelled far and wide, from Teachers College of Columbia to Austin, from the UK to Hong Kong, from Japan to China, Turkey, Russia, Continental Europe, in short, all through the world. Publishing Background: Is Democracy and Education a Textbook? Both Hansen (2006) and Cunningham and Heilbronn (2016) gave a comprehensive account on the publication of Democracy and Education. Hansen quoted the book contract Dewey signed with Macmillan in 1911, originally entitled, “An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education” (Hansen 2006: 1). Became of the impending First World War in 1915, the publishers urged Dewey “to change the title in light of pressing political issues” (ibid.: 1). Thus, the title Democracy and Education came into being, but “Dewey’s curt preface certainly sounds textbookish,” observed Hansen (ibid.: 5). With further analysis and explanation, however, Hansen concluded: Dewey’s publishers had asked for a textbook for teachers, but he gave them much more. He produced a book that teachers, even as it articulates from Dewey’s point of view the elements of an education in and for a democratic society. Readers may not accept his lessons, and they may disagree with his methods. However, they can only reach those judgments by entering the inquiry with him. In so doing, they put themselves in a position to learn—to grow. (Hansen 2006: 20)

Cunningham also dwelt on the issue of textbook. He did a historical research on textbook publication on education in the USA at the turn of the twentieth century. One interesting fact was about Columbia’s Teachers College: And in the case of Columbia’s Teachers College, enrolment grew from hundreds of students to thousands, national and international, over this period. It became the largest school of education in the world, generating a huge income…… Success generated a huge and lucrative market for

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educational publications. The academic journal Teachers College Record was launched in 1900. In 1901 Edward L. Thorndike began to write textbooks “to make money and to spread the word”. (Cunningham and Heilbronn 2016: 25)

When it looks like Dewey was following Thorndike’s motive and footsteps, the publishers had bigger plans. The Macmillan Company of New York, for example, was not just planning one textbook, but a series of textbooks on education. Naturally, it required an editor and they recruited Paul Monroe, Professor at Teachers College for this Job. Monroe was a historian of American education and knew Dewey personally. Earlier on, he invited Dewey to contribute to his 5-volume Cyclopaedia of Education, in which Dewey wrote 120 entries. Then he got Dewey into his textbook series (Monroe himself wrote three). Today a textbook writer remains a respectable job but it is incomparable to or less prestigious than an innovative researcher who has something new or important to publish. That is why Hansen tries to defend Dewey’s Democracy and Education, which is not a dry textbook but an innovative treatise on the subject. Cunningham, on the other hand, saw Dewey’s textbook as a good way of disseminating his educational philosophy, but it needs institution (teacher education) and promoters to perpetuate Dewey’s ideas (he identified William H. Kilpatrick and Philip. W. Jackson). My knowledge is that, the image of a textbook writer and the role of textbooks have changed, then and now. In Dewey’s times, a textbook writer is in fact an innovative researcher. He/she was expected to synthesize all existing knowledge of a subject and came up with a theory, a position, even a paradigm. Take a snapshot of Alexander Bain, whose The Senses and The Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and The Will (1859) became a standard textbook of psychology for many decades in England and America (see Chapter 4). It summarized mental philosophy up to 1850s. Dewey himself wrote his first book, Psychology (1887) which was a textbook. It brought him immediate fame and recognition. Psychology was not just a textbook, but was an innovation in which Dewey tried to show how psychology could become philosophic method. A few years later, William James’s, The Principles of Psychology (2 volumes) (1891) appeared. It was again a textbook, but James explored consciousness and the human mind so deeply that it became the starting point of the modern study of consciousness. The above evidence shows

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that “textbook” a hundred years ago was associated with innovation; it was not synonymous with “boring”, nor was it a derogatory term at all. Dewey’s textbook writing efforts started in Michigan and continued in Columbia. His Ethics (1908), co-authored with James Tufts, sold well for three decades, to be revised in 1933. His How We Think (1909), is in fact a textbook for teachers to teach children “reflective thinking,” i.e., scientific thinking. Thus in 1911, when Dewey signed a contract to write An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, it was a textbook in Monore’s textbook series. Dewey’s textbook writing career went on, for Human Nature and Conduct (1922) was subtitled An Introduction to Social Psychology. Scope and Structure Democracy and Education comes with 26 chapters in 420 pages. This work starts with education as life (Chapter 1) and education as social function (Chapter 2), slowly developing into education as growth (Chapter 4), with Dewey criticizing Frobel, Hegel, Herbart and the mental discipline schools (Chapter 5), finally reaching his signature thesis of education as “continuous reconstruction of experience” (Chapter 6). Here Dewey brings in the democratic conception in education (Chapter 7) and examines the three competing aims in education: natural development, social efficiency and cultural or personal mental enrichment (Chapters 8 and 9). As expected, the Deweyan dialectic is to reject each and put them together into unity. The remaining chapters are on the education proper: learning motivation (interest, discipline), thinking, teaching method, curriculum, subject matter (science, geography, history, physical and social studies), finally ending in moral education. In fact, Dewey had considered all these issues in his Chicago years, only to put them together to become a systematic philosophy of education.12 No doubt, Democracy and Education has such a broad scope that it deserves to be called “an introduction to the philosophy of education.” On the other hand, its treatment on different domains is the presentation of Dewey’s own views rather than an outline or an historical account of the domains themselves. For example, when Dewey pays tribute to former philosophers of education such as Rousseau, Frobel, 12 Hansen offered an interpretive synopsis of Democracy and Education and organized it in four primary sections. See Hansen (2006: 10–13).

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Hegel, Herbart (Chapters 5–6), he has no intention to present their ideas in a systematic way, but rather to critique and build on them. In this sense, it is “Dewey’s philosophy of education” more than an “introduction to the philosophy of education.” In subject matter and curriculum, Dewey emphasizes the importance of “meanings (to) supply content to existing social life” (p. 226), as it is intricately related to democracy. He does not bother to go into details of three Rs (reading, writing, arithmetic), dismissing essentialism as “ignorance of the essentials needed for the realization of democratic ideals” (p. 226). Similarly, his treatment of geography (Chapter 16), history (Chapter 16), science (Chapter 17), vocational subjects (Chapters 20, 23), social studies (Chapter 21) is just general principles related to interest, personal experience, reflective thinking, man and nature. No subject content nor teaching principles can be found or discussed there. What Is New in Democracy and Education In his Chicago years, Dewey’s educational writings started from Interest in Relation to Training of the Will (1996) and ended with The Child and the Curriculum (1902). It was a long academic journey (see Chapter 9) and by the time Dewey left for Columbia, his major ideas in education were all in place. More importantly, I argue that his system of thought in education was largely formulated in The Child and the Curriculum. My challenge is to find out what is new in Democracy and Education; are there new ideas added on in his Columbia years? My discovery is that most ideas in Democracy and Education are elaboration of his old ideas in Chicago, but there are a few new ones. As always, Dewey’s ideas interlock and overlap; they are not discrete, not like an integer or a natural number. Well-knowing this constraint, I searched through Democracy and Education’s 26 chapters. I try my very best and identify 12 potentially new items. When I review them in depth, I come to a list of 7 elaborated ideas and 5 new ideas (Table 10.4). Below I will just outline his new ideas. I will skip the elaborated ideas as you can find their original forms in Chapter 9.

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Table 10.4 Dewey’s former ideas in education and new ideas in Democracy and Education Former ideas (Ideas found in Chicago years, further elaborated in Columbia years)

New ideas (Ideas not found in Chicago years, newly developed in Democracy and Education)

• • • • • • •

• Philosophy as general theory of education • Critique of Rousseau’s Idealization • Interactive Unfoldment • Plasticity • Political philosophy

Education as living Schools and social customs Life customs Social control Habits Growth Value

Summary of Dewey’s New Ideas in Democracy and Education Philosophy as General Theory of Education Dewey never put forth this position before in his early writings. During his Columbia years from 1905 to 1914, he further developed and sharpened his pragmatic philosophy. Philosophy is an inquiry into humanity, human nature and how humans grow and live, according to Dewey. Since humans grow and live within an environment, our adaptations are our thinking and action on the environment with meaning, value and experience, solving problems and resolving conflicts. It therefore follows that philosophy is human inquiry for action, and education is a human process to communicate shared meanings for intelligent action. In Dewey’s words, Philosophy was stated to be a form of thinking, which, like all thinking, finds its origin in what is uncertain in the subject matter of experience, which aims to locate the nature of the perplexity and to frame hypotheses for its clearing up to be tested in action. Philosophy is at once an explicit formulation of the various interests of life and a propounding of points of view and methods through which a better balance of interests may be effected. Since education is the process through which the needed transformation may be accomplished and not remain a mere hypothesis as to what is desirable, we reach a justification of the statement that philosophy is the theory of education as a deliberately conducted practice. (MW9: 341–342)

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Going Beyond Rousseau’s Idealization In his writing in Michigan and Chicago years, Dewey never gave a comprehensive review of major education thinkers. By the time he contributed to Cyclopedia of Education and wrote Schools of Tomorrow, he was compelled to review these predecessors of educational thought. The result was that Dewey give a critique on Rousseau (Chapter 3) and Frobel (Chapter 5) as he built his system. Briefly stated, Rousseau believes that human nature are good but civilization “corrupts” them, thus his signature statement, “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” In the age of enlightenment, Rousseau believes in the goodness of innate human nature. He speculated that humans were initially solitary animals, without reason, language nor communities. Animal-like passions led humans to develop language, reasoning and complex communities. When humans became political, rational with language, they formed civilizations that were repressive to human nature: unnatural, unjust and unequal. Thus, he wrote Discourse on Inequality (1754) and The Social Contract (1762) for an equitable and just political system. In education, his Emile (1762), espoused the natural unfoldment thesis, i.e., a child’s good human nature will naturally unfold and it should be kept away from society’s “bad” influences. Let me briefly compare Rousseau’s ideas in 1762 and Dewey’s in 1915. In 1762, Rousseau saw man as born free and everywhere in chains. He suggested natural unfoldment for children to overcome society’s “chains” and bad influences. In 1915, Dewey replaced “free” and “chains” with “impulses” and “life-customs.” For Dewey, a child is born with impulses for action which are not in alignment with life-customs. There is social control to his impulse and action where control means acts (approval, disapproval, etc.) to influence others’ action in a stimulus-response framework. It is not one person’s control over one child, but a social control by the whole society so there must be “common understanding of the means and ends of action” by its group members. (Democracy and Education, Chapter 3) It is clear that Dewey had built on and gone beyond Rousseau. A hundred and fifty years of research in psychology, anthropology and science had made this possible, epitomized in Dewey’s views. Instead of a simplistic insistence of natural unfoldment, Dewey hits upon internal control and intrinsic disposition in education. This becomes the study of motivation a few decades later.

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Moving from Natural Unfoldment to Interactive Unfoldment Here is another important new idea in Democracy and Education. Dewey is not following the traditional view of “unfolding from within” from Rousseau (natural unfoldment) to Fröbel (mystic symbolic value) to Hegel (absolute whole) “in process of unfolding” (MW9: 75). He criticizes Rousseau as idealizing the child and human nature; Fröbel as emphasis upon mathematical symbols and Hegel as embracing institutions. He sees them as ignoring the interaction between organization and environment, leading to growth from present to future. He sees the whole process as natural growth and maturity materialized through the environment (Chapter 5). Dewey is always skeptical of the “teleological” thesis, in that there is an inner force that unfolds in a process. Instead, he sees growth as a process of interaction. He takes a broader perspective that growth and development is not only for children; it is human progress (adult and children) in the adaptation to the environment through adjustment and the “reconstruction of experience.” Dewey does not talk much about child’s biological growth; his child’s mental development is just a description of logical stages. His growth is an evolutionary and developmental process of all humanity, which can be better termed “interactive unfoldment.” The Notion of Plasticity Plasticity is a central notion in the architecture of the human mind today, especially for the child’s mind. Dewey rightly asserted in Chapter 4: Plasticity lies near the pliable elasticity by which some persons take on the color of their surroundings while retaining their own bent. But it is something deeper than this. It is essentially the ability to learn from experience; the power to retain from one experience something which is of avail in coping with the difficulties of a later situation. This means power to modify actions on the basis of the results of prior experiences, the power to develop dispositions. Without it, the acquisition of habits is impossible. (MW9: 49)

From this assumption of plasticity, children have the power to learn from experience, leading to the formation of habits. While Dewey does not elaborate much on the nature or organization of plasticity and leaves room for future psychologists, he rejects the assumption of mental faculties at birth. Instead of focusing on traditional abilities such as perceiving,

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remembering, willing, judging, generalizing, attending, etc.… (MW9: 73), he emphasized initiative, inventiveness and readaptability. Whatever the case, Dewey proposes some new important ideas in human cognition basic to child education. Democracy as a Way of Life In Chapter 7 of Democracy and Education, Dewey outlines his position on political philosophy, criticizing the undesirable political ideals and systems of the past. This includes the Platonic class society without freedom, the eighteenth-century individualistic ideal of freedom with humanity in chaos and the more recent nineteenth-century national states as institutions dominating over the individual. Here for the first time, Dewey applies his political philosophy to education and puts democracy in the forefront. But what is that notion of democracy? Summarizing Dewey’s political thought, his notion of democracy starts from ethics, and grows into the following main ideas that include social justice, equality, participation and finally a way of living. The basic tenets are: • Interests are shared by all groups; • Freedom of interaction and communication between groups are important for the sharing of experience; • Community members participate on equal terms with a flexibly adjusted institution; • A democratic society requires a positive mind and habit which can be nurtured through education. It can secure social change without disorder. Dewey acknowledges that “education is a social process” and there is a criterion implied in “a particular social ideal.” The criteria are “the worth of a form of social life…… in which the interests of a group are shared by all its members, and the fullness and freedom with which it interacts with other groups” (MW9: 105). Following these criteria, Dewey argues that democracy is the education ideal of contemporary American society: A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of education which gives

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individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder. (MW9: xvi)

Review and Evaluation Dewey’s Startling Claim: Philosophy as Theory of Education Dewey’s claim of philosophy “as the generalized theory of education” can be presented as follows. For Dewey, philosophy is to clarify thinking, for testing and for action. In the process, philosophy has to review uncertainties faced in different “social conditions, aims, organized interests and institutional claims” (MW9: 341). Based on the above, philosophy can make explicit views and methods for a balanced interest and harmonious readjustment in society. Since education is a process to achieve what is desirable, so philosophy is the theory of education for deliberate practice to bring about improvement of social life in harmony (MW9: 387). Seen in this way, Dewey’s position as a pragmatic view of philosophy is not necessarily agreed by linguistic or postmodern philosophers. When philosophers try to review social conditions, aims, interests and claims, it is the realm of political philosophy and social philosophy, not education. When Dewey assumes it possible to balance different interests and aims for a harmonious society, his assumption was not shared by other schools, such as the Marxists, the phenomenologists or the humanists. Worse still, it was not supported by twentieth-century political reality: conflict and uncompromised interests never reach a balanced readjustment in society or among nations. Instead, we see unresolved conflicting ideology and power relations. When it is logical for Dewey to see the relation of philosophy and education this way, this is just another bold claim and macroscopic perspective characteristic of Dewey’s. Thirty years before, a young 25year-old Dewey saw psychology as the centre of human sciences (see Chapter 5). Two years later, he saw psychology as philosophic method. By 1915, he took philosophy as theory of education. Yes, this time he might have solved his problem as a professional philosopher and attracted interest from technical professors, but his “logical deduction” did not add much meaning and value to social theorists, politicians or the public.

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Dewey’s Notion of Democracy Readers with a different culture from the West may inquire: Why did Dewey put democracy in the forefront? Why is democracy, only one form of government in human history, occupying the central role in Dewey’s conception of education? With Dewey’s focus on political and social philosophy in his Columbia years, he saw public education as an enterprise serving a social function, where the modern American society need education to perpetuate its democratic ideal. In his words, ……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…… which…… 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… … (Preface of Democracy and Education) (MW9: 3)

For Dewey, this democratic ideal is not just a form of government, but also a way of living, and a positive mindset of justice and equality. In particular, he sees the importance of free communication: “(S)ince democracy stands in principle for free interchange, for social continuity, it must develop a theory of knowledge which sees in knowledge the method by which one experience is made available in giving direction and meaning to another” (MW9: 354). As I understand it, Dewey is too eager to bring philosophy into human action and social sciences. His democracy in fact means free communication and he has high hopes that with sincere and in-depth communication, we can reach an agreed and better outcome by positive action. Of course, twentieth century’s course of events show the opposite. Communication brings heated-debate and opposite camps may never compromise in their views. American party politics is a case in point that does not need my elaboration. Probably, we need more research in political sciences, public opinion, cognitive stickiness (fixation) in psychology to chart the course of human communication. The credit of John Dewey is he starts with a naïve, idealistic starting point: to break down barriers for communication, to move on for

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genuine communication. When we begin to understand the underlying vested interests, ideology, worldview, aspiration and motive behind participants, we can hopefully reach more understanding and some temporary consensus. Today we are at a position of naivety lost. Dewey’s Moral Education and Ideal School: An Impossible Dream? To state in a simple, positive way, John Dewey wants to integrate knowledge with conduct (desirable action and behaviour), which is what moral education should achieve. He wants learning to affect “character formation” with “the moral end as the unifying and culminating end of education” (MW9: 370). His ideal is that learning should be in-depth activity related to disposition and motive. He wants learning to be “the accompaniment of continuous activities or occupations which have a social aim and utilize the materials of typical social situations” (MW9: 370). Again, he is too eager to integrate. My view is that this is an impossible dream, an unnecessary dream and even a bizarre dream. How can all knowledge transmission come with moral action? Many skills, for example, learning of alphabets, to add, to read, are not moral. Many abstract ideas in science have no moral value at all. It is just human mental interest and exercise, for example the idea of DNA, black hole, etc. When a teacher thinks of everything she teaches with a social moral aim such as division for a equal share, circle as same distance from social vicinity, it doesn’t add much to knowledge. In the final paragraph of Democracy and Education, Dewey summarizers his ideal school where learning and morality meets: For under such conditions, the school becomes itself a form of social life, a miniature community and one in close interaction with other modes of associated experience beyond school walls. All education which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral. It forms a character which not only does the particular deed socially necessary but one which is interested in that continuous readjustment which is essential to growth. Interest in learning from all the contacts of life is the essential moral interest. (MW9: 370)

In short, his ideal school encapsules the following characteristics:

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• • • •

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Share effectively Form socially positive character Continuous readjustment (growth) Interest in learning

No doubt this is very idealistic, and some progressive educators try to work toward it. A hundred years have passed and this ideal remains a good dream and direction.

Further Readings See reading list in Chapter 13.

References Cunningham, P., & Heilbronn, R. (Eds.). (2016). Dewey in Our Time: Learning from John Dewey for Transcultural Practice. London: UCL Institute of Education Press. Dalton, T. C. (2002). Becoming John Dewey: Dilemmas of a Philosopher and Naturalist. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dykhuizen, G. (1973). The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Hansen, D. T. (2006). John Dewey and Our Educational Prospect: A Critical Engagement with Dewey’s Democracy and Education. Albany: State University of New York Press. Jenlink, P. M. (Ed.). (2009). Dewey’s Democracy and Education Revisited: Contemporary Discourses for Democratic Education and Leadership. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kilpatrick, W. H. (1914). The Montessori System Examined. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press.

PART IV

Involvement in Education and Impact

CHAPTER 11

Dewey in China

Introduction Once-in-a-lifetime Experience In academic 1918–1919, John Dewey took a sabbatical leave from Columbia which, with a chain of events, led to his visit to China. Humorously comparing his visit to China as “like Mars to him,” Dewey told his children that he “never expected to go there and did not know anything that was happening there.”1 As it turned out, his stay in China for 2 years and 2 months was the longest visit he had ever had to a foreign country in his life time. This once-in-a-lifetime experience was a single most significant event with lasting impact on his future life. His daughter wrote many years later, “China remains the country nearest his heart after his own” (Jane Dewey 1939: 42). What had happened that had led to Dewey’s strong affection to China? Why did he stay there for such a long period of time? Today international academic exchange is so common, frequent, efficient that a US scholar in demand can fly to Shanghai in 15 hours, gives a talk and then flies to Europe for another conference the next day. Telecommunication through Internet, such as skype, facetime, zoom, may even make international conferences obsolete. Not so a hundred years

1 John Dewey to Dewey children. April 1, 1920 (#03593).

© The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_11

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ago. It took the Deweys 20 days to cross the Pacific (January 22, 1919– February 9, 1919)2 and landed onto Japan. Why did the Deweys go to Japan? Why did they go to China two months later? What did they do in China and what were their impact? The Historical Inevitability Thesis Dewey’s visit to China can now be treated as a historical event. It can be likened to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that triggered the First World War. The historical questions thus arise: Is the assassination of the Archduke inevitable? Can the First World War be avoided? Can it be fought differently and ended differently? In our case of John Dewey’s China trip, which took place just a few years after the notorious assassination, I always ponder over the law of historical immutability. The questions can be formulated in four inevitability theses: 1. Is Dewey’s visit to China inevitable? 2. Is Dewey’s extended stay in China for over two years unavoidable? 3. Is the popularization of Dewey’s ideas in China after his visit inevitable? 4. Is the purge of his ideas (1950–1976) and resurrection (1980– present) inexorable? I will try to answer these questions as I go along telling Dewey’s China trip story.

1918: Dewey’s Year of Complicated Political Involvement End of First World War Our story began in 1918, which was a year of complicated political involvement for Dewey. Note that the European War (later termed the First World War) had started in 1914 and Dewey urged America to fight against aristocratic Germany. It was a progressive ideal to stage

2 The Deweys took the Shunyu Maru from San Francisco to Yokahama (Dykhuizen 1973: 187).

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“the war to end all wars” and to make the world “safe for democracy.” Initially, the Americans remained neutral, but when American ships were sunk by German submarines, the US declared war on Germany in April 1917. By 1918, it looked like the Germans were losing and Woodrow Wilson, President of the USA, announced his famous Fourteen Points for peace negotiation. Outlined in January 1918, the Fourteen Points included open diplomacy, freedom of navigation, elimination of trade barriers, disarmaments, adjustment of colonial claims, self-determination of the peoples, and finally the formation of an “association of nations” for “political independence and territorial integrity of great and small nations alike.” Though seen as “Wilsonian idealism” by the European Allies, this American progressive diplomacy became the basis for the terms of German surrender in November 1918 and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles in April 1919. Dewey and Wilson were classmates during their Johns Hopkins years (see my Chapter 3). He was generally in support of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, especially for the formation of a League of Nations. As a key opinion leader in American politics, Dewey wrote many articles on the subject, such as The Approach to a League of Nations (MW11: 127–130), The League of Nations and the New Diplomacy (MW11: 131– 134), The Fourteen Points and the League of Nations (MW11: 135–138), A League of Nations and Economic Freedom (MW11: 139–142).But Dewey’s involvement was more than that; he was also involved in Wilson’s 13th point: the establishment of an independent Polish State. The Independence of Poland With the publication of Democracy and Education in 1916, Dewey became the spokesman of American education for a democratic society. He had attracted many followers; among them Albert Barnes, a businessman and an art collector, who attended Dewey’s seminars and came up with a bold idea: to try out the ideas of Democracy and Education in the experiment of assimilation of new Polish immigrants in Philadelphia. The experiment became some kind of a research project financed by Barnes, supervised by Dewey and conducted by a team of Dewey’s graduate students. While the Polish study did not yield any substantial research results, it did induce Dewey into the Polish question. Historically Poland was a commonwealth, partitioned by Germany and Russia in 1795. The rising

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tide of modern Polish nationalism began in the 1890s, and the First World War was a golden chance for the Poles to gain independence. The Polish National Committee was formed in Paris to lobby for international support for Polish independence. Its leaders, Roman Dmowski (1864– 1939) and Ignacy Paderewski (1860–1941) met President Wilson and subsequently the independence of Poland became an American agenda in Wilson’s 13th Point. Dewey’s investigation in Philadelphia showed that there were two groups. The first group related to Paderewski and the Roman Catholic Church was conservative. The second group related to the American Jews was more liberal, socialist in spirit and progressive. Dewey believed that post-war Polish democracy would be at stake if the conservative group gained power. Through his network, Dewey met Colonel E. M. House, President Wilson’s military attaché, in August 1918, to present the Polish situation he knew of. A week later Dewey received a telegram from the office of Military Intelligence asking him to come to Washington immediately. All Saturday and Sunday he was reporting his information on Poland. To Dewey’s complete surprise, he was asked to accept a captaincy “in the Propaganda Department of the Intelligence Bureau” (Martin 2002: 297). By September, he finished his full report and sent it to the Intelligence Office. He even sent a copy to President Wilson and received a thank you note from the latter. On November 6, 1918, the office of Military Intelligence contacted Dewey again for more reliable information, saying that “we cannot altogether trust the newspaper reports and I am appealing to you to lend your good offices” (Martin 2002: 298). On 11 November 1918, Poland declared independence. It can be seen that John Dewey was a private informant in Polish politics as much as a public opinion leader. While he was not a politician and did not actually influence the course of political events in Poland, he had strong views on the First World War and the League of Nations, and he tried to influence the democracy and independence of Poland.3 Let us not 3 You may note that Dewey’s influence on the independence of Poland was minimal. Even President Wilson’s influence was much less substantial than the European powers. Germany was the first to “grant” Poland independence during the First World War by creating the kingdom of Poland, a puppet state under the German Empire. The actual Polish independence took place on November 11, 1918, when Polish Commander-inChief Jozef Pilsudski (1867–1935) declared independence. Pilsudski remained Chief of State from 1918 to 1922 while Paderewski became prime minister and foreign minister

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be naïve to believe that Dewey is a neutral independent scholar without any political interest, network or affiliation. With his political views and real political encounter, he was to set foot on China the following year.

Family Issues and Family Trip When most researchers focus on Dewey’s trip to China, his lecture series and its enormous impact, few study why Dewey went on the trip at all. A casual reader may assume that it was a well-planned trip that had created unprecedented impact. Not so. My study of the related circumstances suggests that it was more like a family trip to start with. Family Finance In spring 1918, Dewey was still teaching in Columbia but he knew he would have a sabbatical leave in academic 1918–1919, i.e., to start in September 1918. Instead of taking a real vacation of hiding away to focus on his writing, Dewey tried to take up some more teaching jobs. First he taught in Stanford (May–June 1918), then UC Berkeley (Fall 1918), finally Japan (Spring 1919). In between he conducted research in Philadelphia (July–August 1918). The reason for Dewey’s packed teaching was family finance. A village boy from a very modest family, Dewey had to borrow $500 from his aunt to start his graduate study (see my Chapter 2). He started as an assistant professor in the University of Michigan, was married and raised a family of six children. When he moved to the University of Chicago, he was head of two departments and got about $5000 per year. As disclosed by his biographer: As late as 1900, the Deweys had no telephone in their home, but relied on the people in a neighborhood drugstore to relay calls to them. …… When Frederick, the oldest child, expressed a desire for a bicycle, the proposal precipitated a “family crisis,” with the family debating the matter long and hard before deciding to get him one. Since the family could not often to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Paderewski is a world renowned musician, philanthropist, nationalist and not as conservative as Dewey described. The American Jews that Dewey favored had little impact on the independence of Poland. For more information on the independence of Poland, please read Richard M. Watt (1979) Bitter Glory: Poland & Its Fate 1918–1939. New York: Hippocrene Books.

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afford the more expensive forms of recreation such as theater, opera, and concerts, they contented themselves with visits to the several parks and museums for which Chicago was noted. (Dykhuizen 1973: 107)

The fact was that the Deweys saved up their money for European trips to enrich the education of their children. Their family finance did improve when Alice became principal of University College Elementary School and John became head of two more schools. However, their hasty decision to quit put them in financial burden again, as the new job in Columbia paid much similar to Chicago’s but the living expenses in New York were far much higher. That explained why Dewey was taking up teaching jobs in Teachers College, giving talks where possible and writing books, all to contribute more income to the family. Seen in this way, Dewey’s lecturing trip to Japan was just one more of his lectures which would bring extra income. Family Trouble On the surface, John Dewey had an enviable family: loving and intelligent wife, smart and adorable children, stable income, respectable status. But when we look inside, there was always trouble. The trouble was Alice’s depression. A smart and progressive student when Dewey met her in his class, she had a troubled past. Her mother died when she was four and her father died two years later. This childhood trauma must have had lasting impact on her life. Brought up by her grandparents, Alice became a “moody loner,” very much like her grandfather who was moody, discontented, hypercritical. Depression and negative thoughts frequently set into disturb her later life. Apparently, the intellectual stimulation in Michigan eased her depressive mood, so was the marriage and children, but she was always restless and had a strong urge to travel. She seemed to be troubled by “Americanitis,” or neurasthenia, a psychotic symptom that was said to have struck the American middle class in late nineteenth century, William James being an example (Schultz and Schultz 2008: 184). The death of their second son Morris in 1895 hit her hard. She lapsed into depression and wished she were dead. John was patient and took her to vacation for rest. Before the birth of the third daughter Lucy in 1900, Alice was severely depressed. After Lucy’s birth, John took care of the

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family and Alice travelled to Georgia, Florida and New Orleans with the eldest daughter Evelyn. When she got better and took up the position as principal of University College Elementary School in 1902, she was critical of her teachers and fired those she thought incompetent. Her clash with President Harper led to Dewey’s sudden resignation from Chicago in 1904 (see my Chapter 8). The unintended consequence was that the Deweys took a second trip to Europe in which they lost their third son Gordon (see my Chapter 10) “The blow to Mrs. Dewey was so serious that she never fully recovered her former energy” (Jane Dewey 1939: 35). It was clear that Alice had a long history of depression and John, as a faithful husband, had to accommodate and deal with it. His prescription was “think positive” and “travel cure,” and he would take care of the children and household chores. A pattern seemed to have developed: depression → restless → travel → new experience and new challenges → signs of improvement → depression again.

In May–June 1918, Alice’s depression seemed to have worsened. She was travelling to California with John and she wrote to Evelyn, “I have been through some hard times in my life, but for concentrated dull misery of a fruitless sort this summer.” She was still troubled by Gordon’s death and asked a San Francisco sculptor to make a sculpture of Gordon’s face. When John left California for Philadelphia in July, she sighed on “the hopelessness of anticipating anything humane for the future.” Then she wrote to Lucy who was in her final year in New York, “I feel something as if I died, and was hearing of these things… from another world” (Martin 2002: 309–310). Family Trip It appeared that Alice’s depression had loomed to such an immense extent that the only hope of cure, at least temporarily, was a long trip with extraordinary and new experience that might divert her attention and bring her back to normal again. John kept persuading her to take a tour to Japan and finally she gave her consent. Then she began studying Japanese art and culture and her mood lifted up a bit. By gathering the facts and circumstances leading to Dewey’s visit to the Far East, it was clear that Dewey’s visit to China was not intentional

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nor inevitable. He had no intention visiting China in 1918. His initial intention was to lecture in Japan and earned some extra income during his sabbatical leave. Later he was determined on the Japan trip because he wanted to take his wife for a longer and novel vacation, hoping that it would somehow help to “cure” her depression. As we shall see, it worked wonder for her and paved way for their China trip.

A Contingent Trip Extended and Extended Dewey arrived in Shanghai, China on 30 April 1919 and left on 2 August 1921. It was not a pre-scheduled trip of 26 months. His visit was extended and further extended. Let’s gather the facts before explaining why. Invitation from China Since America was a long way from Japan, the Deweys had an initial plan of visiting nearby China for six weeks as tourists before returning to the US (Martin 2002: 312). The constraint was that Dewey had to be back to teach in Columbia for the fall semester of 1919. His former Chinese students, Hu shi and Tao xing-zhi knew about it and Tao wrote to Hu on 12 March 1919: “Three weeks ago, I heard that Dr. Dewey was in Japan as an exchange professor with Tokyo Imperial University…… Let’s invite him to China for sightseeing, or let’s go to Japan to see him…… I talked to Guo and decided that he would go to Japan to invite him” (Zhang 2001: 299). On 14 March, Guo bing-wen and Tao lu-gong called on the Deweys in Tokyo and made the invitation on behalf of the higher institutions from China. Dewey was positive but asked for local expenses; at that time, he intended to visit three cities, Guangdong, Nanjing, Beijing, gave talks and returned to America by September. Guo’s meeting with Dewey was reported in Peking Daily News on 27 March as Tao’s letter to Hu (Gu 2019: 36). On 28 March, Peking Daily News again published Dewey’s letter to Hu, confirming his visit “to Shanghai in mid-May.” Dewey further wrote, “By July it may be too hot; we may go back to Japan for a few weeks and then back to America” (Gu 2019: 37). The publication of Dewey’s letter served as an announcement of his impending visit to China.

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From a Few Months to a Whole Year So the fact was that the Deweys had no fixed plan for China in February. By March, John accepted an invitation for talks in three cities, and the route was to start from the south (Guangdong). His plan was to stay just for a few weeks and returned to Japan in July, then to America in September. In the above letter, Dewey added, “I’m also willing to stay for a year to lecture, subject to the approval from the two universities” (Gu 2019: 38). In other words, he intended to stay for a year but need Columbia’s approval. Why did Dewey want to stay for a whole year in China? Again it was Alice. During the trip to Japan, she was attracted to the novel culture there, describing in every detail what she saw and exclaimed, “We are having so many interesting experiences and impressions” (Dewey 1920: 7; 11 February 1919).4 She learned to speak Japanese (14 March 1919), attended many social events (20 March 1919) and felt humorous about Japanese etiquette (27 March 1919). Apparently, her depression had evaporated. When John was invited to lecture in China, Alice “immediately expressed her desire to accept this plan” (Martin 2002: 312–313). Apparently “travel cure” worked well for her and John was thus eager to follow through. By mid-April, Columbia sent in a cablegram and approved Dewey’s extended leave for his one-year exchange in China. It added later, to Peking University, the sponsoring body, that Dewey was on no-paid leave. Well, Dewey’s Chinese students got a contract for their teacher to lecture in China for a year. It was from June 1919 to March 1920 (Dykhuisen 1973: 195). Now, they had to solve the problem of financing the project, plus planning his itinerary and marketing him. Finance was a major issue. Initially Tao planned that the three parties, Peking University, where Hu taught, Nanking Normal College, where Tao taught, and Jiangsu Education Association would jointly sponsor Dewey’s salary and living expenses in China. But the May-fourth movement which started on 4 May 1919 had led to student unrest and Peking University President Cai yuan-pei resigned on 10 May. Nobody was to follow up the expenses

4 Dewey, J., Dewey, A. C., & Dewey E. (Ed.). (1920). Letters from China and Japan. Boston: E.P. Dutton & Company.

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of this exchange professorship program with Columbia and Hu was indignated and worried.5 Finally an academic society, Shangzhi Society, came to rescue and raised enough funds for the project. Evidence showed that Dewey’s visit to China was a contingent one, with an initial plan of only a few weeks, next to a few months and then to a year. As we shall see, it was further extended for another year in April 1920. Many contingent factors were at work in this visit: personal family interest, Dewey’s Chinese students, Columbia University and financiers. The visit, with its extension and further extension, was never inevitable. Zhang bao-gui, a Chinese Deweyan scholar, came up with this speculation though without giving evidence (Zhang 2001: 18).

A Chronology of Dewey’s China Trip (1919) Details of Dewey’s China trip have been organized as chronology by many researchers. Li jie-hua, a Chinese scholar, had created a chronology in 1985.6 This was followed by Chen wen-bin, who made up another one in his doctoral dissertation in 2006.7 More importantly, Gu hongliang, a Chinese Deweyan scholar with East China Normal University, published a lengthy collection, Dewey in China: A Chronology in 2019. It was the author’s extensive collection of available sources and information on the subject for over 20 years. This scholarly work of 368 pages has now become an important source of historiography of Dewey in China. My short chronology below will give a brief account of Dewey’s visit (Table 11.1). Meeting Dr. Sun yat-sen In the first 8 months, Dewey had visited 9 cities and delivered dozens of lectures, based on the arrangement of his sponsors, Jiangsu Education Association in Shanghai, Nanjing Normal College in Nanjing, and Peking University and Ministry of Education in Beijing. His lectures were simultaneously translated by his students, Jiang, Tao and Hu in respective places. In his trip to Japan, Dewey told reporters that he “wanted

5 Gao, S. P. (1984) in Chinese. 6 Li, J. H. (1985) in Chinese. 7 Chen, W. B. (2006) in Chinese.

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Table 11.1 Dewey’s China trip, May–December 1919 May

June

July August September

October

November December

The Deweys traveled from Shanghai to Hangzhou, Nanjing and Tianjin. They visited factories, schools, villages, walked crowded streets and department stores. In Shanghai, he gave his first talk toJiangsu Education Association 12th Dewey had a dinner with Dr. Sun yat-sen, ex-president of Republic of China 18th Dewey gave a lecture series in Nanjing Normal College from 19 to 26 May 29th The Deweys arrived in Beijing 8th Dewey gave his talk in the auditorium of the Ministry of Education. On that evening he was treated with a welcome dinner by over 300 celebrities. His talks continued all through June 25th Lucy arrived in Beijing 21st Lucy was admitted to hospital for influenza but soon recovered and was discharged 20th Dewey attended the Peking University Class Commencement Day and was introduced by President Cai. His lecture series in Peking University was scheduled every Saturday at 4 pm. It started on 20 September 1919 and ended by 6 March 1920 21st Another lecture series with the Ministry of Education was scheduled every Sunday at 9 am. It started on 21 September 1919 and ended by 20 February 1920 6th–14th The Deweys visited Taiyuan, the capital city and largest city of Shanxi province in Northern China. They attended the 5th Congress of National Education Association and Dewey gave five talks 19th Dewey’s 60th birthday dinner celebration 2nd–9th The Deweys visited Shenyang, the capital city and the largest city of Liaoning province 24th–29th The Deweys visited and gave talks in Jinan, the capital city of Shandong province in Eastern China

very much to talk with Japanese leaders on matters of domestic and international importance and to report his findings in the New Republic and Dial ” (Dykhuizen 1973: 187). Same for China. Of interest was that he met Dr. Sun Yat-sen on 12 May, just days after he set foot on China. Dewey found out that Sun was a philosopher and that the Chinese people are pragmatic and action-oriented. Revealed in Dewey’s letter to children, Ex-President Sun Yat Sen is a philosopher, as I found out last night during dinner with him. He has written a book, to be published soon, saying that

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the weakness of the Chinese is due to their acceptance of the statement of an old philosopher, “To know is easy, to act is difficult.” Consequently they did not like to act and thought it was possible to get a complete theoretical understanding, while the strength of the Japanese was that they acted even in ignorance and went ahead and learned by their mistakes; the Chinese were paralyzed by fear of making a mistake in action. So he has written a book to prove to his people that action is really easier than knowledge.8

60th Birthday Celebration in Family Trip Another interesting event was the celebration of his 60th birthday organized by his sponsors. In the celebration dinner, President Cai compared Dewey with Confucius: …… President Cai toasted on behalf of Peking University, saying that Dewey’s sixtieth birthday fell that year precisely on the day the rotating lunar calendar indicated as the birth date of Confucius. The ancient Chinese culture could be represented by Confucius while the new Western culture could be represented by Prof. Dewey. There were both differences and similarities among the ideas of Dewey and Confucius…… Confucius said respect the emperor, Dewey advocated democracy; Confucius said females were a problem to raise, Dewey advocated equal rights for men and women; Confucius said transmit not create, Dewey advocated creativity; These were very different…… I think Confucius’s ideal and Dewey’s ideas were very similar, which was the evidence of the interfacing of Chinese and Western culture. However, new interpretation would only be arose by organizing Chinese old theories with the spirit of Western experimentation.9

Though treated as a philosopher king with cheering crowds whenever they went, the Deweys took the China visit as a family trip, combining sightseeing with work. Lucy, Dewey’s second daughter, had just graduated from Barnard, and she come to join her parents as a graduation trip. Her arrival in July eased Alice’s incessant worry about her children, but 8 Dewey, J., Dewey, A. C., & Dewey E. (Ed.). (1920). Letters from China and Japan. Boston: E.P. Dutton & Company. 9 Gu, H. L. (2019) in Chinese. President Cai’s speech in Chinese translated here was based on Keenan, B. (1977). The Dewey Experiment in China: Educational Reform and Political Power in the Early Republic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 10–11.

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Table 11.2 Dewey’s China Trip, January–December 1920 January

March

April June July September October

November

December

Dewey continued his lectures in Peking University and the Ministry of Education 31 December–2 January The Deweys visited Tianjin 24 February Evelyn arrived in Beijing 5–23 March Dewey delivered three talks on three contemporary philosophers: James, Bergson, Russell 31 March Dewey wired Columbia for a further extension 4 April–16 May Dewey was in Nanjing for a lecture series of 8 hours per week for 6 weeks 17 May–30 June The Deweys toured throughout all the major cities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang The Dewey’s stayed in Nanjing in summer. Alice promoted her feminism and co-education 17 October Dewey was conferred an Honorary Degree by Peking University 25 October–2 November Dewey gave a series of talks to Hunan Education Association 2 November The Deweys visited Hubei, a landlocked province in Central China, and gave a few talks 1 December Dewey wrote a confidential report to the US Embassy entitled Bolshevism in China

then Lucy caught typhoid. As the Deweys had pitifully lost two children in their previous European trips, you could easily imagine their unspoken worries. Should Lucy’s illness have deteriorated further or died, it might have ruined the whole trip. John might have to console Alice and the trip might have to be abandoned abruptly. This further supports the thesis that Dewey’s two-year visit is never his pre-scheduled plan. Fortunately, Lucy was admitted to hospital and had a speedy recovery in August (Table 11.2). High-spirited In January and February 1920, Dewey continued his lectures in Peking University and the Ministry of Education, which ended in early March. Despite his hectic schedule, Dewey was high-spirited and felt rejuvenated, beginning to see things in a new angle. In his letter to John Jacob Coss, a colleague at Columbia, on 13 Jan, he wrote, “Nothing western looks

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quite the same anymore, and this is as near to a renewal of youth as can be hoped for in this world” (MW12: 285–286). In another letter to Coss on 7 November, he reflected: “the trip was the most interesting and intellectually the most profitable thing I’ve ever done” (MW12: 285). Extending for the Second Year At that time, the Deweys hadn’t any concrete plan for their second year. They told their children, “You can never tell, we may decide to go to India and the vale of cashmir or even Tibet before we return” (Martin 2002: 320). Their eldest daughter Evelyn, now a publisher with Dutton, had just arrived in Beijing on 24 February. She was offered a job in Peking University, so was Lucy (ibid.). Alice, like John, was busy lecturing and promoting feminism in Beijing. The whole family was so much engaged in Beijing that Dewey wired Columbia for a second year extension on 31 March, as he wanted to assist “in the democratic reform of Chinese Education” (ibid.: 321). Columbia’s approval came on 21 April (Gu 2019: 187). By then, the Deweys were already in Nanjing for another series of lectures with Nanjing Normal College. After the lectures, the Deweys spent six weeks touring through the major cities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. More Talks In summer, the Deweys were in Nanjing and Alice got a big boost of her feminism in China. In the summer school of Nanjing Normal College, co-education was for the first time instituted, and Alice was there to give lectures, to advise and to give support. Subsequently, she was made an honorary Dean of Women at Nanjing (Jane Dewey 1939: 41). Back to Beijing, when John was appointed professor of philosophy and education, Lucy was appointed professor of history! (Gu 2019: 243). When fall 1920 set in, Dewey was again teaching in Peking University. On 17 October, he was conferred an Honorary Degree by Peking University. About the same time, Bertrand Russell, the famed British philosopher, arrived in China. From 25 October to 4 November, the Deweys visited Changsha, the capital city of Hunan province, and met Russell and other renowned Chinese scholars. When John gave talks organized by Hunan Education Association, Alice was busy promoting co-education with talks in convent schools (Gu 2019: 260–261). It was

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Table 11.3 Dewey’s China Trip, January–July 1921 January March April May June July

Dewey stayed in Beijing, taught at Peking University and wrote a few articles to The New Republic 26 March Russell was admitted to hospital for pneumonia. He dictated a will to Dewey, who witnessed it by his bed 5–22 April The Deweys arrived in Xiamen and gave talks 28 April–9 May The Deweys arrived in Guangdong and gave talks 10 May The Deweys returned to Beijing 30 June The sponsors gave a farewell party to the Deweys 11 July The Deweys left for Shandong 18–23 July Dewey gave his last talks in Jinan before returning to America

clear that the whole Dewey family were much engaged in different ways in their second year in China (Table 11.3). To the South Dewey’s stay for the last seven months was less eventful. One anecdote was that on 26 March he was at the “death” bed of Bertrand Russell who dictated him a will. (Russell later recovered and left China in May). Another interesting episode in 1921 was Lucy met her future husband, Wolfgang Brandauer, an Austrian working in Beijing. The two got married two years later, again in Beijing but Dewey had already left (Martin 2002: 216–218). In April, the Deweys went south to Fujian province. He gave talks in Xiamen University on 6 April, followed by more talks to other colleges and schools. By 12 April, they reached Fuzhou where they delivered 23 talks in 10 days! On 23 April, they got on a cruise which took them to Guangdong province on 28 April. There the Deweys met scholars, politicians and government officials. He was welcomed by Chen jiong-ming, the warlord and head of Guangdong province. The Deweys continued to deliver talks there for more than a week and returned to Beijing on 10 May. On 30 June, the sponsors gave a farewell party to the Deweys, who left for Shandong on 11 July, and gave more talks in Jinan before leaving for America via Japan on 2 August 1921. Summarizing Dewey’s visit to China, Hu observed:

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We can say that, there was never a foreign scholar like Dewey who had such a significant impact among the Chinese intellectuals since the interfacing of Chinese and Western culture. We can also say that, in the next few decades, there would hardly be another Western scholar affecting China as much as Dewey did…… His influence will continue forever, with more growth and fruitful future. Dewey loves China and the Chinese people. In these two years, he was not only the mentor and friend of the Chinese, but also our interpreter and defender.10

Promoting American Diplomacy Dewey Promoting American Democracy and Values When Dewey was speaking on democracy and education in China he was elaborating his own philosophy as much as promoting American values. When he sided with China against the Treaty of Versailles and denounced Japanese aggression in Shandong, he might have been unknowingly promoting American diplomacy in China. A year after John Dewey set foot on China, his impact on diplomacy and education was being felt. On 29 May 1920, in a farewell dinner in Shanghai, Dewey’s interpreter Guo bing-wen praised Dewey: “In foreign policy, the Americans get more information on China from Dewey and form a correct public opinion; in education, Dewey is like soothing rain after drought.” Dewey thanked his sponsors by pointing to “the similar spirit of self-help and solidarity between the Chinese and Americans.” (Gu 2019: 207–208).

In another note of thanks at a farewell dinner on 30 October 1920 in Hunan, Dewey repeated his role of a goodwill ambassador: The diplomatic relations between the two republics on both sides of the Pacific could be symbolized by the two national flags. Last time when the American ambassador visited China, he was instructed by President Wilson to offer our best support to the Chinese people. Americans in China, in whatever capacities, are willing to assist the Chinese people regardless of their own interest.11 (Gu 2019: 266)

10 Hu, S. (2003) in Chinese. 11 Takungpao (1920) in Chinese.

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Dewey as an Informant But Dewey was more than a goodwill ambassador. He also served as an informant. Note that Bolshevism in China was on the rise, especially when Russia relinquished its territorial claims and rights in China in April 1920. Now in China, America and Russia were cautiously seen as “friends” while Japan and Britain were bitterly seen as “foes.” Some time in late 1920, the US Embassy handed a cablegram to Dewey. It was from a Colonel Drysdale from the office of Military Intelligence. “With the unrest in China and the instability of the government, the office now wanted information about the possibility of a Communist revolution in China” (Martin 2002: 321). Dewey was a liberalist and was against communism all his life. He personally knew many young socialists but noted, “They are practically all socialists, and some call themselves communists. Many think the Russian revolution a very fine thing. …the whole social and economic background of Bolshevism as a practical going concern is lacking” (ibid.: 321). Dewey’s confidential report was sent to Washington on 2 December 1920.12 Role of US Government That the US government actively promoted democracy and diplomacy in China during and after the First World War had been studied by historians. Hans Schmidt (1998) showed that the US government, through its Committee on Public Information (CPI)’s foreign section, had promoted US democracy to China by creating Wilson as a “super-hero” and capitalizing on China’s positive attitude with America. They were also gathering information on the May-fourth movement and the subsequent change of political views among Chinese radicals. No doubt John Dewey’s presence in China was beneficial to the American government in promoting US diplomacy and in getting first-hand intelligence. As noted in Colonel Drysdale’s forward on Dewey’s report, “Dr. Dewey…… has had unusual opportunity of getting into touch with the element in China that maybe considered as radical. I know of no one any where, better qualified to report on this important matter than Dr. Dewey” (MW12: 287).

12 For details, please see Middle Works (MW12: 254).

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The Red Scare Thesis More recently, Peng shan-shan (2018) of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences proposed an intriguing thesis: the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia had led to the Red Scare in the US which had led to Dewey’s prolonged stay in China in 1920. According to Peng, “The New Republic was classified as a revolutionary magazine, and John Dewey was identified as the person ‘most dangerous to young people’…… At the peak of the Red Scare in February, Hu shi warned Dewey that he would be expelled if he returned to the US…… Accordingly, Dewey decided to stay in China. The Red Scare is the main reason why he described living in America as unattractive” (Peng 2018: 71). It is hard to confirm the above speculation. So far I have not come across evidence of Hu shi warning Dewey. Instead, Hu begged Dewey to stay for the modernization of China’s university in teacher training and curriculum. In his correspondence to John Coss on 22 April 1920, Dewey disclosed: Hu shi and a few others are very anxious to modernize the university, and to do [this] means not only getting teachers but material in shape. He is anxious to have me give a course in the interpretation of the history of western philosophy, which can become for a while a kind of standard basis for that subject.13

Dewey also unveiled his work of condensed lectures, the intense political atmosphere among students, and his decision to stay for another year: I have decided to stay over here and teach another year… to try to clinch whatever may have got started this year… The students are on strike again as a protest [against] the Government’s dealings with Japan, but they have excepted (expected) my lectures. I’m lecturing… 8 hours a week altogether, but the interpretation has to come out of the time, so it is rather a lesson in selection, condensation and illustration. (MW12: 286)

Dewey was a public figure in China and America in 1920. He was a respectable scholar symbolizing American values and culture. Publicly, he was well-received in his lecture tour throughout China, serving as 13 Quoted from Dykhuizen (1973: 197). Original source in Butler Library, Dewey to Coss, 22 April 1920.

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America’s goodwill ambassador. Privately, he was an informant to the Office of Military Intelligence of US State Department. Personally, he had many faithful Chinese disciples from whom he learned much about China. He was excited to witness the birth of a new nation but was deeply moved of the demise China was facing and what the students were fighting for. For a whole year, he had met numerous students and intellectuals who were generally very positive to his ideas. On the family side, Dewey and Alice, Lucy and Evelyn were all enjoying their trip in China in March 1920. When John was busy planning and delivering his lectures on three contemporary philosophers, Alice was busy promoting feminism and helping students to further their studies in America. One event was she had a social gathering with nine female undergraduates of Peking University on March 14 (Gu 2019: 176). Lucy was helping her mother all through and she was invited to talk about American culture and history. When Evelyn arrived in Beijing, she had ambitious publishing plans on China. The first was her parents’ Letters from China and Japan, already prefaced for publication in January 1920. With all these facts and circumstances taken together, it was more likely that Dewey extended his visit because he enjoyed his responsibility of contributing to the modernization of China through his talks. It was unlikely that Dewey extended his second year stay because of the Red Scare. It was just unthinkable that he would be expelled from the US in case he decided to return.

Dewey’s Chinese Disciples The Young Chinese Intelligentsia Few Chinese people spoke English in the 1910s and they had to rely on translation for Dewey’s lectures. These were performed dutifully by Dewey’s Chinese disciples, who studied under him in Columbia just a few years before he visited China. In fact, Dewey’s tour was an orchestrated effort among his Chinese students, each working in different locations with different emphasis in a coordinated fashion. Their goal: to promote Dewey’s thoughts wherever he went. These disciples had a few things in common. First they were the young emerging Chinese intelligentsia since the founding of the new republic in 1911. Second, they all studied and graduated in Columbia in the first and second decade of the new century. Third they were all Dewey’s faithful disciples who tried to apply his ideas for the improvement of

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China, in political, social, cultural or educational domains. Not only were they major organizers and interpreters of Dewey’s visits, but they became renowned Chinese intellectuals and educators of the first half of twentieth century, and many left their marks on modern Chinese intellectual history. Promoters and Translators Hu shi (1891–1962) Hu shi was among the most enthusiastic promoters of Dewey’s thoughts. Hu went to America in 1910. First he studied in Cornell, but having heard of Dewey, transferred to Columbia in 1915. Two years later he returned to China, taught at Peking University and proposed a literary reform, which later spread into a new cultural movement. He had close personal contact with Dewey and made an invitation of visiting professorship to Dewey on behalf of Peking University. Before Dewey’s arrival in May 1919, Hu had written articles to introduce pragmatism and Dewey. To make sure the Chinese audience could understand Dewey’s ideas, Hu gave many introductory talks before Dewey’s actual lectures. Then in the actual lectures, Hu became the star translator and official interpreter. Before each lecture, Dewey had prepared a lecture outline in English, which Hu read, translated and distributed. It had made Dewey’s complicated ideas and monotonous tone more intelligible. When most Chinese audience were eager to learn new ideas but failed to understand Dewey’s English, they were attracted by the young, handsome interpreter and his vivid and eloquent translation (Yuan 2001: 227). According to a doctoral dissertation, Hu served as translator in 26 lecture series of over 80 talks, most of which were held in Beijing in 1919 (Chen 2006: 19–20). Thanks to Hu’s translation and follow-up publications, Dewey’s complicated ideas were able to popularize in China. Jiang meng-lin (1886–1964) To start his first lecture in Shanghai for Jiangsu Education Association on 3 May 1919, Dewey was escorted and translated by Jiang, who studied in the US from 1908 to 1917, earning his PhD in Columbia. Upon return to China, Jiang started in Shanghai, formed The New Education Society and published a new journal entitled New Education. Through the journal, Jiang wrote and promoted Dewey’s ideas, devoting a special

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issue on John Dewey (vol. 1, no. 3). Soon Jiang was recruited as a professor with the Education Faculty of Peking University and assisted the university president in daily administration. Guo, Tao and the Columbia Alumni The third sponsor was from Nanjing. When the Deweys paid their first visit to Nanjing (18–26 May 1919), they were welcomed by Guo bingwen, President of Nanjing Normal College. Guo earned his PhD in Columbia in 1915 and joined Nanjing Normal College with a vision of building the foremost Teachers College in China. In a matter of years, he hired Tao xing-zhi, Zheng xiao-cang, Chen he-qin, all graduates of Teachers College of Columbia. Another PhD from Northwest University, Liu bo-ming, was also recruited (his wife was a graduate of Columbia). By the time Dewey visited China, Nanjing Normal College had become the center of educational innovation in China, somewhat like a Columbia Alumni Club. In his first visit to Nanjing Normal College in May 1919, Dewey’s lectures were translated by Tao. In his second visit in April to June the following year, the translation was done by Liu, who also served as Dewey’s tourist guide all through Jiangsu and Zhejiang (Yuan 2001: 186–187). Zhang bo-ling (1876–1951) On 29 July 1919, the Deweys made a short trip to Tianjin and they were welcomed by Zhang bo-ling, a renowned educator who founded Nankai College, which later became Nankai University. Zhang had also studied in Columbia in 1917–1918 and he served as translator to Dewey’s talk on The Teaching of Scientific Method (Gu 2019: 96). Different Themes Dewey gave different talks on different locations for different themes. In his first talk in Shanghai, Dewey gave an overview of his Democracy and Education. When he went south to Nanjing, he talked almost exclusively on education: education and experience, education and evolution, the educators’ calling, trends in education, education and society, etc. In Tianjin, he talked about the scientific method. When he lectured in Peking University and the Ministry of Education, his talks varied, including topics on social and political philosophy (16 lectures), philosophy and education (16 lectures), ethics (15 lectures), and types of

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Table 11.4 Dewey’s lectures and translators (1919) Time

Location

Sponsors

May 1919

Shanghai

May–June 1919

Nanjing

June–December 1919

Beijing

Jiangsu Jiang meng-lin Education Association Nanjing Normal Tao xing-zhi College Peking University, Hu shi Ministry of Education

July 1919 6–14 October

Tianjin Taiyuan

Nankai College 5th Congress of National Education Association

Translators

Zhang bo-ling Hu shi

Major themes Democracy and education Education Social and political philosophy, ethics, education Scientific method Education reform

thinking (8 lectures). Upon the audience’s request, he even gave a critique on the three contemporary philosophers: William James, Henri Bergson and Bertrand Russell (3 lectures, March 1920). When Dewey visited Taiyuan on the 5th Congress of National Education Society in October 1919, his talks were on education reform. Below is a summary of Dewey’s major lectures and translators in 1919 (Table 11.4). Interpreter or Misinterpreted? Hu Interpreting Dewey When Hu became the “official interpreter” of Dewey in China, questions arise as to whether Hu had faithfully interpreted Dewey’s ideas. Yuan qing, in his dissertation, argued that Hu was Dewey’s loyal disciple and had promoted Dewey’s ideas all his life (2001: Chapter 5). However, Cecile Dockser, another researcher, pointed to the difference between Hu and Dewey. When Hu advocated wholesome westernization for Chinese culture, Dewey believed in cultural integration. Hu saw experience as “responsive behavior” but Dewey saw it as “creative intelligence” (Dockser 1983: 43). In her dissertation, Dockser contrasted the two: Dewey is flexible; Hu is rigid. Hu is a determinist —— his view of the natural universe is social Darwinian and mechanistic; Dewey’s universe is

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open and free. Hu’s conception of democracy is elitist; Dewey’s is egalitarian. Dewey’s politics are radical; Hu is a political conservative. Hu rejects the Chinese past and embraces the west totalistically; Dewey believes in wedding traditional values to contemporary realities. Hu is a cultural reformer; Dewey is concerned with institutional, particularly economic, change as well. Dewey’s dread of having his ideas hardened into dogma is such that he avoids devising specific programs for the United States. But Hu transforms Dewey’s ideas into an ideology for the New Culture moment in China. (Dockser 1983: 101–102)

There is no doubt that the two scholars are different, one Chinese and one American, each imbued with different cultures and faced with different historical problems. It could surely be interpreted that Hu promoted Dewey for his own ends of cultural reform in China (Zhang 2001: 24). However, it was not his own ends, but a shared vision of promoting science and democracy in modern China which had slowly emerged among the progressive Chinese intelligentsia. Surely Dewey was representing this western thought and a group of young Chinese intelligentsia was consciously promoting him. Seen in this way, the subtle difference between Hu and Dewey’s ideas becomes academic. Dewey, Hu and Mao Dewey’s impact on the young Chinese intelligentsia was all-pervasive. Even Mao ze-dong (1896–1976), the future leader of Chinese Communist Party, had been influenced by Dewey and his student Hu shi. In early 1919, Mao was working in the university library of Peking University but he had returned to Hunan in April. There he started Xiang Jiang Commentary, a progressive magazine, in which an article appeared on Dewey (Gu 2019: 94). Mao urged for the study of problems in China. Around that time, Hu had argued for “more study on problems and less discussion on –isms.”14 Mao responded by setting up “Society for the Study of Problems” in Changsha. Mao continued to support Hu’s ideas in the earlier 1920s when he began to shift to Marxism. It was reported that he was among the audience in Dewey’s talk in Shanghai in May 1920.15 In October 1920, he covered Dewey’s talk in Hunan as a correspondent

14 Hu, S. (1919) in Chinese. 15 Tian Xia Shao Shan Website. (2009).

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to Da Gong Post (Gu 2019: 264). Among the many –isms gaining popularity in China, Mao particularly focused on the study of pragmatism, nihilism and socialism.

Popularization of Dewey’s Ideas The Most Popular American in China During the Second World War in late 1942, Dewey wrote to the people of China: Your country and my country, China and the United States, are alike in being countries that love peace and have no designs on other nations. We are alike in having been attacked without reason and without warning by a rapacious and treacherous enemy. We are alike, your country and mine, in having a common end in this war we have been forced to enter in order to preserve our independence and freedom. ……We are now comrades in a common fight and in defending ourselves, all our energies are pledged to your defense and your triumph……the United States and China will win against Japan…… You have won the undying respect and admiration of all nations that care for freedom…… The coming victory will restore to China her old and proper leadership in all that makes for the development of the human spirit. (LW15: 369–370)

His message was printed on thousands of leaflets scattered all over China by US warplanes. At that time, China and America were allies fighting against the Japanese; this wartime operation was strong evidence that the US government considered Dewey a most popular American in China. And so was he. His ideas were popularized in China during and after his visit, thanks to his students and “grand-students” (students’ students). He once remarked to the members of Youth Society Magazine in Nanjing in April 1920, “I admire your determination and effort for social reform. I’m flattered to have you as my grand-students” (Gu 2019: 186). In other words, Dewey was aware that his ideas were spreading rapidly in China. Popularization of Ideas But what part of Dewey’s ideas were spreading? Dewey’s scope of work ranges from education, psychology, social and political philosophy, general

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philosophy, ethics, etc. His main ideas were: education, democracy, science, reflective thinking (How We Think), pragmatism, logic, method, morality, impulse and human nature. Some of his ideas were spreading while others did not. Why? We are back to the inevitability question again: Is the popularization of Dewey’s ideas in China inevitable? In his doctoral dissertation entitled Dewey and China in 2001, Yuan provided a list of 31 journal articles written on and about Dewey from 1919 to 1929, in addition to another list of Dewey’s published lectures, excerpts, interviews, reports and translated works (Yuan 2001: 117–125). Moreover, he mentioned about a “Dewey heat” in education (ibid.: 171). It was clear Dewey’s ideas were spreading successfully in education, pragmatism, philosophic method, but not so much in psychology and political philosophy or democracy. Education Remember Nanjing Normal College became a Columbia Alumni Club, where Dewey’s disciples practiced and spread his educational ideas? As early as 1918, Tao was promoting Dewey’s education in his writing Pragmatism in Education (Yuan 2001: 173). Dewey’s basic texts in education were subsequently translated and his Democracy and Education became a standard text in schools of education (Yuan 2001: 173–175). More importantly Tao extended Dewey’s educational ideas in rural areas in the 1920s and 1930s, to eradicate illiteracy and to institute social reform. While this was subsequently suppressed by the warlands and the government, it nonetheless demonstrated the power of ideas, from Dewey to Tao and then from Tao to rural China. In early childhood education, Chen he-qin pioneered in child study in China, somewhat similar to what Dewey’s disciple Lucy Mitchell did in the USA (see my Chapter 12). As for the reform of the school grade system, project method, individualized instruction and so forth, these progressive ideas forefathered by Dewey were imported to China from America in the 1920s and 1930s. Dewey’s educational ideas and principles had spread far and wide. Philosophic Method Dewey is basically a philosopher and his philosophic method is inquiry and criticism. His student Hu shi summarized his philosophic method as pragmatism in two steps:

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1. Historical Method – He never takes a theory or system as something independent, but sees it as a process: in the start, there is a cause; in the end, there is a consequence. This is a revolutionary method because he tries to evaluate the value of the theories or systems by consequences. It is fair and powerful. This critical spirit is an important weapon in academic pursuit. 2. Experimental Method—(a) to start from fact and real situation. (b) all theories, ideals, knowledge are presumptive. (c) all theories and ideals should be validated by action. Experimentation is the acid test of truth. A specific idea has its limits in application, but a method has no limits. While Prof. Dewey has left us, his method will gain more disciples in the future.16 In fact, Hu was applying this method in the study of Chinese philosophy to earn his PhD. All through his life, he was studying and reassessing Chinese classics. He and a whole generation of Chinese scholars had begun reassessing Chinese culture with a Deweyan eye, in Chinese literature, Chinese history and Chinese philosophy. Dewey’s impact on the post May-fourth scholars in their evaluation of traditional Chinese classics had been phenomenal. Political Philosophy In social and political philosophy, Dewey’s impact was complex and mixed. Let me start with democracy, Dewey’s core concept which forms his signature title, Democracy and Education. Related to it is the concept of science. Democracy is in fact a novel concept to traditional Chinese culture. In Chinese political history, people were ruled by emperors and nobilities and there was hardly any concept of “ruled by the people.” So was the idea of science and experimentation. While these two novel concepts had been introduced to China much earlier in the nineteenth century, they were never taken that seriously until China faced unprecedented chaos in the early twentieth century. In 1915, Chen du-xiu, a progressive intellectual, started his influential progressive journal The New Youth. In it, he emphasized these two concepts as the most important weapon to rescue China. He called them Mr. D and Mr. S. Chen gave a 16 Hu, S. (1921) in Chinese.

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phonological translation as Mr. Demokelaxi (democracy) and Mr. Saiyinsi (science). To elaborate further, he explained them as human rights and science. Obviously the concepts of democracy and science were not introduced by Dewey, but a researcher highlighted Dewey’s image as “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy” (Wang 2007: 15–17). Apparently, the translation of the term “science” was based on knowledge disciplines, such as science, philosophy, maths, physics, which was less problematic, but for democracy, there was no agreement to its translation. Throughout Dewey’s visit, democracy had been translated as Min Zhi Zhu Yi, Min Ben Zhu Yi, Min Zhu Zhu Yi. A consensus slowly emerged in the 1930s and Min Zhu Zhu Yi prevailed. Dewey’s democracy is American democracy with political institutions, systems, rules and culture. His version is participatory democracy and he had been involved in third party politics to improve the system. But these conditions were all lacking in China. As it turned out, China moved on the direction of communism while rejecting American democracy. Dewey’s political ideas were never popularized in China, even up to today. Reasons Underlying Popularization We have seen that subsequent to Dewey’s China visit, part of his ideas (education and philosophic method) were popularized but other parts (political philosophy and democracy) were not. Apparently, the reasons lie in the context of Chinese intellectual history than Dewey himself. My initial examination shows that Dewey’s education and philosophic method provide good answers to Chinese intellectual needs but his political philosophy does not. In education, the Chinese had a long tradition of high respect for education and the intelligentsia, as evidenced in Confucius being seen as the “greatest teacher in all ages” in Chinese history. That Dewey was seen as the coming of the second Confucius was not at all a joke. It was an unparalleled respect ever given to any Western scholar. When subsequently Dewey’s educational ideas flourished in China in the 1920s and 1930s, it was due much to the work of Dewey’s disciples as to this Chinese mentality on education, which was seen as a cultural match (Yang and Li 2019). The Chinese respect to education continues up to today. On the other hand, Dewey’s ideas on education had gained popularity in the first half of the twentieth century all over the world. Thus, it was

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just natural that his ideas gained support in China as much as it did in America, even in Britain and Turkey. In philosophic method, Hu was applying Dewey’s method of inquiry and criticism to Chinese classics. He was not alone. The young Chinese intellectuals believed the demise of the defunct and obsolete Chinese culture had hindered China’s modernization. Figuratively, Chen du-xiu had proposed “to demolish the Confucius House.” On the one hand, the Chinese intellectuals had to dismantle the Chinese culture; on the other hand, they had to import new ideas from the West. In the process, Western tools such as Dewey’s philosophic method were employed to reassess Chinese culture, history and philosophy. Research and publications along this line flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. There was no doubt that Dewey’s visit and his students, Hu in particular, had helped to spread his method of inquiry in the academic field. As for political philosophy, the political situation in China in the early twentieth century was entirely different from that of America. What China as a nation faced was a problem of survival, of foreign aggression, of political continuity. America at that time was reaching out to the world with its Wilsonian idealism, and slowly emerging as a dominant world power. It was not realistic to import the American political system to China and Dewey’s political philosophy, such as his participatory democracy, looked irrelevant to China. Dewey could not provide quick-fix to any of the pressing political problems in China. On the other hand, Marxism, with its extreme form in Bolshevism, was seen as an answer. The Russian revolution offered a model for the Chinese intellectuals to emulate. Dewey was aware of this and remarked that the students were “much inclined to new ideas, and to projects of social and economic change…… they are practically all Socialists, and some call themselves Communists. Many think the Russian revolution a very fine thing” (MW12: 253–254). In another letter to Barnes in September 1920, Dewey wrote: The whole temper among the younger generation is revolutionary, they are so sick of their old institutions that they assume any change will be for the better——the more extreme and complete the change, the better. And they seem to me to have little idea of the difficulties in the way of any constructive change. (Martin 2002: 323)

Not surprisingly, the Chinese political atmosphere inspired the growth of Marxism and the subsequent formation of the Chinese Communist

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Party in July 1921, the time when Dewey left China. Dewey’s political philosophy left little mark on China, saved a few loyal disciples such as Hu, Tao, Jiang. Inevitability Thesis Finally, we are back to the inevitability thesis. Having briefly examined the related issues of Chinese intellectual history of early twentieth century, I come to the following tentative conclusion. It is inevitable that some of Dewey’s ideas were popularized while some were not. Dewey’s disciples served only as human agents acting to popularizing them. Even without them, or even without his China visit, Dewey’s ideas in education would be popularized in the first half of twentieth century, as it did in the US, in UK and other parts of the world. It is a global trend which looks inevitable. The popularization of his method of inquiry, pioneered by Hu, was also inevitable for it was the trend of the Chinese intellectuals to reassess Chinese culture by Western method. Finally, the “depopularization” of Dewey’s political philosophy is also inevitable because it did not meet the urgent political needs of China of the times. Here Dewey lost to Marx, despite Dewey’s living visit to China and his frequent updated commentary, sympathy and involvement in Chinese politics.

The Purge and Resurrection of Dewey’s Ideas Ideology Dictates Purge Dewey had a good political sense. When the Chinese Communist Party took over China in 1949, Dewey immediately predicted what would happen to his ideas: “Now that they are Bolshevized, my name will be mud——the philosopher of imperialistic bourgeois capitalism” (Martin 2002: 327). The purge of Dewey’s ideas started in the 1950s. Initially, it was mild: Dewey was criticized by critical views quoted from his colleagues such as Sidney Hook, Harold Rugg, Boyd Bode and Isaac Kandel. In 1954–1955, coincidentally after Dewey’s death in 1952, a “purge movement” started on Tao and then Hu. The attack on Hu had reached a word count of three million, calling Hu a “corrupted Chinese Dewey.” A notable Dewey disciple, Chen he-qin, was forced to make a public confession, calling Dewey “the biggest crook in education

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history.”17 No educators dare to talk about Dewey from 1950 to 1978, except for those ordered to purge him. Resurrection Since 1980 It appears to me that the purge and resurrection of Dewey’s ideas were both inevitable. Dewey was purged because his students Hu and Tao had had significant influence in China. Hu openly opposed to communism all his life, same as Dewey did, and fled to Taiwan and then America in 1949. Tao’s ideas did not strictly follow the official orthodoxy and was subsequently purged. Fortunately he died in 1946 before the communists took power. All social science disciplines were seen as bourgeois ideology and it was just logical and inevitable that Dewey’s ideas would be purged together with other “bourgeois” social science disciplines. When China opened her door again in 1978, censorship on academic ideas began to ease and many Western ideas and disciplines were studied. Dewey was slowly resurrected and books and dissertations on him appeared. The Dewey Centre in Fudan University was established in 2004; his Collected Works were all translated by 2016. His Selected Works were published in 2017. The Chinese Society for Taoxingzhi Studies has been formed in 1985 to study Tao’s educational ideas. Hu was also resurrected and reassessed more fairly. Such change looks sensible, even inevitable, as China begins to join the global community and is more receptive to academic ideas, old and new. If a school is a miniature of society, Dewey in China and its subsequent development can be looked upon as a miniature of China’s intellectual history.

Further Readings My research on Dewey in China shows that the topic has attracted quite a number of doctoral dissertations, partly because it is a unique event in modern intellectual history of China and the West. And more Chinese scholars than Americans were interested in the issue. Some were written in English while others in Chinese.

17 Hu, S. (1959) in Chinese.

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1. Dewey, J., Dewey, A. C., & Dewey E. (Eds.). (1920). Letters from China and Japan. Boston: E.P. Dutton & Company. This is the original source of the Deweys’ impression on Japan and China. Their letters to their children, which covered the period from February to August 1919, were collected and edited by their daughter Evelyn and published by EP Dutton & Company. 2. Dockser, C. B. (1983). John Dewey and the May Fourth Movement in China: Dewey’s Social and Political Philosophy in Relation to His Encounter with China, 1919–1921. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International. Cecile Dockser studied in Harvard and finished her dissertation in 1983. She reviewed Dewey’s visit to China and examined Dewey’s disciples, with a critical comparison between Hu shi and Tao xing-zhi. She was among the earliest to discover Dewey’s special emotional attachment to China and “immersion in Chinese culture” (p. 177), plus how China had “stimulated Dewey to rethink his western presuppositions” (p. 178). 3. Keenan, B. (1977). The Dewey Experiment in China: Educational Reform and Political Power in the Early Republic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. A pioneering study on the topic, Barry Keenan began his study in Claremont Graduate School in the 1960s. In writing his dissertation Keenan had informative interviews with Lucy, Dewey’s daughter who was on the trip with her parents. He had also gained much first-hand information and ideas from related Chinese scholars of the period, notion Dr. Ou tsuin-chen and Prof. Chow tse-tsung. 4. Wang, C. S. (2007). John Dewey in China: To Teach and To Learn. Albany: State University of New York Press. In her doctoral dissertation, Jessica Wang proposed an interesting notion: China was learning from Dewey as much as Dewey was learning from China. No doubt Dewey learned much about China during his visit and from his disciples who had studied with him in America. In the two-year-period, “Dewey was both a spectator and a player” (p. 5). Wang discovered that Dewey’s China experience had shaped his political philosophy, such as expanding the concept of the state with the idea of the public (pp. 101–102), and seeing democracy as a form of culture in community life rather than just a form of government (p. 112).

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5. Yang, J. Z. (2016). When Confucius “Encounters” John Dewey: A Historical and Philosophical Analysis of Dewey’s Visit to China. Yang studied in University of Oklahoma and wrote this doctoral dissertation in 2016. He studied the educational encounters between Dewey and the five Chinese scholars (Hu shih, Liang shuming, Tao xingzhi, Guo bingwen, and Jiang menglin). In a theoretical framework of educational theory of encounter by Jane Roland Martin, Yang employed Martin’s notion of “double-entry cultural bookkeeping,” “cultural asset” and “cultural liabitlity,” and discovered that “Dewey’s Chinese students tried to adopt, transfer and apply Dewey’s pragmatism into Chinese reality mostly because they were eager to find a ‘miraculous medicine’ that would supposedly cure any ill within Chinese society” (Yang 2016: Abstract). 6. Chen, Wen-bin (2006). John Dewey’s Lectures in China: How Chinese Intellectuals Respond to It. Doctoral Dissertation, Department of History. Fudan University, Shanghai (in Chinese). This is Chen’s doctoral dissertation in History with Fudan University, Shanghai in 2006. After reviewing numerous historical data, Chen found that there were a lot of historical facts to be clarified. He also focused on the responses and the changing attitudes of the intellectual circles through analyzing over Dewey’s 200 lectures at that time. 7. Gu, Hong-liang. (2019). Dewey in China: A Chronology. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press (in Chinese). Gu is a professor of philosophy in East China Normal University. He amassed abundant data on the subject for over 20 years and compiled this book, which gives detailed information on Dewey’s visits to China. This 368-page book has now become the most important resource of Dewey’s chronology in China. 8. Yuan, Qing (2001). Dewey and China. Beijing: People’s Press (in Chinese). Yuan graduated from the Faculty of History in Nankai University, Tianjin, specializing in contemporary history of eastern and western cultures. His doctoral dissertation, Dewey and China, analyses the changes of the intellectual atmosphere and attitude before and after the visit of Dewey during the May-fourth Movement. 9. Zhang, Bao-gui (2001). Dewey and China. Shijiazhuang: Hebei People’s Press (in Chinese).

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Zhang studies Dewey’s aesthetics. His Dewey and China briefly and concisely covers the visit of Dewey to China, Dewey’s most prominent talks in China, as well as the views of the Chinese intellectuals on Dewey.

References Dewey, J. (1939). Biography of John Dewey. In P. A. Schilpp (Ed.), The Philosophy of John Dewey (p. 10). New York: Tudor Publishing Company. Dockser, C. B. (1983). John Dewey and the May Fourth Movement in China: Dewey’s Social and Political Philosophy in Relation to His Encounter with China, 1919–1921. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International. Dykhuizen, G. (1973). The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press. Peng, S. S. (2018). A Journey to Mars: John Dewey’s Lectures and Inquiry in China. Journal of Modern Chinese History, 12(1), 63–81. Schmidt, H. (1998). Democracy for China: American Propaganda and May Fourth Movement. Diplomatic History, 22(1), 1–28. Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2008). A History of Modern Psychology (9th ed.). Boston: Cengage Learning. Wang, C. S. (2007). John Dewey in China: To Teach and To Learn. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Chinese References Chen, W. B. (2006) in Chinese: 陳文彬 (2006)。 五四時期杜威來華講學與中國知識界的反應。 復旦大學博士論文, 歷史學系,116–124頁。 Dewey, J. (2001) in Chinese: 杜威談中國。杭州:浙江文藝出版社。 杜威 (2001)。 Gao, P. S. (Ed.). (1984) in Chinese: 高平叔(編) (1984)。 胡適致蔡元培函(1922年6月22日),蔡元培全集(第三卷) (1917 –1920),北京:中華書局。 第305頁。 Gu, H. L. (2019) in Chinese: 杜威在華學譜。上海:華東師範大學出版社。 顧紅亮 (2019)。 Hu, S. (1919) in Chinese: 《每週評論》 ,第31號。 胡適 (1919年7月20日) 多研究些問題,少談些「主義」。 Hu, S. (1921) in Chinese:

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胡適 (1921)。 杜威先生與中國。 《東方雜誌》 ,第18期13號。 Hu, S. (1959) in Chinese: 1959年7月16日胡適在夏威夷大學所作的英文演講,夏道平譯文載1959年8月16日 《自由中國》 第21卷第4期。 Hu, S. (2003) in Chinese: 胡適全集(第一卷)。合肥:安徽教育出版社。 胡適 (2003)。 Li, J. H. (1985) in Chinese: 黎侫華 (1985)。 杜威在華活動年表。華東師範大學學報,第一至三期。 Takungpao. (1920) in Chinese: 《各公團歡迎名人記》 ,湖南 《大公報》 1920年10月31日. Tian Xia Shao Shan Website. (2009) in Chinese: 淺析杜威實用主義哲學對毛澤東的影響。2019年8月20 天下韶山網 (2009)。 日:http://www.txssw.com/newswrmzd/maozedongxingjiulunwenku/13558. htm. Yang, Y., & Li, J. P. (2019) in Chinese: 楊旭,李劍萍(2019)。 文化契合性:杜威教育理論在中國傳播流行的深層原因。 《教育 科學研究》 ,第3期。 Yuan, Q. (2001) in Chinese: 杜威與中國。北京:人民出版社。 元青 (2001)。 Zhang, B. G. (2001) in Chinese: 杜威與中國。石家莊市:河北人民出版社。 張寶貴 (2001)。

CHAPTER 12

John Dewey and Progressive Education

Introduction Dewey Reads Science Fiction Imagine you were bookish John Dewey, a graduate-turned-professor from Vermont (1875–1879) to Michigan (1884–1894). What leisure reading would you do? The answer is important for it might reflect Dewey’s personal interest as much as the social ethos of his times. Needless to say, the ideas from leisure reading might have crept into ones thinking. You may be astonished that Dewey read science fiction. Looking Backward: 2000–1887 was a science fiction written by American novelist Edward Bellamy in 1888, eight years before the famed British novelist H. G. Wells published The Time Machine. When asked in his seventies about what books he considered the most influential in his life time, Dewey named William James’s Principles of Psychology and Bellamy’s Looking Backward (Martin 2002: 83). It is not surprising that Dewey would name Principles of Psychology for its lasting impact on American intellectual thoughts but to name Looking Backward appears a bit out of expectation. Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000–1887 For readers unfamiliar with the nineteenth-century American literature, Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) was a novelist with a strong socialist inclination, which made him a good comparison with H. G. Wells. Bellamy’s © The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_12

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father was a Baptist minister, who sent his son to Europe to study law. Upon returning to the USA, Bellamy took up journalism instead and worked in the New York Post. By 1878, he was publishing novels. After a few unnoticeable attempts, Bellamy stormed the literary world in 1888 with his utopian science fiction Looking Backward: 2000–1887 . It sold over one million copies within a few years. Looking Backward was set in Boston in 1887, during which the protagonist, Julian West, fell into a mesmerized sleep in an underground sleeping chamber. He was revived and woken up in the year of 2000 and found himself in an utterly different society. In 1887, Boston was a busy city with noisy streets. There were huge income gap between the rich and the poor; the poor lived in crowded slums while the rich lived in huge mansions with lavish decoration. The haves owned everything and paid the have-nots very low wages, leading to frequent workers’ strikes and riots. In 2000, as Bellamy’s utopian novel unfolded, Boston became a small garden city with tree-lined boulevards and modern facilities. Poverty and hunger was eradicated by means of a government-planned economy in which everybody received an equal share of the domestic products. All citizens had college education and young men and women had free choice of their career, retiring at the age of 45. People led an efficient and orderly life, with a sense of brotherhood and fraternity. The dark side of human nature such as selfishness, greed and hypocrisy became history, being transformed into selflessness, benevolence and sincerity. The American Reformers’ Quest For readers of the twenty-first century, you may think Bellamy’s futuristic vision of 2000 too naïve. But imagine you were in the time-space capsule of 1887 Boston, what intellectual resources did you have for your dreams? In 1887, you did not have any historical evidence of the failure of the central-planning state economy, nor the suspicion of the “big brother watching”1 that infringed on individual freedom. You, like Dewey, might belong to the new middle class who might have witnessed social injustice and economic inequity with indignation. All told, Bellamy’s vision had inspired intellectuals and the public to eliminate social ills by equitable 1 The famous dystopian novel by British novelist George Orwell (1949): Nineteen Eighty-Four.

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distribution of economic goods. A Bellamyite movement started, and by 1891, 162 “Nationalist Clubs”2 were formed for a movement to champion for state ownership and the abandonment of market competition. When Bellamy himself went into politics but died young at the age of 48, his vision had inspired a generation of American reformers for a more equitable society, though not necessarily a socialist one. The above sets the stage of progressivism and progressive education that we will explore in the next section.

Progressivism in America (1860–1920) For American cultural history, readers can get more complete information from college courses of American history or even from high school textbooks. Below is a very brief account of the emerging ideas of progressivism in American culture during Dewey’s times, which is relevant to this chapter. From Tradition to Modernity (1860–1879) A British colony having gained independence in 1776, the USA was culturally more attached to Britain than to Spain, France or Holland, though immigrants and the religious persecuted from all Continental Europe sought refuge there. Thus, the New Englanders settled there with the British protestant ethic plus liberal individualism without an aristocracy but a power structure rested on mercantilism, liberty and pioneering spirit. British classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo all had their impact on early American thought of free market economy and perfect competition. By the mid-nineteenth century, Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory and Herbert Spencer’s notion of “survival of the fittest” permeated American thought. With most Americans living in isolated rural communities, their Christian faith was aligned with their belief in individualism, laissez-faire and progress. Their values were summarized below by Robert Wiebe in his most acclaimed work, The Search for Order, 1877 –1920:

2 The advocates called themselves “nationalists” instead of “socialists”. Their goal was to nationalize private industries.

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Most important, the theory, the [Darwinian] theory, for all of its harsh qualities, drew upon a rich tradition of village values. Equal opportunity for each man; a test of individual merit; wealth as a reward for virtue; credit for hard work, frugality, and dedication; a premium upon efficiency; a government that minded its own business; a belief in society’s progressive improvement; these and many more read like a catalogue of mid nineteenth-century virtues. (Wiebe 1967: 136)

To my readers, it is instructive to read Dewey’s own account in his The School and Society (1899), which outlined how America changed from the rural self-sufficient agrarian economy into an early industrial urban economy. A vivid example is that in the 1860s the villagers still used animal fat and wicks to make their own candles. Then came electric light (MW1: 7). Soon, candle-making became mass production. It was the forces of industrialization and urbanization that changed the face of America. With railroads cutting through cotton fields and connecting towns and villages; with the discovery of oil and the growth of the manufactory industry, small towns grew into big cities with new problems and social ills. Traditional values gave way to modern ones amid poverty and progress. This became the title of a best seller, Poverty and Progress (1879) written by Henry George (1839–1897), a journalist, political economist and pioneering progressivist. He studied the paradox of poverty and increasing inequity during a period of rapid economic growth through technological progress and argued, following the line of Ricardo, that land ownership, the monopoly of land, was the crux of the problem. The landowner simply held the property, reaped the benefit from other factors of production—capital, labor, entrepreneurship. To remedy the situation, George proposed a single tax, or land value tax, i.e., to tax the value of the land and use the tax to finance public investment and service, such as infrastructure building, transportation, education and social welfare. His rationale: land belongs to all people. He respected private property and did not advocate the confiscation of private property, however. The publication of Poverty and Progress in 1879 marked the beginning of the Progressive Era. The book had had lasting impact on American

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thought and social reform.3 John Dewey must have read it in his formative years and he later estimated that it “had a wider distribution than almost all other books on political economy put together” (LW9: 300). The Progressive Era (1879–1920) In the 1880s, the American society was plagued with immense social ills caused by industrialization and urbanization. When Poverty and Progress became a best seller in 1880s, it had gone into the American psychic that the capitalists and landowners, by taking advantage of the laissezfaire economics and free market mechanism, reaped most of the economic wealth and left the mass in poverty, amid technological progress. They had erected monopolies in major industries and widespread political corruption was a way for them to perpetuate the system. The pressing problems of urbanization, city vices and immigration became the background of the intensifying conflict between the proletarians and the capitalists. One bloody incident was the Haymarket Square Riot in Chicago in May 1886. A peaceful rally for an eight-hour day led to clashes between demonstrating workers and the police, followed by a bomb explosion killing 7 police officers and 4 civilians. The subsequent trial sentenced seven rioters to death. All these took place in big cities. Jacob Riis (1849– 1914), one of the earliest reformist-journalists, described the New York slums, the dark streets and tenement apartments in How the Other Half Lives (1890): a poor, hungry and ragged man, unable to feed his children, became a man with a knife, seeking to kill and revenge at the wealthy outside Fifth Avenue of New York downtown. Observed Weibe, Now danger lurked everywhere. Farmers and wage earners, dissenting ministers and angry editors, immigrants and ideologists, peaceful petitioners and armed strikers, all blurred into visions of a society unhinged. (Wiebe 1967: 78)

Despite conflict and antagonism, the progressivists looked at these problems optimistically: they believed in progress and took active action to 3 Many eminent thinkers and activists acknowledged Henry George’s influence on their thoughts and action, including some US Presidents, Sun Yat-sen and John Dewey. See Earth Rights Institute http://www.earthrightsinstitute.org/.

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solve them. The era was supposed to end with the First World War (1914–1918), after which the USA rose to become a dominant world power. The Idea of Progress Beneath these economic and political conflicts lies the idea progress, the nineteenth-century assumption that everything, society included, was moving forward and making progress toward perfection. Nineteenthcentury progressivism embodied two important concepts: stage and evolution. Auguste Comte (1794–1859), the father of modern sociology, was among the first to postulate that human societies underwent three stages: the theological stage, the metaphysical stage and the positive (scientific) stage. As for evolution, progressivism picked up Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, manifest in Herbert Spencer’s notion of “survival of the fittest,” thus the term social Darwinism to justify fierce market competition as well as political struggle for the fittest, leading to the fittest and perfect outcome. American progressivists took up these two notions with some ingenious revision. Notably, Lester Ward, an American sociologist of the Progressive Era, proposed in Dynamic Sociology (1883) that society evolved in four stages: natural man, loose aggregates, national states and universal integration. Around 1900, progressive economist Simon Patten proposed three stages in economic progress: pain economy (scarcity), pleasure economy (abundance) and creative economy (self-direction, cooperation and altruism) (Quoted from Wiebe 1967: 141). As for social Darwinism, all progressivists were against “social” or “economic” survival of the fittest. They had a crusading mission to eliminate economic inequity. Instead of leaving society alone to take care of itself, they advocated social intervention. Thus, Patten suggested breaking the bonds of “social heredity” and William Bagley (1874–1946), an educationalist, suggested nurturing the “socially efficient individual.” Progressive Politics and Agenda With social and economic upheaval aggravated by an economic depression of 1893–1894, the political elites felt the mood and joined force with city reformers for a new, improved society. The authors of the two best sellers, Henry George and Edward Bellamy, joined politics in different

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ways. Henry George campaigned for mayor of New York City twice: first as a candidate of the United Labor Party in 1886 and the second time as an independent Democrat in 1897 (He died of a stroke four days before the election). When Edward Bellamy inspired the Bellamyite movement for an utopian, nationalizing America, he founded a magazine, The New Nation, in 1891 and promoted united action between Nationalist Clubs with The People’s Party (Populist Party). More importantly, progressive politics moved to the national level at the turn of the twentieth century as the two presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, serving from 1901 to 1908, and Woodrow Wilson, serving from 1913 to 1920, were increasingly progressive. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (1858–1919), an image of an American “Cowboy” with robust masculinity, was the driving force behind progressive politics. As the 26th President of the USA, he proposed “square deal,” which means changing the rules for more equality of opportunity. In his 94-page pamphlet of A Square Deal for Every Man (1904),4 Roosevelt set forth 75 topics, which more or less covered control of corporation, conservation of natural resources, hygienic food and consumer protection. During his presidency, he worked to break the trusts, regulated the railroads, established national parks and advocated pure food and drugs, among other progressive measures. Roosevelt aimed at a comeback for the 1912 election but was unable to win the Republican nomination. Thereby he founded the Progressive Party (nicknamed Bull Moose Party) and finished second (27.4% of the popular vote) in the presidential election. While Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson won the election (41.8% of the popular vote), both Roosevelt and Wilson were considered progressivists so that American progressive politics lasted from 1900 to 1920. One “public enemy” of progressive politics was the trusts. In 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed almost unanimously to prohibit agreements between big businesses to restraint trade or competition. President Roosevelt sued 45 companies under the Sherman Act while the succeeding President Taft sued 75. In 1914, the Congress passed the Clayton Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act as further antitrust measures. It must be noted, however, that many progressivists were not against big business per se; they were against big evil corporations which 4 Roosevelt, T. (1904). A Square Deal for Every Man: A Collation of Quotations from the Addresses and Messages of Theodore Roosevelt. R.J. Thompson.

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acted ruthlessly and greedily. They had in mind a new society, an orderly society that fostered cooperation between labor and big corporations. They supported social efficiency and social engineering but were generally anti-socialist in outlook. Progressivists did not come as a unified band, but with diverse values as social gospelers, Christian socialists, romantic Marxists, corporate executives, political elites, public intellectuals. What united them was the faith of progress and social reform through human action. With the deep-rooted value of British mercantilism and individualism, they aimed to improve free market capitalism and rejected socialism. The diverse reform movements had attained enviable achievements: purifying the electorate, attaining women suffrage, improving municipal administration, regulating monopolies and corporations (trust-busting), anti-corruption, anti-prostitution, improving labor laws, prohibiting child-labor, conservation, etc.5 The Rise of the New Middle Class Marxian political economy has it: industrialism created antagonism of the two classes: the bourgeoisie (capitalists) and the proletariat (workers). There were also petti-bourgeois, which we call them middle classes. In America, as in other nineteenth-century Western economies, the rise of the middle class probably started with industrialization and urbanization. They were a diverse group of professional occupations bound by unique professional skills and functions: in medicine, law, economics, accounting, administration, management, teaching, social work, architecture, engineering and so forth. They offered services of paramount need to support a new industrial society and a self-enhanced consumer society. They formed professional associations, published trade journals, established standards of practice and joined with tertiary institutions to confer qualifications. They actually offered upward social mobility for the lower class, and they outnumbered the capitalists, landowners and aristocracy. As the number of farmers dwindled, the number and kinds of professionals were on the rise. Armed with new knowledge and technical know-how, they were the impetus of more efficient work, improved 5 For a historical account of American progressive politics of 1900–1930, see Dawley, A. (2003). Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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services and better life. They were the educated with a new language, a new perspective to old problems and a scientific outlook to solve problems. Their zeal and optimism created a hopeful future—a progressive society. The Beginning of Scientific Management In retrospect, scientific management looks like the last piece of jigsaw puzzle to fit in the American progressive society. With science as the new religion and efficiency as the new gospel, how to produce more, produce better and avoid waste is a crucial issue of productivity. Frederick Taylor (1856–1915), an efficiency expert in industrial production, became one of the leaders in the efficiency movement. His ideas were simple: to replace the rule-of-thumb work method with a scientific study of the tasks and steps involved, followed by a detailed improved plan of instruction and supervision. He first worked in Midvale Steel Works and later Bethlehem Steel Corporation in the machine shop, where, through empirical tests, he was able to quadruple cutting speeds. Initially, he used the term “process management” and “shop management” but later adopted the term “scientific management” in his best remembered work, “The Principles of Scientific Management (1911).”6 The purpose of scientific management, also known as Taylorism, is to improve efficiency and avoid wastes. In his book, Taylor pointed out that there was “inefficiency in almost all of our daily acts” (introduction, p. 2). The solution was not to find “the right man” to supervise the work, but to set up a system of management by scientific rules, laws and principles. While he supported the prevalent “initiative and incentive” system for the employee for better work, Taylor stressed the importance of scientific task analysis, such as his famous time-motion study, to set standard and flow of work. Taylor further stressed the importance of training workers as well as their hearty cooperation (Chapter 2). By applying scientific management to improve efficiency, both employers and employees would benefit (Chapter 1) and that there would be equal division of work and responsibility between management and workers (Chapter 2). 6 The term caught national attention in a court case brought to the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1910 where the plaintiff argued that scientific management could overcome railroad inefficiencies so that there was no need to raise train fare despite rising labor costs.

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The Progressive Nation Taylor argued that systematic scientific management could be applied to the manufacturing plant, to great corporations and even to government. He saw efficiency as a national goal, for even President Roosevelt urged for “national efficiency.”7 This view echoed those of other progressivists such as Herbert Croly (1869–1930), a political philosopher who sought to improve the government administrative machinery by training experts in public services. More specifically, in his influential book, The Promise of American Life (1909), Croly argued for a strong national government and the strengthening of labor unions, with efficient management to promote equity among its citizens. Croly coined “New Nationalism” and later worked for Roosevelt in the 1912 presidential election, followed by publishing another book, Progressive Democracy in 1915. In summary, both Taylor and Croly championed for efficiency. Taylor found the means (scientific management) and Croly found the sphere (Federal Government). Through science and technology, more goods and services could be produced efficiently and a strong government could help to manage and distribute them fairly. Both saw the importance of cooperation: Taylor urged for the cooperation between workers and management and Croly urged for the cooperation between labor unions and government. Such is the social, political and intellectual background of the Progressive Era which has led to the emergence of progressive education. The mood of progressivism was one of science, optimism, efficiency and cooperation for a hopeful future. The public sentiments in politics were antitrust, anti-corruption, muckraking, fair election and fair voting. The organizing principles for society and government were: equity, democracy, efficiency, scientific management and rationality. These principles created a new social order, which moved American society from a traditional personal community into a modern impersonal world. The rising middle class is both the cause and the outcome of forging professionalization, bureaucratization and accountability in social institutions, including education.

7 In his book, Taylor quoted Roosevelt saying, “The conservation of national resources is only preliminary to the larger question of national efficiency” (p. i).

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From New to Progressive Education When I began my study of progressive education many years ago, I pondered over a simple but basic question: Who started progressive education and when? Apparently it was John Dewey who was named as “the father of progressive education” (Encyclopedia.com).8 However, Dewey himself gave the credit to his colleague Francis Parker, calling him “the father of the progressive education movement” (LW5: 320). So who started progressive education, when and how? Francis Parker—The Father of Progressive Education Apparently progressive education is a movement traceable to Parker’s Quincy System in 1876, twenty years before John Dewey entered the field. As a movement, it was not started by just one person but grew out of social needs envisioned by many like-minded reformers. To begin with, the movement did not even have a name, only discontent with existing conditions and demand for changes. Francis Wayland Parker (1837–1902) was a self-made pioneering educator of nineteenth-century America. Born in New Hampshire and educated in public schools, he started as a village teacher at the age of 16, first in New Hampshire and later Massachusetts. He fought The American Civil War (1861–1865) and obtained a colonel title, after which he traveled to Europe in 1872 and studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin, learning the latest European pedagogy and psychology. Upon return to the USA, Parker was elected superintendent of schools in Quincy, Massachusetts. During his term of office from 1875 to 1880, Parker implemented sweeping curriculum reform. He abolished alphabet learning by rote: the speller, the reader, the grammar, the copybook were replaced with magazines, newspapers and school-based materials. Arithmetic was taught by application, not by learning the rules. Geography was taught in field trips. The “Quincy System” quickly caught national attention, but he modestly stated he had nothing new to offer: I repeat, ……that I am simply trying to apply well established principles of teaching, principles derived directly from the laws of the mind. The

8 https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/education/education-termsand-concepts/progressive-education.

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methods springing from them are found in the development of every child. They are used everywhere except in school. I have introduced no new principle, method, or detail. No experiments have been tried, and there is no peculiar “Quincy System”. (Quoted from Cremin 1962: 130)

The Quincy System produced impressive results: school children there excelled at reading, writing and spelling and stood fourth in their county in arithmetic (Cremin 1962: 131). In 1880, Parker left and became superintendent of the Boston Public Schools and later principal of the Cook County Normal School, Chicago (1883–1899). In 1894, Dewey visited the school, impressed with Parker’s work and enrolled his children Evelyn and Fred there. Parker was no theoretician, only a dedicated practitioner of education. He believed in child-centered education (from Fröbel), the scientific study of pedagogy (from Herbart) and learning with meaning (from Pestalozzi). He had given talks on teaching, published as Talks on Teaching (1883) and Talks on Pedagogics (1894). Still under the preDarwinian Christian faith for crusade of child education, Parker preached in 1894: ……the divinity…… striving imagination stretches away to the invisible, all powerful, all-controlling, all-loving. One who permeates the universe, lives in it, and breathes his life through it, the eternal life to be taken into the human soul. The myth is the obscure image, in the child’s soul, of God Himself. (Talks on Pedagogics, 1894)

When Dewey began his work in education at age 35 in 1894, Parker was already an established pioneer in his late-fifties. Their professional relationship was that of mutual admiration and respect. They were comradein-arms where Parker worked on the practice and Dewey offered the theory. The two differed in appearance and personality as well: Dewey was young, gentle and studious; Parker was bald head, emotional and aggressive. Dewey sent his children to Parker’s school and Parker invited Dewey to offer course of lectures there. A reporter once attended the lecture and gave a vivid and interesting contrast of the two personalities—a lion and a lamb: …… one would never dream that the quiet man with his level eyebrows and pleasant gentle voice was the lion, and the great Colonel Parker was the lamb. Such, however, is the case. Col. Parker sits at one side of the platform, listening, often with closed eyes, as is his wont, to the agreeable

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voice of Dr. Dewey, as he quietly utters those radical ideas. …… Col. Parker, in his aggressively earnest way, has been lustily pounding for years, on the same thing. Dr. Dewey does not pound. He quietly loosens the hoops, and the bottom insensibly vanishes. Dr. Dewey is worshipped by his hearers. There is a charm about his personality which is simply irresistible. He is as simple in his language as in his manner… At the close of the lecture…… Col. Parker then rose, …… said: “Ladies and gentlemen, if what Dr. Dewey has been telling you is true, the millions upon millions which are expended upon our public school system is not only spent in the wrong way, but we are dulling bright intellects and doing incalculable harm to the future generations.”9

It appears Parker well knew that his metaphysical and romantic pedagogy had to give way to a more scientific functional approach. No doubt Parker welcomed Dewey but Parker’s untimely death in 1902 ended their fruitful collaboration. Charles Eliot—The New Education It would be of research interest to see how the term “progressive education” evolved. In 1860, Herbert Spencer’s writings in education were collected and published in Education: Intellectual, Moral and Physical. He proposed that education was “to prepare us for complete living,” which included self-preservation, necessities of life, offspring rearing, proper human relations and gratification of tastes and feelings.10 His ideal education had had much impact on the American public, especially on Charles W. Eliot (1834–1926), who became president of Harvard University in 1869. In that year Eliot wrote The New Education,11 which was about reforming higher education in America. Eliot was actively involved in secondary education reform as well. As for primary education, a writer in 1883 called the Quincy System “The New Education and Colonel Parker.” In other words, all reform effort in education, be it primary, secondary or tertiary, was under the generic term of “New Education.”

9 Quoted from Dykhuizen (1973: 93–94). The reporter was Ellen Graff; the newspaper clipping was kept in Colonel Parker’s Scrapbook (Dykhuizen 1973: 349). 10 Spencer, H. (1860). Education: Intellectual, Moral and Physical. New York. 11 Eliot, C. W. (1869). The New Education. The Atlantic Monthly, XXIII, 203–220,

358–367.

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Dewey’s Changing Usage In 1884, Dewey called his vision in psychology “The New Psychology.” Then, he used the term “new education” in 1899 for the education he delivered in the laboratory school, as seen in his lecture to parents (The School and Society, MW1: 6). In another address at the Francis W. Parker School in 1904 (MW3: 240), Dewey employed the term “indirect education,” which was published with a note from the editor as “new education” (MW3: 418). In November 1908, the first volume of Progressive Journal of Education appeared. By then, the term “progressive” had already got into the public mind, together with President Roosevelt’s progressive politics. In 1915, when Dewey published his Schools of Tomorrow, he called the schools he investigated “progressive schools” (MW8: 263, 311) and those teachers “educational reformers” (MW8: 207). The term “new education” was dropped and “modern education” was used instead (MW8: 208). Finally in 1916, “progressive education” appeared in Democracy and Education, with a brief statement that “it is the aim of progressive education to take part in correcting unfair privilege and unfair deprivation, not to perpetuate them” (MW9: 72). This usage was in line with the progressivist ideal. Apparently, the early usage of the term by Dewey was to denote some kind of reform effort for equity and fairness, similar to what the connotation of “progressive” politics would carry. When John Dewey returned from China in 1921, Progressive Education Association had already been formed with the term “progressive education” further popularized. From the 1920s to 1940s, Dewey employed the term “progressive education” frequently in his education writings to denote either the ideal education in his mind or the new, non-traditional education already in practice. It is of interest to note, however, that many educators continued to use the term “new education” even in the 1930s. One symposium organized in 1930 had the title of “The New Education Ten Years After,” which was an evaluation of progressive education of the 1920s. Even in Experience and Education of 1938, Dewey was using “new education” and “progressive education” interchangeably (LW13: 4, 14, 61).

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The Diversity in Progressive Education The Progressive Education Association With progressive schools and practices already in place for more than two decades, Stanwood Cobb (1881–1982), Eugene Randolph Smith and other like-minded young educators founded the Progressive Education Association in 1919. They were inspired by Marietta Johnson’s organic school in Fairhope, Alabama and set forth statement of principles very much in Johnson’s vision: • • • • • • •

Freedom to Develop Naturally Interest as Motive of Work The Teacher as Guide, Not a Task-Master Scientific Study of Child Development Attention to the Child’s Physical Development Co-operation Between School and Home The Progressive School as Leader in Educational Movements12

Caught in the mood of progressivism, the Progressive Education Association started with a bold aim: reforming the entire school system in America (Cremin 1962: 241). The association was not a professional body; it was “primarily an association of parents and others who are interested in education as it affects the community and the nation,” serving to exchange views between parents and experimental educators (ibid.: 245). To start with, it was on the fringe of the education system; no support from university, nor schools of education, only the lay public. While Cobb and Smith both became teachers and later school principals, their experience was mainly confined to private schools rather than the mainstream public schools. The Progressive Education Association invited John Dewey to be its first honorary president. When Dewey declined (he would be in Japan and China in the next two years), they were excited to get President Eliot of Harvard to fill this symbolic position. In 1927, they invited Dewey

12 Quoted from Cremin, L. A. (1962). The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (pp. 243–245). New York: Knopf. Simplified and edited by author.

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again upon Eliot’s death. This time Dewey accepted it but gave a critical presidential address in 1928 (see below for detail). The Diversity of Progressive Education In the 1920s, we saw the Progressive Education Association slowly rising to national prominence. However, it did not monopolize or solely direct the progressive education movement. Rather there were many prominent players, nearly all of them related to Dewey. Below is an outline of eight educators and their work. My list is never intended to be exhaustive but I hope to have covered the major ones as well as showed their diversity. Each educator probably deserves a chapter in a whole book on the subject. Marietta Johnson’s Fairhope School Marietta Johnson (1864–1938) dreamed of teaching at the age of ten and had taught elementary and high school. She read a book on child psychology (Nathan Oppenheim: The Development of the Child) and Dewey’s early educational writings. In 1903, she visited Fairhope, Alabama and later started her “Organic Education” for body, mind and spirit: to “minister to the health of the body, develop the finest mental grasp, and preserve the sincerity and unself-consciousness of the emotional life” (Cremin 1962: 149). In her Thirty Years with an Idea (1939), she outlined her utopian education: No examinations, no tests, no failures, no rewards, no self-consciousness; the development of sincerity, the freedom of children to live their lives straight out, no double motives, children never subjected to the temptation to cheat, even to appear to know when they do not know; the development of fundamental sincerity, which is the basis of all morality.13

In 1914, Dewey visited Johnson’s school and was very much impressed with the Fairhope experiment. Naturally, Dewey supported the notion of organicity: the child and her education was seen as an organic whole, and Johnson called it “a unit organism.” In addition, Dewey had always had preference of a rural setting for education. 13 Quoted from Cremin, L. A. (1962). The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (p. 151). New York: Knopf.

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Dewey reported the Organic School in Schools of Tomorrow, which brought Johnson to national attention. Johnson’s child-centered education, as reported, resonated Dewey’s child interest, freedom and selfexpression. Both saw the importance of teacher guidance in childcentered education. Johnson’s vision became the guiding spirit of the Progressive Education Association and many child-centered schools in the 1920s. William Wirt’s Gary Plan William Wirt (1874–1938) was a farm boy, studied political science and later attended some of Dewey’s class in the University of Chicago. He witnessed urbanization and wanted to preserve the traditional American values of liberalism, community and self-advancement through education. In 1907, he became the school superintendent of Gary, Indiana, which was a new industrial town 27 miles southeast of Chicago. While Wirt was not much an original thinker (Cohen 1966: 21), he had a vision to integrate a few disparaging ideas together: Dewey’s school as an embryonic community, Taylor’s scientific management for efficiency and pedagogical reform for manual training. This he did by his “platoon system” and “work-play-study” program. From the onset, the Gary Schools were designed with the concept of shared facilities and floating class (platoon system). The school facilities were also community facilities: the school auditorium was another town hall where townspeople gathered, socialized and learned. Schools were open all day with adult evening classes and Saturday classes. To maximize the utilization of space and resources, fewer classrooms were built and the budget was spent on setting up manual training workshops, kitchens, laboratories, playground, gymnasium and other facilities. Students did not stay in one homeroom; through ingenious timetabling, students were “herded” from classroom to workshop, laboratory to gymnasium, playground to kitchen, etc. where they were actively and busily engaged in the “work-play-study” program. In Gary, boys and girls learned cooking, carpentry, gardening, sewing, molding, through work and practice with workmen, gardeners, artisans. Academic subjects were departmentalized with attention on rapid, normal and slow learners. In this way, the Gary plan was implementing the progressive ideal of “learning by doing,” manual training, education of the gifted, and operating an embryonic community life in efficiency.

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The Gary plan attracted much publicity since 1911. After Evelyn Dewey had visited it in 1914 and Schools of Tomorrow described it with endorsement, Gary became an object of emulation. While Dewey might not have met William Wirt personally and the two had only a few correspondences (Thorburn 2017: 4–5), Dewey’s brilliant student Randolph Bourne took it as par excellence of progressive education in his work, The Gary Schools (1916): Those who follow Professor Dewey’s philosophy find in the Gary schools – as Professor Dewey does himself – the most complete and admirable application yet attempted, a synthesis of the best aspects of the progressive “schools of tomorrow”. (Bourne 1916: 144)

For Bourne, the Gary plan was American; it had caught the mood of the Progressive Era: efficiency and democracy. Philosophically speaking, it was Deweyan and American: Its philosophy is American, its democratic organization is American. It is one of the institutions that our American ‘Kultur’ should be proudest of. Perhaps professional educators, accustomed to other concepts and military methods and administrative illusions, will not welcome this kind of school. But teachers hampered by drill and routine will want it, and so will parents and children. (The New Republic II , 1915: 328)

It appears Dewey did not have direct influence on Wirt. It was Wirt who took Dewey’s ideas and developed it into a system which could become a model for public schools. Despite the failure to implement it in New York, the Gary plan and platoon system continued to grow in the 1920s, with over 200 cities in 41 states experimenting it. It was the triumph of Dewey’s ideas as much as the pursuit for efficiency by school districts that had led to Gary’s popularization. Helen Parkhurst’s Dalton Plan Helen Parkhurst (1886–1973) was an acclaimed American educator in progressive education. She graduated from Wisconsin State Teachers College in 1904 and began teaching farm children. Parkhurst encountered Dewey while doing postgraduate work at Columbia (Higgins and Coffield 2016: 18). Motivated by Dewey’s notion of freedom and self-expression, Parkhurst tried out experiments of self-directed and selfspaced learning in 1911–1912. She asked students to sign contract and

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took responsibility of their learning; teachers only prepared material, gave assignments (tasks) and offered guidance while students planned and worked on their own pace. It was the earliest form of individualized instruction. In 1912–1913, Parkhurst traveled to Italy and studied under Maria Montessori. When the latter visited the USA in her whirlwind lectures in 1913–1915, Parkhurst worked for her and became the director of all Montessori Schools in the nation. In 1919, Parkhurst continued her experiment in a high school, the Children’s University School in Dalton, Massachusetts. She argued that lockstep teaching was not efficient. Her experiment was an “efficiency measure” in which she “creates conditions… for the learner to learn.”14 According to Steven Cowen and Gary McCulloch, professor with the London Institute of Education, Evelyn Dewey became a mentor to Parkhurst, and her Dalton Plan was introduced to Britain by Rosa Bassett, a headmistress of a London secondary school15 (Higgins and Coffield 2016: 18). In 1922, Parkhurst published Education on the Dalton Plan, which was complemented by Evelyn Dewey’s The Dalton Laboratory Plan as well as another book The Dalton Plan in the Elementary School by Albert Lynch. By then, Dalton Association had sprung up all over England. It appears the Dalton Plan was more popular in the UK than in the US. Here again Dewey had an indirect influence on Parkhurst by inspiring her direction of research and experiments. In fact, the terminologies behind Parkhurst’s method, such as “create condition,” “liberation of the pupil,” “learning equals experience,” “experience is the best teacher,” “selfdirection,” “interaction,” “co-operation,” etc. are all Deweyan. Parkhurst

14 Quoted from Parkhurst, H. (1922). Education on the Dalton Plan (1922) (p. 34). Boston: E.P. Dutton & Company. 15 Readers who follow through my chapters will know that Evelyn Dewey (1889– 1965), John Dewey’s eldest daughter, was three years younger than Helen Parkhurst. When Evelyn started her career in education and co-authored Schools of Tomorrow with her father in 1914–1915, Helen had already been in education for ten years, became a protégé of Montessori and then head of all Montessori schools in the USA. In 1919, Helen was conducting her experiment in Dalton when Evelyn published her second book, New Schools for Old. Judging from their age and experience, it is unlikely that Evelyn was a mentor of Helen, though the two young ladies knew each other well and were close associates.

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remained influential in American education and later became a radio and TV host of children programs.16 Caroline Pratt and Lucy Mitchell’s Play School During the Progressive Era, many women of the new age worked on early childhood education. Caroline Pratt and Lucy Mitchell were among them, based in New York City. Caroline Pratt (1867–1954) taught in a village school and later earned a Bachelor of pedagogy from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1894. Afterward she taught manual training and carpentry. Around 1911, she designed a line of toys, called “do-with toys,” for children to play and tell their own open-ended stories in familiar settings. She believed in hands-on experience and learning through play. In 1913, she launched her Play School in Greenwich Village, New York City. It was reported in Schools of Tomorrow as: The “Play School” conducted by Miss Pratt in New York City organizes all the work around the play activities of little children…… her plan is: To offer an opportunity to the child to pick up the thread of life in his own community, and to express what he gets in an individual way. The experiment concerns itself with getting subject-matter first hand,…… and with applying such information to individual schemes of play with related toys and blocks as well as expressing himself through such general means as drawing, dramatization, and spoken language. (MW8: 283)

Caught in the mood of expressionism of the Greenwich Village intelligentsia, Pratt saw children as creative artists. She was joined by Lucy Sprague Mitchell (1878–1967), a fervent educator who wanted to study how mental growth affected learning experience. In 1912, Lucy’s husband Wesley took up a teaching position in Columbia and they moved to New York City. The Mitchells and Deweys became friends and Lucy studied John Dewey’s work, met and learnt much about child development from John personally. In 1916, she founded the Bureau of Educational Experiments (BEE), which aimed to collect information on experiments and research to understand the “whole child” (Dalton 2002:

16 For Parkhurst life and works, you may refer to: Lager, D. (1983). Helen Parkhurst and the Dalton Plan: The Life and Work of an American Educator (Unpublished Doctoral dissertation). University of Connecticut.

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97). Through BEE, Mitchell established a nursery school as laboratory for observations and expanded Play School to become City and Country School in 1921.17 She also revolutionized children’s literature in her Here and Now Story Book with child-centered daily life stories of rhythm, rhyme and repetition. By 1930 BEE moved to Bank Street, New York City and was renamed Bank Street College of Education in 1950. When Dewey endorsed Pratt and supported Mitchell, the two were not only Dewey’s personal friends, but they elaborated Dewey’s philosophy of education in early childhood education. Pratt stressed hands-on experience, play and community, which aligned with Dewey’s learning by doing and school as a miniature community; the do-with toys are miniature of made-believed living. Mitchell was an ambitious educator whose innovations were mostly focused on early childhood education. Inspired by Dewey, she tried out many child-centered experiments and funded many projects, such as nutrition and sex education classes, rural school programs and a special laboratory school by Neurological Institute (Dalton 2002: 97). She helped to popularize Dewey’s ideas in early childhood education. The Columbia Connection At the turn of the twentieth century when Dewey arrived at Columbia University, its Teachers College had already become the center of educational research and teacher training of the nation. Teachers College graduates came to dominate education faculties in other universities and school districts throughout the USA (Cunningham and Heilbronn 2016: 25). They were a prominent part of the progressive education movement. In the first half of the twentieth century, Dewey was the superstar in Columbia for education while James Cattell and Edward Thorndike dominated psychology and educational psychology there, respectively. A few Teachers College professors had had significant impact as well, notably William Kilpatrick, Harold Rugg and George Counts. William Kilpatrick and Project Method William Kilpatrick (1871–1965) was Dewey’s student, colleague and advocate. After teaching and a number of administrative posts, Kilpatrick 17 The name was so changed to include its country campus when they established a summer school in the farm of Hopewell Junction, New York.

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came to Columbia in 1907 and earned his doctorate in 1912. He taught at Teachers College for the next 25 years until retirement, strongly promoting Deweyan education. At a time when teacher education and teacher certification became a must for a teaching career, thus the professionalization of teaching, Kilpatrick’s classes in Teachers College were always full. Over the years, he had taught over 35,000 teachers and so carried the title of “teacher of teachers” and “million dollar professor.” In 1918, Kilpatrick proposed The Project Method, a short article to advocate “whole-hearted purposeful activity proceeding in a social environment” with four steps: purposing, planning, executing and judging. It looks like an extension of Dewey’s How We Think with five phases (see Chapter 7 of this book). Kilpatrick’s idea was Deweyan and revolutionary because he started from the child’s active learning and was against a fixed curriculum, fixed-ordered teaching and memorization. On the other hand, he tried hard to integrate Dewey and Thorndike’s ideas (see elaboration in the next section). In 1923, he published Source Book in the Philosophy of Education, followed by Foundation of Method in 1926. The former was to support and scaffold Dewey’s philosophy of education in Democracy and Education with other readings and perspectives while the latter is a detailed argument for the project method. For good or for bad, Kilpatrick put Dewey into mainstream education and became Dewey’s principal interpreter. Academically, his ideas and theories had closely followed Dewey’s line of thought. In the same vein, Kilpatrick’s project method became a popular label attached to progressive education. On a personal basis, Kilpatrick was closely attached to Dewey. It was once quoted Dewey saying: “He (Kilpatrick) is the best I ever had” (Cremin 1962: 216). For readers’ interest, Kilpatrick was present in Dewey’s 70th, 80th and 90th birthday celebrations. In the 70th birthday celebration, Kilpatrick, then president of Teachers College, served as chairman of the advisory board for the event. In the 80th celebration, he delivered a speech: “John Dewey and American Life” and introduced Dewey. By the 90th birthday, Kilpatrick, already retired and nearly

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80 years old, again chaired a committee of sponsors to raise funds for Dewey’s cause.18 The contribution of Kilpatrick to the populization of Dewey’s ideas must be enormous; for without him, Dewey may remain a little more than an outspoken public intellectual and an obscure philosopher of education, very much similar to the fate of Dewey’s teacher E. Stanley Hall, a seldom-mentioned pioneer of child-study movement of the late nineteenth century. Harold Rugg on Child-Centered Schools and Progressive Curriculum The progressive education movement took off after the publication of Schools of Tomorrow in 1915. Experiments and innovations sprung up throughout the USA, as Evelyn Dewey continued her investigative report in New Schools for Old in 1919, plus The Dalton Laboratory Plan, a whole book on individualized instruction in 1922. To chronicle the development of the 1920s, Harold Rugg, another professor with Columbia, co-authored with Ann Shumaker, The Child-Centered School: An Appraisal of the New Education in 1928. In it we saw schools tending toward child-centeredness, focusing on the child’s creative selfexpression, the child’s physical and emotional needs as well as her artistic development. According to Rugg and Shumaker, the new “child-centered” schools operated under the following principles: child’s freedom, child’s initiative, child’s interest, activity, creative self-expression and personality and social adjustment. These schools were revolts against traditional formal, mechanical teaching, freeing the child as the master of learning. It was the triumph of the child’s creative self-expression over the standardization in teaching. Many “new” schools provided laboratory and demonstration facilities for the dissemination of their practices. The “new” schools were not without shortcomings. Rugg and Shumaker gave a critique for their chaos, their lack of design and planning and their neglect of training in thinking. A reviewer also pointed to its lack of purpose and values:

18 Jay Martin has described each celebration in some detail. See Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey (pp. 371–376, 434–438, 475–478). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

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No one who has studied the accomplishments of children who are intensely interested or who have set up desirable purposes can doubt that interests and purposes are essential to the educational process, but this does not mean that transient child interests should be the center of the course of study. If interests and purposes are to have educational worth, they must be based on values, and the more universal and permanent the values, the better.19

Readers may be interested to note that Harold Rugg’s (1886–1960) contribution to progressive education was more on curriculum work than child-centered schools. He graduated in civil engineering from Dartmouth College in 1909 and later earned his doctorate in education from the University of Illinois in 1915. His engineering background became his strength when he worked with Charles Judd at the University of Chicago, applying statistics to education and publishing Statistical Methods Applied to Education in 1917. In 1920, he moved to Teachers College and began working on social studies and school curriculum. He published Man and His Changing Society, which later became a junior high textbook series in social studies. His approach was to engage students in the investigation of social problems from a critical perspective and to propose solutions. His textbooks, which sold over one million copies since 1929, advocated social justice with a progressive overtone. The textbook was attacked in the 1940s by conservatives for its “pro-socialist” ideas and was censored and systematically removed from some school districts across the USA.20 It became a dark chapter in progressive education. George Counts’s Social Reconstructionism On October 29, 1929, the Wall Street stock market crashed, which soon developed into an economic depression. It swept through America in all aspects, including education. In face of rising unemployment and economic hardship shortly after the roaring twenties of innovation, reform, automation and ludicrous consumption, the public tried to

19 Book review by Horn, E. (1929). The Child-Centered School: An Appraisal of the New Education by Harold Rugg and Ann Shumaker. The Elementary School Journal, 29(7), 549. 20 Readers can dig deeper in: Evans, R. W. (2008). This Happened in America: Harold Rugg and the Censure of Social Studies. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

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comprehend and find a new direction for society. The concern of progressive educators also changed from child-centered education to education for social improvement. The new spokesman: George Counts; his vision: social constructionism. George Counts (1889–1974) was a high school principal before earning his PhD under Charles Judd in the University of Chicago in 1916. Thereafter he taught in a few colleges and universities before landing to Teachers College in 1926 and stayed there until his retirement in 1955. Counts was a political activist, a socialist as well as a scholar. His starting point was Dewey’s idea of embryonic community and education for social reform. Counts elaborated it with a sociological analysis in The Selective Character of American Secondary Education (1922) and The Social Composition of Boards of Education (1927), arguing that business interests and the upper-class controlled high schools and school boards. Being critical of American education, Counts’s ideas became more prosocialist after his visit to the Soviet Union in 1927 and 1929. Counts was invited to deliver a speech to the Progressive Education Association in 1932. At the onset of the Great Depression, Counts challenged the basic premise of child-centered progressive education in his address entitled Dare Progressive Education be Progressive?, which was later published in Dare the School Build a New Social Order? 21 Counts saw that progressive educators were afraid of influencing children to avoid “indoctrination”: they worked with the assumption that children would develop their own understanding of the world by themselves. They wanted to keep politics out of education, but in fact they had supported the status quo and middle-class values. Counts argued that education was basically a political and social venture. When business and financial elites (oligarchs) blundered and led to the current economic crisis, he challenged teachers to lead children and education for the creation of a new social order, a just society with true democracy. It can be seen that Counts had moved a step further in Dewey’s education for democracy and social reform. He dared to call teachers to action, to urge educators to become social reformers. Counts’s true collective democracy resonated with Dewey’s participatory democracy where everyone participates and shares others’ point of views. Counts 21 There were three addresses and papers in Counts’s Dare the School Build a New Social Order? They were: Dare Progressive Education Be Progressive; Education Through Indoctrination; and Freedom, Culture, Social Planning and Leadership.

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became anti-communist after Stalin’s political purge in the Soviet Union. He served as president of American Federation of Teachers from 1939 to 1942 was founder of New York State Liberal Party and ran for the US Senate in 1952. Counts remained politically active throughout his life. It is of interest to note that Counts and Dewey had had the same political inclination. Both visited the Soviet Union in the 1920s. When Counts spoke with enthusiasm, Dewey spoke with caution. Counts became disillusioned and turned to anti-communism in the 1930s as the Soviet Union showed its totalitarian nature. About that time, Dewey defended democracy against the rising tide of dictatorship in Germany, Italy and Russia. When Dewey was about to retire from Columbia, Counts joined the faculty in the 1920s and became associated with Dewey. Both addressed the Progressive Education Association and were critical of progressive education. In 1934, Counts founded a new journal, Social Frontier: A Journal of Education Criticism and Reconstruction. In the journal, Counts set aside a “John Dewey’s Page” for Dewey to write whatever he desired. In 1940, when British philosopher Bertrand Russell was appointed visiting professor to the City College of New York, it became a court case for he was accused of being “an alien and an advocate of sexual immorality.” Dewey immediately jumped to Russell’s defense, and Counts unreservedly supported Dewey. They wrote to the mayor of New York City, demanding academic freedom and calling it “the persecution of Socrates and Galileo” (Martin 2002: 445). It shows clearly that the two were comrade-in-arms to fight for the cause of liberty.22

Dewey’s Role in Progressive Education No Consensus in Research What was Dewey’s role in the progressive education movement? Many historians have tried to answer this question. As early as 1959, Martin Dworkin pointed out that Dewey’s role “was largely that of a reverently misinterpreted prophet rather than a carefully obeyed commander” (Dworkin 1959: 9). When Lawrence Cremin saw “the dialectic between Dewey the observer and Dewey the reformer” (The school Review 1959:

22 Dewey had written on the case. See Dewey, J., & Kallen, H. M. (Eds.). (1941). The Betrand Russell Case: Social Realities Versus Police Court Fictions. New York, NY: The Viking Press.

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163), he argued that in both roles, Dewey affected the movement, but which had developed in ways different from his ideas. Dispute this failure, Cremin saw Dewey’s triumph as his ideas of progressive education became conventional wisdom in 1940s (Cremin 1962: 328). A high school textbook typically saw Dewey as the leader of the educational reform: “under the leadership of Professor Dewey, an effort was made to rid American schools of the rigid, factory-like atmosphere which had long prevailed.”23 On the other hand, Raymond Callahan argued in his Education and the Cult of Efficiency (1962), that Dewey’s progressive ideas were utterly defeated and replaced by the social forces behind public school administration which urged for social efficiency and scientific management. This view was taken up more than 20 years later when Ellen Lagemann proposed an intriguing thesis and argued cogently, with historical factual support, that “Edward L. Thorndike won and John Dewey lost” (History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 2, 1989: 185). Her point was that Thorndike’s scientific psychology (she called it positivist approach) gained popularity and became mainstream American education while Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy of education did not. To follow up with this controversy, Herbert Kliebard (2004), in his most acclaimed American history on school curriculum, entitled The Struggle for the American Curriculum (1893–1958), advanced yet another thesis. He told the story of the American curriculum as a struggle among four competing schools and groups: the humanists (traditionalists), the child-centered movement, the social efficiency educators and the social meliorists (social reformers). However, Dewey belonged to none of them. Dewey as a towering figure simply hovers over them. “I decide in the end that he did not belong in any of them and that he should appear in the books as somehow hovering over the struggle rather than as belonging to any particular side” (Kliebard 2004: xix). Readers may be bewildered with the impression that historians have not yet reached a consensus on Dewey’s role in the progressive education movement. William Hayes, writing on The Progressive Education Movement (2007), made a point: that a historical movement such as progressive education can seldom be attributed to the work of any one individual (Hayes 2006: 17). He thus put alongside Dewey with Francis Parker, Jean Piaget (1896–1980) and William Kilpatrick as other pioneers in the

23 Craven, A. O. (1961). American History (p. 584). Boston: Ginn & Co.

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progressive education movement (Hayes, Chapter 3), without specifying who influenced whom in what role. As I showed earlier, Parker was an elder colleague of Dewey, pre-Darwinian in outlook and a Frobelian, so that his views could be subsumed in Dewey’s; William Kilpatrick was Dewey’s faithful disciple who further elaborated Dewey’s ideas with the implementation of the “project method.” Piaget was a Swiss psychologist whose impact on American education was not felt until the translation of his works in the 1950s. We thus came back to a full circle: Dewey was the single most influential theoretician in progressive education movement but what was his role? Dewey and Thorndike Integrated In response to Lageman’s claim that “Thorndike won and Dewey lost,” I wish to briefly introduce my readers to Edward Lee Thorndike (1874– 1949), who was a student of James McKeen Cattell, Dewey’s classmate in Johns Hopkins (see my Chapter 3). Of Thorndike’s long affiliation with Teachers College, Columbia University since 1899, he pioneered in educational psychology, comparative psychology, behaviorism, animal learning, psychometrics and had published over 450 books and articles. He started the trend of behavioral psychology and psychological measurement which had had impact on American education up to today. But American education of the twentieth century was not just a fight between Dewey and Thorndike, or their ideas. It was the competition of many contending ideas; some became more dominant in a certain period and waned. Others might have undergone metamorphosis and reinterpretation. In this case, Dewey’s ideas in education seem to have survived longer than Thorndike’s psychology. On the other hand, Dewey’s disciple Kilpatrick had tried to integrate Dewey’s education with Thorndike psychology in The Project Method. Notably, Kilpatrick’s purposeful activity had integrated Thorndike’s law of effect. In a broad sense, the animal interacts with the environment to solve problems for a purpose. So do the human species. To a certain extent, the law of effect, of learning by trial and error, has some superficial, or universal, similarity with learning by doing. It can explain animal and human learning as well. The difference is that Thorndike tried to discover universal laws of learning for all species while Dewey tried to account for the unique process of human learning. The former focused

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on precise measurement, such as learning curve and quantity of reinforcements while the latter was concerned with the qualitative description of a growth process. The Emerging View Amidst the above divergent views, a few consensus have emerged. First, Dewey is the foremost theoretician of American education reform, whether we call it new, progressive, child-centered or otherwise. Supporters and opponents alike would quote Dewey for their own needs, motives and interpretation. One example of bizarre criticism was that Dewey’s notion of impulse had led to classroom nihilism (Edmondson III 2006: 32–33). The critic further pointed to “Dewey’s abuse of language for his rhetorical convenience” (ibid.: 96). Fact is he wanted a more academic education and a disciplined classroom in America. Second, there were contending forces and orientations of reform before, during and after Dewey’s times. Some were more aligned with Dewey’s, such as the child-centered educators and the social meliorists, but others were less so, such as the traditionalists and the efficiency experts. But all competing schools felt the impact of Dewey’s ideas, so that it is sensible for Kliebard to put Dewey as a towering figure above them. Third, there is no doubt that Dewey’s ideas would be misinterpreted and distorted in the course of the progressive education movement. To quote from Richard Hofstadter, one of Dewey’s critics: It is commonly said that Dewey was misunderstood, and it is repeatedly pointed out that in time he had to protest against some of the educational practices carried on in his name. Perhaps his intent was widely, even regularly violated, but Dewey was hard to read and interpret. He wrote a prose of terrible vagueness and plasticity. (Hofstadter 1964: 361)

Finally, while Dewey did not intentionally or directly lead the progressive education movement, his impact on American education has been felt. More specifically, in elementary education, his child-centered approach becomes the dominant paradigm since the 1920s, though practitioners might not have followed through Dewey’s ideals. In secondary education, we saw the publication of the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education by the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education of

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the National Education Association in 1918. The report was fully imbued with Deweyan concepts and principles, such as the following: Education in a democracy, both within and without the school, should develop in each individual the knowledge, interests, ideals, habits, and powers whereby he will find his place and use that place to shape both himself and society toward ever nobler ends…… The purpose of democracy is to so organize society that each member may develop his personality primarily through activities designed for the well-being of his fellow members and of society as a whole.24

Hofstadter has soberly observed, “Dewey’s thought was constantly invoked. His vocabulary and ideas, which were clearly evident in the Cardinal Principles of 1918, seem to appear in every subsequent document of the new education. He has been praised, paraphrased, repeated, discussed, apotheosized, even on occasions read” (Hofstadter 1964: 361). Historian Joel Spring echoed the same view: “The Cardinal Principles, the comprehensive high school, vocational guidance, and the junior high school represent, of course, the main stream” (Spring 1970: 69). In this way, many of Dewey’s ideas have been incorporated into mainstream American education of the twentieth century. A personal note on Teachers College, the seedbed of progressive education in America. I studied there some 30 years ago. There was a building named after Thorndike and a statue of Dewey placed at the entrance of its Milburn Library. Faculties talked about the ideas of both men enthusiastically and students studied them with reverence.

Further Readings For readers interested in John Dewey and Progressive Education, you may dig deeper in the following. A. The Progressive Era (1879–1920) This is an important historical era of America transforming from tradition to modernity. The following books are of interest; they offer intellectual history, political history and important personalities of the period: 24 Quoted from Spring, J. (1970). Education and Progressivism. History of Education Quarterly, 19(1), 68.

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1. Wiebe, R. H. (1967). The Search for Order, 1877 –1920. New York: Hill and Wang. Wiebe gave a comprehensive history of the Progressive Era. It offers a historical narrative and sociological analysis for an era of rapid economic and political change. The nation moves from crisis in the communities (Chapter 3) to the revolution in values (Chapter 6) and to the illusion of fulfillment (Chapter 8). The book is part of The Making of America Series, a six-volume history of the USA. 2. Dawley, A. (2003). Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. As the title suggests, The American progressives wanted to change the world. A kind of New Internationalism (Chapter 1) and a new form of Social Republic (Chapter 2) were in the making during the period. Dawley wrote with a sober and detached tone as world history underwent revolution from Mexico to China to Russia plus the rise of nationalism (Chapter 3) with World War and Reconstruction (Chapter 5). A scholarly and interpretative work imbued with details and quotes. 3. McGeer, M. (2014). A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement. New York: Oxford University Press. A recent book on the history of the Progressive Era, Mc Geer explained how the rise of the American middle class started a revolution: redefine the role of women, rewrite the rules of politics, revolutionize marriage and ban the sale of alcohol, and many more. It has created drastic and lasting change in America comparable to the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt and New Frontier of John Kennedy. In politics, the dilemma between social good of progressivism and the American value of individual freedom keeps surfacing in twoparty politics and continues up to today. 4. Flanagan, M. A. (2007). American Reformed: Progressive and Progressivisms. New York: Oxford University Press. Written as a textbook on the American Progressive Era, the author tries to show how democracy and “social justice” movement permeates throughout the period in politics, social justice, economic equity and foreign policy. It covers how women, the blacks, the minorities and the labor unions involved and revolved around the movement which defined democracy in this young nation.

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5. Gould, L. L. (2000). America in the Progressive Era (1890–1914). London: Routledge. Gould’s book offers an analytical narrative of the rise and decline of progressive reform from 1890 to 1914. The author puts focus on Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, both progressive in outlook and set somewhat similar agenda as America emerged to become a world power. B. Progressive Education The following books and papers can introduce you to the subject: 1. Cremin, L. A. (1962). The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 . New York: Knopf. A classic on the history of progressive education, Cremin amassed enormous data to show the transformation of the American schools from 1876 to 1957. In Part 1, he detected the progressive impulse and outlined the pedagogical pioneers (Chapter 5). In Part 2, he examined the progressive ideas, people (Chapter 6), organization (Chapter 6) and its impact (Chapter 8). A must read on the subject. 2. Fallace, T. D. (2011). Tracing John Dewey’s Influence on Progressive Education, 1903–1951: Toward a Received Dewey. Teachers College Record, 113(2), 463–492. In this paper, Fallace argued that Dewey’s influence on progressive education was assumed, not demonstrated. He pointed out four methodological flaws and saw that many historical actors were held responsible for the misinterpretation and misapplication of Dewey’s ideas. Fallace’s claim was justified in so far as history is often open to interpretation: many forces were at work to affect progressive education and John Dewey was but one of them. 3. Hayes, W. (2006). The Progressive Education Movement: Is It Still a Factor in Today’s Schools? Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Education. A short introduction by a retired educator. Hayes tries to relate progressive education to present-day American schools. 4. Howlett, J. (2013). Progressive Education: A Critical Introduction. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Howlett, a British lecturer in education, tried to show that progressive/liberal education started in Europe (Chapters 1 and 2)

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and gave a short account of Parker, Dewey and the American tradition (Chapter 6). It is updated with postmodernism, deschooling, critical pedagogy, Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich (Chapter 8). Written in a British style of complicated English, you may read it to avoid American-centeredness. 5. Zilversmit, A. (1993). Changing Schools: Progressive Education Theory and Practice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zilversmit was educated in a traditional “old-fashioned New York City public school” in the early 1940s. He was attracted to the freedom of progressive education and wrote about it with a calm and fair tone. He was on the sympathetic side and offered a historical study with in-depth schools in progress during the period in various locations, including Winnetka, Illinois and several school systems in the Chicago area. Zilversmit saw progressive education as genuine American ideology in education. 6. Semel, S. F., & Sadovnik, A. R. (1999). “Schools of Tomorrow,” Schools of Today: What Happened to Progressive Education. New York: Peter Lang. Susan Semel worked on her research in the 1980s and was inspired and encouraged by Lawerance Cremin, the historian of Progressive education. Her collaboration with Alan Sadovnik has turned into this volume, published in 1999, that documents the history of some of the most prominent progressive schools of the early twentieth century. It has also included a number of progressive schools of today to show how the legacy of progressive pedagogy has continued to strive. The title is a volume in the History of Schools and Schooling Series. Its second edition appeared in 2016, which was completely revised to include the more recent progressive charter schools, the experience in public progressive education and KIPP (knowledge is Power Program). 7. Edmondson, H. T. (2006). John Dewey and the Decline of American Education: How the Patron Saint of Schools Has Corrupted Teaching and Learning. Wilmington: ISI Books. A more recent short book (114 pages) to attack John Dewey. The author indicted “America’s education decline” (p. xii) as witnessed by low standard scores to the education system being controlled by teachers (National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers) who move along John Dewey’s education theory (p.

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xiv). A source book of emotional criticism with lots of quotes but misunderstandings. 8. Peal, R. (2014). Progressively Worse: The Burden of Bad Ideas in British Schools. London: Civitas. A British history teacher explains how “progressive education has plunged British schools into a decades-long crisis, leaving generations of pupils illiterate and under-educated” (from book bluff). Peal was hailed as a young voice in British education. C. The Teachers College Professors on Progressive Education As stated in my chapter, a few professors at Teachers College who were colleagues with John Dewey have had significant impact on progressive education. You may wish to know more about them: 1. William Kilpatrick a. Biography Tenenbaum, S. (1951). William Heard Kilpatrick: Trail Blazer in Education. New York: Harper. b. Selected Works Kilpatrick, W. H. (1923). Source Book in the Philosophy of Education. New York: Macmillan. Kilpatrick, W. H. (1925). Foundations Of Method—Informal Talks On Teaching. New York: Macmillan. Kilpatrick, W. H. (1941). Selfhood and Civilization: A Study of the Self -Other Process. New York: Macmillan. 2. George Counts a. Biography Gutek, G. L. (1984). George S. Counts and American Civilization: The Educator as Social Theorist. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. b. Selected Works Counts, G. S. (1927). The Social Composition of Boards of Education: A Study in the Social Control of Public Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Counts, G. S. (1928). School and Society in Chicago. New York: Harcourt Brace. Counts, G. S. (1952). Education and American Civilization. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. 3. Edward Thorndike a. Biography Joncich, G. M. (1968). The Sane Positivist: A Biography of Edward L. Thorndike. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. b. Selected Works Thorndike, E. L. (1903). Educational Psychology. New York: Lemcke and Buechner. Thorndike, E. L. (2010 [1904]). An Introduction to the Theory of Mental and Social Measurements. Charleston,SC: Nabu Press. Thorndike, E. L. (1906). Principles of Teaching, Based on Psychology. New York: A. G. Seiler. Thorndike, E. L. (2017 [1911]). Animal Intelligence. North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Thorndike, E. L. (2009 [1921]). The Teacher’s Word Book. Charleston, SC: BiblioLife. Thorndike, E. L. (2012 [1927]). The Measurement of Intelligence. London, UK: Forgotten Books. Thorndike, E. L. (1966 [1931]). Human Learning. London: The MIT Press. D. Notable Progressive Leaders in America Below is a list of American progressive leaders and their areas of specialization based on Progressive Era, Wikipedia. 1. Jane Addams, social reformer 2. Susan B. Anthony, suffragist 3. Robert P. Bass, New Hampshire politician 4. Charles A. Beard, historian and political scientist 5. Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court justice 6. William Jennings Bryan, Democratic presidential nominee in 1896, 1900, 1908; Secretary of State

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7. Lucy Burns, suffragist 8. Andrew Carnegie, steel magnate, philanthropist 9. Carrie Chapman Catt, suffragist 10. Winston Churchill, author (not the British politician) 11. Herbert Croly, journalist 12. Clarence Darrow, lawyer 13. Eugene V. Debs, American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the USA. 14. John Dewey, philosopher 15. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black scholar 16. Thomas Edison, inventor 17. Irving Fisher, economist 18. Abraham Flexner, education 19. Henry Ford, automaker 20. Henry George, writer on political economy 21. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, feminist 22. Susan Glaspell, playwright, novelist 23. Emma Goldman, anarchist, philosopher, writer 24. Lewis Hine, photographer 25. Charles Evans Hughes, statesman 26. William James, philosopher 27. Hiram Johnson, Governor of California 28. Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, union activist 29. Samuel M. Jones, politician, reformer 30. Florence Kelley, child advocate 31. Robert M. La Follette Sr., Governor of Wisconsin 32. Fiorello LaGuardia, US Congressman from New York; New York City mayor 33. Walter Lippmann, journalist 34. Mayo Brothers, medicine 35. Fayette Avery McKenzie, sociology 36. John R. Mott, YMCA leader 37. George Mundelein, Catholic leader 38. Alice Paul, suffragist 39. Ulrich B. Phillips, historian 40. Gifford Pinchot, conservationist 41. Walter Rauschenbusch, theologian of Social Gospel 42. Jacob Riis, reformer

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43. John D. Rockefeller Jr., philanthropist 44. Theodore Roosevelt, President 45. Elihu Root, statesman 46. Margaret Sanger, birth control activist 47. Anna Howard Shaw, suffragist 48. Upton Sinclair, novelist 49. Albion Small, sociologist 50. Ellen Gates Starr, sociologist 51. Lincoln Steffens, reporter 52. Henry Stimson, statesman 53. William Howard Taft, President and Chief Justice 54. Ida Tarbell, muckraker 55. Frederick Winslow Taylor, efficiency expert 56. Frederick Jackson Turner, historian 57. Thorstein Veblen, economist 58. Lester Frank Ward, sociologist 59. Ida B. Wells, Black leader 60. Burton Kendall Wheeler, Montana politician 61. Woodrow Wilson, President

References Bourne, R. S. (1916). The Gary Schools. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. Callahan, R. (1962). Education and the Cult of Efficiency: A Study of the Social Forces That Have Shaped the Administration of the Public Schools. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cohen, J. (1966). A New Introduction to Psychology. London: Allen & Unwin. Cremin, L. A. (1959). John Dewey and the Progressive Education Movement, 1915−1952. The School Review, 67 (2), 160–173. Cremin, L. A. (1962). The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 . New York: Knopf. Cunningham, P., & Heilbronn, R. (Eds.). (2016). Dewey in Our Time: Learning from John Dewey for Transcultural Practice. London: UCL Institute of Education Press. Dalton, T. C. (2002). Becoming John Dewey: Dilemmas of a Philosopher and Naturalist. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dworkin, M. S. (1959). Dewey on Education: Selections. New York: Teachers College Press.

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Dykhuizen, G. (1973). The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Edmondson, H. T. (2006). John Dewey and the Decline of American Education: How the Patron Saint of Schools Has Corrupted Teaching and Learning. Wilmington: ISI Books. Hayes, W. (2006). The Progressive Education Movement: Is It Still a Factor in Today’s Schools? Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Higgins, S., & Coffield, F. (Eds.). (2016). John Dewey’s Democracy and Education: A British Tribute. London: UCL Institute of Education Press. Hofstadter, R. (1964). Anti-intellectualism in American Life. New York: Random House. Kliebard, H. M. (2004). The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958. New York: Routledge. Lagemann, E. C. (1989). The Plural Worlds of Educational Research. History of Education Quarterly, 29(2), 183–214. Martin, J. (2002). The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press. Spring, J. (1970). Education and Progressivism. History of Education Quarterly, 10, 53–71. Thorburn, M. (2017). John Dewey, William Wirt and the Gary Schools Plan: A Centennial Reappraisal. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49(2), 1–13. Wiebe, R. H. (1967). The Search for Order, 1877–1920. New York: Hill and Wang.

CHAPTER 13

Late Writings on Education

Dewey’s Network of Enterprise (1921–1940) A Network of Four Domains Howard Gruber (1922–2005), a psychologist on creativity of eminent persons, has proposed the notion of network of enterprise (1989) which can be used as a framework of analysis for the work of a person’s lifetime.1 The idea is that an eminent person may work on a number of projects simultaneously which may form a network. On the other hand, each project may have its own developmental path. Let me bring this to Dewey’s life and works from 1921 to 1940. For our interest, I will arbitrarily put Dewey’s network of enterprise into four domains: education and psychology, philosophy, political writings and action, and personal events and international travels (Table 13.1). A Prolific Writer in Philosophy and Politics Immediately I discover that education and psychology is not his major focus, philosophy is. In a period of 20 years, Dewey delivered four important lectures and turned out nine books, some of which were based on his lectures. His most impressive contribution to philosophy can be found in: Reconstruction of Philosophy (1921), Experience and Nature (1925), 1 Wallace, D. B., & Gruber, H. E. (1989). Creative People at Work: Twelve Cognitive Case Studies. New York: Oxford University Press.

© The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_13

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1921 (62) 1922 (63) 1923 (64) 1924 (65) 1925 (66) 1926 (67) 1927 (68) 1928 (69)

Year

• Honorary President of PEAa • Progressive Education and The Science of Education

Human Nature and Conduct

Education and psychology

Experience and Nature

Reconstruction of Philosophy (1920) Paul Carus Lecture: Experience and Nature

Philosophy

Table 13.1 John Dewey’s network of enterprise (1921–1940)

The Public and Its Problems

Political writings and action

Visits USSR

Death of wife

Visits Mexico

Visits Turkey

Visits China

Personal events and international travels

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1934 (75)

1931 (72) 1932 (73) 1933 (74)

William James Lecture: Art as Experience Ethics (revised)

Gifford Lecture: The Quest of Certainty

Philosophy

• South Africa Conference: The Terry Lecture: A Common Need for a Philosophy of Faith Education • Dewey Page on Social Frontier

How We Think (revised)

Honorary President of NEAc

The Sources of a Science of Education

1929 (70)

1930 (71)

Education and psychology

Year

The Committee of Civic Workers and Educators on New York Corruption New York City Teachers Union politics (1933–1935)

The Need for a New Party

• President of People’s Lobbyb • President of League for Independent Political Action Individualism, Old and New

Political writings and action

(continued)

Visits South Africa

• Visits Europe • Retires from Columbia • Continues as Professor Emeritus

• Visits Scotland • 70th Birthday Celebration

Personal events and international travels

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Theory of Valuation

Logic: The Theory of Inquiry

Philosophy

• Committee for Cultural Freedom • Freedom and Culture Defends Bertrand Russell

Dewey Commission on Trotskye

Liberalism and Social Action

Political writings and action

Acquaintance with Roberta Lowitz Visits Mexico

Personal events and international travels

(1991). John Dewey and American Democracy (Chapter 12). Ithaca: Cornell U. Press c National Education Association is the largest labor union and professional interest group in the United States. It was founded in 1857. Its members are about 3,000,000 up to 2015. The stated mission of the NEA is “to advocate for education professionals and to unite our members and the nation to fulfill the promise of public education to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and independent world” d John Dewey Society is still active today: http://www.johndeweysociety.org/ It has sponsored annual John Dewey Lectures e Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) was a Russian revolutionary who had a political struggle with Josef Stalin. He lost, was put on trial but fled to Mexico in the 1930s. Pro-Trotskyists formed an international tribunal to “hear” Stalin’s charges. Dewey as an impartial liberalist was invited to chair the tribunal

a Progressive Education Association, please see more detail in Chapter 12 of this book b Dewey had pushed for a third political party and served as presidents for two organizations. For more information, please refer to Westbrook, R. B.

1940 (81)

John Dewey Society foundedd

1935 (76) 1936 (77) 1937 (78) 1938 (79) 1939 (80)

Experience and Education

Education and psychology

Year

Table 13.1 (continued)

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The Quest of Certainty (1929), The Theory of Inquiry (1938), Theory of Valuation (1939). Simultaneously, he was writing on political philosophy and taking part in political action. There his most notable publications were: The Public and Its Problems (1927), Individualism, Old and New (1930), Liberalism and Social Action (1935) and Freedom and Culture (1939). That was at an amazing rate of a book in every two years! As an independent scholar, Dewey had been engaged in third party politics; he became president of People’s Lobby and League for Independent Political Action in 1931, investigated in New York corruption in 1933 and took part in New York City Teachers Union politics from 1933 to 1935. In international politics, Dewey headed a Commission of Inquiry in Mexico in 1937 on the charges against Leon Trotsky and “acquitted” the latter. All along Dewey was the vanguard of academic freedom: he supported Professor Arthur Kraus’s hunger strike in City College of New York in 1937, formed The Committee for Cultural Freedom in 1939 and stood up for Harold Rugg when his textbook was considered subversive and banned in some school districts in 1940. Of international sensation was his defense of Bertrand Russell, who was charged with “immorality and indecency” in his teaching (see Chapter 12). Widower and Emeritus Harvesting on Education A few important personal events took place during that period. Alice Chipman, whom Dewey married for forty years, died of heart failure in 1927. Apparently Dewey did not recover until two years later, when his friends and colleagues treated him to his 70th birthday celebration. By then, Dewey was a national celebrity. In 1930, Dewey retired from Columbia as a full-time professor so that he could be relieved from his teaching duties for more time on his writing. He became Professor Emeritus of Philosophy in Residence and maintained his office, meeting and advising graduate students from time to time. Even before his retirement, Dewey had been squeezing time for international travels. During the period, he made eight international trips, mostly to give talks, to receive honorary degrees or to do some research. The 70-year-old Dewey had some acquaintance with women and developed, in 1936, an intimate relationship with Roberta Lowitz, the daughter of an old friend. They got married in 1946 when Dewey was 86.

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Piecing together the above facts in Dewey’s network of enterprise, I can see that Dewey is a scholar in continuous progress and on the move. I can also safely conclude that philosophy is Dewey’s major enterprise, followed by his political writings and action. He made many international trips during the period, alongside some major changes in his personal life. Education and psychology, then, is more like his sideline business, though he had, by then become an icon and spokesman of American education. A well-sought-after speaker, Dewey became honorary president of Progressive Education Association and National Education Association in 1928 and 1932, respectively. A society to his name, John Dewey Society, was founded in 1935. In education, it is a time of harvesting and refining, not for creating and system building; this he would leave to his students and junior colleagues.

Dewey’s Late Writings on Education (1928–1940) After returning from China in 1921, Dewey worked on his philosophy and political writings and did not write much on education from 1921 to 1927. In 1924, he visited Turkey, upon the invitation of the Turkish Government, and advised on its education. In 1926, he visited Mexico and delivered lectures there. More significantly, he joined a US delegation to visit the USSR in summer 1928 and upon return, wrote a few articles on his Russian impression, such as “What are the Russians Schools Doing ?” (LW3: 224) and “New Schools for a New Era” (LW3: 233). He witnessed Russia undergoing a national experiment, and he found it distasteful for indoctrination in Russian Schools. In the same year, Dewey accepted the post of honorary president of Progressive Education Association and delivered a presidential address. Joseph Ratner (1901–1979), Dewey’s student and close associate in his late years, edited a book entitled Education Today by John Dewey in 1940. It must have been authorized by Dewey himself, which is a collection of Dewey’s educational writings from My Pedagogic Creed of 1897 to Democracy and Education in the World of Today of 1938. The book did not select or adapt any passages from Dewey’s essential education texts, such as The Child and Curriculum, Schools of Tomorrow, or Democracy and Education, probably because of copyright or publishing right issues. Of the 45 articles collected, about half were Dewey’s late writings from 1928 to 1938, which focused on democracy and social change. It reflected Dewey’s ideas and concern in his late years as well as

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the then social mood. According to Ratner, the publication was timely because it tried to answer the basic question of “education today” “totalitarian dictatorships have… taken as a challenge for democratic societies” (Ratner 1940: foreword, vi). Pointed out Ratner, “The future of American democracy will depend upon the effort and intelligence with which we attack our present problems. Education Today, … throws [light] on the key problems of a democratic society” (ibid.: xiii). Ratner’s selections were analogous to my organization of Dewey’s late writings into three periods. Since many of Dewey’s late writings on education elaborated a few similar ideas, I have picked nine more representative papers below for synopsis and review. Hopefully my picks are broader and more comprehensive than Ratner’s since my review poses no copyright issues. His late writings on education (1928–1940) can roughly be divided into three periods, each with a special focus. Period One (1928–1934): Support and Critique of Progressive Education Period one (1928–1934) was mostly writings to support and critique of progressive education. The more notable articles were: Progressive Education and the Science of Education (1928), How Much Freedom in New Schools ? (1930), Monastery, Bargain Counter or Laboratory in Education? (1932), Why Have Progressive Schools ? (1933) and The Need for a Philosophy of Education (1934). Dewey also elaborated the scientific status of education in The sources of a Science of Education (1929). Period Two (1934–1937): Moving Toward Social Constructionism During Period two (1934–1937), in the depth of the Great Depression, Dewey was concerned with social change and social reconstruction. Some important addresses and papers were: Education for a Changing Social Order (1934), Can Education Share in Social Reconstruction? (1934) and Education and Social Change (1937). He also outlined, in Rationality in Education (1936), a debate between the conservatives (represented by Robert Hutchins) and the progressives (represented by Lancelot Hogben) on the aims and methods in higher education. Dewey was also concerned with the role of teachers in education, giving talks and writing articles such as The Duties and Responsibilities

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of the Teaching Profession (1930), The Teacher and His World (1935) and The Teacher and The Public (1935). Period Three (1938–1940): Experience and Democracy By Period three (1938–1940), with the impending the Second World War, Dewey summed up his education ideas in Experience and Education (1938) and expounded his support to democracy in Democracy and Education in the World of Today (1938). Other articles on democracy in education included: Class Struggle and the Democratic Way (1936) and Democracy and Educational Administration (1937). Related to it was academic freedom that Dewey strived for, such as the article, The Social Significance of Academic Freedom (1936).

Synopsis and Review of Late Writings Progressive Education and the Science of Education (1928) In this address as honorary president of Progressive Education Association in 1928, Dewey was very much in support of progressive education. He outlined the common characteristics of progressive schools and endorsed them: respect for individuality, increased freedom, building upon experience, atmosphere of informality, activity, real-life communication and personal relations, respect of individual capacities, respect of self-initiated and self-conducted learning (LW3: 258–259). In fact, all these are Deweyan ideals in education. As always, Dewey was critical of traditional schools. Now in the 1920s, Dewey criticized their new paradigm which emphasized on the notion of social efficiency with concerns of waste, resources, efficiency and effectiveness (LW3: 260). He was also aware of the fad of IQ and its measurement. Simply put, “The aim is to establish a norm. The norm, omitting statistical refinements, is essentially an average found by taking a sufficiently large number of persons. When this average is found, any given child can be rated” (LW3: 260). Unwittingly, it becomes “assigning to the individual child a determinate point on a curve” (LW3: 261). Dewey pointed out it was a mistake, for quality was reduced to quantity without relating to the “qualitative processes” and “intellectual form.” Moreover, one cannot measure something “which does not exist.” In education, where

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growth is a paramount “moving and changing process” with new capacities and elements surfacing every day, the adherence to pre-established static measurement simply doesn’t work. Dewey was aware that educators in progressive schools were attacked for “criticism that they are unscientific” (LW3: 262). Dewey argued that it is a matter of orientation of science, whether science is to maintain the status quo or to effect for change: If you want schools to perpetuate the present order, with at most an elimination of waste and with such additions as enable it to do better what it is already doing, then one type of intellectual method or “science” is indicated. But if one conceives that a social order different in quality and direction from the present is desirable and that schools should strive to educate with social change in view by producing individuals not complacent about what already exists, and equipped with desires and abilities to assist in transforming it, quite a different method and content is indicated for educational science. (LW3: 262)

In 1928, Dewey saw progressive education as moving from negative to positive, from destructive to constructive. He noted that “freedom is no end in itself,” but “an opportunity to do something of a positive and constructive sort” (LW3: 262). Thus, Dewey hoped progressive education could “enter upon organized constructive work, ……to make definite contributions to building up the theoretical or intellectual side of education…… science or philosophy of education” (LW3: 263). In closing, Dewey urged progressive schools to make contribution on “the development of organized subject-matter,” i.e., curriculum development, and on studying “the conditions favorable to learning” (LW3: 267). Here again, Dewey took a broader perspective beyond micro-teaching. He wanted to discover conditions for self-learning in cooperative activities: It is no longer a question of how the teacher is to instruct or how the pupil is to study. The problem is to find what conditions must be fulfilled in order that study and learning will naturally and necessarily take place, what conditions must be present so that pupils will make the responses which cannot help having learning as their consequence. ……The method of the teacher, ……becomes a matter of finding the conditions which call out self-educative activity, or learning, and of cooperating with the activities of the pupils so that they have learning as their consequence. (LW3: 267)

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How Much Freedom in New Schools? (1930) In 1930, Dewey attended a symposium on “The New Education Ten Years After” and made a final contribution with a paper entitled “How Much Freedom in New Schools ?”. Here, Dewey kept his support to progressive education but denounced that some “child-centered schools” had gone too far in their inculcation of freedom, leading to “one-sidedness,” “operating in a blind and spasmodic fashion,” “undeveloped and egoistic activity,” “bent on the fulfillment of personal wishes and ambitions” (LW5: 321). The fear of adult imposition and avoidance of adult dictation led to “child dictation.” Dewey warned, “…… some of these schools indulge pupils in unrestrained freedom of action and speech, of manners and lack of manners…… the thing they call freedom nearly to the point of anarchy… deplorable egotism, cockiness, impertinence and disregard for the rights of others” (LW5: 322–323). Dewey’s position was that the teacher should offer guidance and direction: The teacher, because of greater maturity and wider knowledge, is the natural leader in the shared activity, and is naturally accepted as such. The fundamental thing is to find the types of experience that are worth having. (LW5: 322)

He saw that “the weakness of existing progressive education is due to the meagre knowledge which anyone has regarding the conditions and laws of continuity which govern the development of mental power” (LW5: 324). When traditional schools could draw on the existing knowledge of pre-set curriculum and teaching, progressive education had to build up its new foundation of knowledge. Dewey thus made a call for the study of child learning, the subject matter (curriculum) “which induces growth of skill, understanding and rational freedom …worked upon co-operatively,” and the “study of society and its moving forces” (LW5: 324–325). In other words, “child-centered schools” should never lose sight of the “socialcentered” child and the specific society he was in. Why Have Progressive Schools? (1933) Written in 1933, Why Have Progressive Schools ? is another defense of progressive education. Dewey began with the universal purpose of education—“to give the young the things they need in order to develop in an orderly, sequential way into makers of society” (LW9: 147) which had led

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to different methods in ancient Greece, Soviet Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Aboriginals in Australia. Then he brought in the psychological discoveries for its application to teaching methods: learning based on previous experience, individual differences and learning motivation with interest. While these sound cliché today, they were new applications to education in the 1930s. The science of individual psychology, Dewey argued, lent support to the progressive education movement for freedom and individuality. Suddenly, I have a strong feeling that Dewey was a relentless learner, constantly updating himself and keeping up with the times. In his presidential address to Progressive Education Association in 1928, he mentioned and criticized the fad of IQ and the vogue of social efficiency. Note that social efficiency was promoted by Frederick Taylor in the 1910s and Lewis Terman (1877–1956), a Stanford pioneer educator of the gifted, brought IQ to American land in 1916. Since then, efficiency and measurement spread throughout America in all endeavors. Dewey was well aware of these ideas and attacked them. Then in his paper of How Much Freedom in New Schools in 1930, he personally visited some progressive schools and spoke harshly of “unrestrained freedom” and “lack of manners.” Now in this 1933 article, I discovered many new and unique terms to reflect the academic and social milieu of the 1930s. Here was about the first time Dewey used “individual differences” (LW9: 150) a term which gained attention in psychology in the 1910s and 1920s. So were “individual learning” and “individual psychology.” Readers may wish to note that Alfred Adler (1870–1937), an Austrian social psychologist, formulated his system of individual psychology and gained popularity in the 1920s. Adler’s stress of social interest was in line with Dewey’s social psychology. When Dewey did not use the term “dyslexia,” he did raise the issue of “backward about learning to read” (LW9: 154). Undoubtedly, Dewey had kept up with the latest trend and ideas. In this article, Dewey mentioned that education was life with growth, which could mean “something to be enjoyed now.” A cultivated individual should be “able to enjoy leisure” and a progressive school had to create success “with each child.” Such was the mood of middle-class parents in the 1930s. Understandably, many progressive schools were working hard to get their graduates into colleges. Whatever the case, Dewey was enthusiastic about progressive schools for their catering for individual needs, offering more freedom, providing outreach activities and furnishing cooperation and self-discipline among their students.

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The Need for a Philosophy of Education (1934) In July 1934, Dewey traveled to Cape Town and Johannesburg to participate in the South African Education Conference. With 4000 attendants from all over the world, Dewey gave a speech entitled The Need for a Philosophy of Education. Dewey started with progressive education, a protest against the existing order in education and urged for a philosophy of education. With his usual pragmatic approach, Dewey saw that “The educational end and the ultimate test of the value of what is learned is its use and application in carrying on and improving the common life of all” (LW9: 202). With his social inclination, Dewey argued that “[t]he greatest need of and for a philosophy of education to-day is the urgent need that exists for making clear in idea and effective in practice the social character of its end and that the criterion of value of school practices is social” (LW9: 202). Dewey is no philosopher of the ivory tower. He was aware of global capitalism and competition and the rising tide of nationalism. In the end of his speech, he criticized the demise of ruthless competition and urged education to foster international understanding and cooperation: …… In a world that has so largely engaged in a mad, often brutal, race for material gain by means of ruthless competition the school must make ceaseless and intelligently organized effort to develop above all else the will for cooperation and the spirit which sees in every other individual an equal right to share in the cultural and material fruits of collective human invention, industry, skill and knowledge. ……With the present unprecedented wave of nationalistic sentiment, of racial and national prejudice, of readiness to resort to force of arms. ……the schools of the world can unite in effort to rebuild the spirit of common understanding, of mutual sympathy and goodwill among all peoples and races, to exorcise the demon of prejudice, isolation and hatred. (LW9: 203–204)

Education for a Changing Social Order (1934) In this address to the American Association of Teachers Colleges in Cleveland, Ohio, in February 1934, Dewey was less radical than his junior colleague George Counts who had, two years before, challenged teachers to build a new social order. Dewey simply noted “the present chaos” (LW9: 158–159) and urged teachers to understand the social forces underlying change. “Education for a changing social order must be based

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on an understanding of the facts…… on insight into the causes that are producing these changes – the forces that are at work” (LW9: 162). Here, Dewey outlined the American faith in democracy, which slowly evolved into “power rules.” Observed Dewey: We live in a time when money not only talks but acts. There is an accumulation and concentration of wealth. Our industrial and commercial system is carried only by means of capital that is amassed and organized. I do not complain of this fact. I only say that it is an outstanding fact and affects politics. (LW9: 163)

Clearly Dewey was among the earliest critic of money politics. Though critical of American capitalism, Dewey was aware that “we could not have our present type of civilization… without the aggregation of impersonal capital.” His concern was “how the aggregated capital is controlled and how it is used plus its social effects” (LW9: 164). With the deepening Great Depression from 1930 to 1933 and the start of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal (1933–1936), Dewey saw a unique opportunity for teacher training institutions “to educate the young for a changing social order” (LW9: 165). Dewey urged that teacher could lead students to learn more about how social and economic forces were at work, to “enable students to do their part in directing the changes that are going on so that we would move to a juster, more humane and more secure social order” (LW9: 167). Dewey’s position as a social reformer rather than a radical revolutionary was consistent with his political inclination, even at times of unprecedented change. Dewey never advocated hot-headed social change. He was less militant than his junior colleagues whom he supported: George Counts urged teachers to create a new social order and Harold Rugg engaged students in critical evaluation of social problems. While Dewey criticized the existing order of promoting “the habit of listening and of accepting,” that of mental passivity and docility (LW9: 160), his remedy was to cultivate “an inquiry disposition,” which he had elaborated in his How We Think, revised a year earlier.

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Can Education Share in Social Reconstruction? (1934) In 1934, Dewey began contributing to Social Frontier and this article appeared on his John Dewey’s Page. Dewey was well aware of the liberalist agenda of social reconstruction after the Great Depression. When education was accused of supporting the status quo, Dewey argued that “the actual status quo is in a state of flux” (LW9: 206). It had grown from “rugged individualism” to “a complex industrial order with highly concentrated economic and political control” (LW9: 205–206). It was “an economic form of success which is intrinsically pecuniary and egoistic” (LW9: 207), and there had always been competing forces between laissez-faire capitalism and collectivism for the “control of capital” (LW9: 207). Dewey was ambivalent about the power and role of schools and teachers in creating a new social order. On the one hand, Dewey observed, “I do not think…. that schools can… be the builders of a new social order” (LW9: 207). On the other hand, he “believe[s] there are enough teachers who will respond to the great task of making schools active and militant participants in creation of a new social order” (LW9: 208). But he cautioned radical educators who tried to correct abuses: “Abuses cannot be corrected by merely negative means; they can be eliminated only by substitution of just and humane conditions” (LW9: 209). In a word, Dewey was an educational reformist and was not an “educational fascist,” a term he coined at the end of this essay. Education and Social Change (1937) Because of the John Dewey’s Page, our philosopher contributed regularly to Social Frontier, and Education and Social Change appeared in May 1937. In this article, Dewey merely reiterated his position that “schools do have a role – and an important one – in production of social change” (LW11: 409). But he found himself fighting on two fronts, the conservatives and the Marxists. All through the 1930s, Dewey was in support of progressive education and against traditional education. Following this line of thought, Dewey here attacked the conservative view for “they tend to favor return to older types of studies and to strenuous disciplinary methods,” which in effect was “to express their opposition to some of the directions social change is actually taking” (LW11: 410). Simultaneously, Dewey rejected the Marxian view that “the school, like every other

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social institution, is of necessity the subservient tool of a dominant class,” which led to the conclusion that “to change education in any important respect is first to overthrow the existing class-order of society and transfer power to another class” (LW11: 413). Dewey was not as naïve as “to suppose that the schools can be a main agency in producing the intellectual and moral changes, the changes in attitudes and disposition of thought and purpose, which are necessary for the creation of new social order” (LW11: 414). But he was hopeful that schools could foster democracy. He appealed to the past history of American education: Our public school system was founded in the name of equality of opportunity for all, independent of birth, economic status, race, creed, or color. The school…… is to create individuals who understand the concrete meaning of the idea with their minds, who cherish it warmly in their hearts, and who are equipped to battle in its behalf in their actions. (LW11: 416)

Experience and Education (1938) Background As a researcher who has followed through Dewey’s lifelong writings in education and psychology, I have every reason to expect something extraordinary in Experience and Education, the final word of his education theory published in 1938. In 1915, Dewey had formulated his education theory in Democracy and Education. By 1922, he had formulated his theory of human nature in Human Nature and Conduct . Three years later, in 1925, he published his metaphysics in Experience and Nature, which was considered his magnum opus in philosophy. It was taken as the greatest new addition to metaphysics in 300 years since Spinoza (Dykhuizen 1973: 214–215). Then, his Gifford Lecture in 1929 and William James Lecture in 1931 turned into important works, The Quest of Certainty and Art as Experience respectively. In education, he had visited the USSR in 1928 and was critical of indoctrination in Russian schools. In 1934, when Dewey addressed an International conference on education in South Africa, he urged for the need of a philosophy of education. All through the 1930s, Dewey was in support of progressive education and urged for social change through education. With his penetrating insight in human nature, metaphysics, science and art, and his concern about the troubling American education

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scene, it is reasonable to expect something new and exciting in Experience and Education. Coverage and Scope This final work was delivered as an evening address in March 1938 to the annual meeting of Kappa Delta Pi, a national honor society Dewey had affiliated with. To start with, Dewey points out that progressive education is “a product of discontent with traditional education” (LW13: 6). There is a need for reform in the three domains of education: subject matter, moral training and school organization. He tries to explain how traditional education fails: traditional/old education teaches the past and cannot relate it to the future. It gives poor education experience. New education/progressive education is a reaction against the old and tries to give positive experiences (Chapter 1). This criticism is substantiated with the criteria of experience, in which Dewey exploits the idea of continuity and interaction (Chapter 3). To move forward, we need freedom: freedom of observation, thinking and intelligence (Chapter 5). We also need to clarify the meaning of purpose, which is how experience grows in the taming of impulse (Chapter 6). The subject matter should be organized in a progressive manner (Chapter 7). This little volume ends with a note on the means and goal of education, which is “the potentialities of education when it is treated as intelligently directed development of the possibility inherent in ordinary experience” (LW9: 61). Criteria of Experience In Chapter 3, Dewey engages himself in a critical examination of the criteria of experience. Here, Dewey postulates two principles: the principle of continuity and the principle of interaction. According to Dewey, “the principle of continuity of experience means that every experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after” (LW 13: 19). Based on this principle, the category of continuity, or the experiential continuum, we can “attempt to discriminate between experience that are worthwhile educationally and those that are not” (LW13: 17). Dewey points out that some experiences are educative but some are mis-educative. For example, “a child who learns to speak has a new facility and new desire… he has… widened the external conditions for subsequent learning” (LW13: 20). In this sense, learning to speak is an educative experience. On the other hand, to force a child to learn something he has no interest in will simply

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result in hostility to learning, which is mis-educative. This is important because experience influences the formation of attitudes of desire and purpose (LW13: 22). The second is the principle of interaction. According to this principle, “any normal experience is an interplay of two sets of conditions, the objective and internal conditions” (LW13: 24). The objective conditions are the environment, the physical conditions and existence outside the experience of the learner. It interacts with the internal, psychological conditions of the learner. Taken together, they form a situation and Dewey postulates a transaction model: it is not only that the external conditions affect the experience but that the internal conditions of learner may affect the external conditions as well. Dewey illustrates his case with the issue of freedom and restriction to a baby (LW13: 25). The two principles are “the longitudinal and lateral aspects of experience.” Continuity and interaction in their active union with each other provide the measure of the educative significance and value of an experience (LW13: 26). Seen in this way, it is the responsibility of educators to create objective conditions that can enhance a child’s existing capacities and provide worthwhile experience for a child’s growth. New Terms and Ideas In explaining the two principles, Dewey invokes some new terms he seldom used in his earlier writings, for example: needs and capacities of the individual, teaching effectiveness, stage of growth attained by the learner, quantitative grading (LW13: 27) unlearn (LW13: 28), social enterprise (LW13: 34), mutual accommodation and adaptation (LW13: 38). He also paraphrases Lincoln on democracy, creatively turning it into education of experience, by experience and for experience (LW13: 14). Clearly, Dewey is keeping update with changing terms and ideas in education. When he discusses social control in Chapter 4, his approach is not how the ruling class exercises social control over other social classes. Instead, he examines the social dynamics in a classroom setting and suggests “that control of individual actions is effected by the whole situation in which individuals are involved, in which they share and of which they are cooperative or interacting parts.” In other words, “control is exercised by situation” (LW13: 33). Dewey observes and concludes: (In) the traditional school…, the order which existed was so much a matter of sheer obedience to the will of an adult was because the situation almost

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forced it upon the teacher. The school was not a group or community held together by participation in common activities. …… in what are called the new schools, the primary source of social control resides in the very nature of the work done as a social enterprise in which all individuals have an opportunity to contribute and to which all feel a responsibility. (LW13: 34)

When “learning by doing” and “life is activity” are Dewey’s signature phrases, he is aware of its pitfalls. Action and activity must be constrained by purpose, thinking and judgment. Points out Dewey, Overemphasis upon activity as an end, instead of upon intelligent activity, leads to identification of freedom with immediate execution of impulses and desires. …… there is no purpose unless overt action is postponed until there is foresight of the consequences of carrying the impulse into execution – a foresight that is impossible without observation, information, and judgment. …… An idea then becomes a plan in and for an activity to be carried out. (LW13: 45)

Dewey Repeating Himself Other than the above exposition of the criteria experience (Chapter 3), social control (Chapter 4) and some new terms, Dewey does not seem to have anything new to offer in Experience and Education. His criticism that the traditional way of education with its subject matter and instruction leads to docility, receptivity and obedience among students (LW13: 6) had been raised in The Child and The Curriculum in 1902. The organic connection between education and personal experience (LW13: 11) has its roots in the first article of My Pedagogic Creed in 1897. That “education is essentially a social process” (LW13: 36) is his basic tenet. When Dewey argues that “(a) genuine purpose always starts with an impulse” (LW13: 43), it is traceable to Chapter 6 of Human Nature and Conduct in 1922, even his Psychology (1887). When Dewey stresses the role of teacher to give guidance, such as “guidance given by the teacher to the exercise of the pupils, intelligence is an aid to freedom” (LW13: 46), he is repeating his observation in How Much Freedom in New Schools in 1930 as well as his Pedagogic Creed (1897). Examples abound that Experience an Education contains ideas found mostly in Dewey’s previous writings in education. In my opinion, Experience and Education is not so much an old wine in a new bottle but almost an old wine in an old bottle. However, it is a small

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nice bottle which can serve as a summary of Dewey’s complex educational thought. Thus, it is not surprising that Experience and Education has been widely quoted among educators after its publication. Democracy and Education in the World Today (1938) This was the first annual lecture delivered in October 1938 in honor of Felix Adler, a professor of ethics in Columbia and the founder of Ethical Culture Movement.2 It was a time of political chaos and uncertainty. In the USSR, Stalin continued the socialist revolution and began the “Great Purge” in 1932–1933. In Germany, the Nazi Party won the election in 1932 and Hitler moved the country into one-party dictatorship. In Italy, Mussolini found the National Fascist Party in 1921 and created a totalitarian military state in the 1920s. International political conflicts escalated as Italy invaded and controlled Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia in 1936, Japan annexed Manchuria in 1931 and invaded China in 1937, and Germany annexed Austria in 1938. More wars and conflicts could only be expected. It was clear that Dewey sensed the looming threat to democracy and spoke in vigorous defense of it. Twenty years earlier, Dewey had already formulated his notion of democracy: it was not just a political system but a way of living in modern society. When Western democracy was under siege in Continental Europe in the 1930s, it was no exaggeration to say that democracy in the West had never faced such an imminent threat before. To start with, Dewey points out that the relation between democracy and education is a reciprocal one, in which “democracy is itself an educational principle, an educational measure and policy” (LW13: 295). On the one hand, education is for democracy, a way of life with free communication and exchange of ideas. On the other hand, democracy cannot endure without education because it is through education and schools that the democratic ideal is passed on. “The school is the essential distributing agency for whatever values and purposes any social group cherishes” (LW13: 297). When we take democracy seriously, we should 2 Felix Adler (1851–1933) was a social reformer and religious leader. He came from a rabbi family but preached “deed, not creed.” He formed the Society of Ethical Culture in 1877 and started the Ethical Culture Movement on public service projects, including kindergarten, nursing service and tenement houses.

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take “steps to make our schools more completely the agents for preparation of free individuals for intelligent participation in a free society” (LW13: 298). For Dewey, democracy means every individual is consulted as a part of the process of authority, with his needs and wants taken into account, “so that the final social will comes about as the co-operative expression of the ideas of many people” (LW13: 296). In the process of free exchange of ideas and intelligent participation, it will lead to the building of a genuinely democratic society. Dewey condemns the tragic racial intolerance in Germany and Italy, objects to the “false propaganda that is put forth in the states for the suppression of all free inquiry and freedom” (LW13: 302), and deplores “the dependence of the authoritarian states in Europe upon the use of force” (LW13: 303). To combat the ideology of anti-democratic states in Europe, Dewey urges that “we should take seriously, energetically and vigorously the use of democratic schools and democratic methods in the schools; that we should educate the young and the youth of the country in freedom for participation in a free society” (LW13: 297). With a sense of urgency, Dewey cautions that we cannot take democracy for granted and see it as our inheritance. It has to be practiced again and again and to be gained generation after generation. Explains Dewey: We have been so complacent about the idea of democracy that we have more or less unconsciously assumed that the work of establishing a democracy was completed by the founding fathers or when the Civil War abolished slavery. …… I think, to be worth-while if we learn through it that every generation has to accomplish democracy over again for itself; that its very nature, its essence, is something that cannot be handed on from one person or one generation to another, but has to be worked out in terms of needs, problems and conditions of the social life of which, as the years go by, we are a part, social life that is changing with extreme rapidity from year to year. (LW13: 299–300)

In closing, Dewey mentions that the cause of democracy is the moral cause of the dignity and the worth of the individual. Mutual respect, mutual toleration, give and take, the pooling of experiences, is ultimately the only method by which human beings can succeed in carrying on this experiment …… of humanity. (LW13: 304)

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Earlier in Education and Social Change (1937), Dewey had made a similar but even more persuasive pledge for democracy: Democracy also means voluntary choice, based on an intelligence that is the outcome of free association and communication with others. It means a way of living together in which cooperation instead of brutal competition is the law of life; a social order in which all the forces that make for friendship, beauty, and knowledge are cherished in order that each individual may become what he, and he alone, is capable of becoming. These things at least give a point of departure for the filling in of the democratic idea and aim as a frame of reference. (LW11: 417)

Summary and Conclusion: Dewey’s Enduring Impact Intellectual Giant In nineteenth-century Britain, Herbert Spencer was known as the philosopher (Francis 2007). The same was alluded to John Dewey in twentiethcentury America. John Shook and Paul Kurtz called him the philosopher in their volume of collected presentations celebrating John Dewey’s 150th birthday (Shook and Kurtz 2011: 9). This is no coincidence of flattery. Both are intellectual giants who encapsulated ideas and knowledge of their times, Spencer on evolution and Dewey on pragmatism. Their writings went beyond philosophy and covered major domains of human endeavor: society, politics, education, science, ethics and culture. They both made lasting and enduring impact on modern Western culture, when their countries succeeded one after the other to become the world’s most dominant power. In studying John Dewey the philosopher, I try to follow his life and career, alongside his works. All his life, he was a professor in the academia, interacting and contributing to the human knowledge enterprises. He had made enormous impact on American society through his ideas, as much by writings, teaching, lectures, speeches as by his active involvement in social action, politics and education. His disciples propagated his ideas in education, and his supporters elaborated his systems of thought in philosophy and politics. His ideas have permeated into America, so much so that “Dewey stands out in a real sense as the philosopher of American culture; for he was able to capture and define the spirit of America” (Shook and

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Kurtz 2011: 9). That his face appeared on the American postage stamp in 1968 in the Prominent Americans Series is an honor well-deserved. Pioneering Spirit and Hard Work Dewey’s rise to eminence appears to be a straightforward story of American pioneering spirit and hard work. He began as a precocious village school boy in Vermont and finished college there. In college, he read Spencer, Comte, Huxley, Marsh and was introduced to Kant and Spinoza by his teacher H. A. P. Torrey. His interest in philosophy was turned into a professional career when William Harris published Dewey’s first philosophical paper in 1882. Then, he studied Hegel and Leibniz under his teacher George Morris in graduate school at Johns Hopkins. Simultaneously, he learned German psychology from another teacher, G. Stanley Hall, who was a student of Wilhelm Wundt. Thus, Dewey was well-versed with modern philosophy and psychology by his mid-twenties. At the same time, he knew ancient philosophy thoroughly, as evidenced by his being invited to teach history of philosophy to his fellow classmates in Johns Hopkins. The young and aspiring Dewey became an assistant professor in the University of Michigan after obtaining his Ph.D. in 1884. He was interested in philosophy but he was much more in demand in psychology. He had a vision of The New Psychology (1884), and he worked hard to integrate philosophy with psychology, producing Psychology as Philosophic Method (1886), at a time when philosophy and psychology were moving on separate ways. To meet the strong demand for psychology in his teaching, Dewey read thousands of pages and turned out a textbook, Psychology, in 1887. Next, he worked on Leibniz’s psychological ideas (1888), Ethics (1891, 1894) and other papers on psychology, notably the Psychology of Infant Language (1894) and The Theory of Emotion (1894). For Dewey’s first 10 years of academic output, he was much a psychologist as a philosopher. By then, his ideas on psychology were mostly in place, based very much on German psychology of an active human mind with consciousness, volition, desire, will and the emerging self. A Career-Driven Knowledge Enterprise In a sense, Dewey’s knowledge enterprise is career-driven. In his Michigan years (1884–1894), he was sought after in psychology, so that

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he wrote much psychology although his personal interest was in philosophy. When he moved to Chicago (1895–1905), he was much in demand in education, psychology and philosophy. President Harper’s ambition for innovation and expansion affected Dewey’s career path, as shown in the founding of Dewey School and his writings in psychology and education. Most of Dewey’s essential works on education appeared in that period: Interest in Relation to Training of the Will (1896), Ethical Principles Underlying Education (1897), My Pedagogic Creed (1897), The School and Society (1899) and The Child and the Curriculum (1902). When he was busy traveling, lecturing and promoting his theory on education, he never lost sight of his philosophy, as noted in his Studies in Logical Theory (1903), among other papers. In the University of Chicago, Dewey was also working on psychology, having recruited James Angell to establish a psychological laboratory there. His most acclaimed paper on psychology, The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology, appeared in 1896, followed by his papers on developmental psychology, such as Principles of Mental Development as Illustrated in Early Infancy (1899) and Mental Development (1900). When he became president of American Psychological Association in 1899–1900, he made a presidential address, Psychology and Social Practice, focusing on education, himself a practitioner. By then, Dewey had made his lasting impact on American psychology; he was a pioneer in psychological theory, educational psychology, developmental psychology and the founder of American functionalism. In 1905, Dewey made his final destination to Columbia University, New York, where he stayed until his death in 1952. It was a new environment with new people and new stimulation. In the first thirteen years from 1905 to 1918, he focused very much on philosophy, writing on Darwin, logic, ethics and pragmatism. In education his two masterpieces, Schools of Tomorrow (1915) and Democracy and Education (1916) were published. In psychology, he finished his first edition of How We Think (1910). But Dewey was more than an academician. He became acquainted with the New York avant-garde intellectuals and took part in social activism, founding and joining many organizations for social causes. As a public intellectual he spoke on politics and democracy. Unbelievably, he tried to involve himself in the independence of Poland. I would say that 1919 was an important year in Dewey’s life. He visited China and stayed there for nearly three years, distancing himself from

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American academics and politics. It looks like he was taking an intellectual retreat to refresh himself, so to speak, while busy lecturing and spreading his ideas in China. When he returned to the USA in late 1921, he entered the final phase of his academic career. He was productive as ever, delivering four important lectures and turning out nine books in 20 years. His last major work in psychology, Human Nature and Conduct , was published in 1922. All his major philosophical treatises were productions of that period, notably Experience and Nature (1925), The Quest of Certainty (1929) and The Theory of Inquiry (1938). In education, Dewey was harvesting on his ideas developed in his thirties to fifties. He wrote many short essays and gave talks. He became the icon of progressive education in America and his ideas spread worldwide, notably China, Turkey, Mexico, the UK and Europe. With the advent of Nazism and the outbreak of the Second World War, Dewey’s defense of democracy and liberty was too important to neglect; he was the most popular American in China and thousands of leaflets under his name were scattered all over China by US warplanes to fight against Japanese invasion. Integrating and Enriching Human Knowledge Such is the life story and academic career of an intellectual giant. His knowledge enterprise is an interaction with the existing human knowledge, mostly intellectual ideas of the West. They focus mainly on four domains: philosophy, psychology, education and political theory. Dewey turned out about eight million words which is added to our stock of human knowledge. Apparently, the pioneering spirit, the hard work and his circumstantial career path cannot fully explain Dewey’s eminence. It seems to me that he had had an inner urge to think, to create and to go beyond his predecessors. As a young man in college and graduate school, he was already reading and in deep dialogue with the Western philosophic tradition: Spinoza, Kant, Leibniz, Hegel. Influenced by Spencer, Mill, Comte and others, Dewey showed an incessant urge to integrate, to make sense, to build on contemporary European thought. When he landed in Michigan, his career demanded him to study German psychology seriously. All these experience and circumstances thrusted Dewey into creating his own theory of psychology. It was based on the German tradition, and the ideas had landed in America, a promised land of innovation,

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social experimentation and practical living. Dewey and other American intellectuals, notably William James and Charles Peirce, caught that spirit and zeitgeist and formulated pragmatism and progressivism. The industrial revolution brought about social change and the need for education. With this background, social experimentation and innovation became possible and Dewey’s psychology was able to reformulate into a theory of education for practice. In so doing, he went along by studying and writing about developmental psychology and educational psychology, plus European pedagogy. His study and dialogue with Herbart, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Frobel and Montessori was unveiled in Schools of Tomorrow (1915). The publication of Democracy and Education (1916) made him the spokesman of American progressive education. In retrospect, Dewey’s whole life was propelled to integrating and enriching the Western human knowledge enterprise. He was a hardworking and creative philosopher in a new era on a new land. Dewey’s Impact on Education and Philosophy Philosophy of Education Dewey’s impact on education and philosophy has been enormous and enduring. Earlier I have quoted Herbert Kliebard (2004) seeing Dewey as a towering figure over the American school curriculum (Chapter 11). This is to be expected, as Dewey’s influence in the first half of twentieth century was unsurpassed by any other philosopher of education. Even in the second half of twentieth century and the twenty-first century, his influence has not declined. Anyone studying the philosophy of education must read Dewey. Howard Ozman’s Philosophical Foundations of Education (1995, 2012) devoted a whole chapter to Dewey (Chapter 4, Pragmatism and Education), followed by another chapter on his junior colleague, George Counts (Chapter 5, Reconstructionism and Education). The same is true for Sheila Dunn’s textbook (2005), Philosophical Foundations of Education: Connecting Philosophy to Theory and Practice. Dewey appeared on three chapters and My Pedagogic Creed was quoted as a sample for readers, presumably future teachers, to show how to write their own personal philosophy of education (pp. 251–252). But Dewey did not survive only in textbooks. He stays in the minds of many philosophers, educators and practitioners. As early as 1972, when Edgar Faure published the UNESCO Report, Learning to Be—The World of Education Today and Tomorrow, the views were entirely Deweyan:

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“modern democratic education… requires a revival of man’s natural drive towards knowledge” (1972: xxix). Two decades later, Jacques Delors, President of European Commission (1985–1995), elaborated the ideas further into the Four Pillars of learning: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live, learning to be (Delors 1998). As a vision of twenty-first-century education in Europe, Dewey’s ideas never wane. In the philosophy of education, Dewey was dismissed by linguistic philosophers in the 1950s but there was a strong revival of interest on him since the 1980s. For example, existentialist educator Maxine Greene talked about wide-awakeness, “perspectives to be sought consciously and critically and for meanings to be perceived from the vantage points of persons awake to their freedom” (Greene 1978: 166). She was using terms, such as meaning, critical, consciousness, dialogue, freedom, all too familiar to students of Dewey. Paddy Walsh, in his Education and Meaning, Philosophy in Practice (1993) took Dewey’s proposition of philosophy as the theory of education seriously (p. 39). He reinterpreted Dewey’s position of “education as a laboratory for testing the human…. significance of philosophical theories” (p. 49), and that “Dewey does incorporate the ethical significance of education in his position” (p. 109). In Walsh’s mind, all these “make Dewey still the educational philosopher most worth reading” (p. 109). Postmodernism More recently, many scholars try to relate postmodernism to education, notably Michael Peters (1995), Kenneth Wain (2004), Lars Løvlie et al. (2003) and Ivana Milojevi´c (2005). Specifically, Kenneth Wain (2004) wrote a book entitled The Learning Society in a Postmodern World—The Education Crisis. He scaffolded the idea of a learning society from Dewey’s vintage, such as defining education in Deweyan terms (2004: 21), seeing schools as instruments of change and social reconstruction (2004: 24) and criticizing the irrelevance of curriculum (2004: 26). When Wain evaluated MacIntyre’s education public, Habermas’s rational society, Rorty’s liberal utopia, Foucault’s politics and domination, Dewey’s position on freedom, participatory democracy and reconstruction was always invoked as important points of departure for debate. More emphatically, Larry Hickman, an authority on Dewey, gave answers on postmodernism as if Dewey were alive. Hickman (2007) saw postmodernism as raising problems and discontents but was not leading

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to anywhere. He gave the answer that classical pragmatism was “waiting at the end of the road” to give rescue. Pragmatism can help to define and promote global citizenship because it “discover(s) a strain of human commonality that trumps the postmodernist emphasis on difference and discontinuity” (2007: 2). Dewey’s view on technology is functional and is based on social constructivism, not the “Heideggerian type of romanticism” or “critical theorists’ notion of technology as ideology” (2007: 4). And Dewey’s notion of warranted assertability in the epistemology industry can be related to the social dimensions of inquiry, so that the function of inquiry is “the production of new artifacts, including new habits” (2007: 9). With the above and other arguments, through Hickman’s words, Dewey seems to have answered the latest postmodernist challenge. Education Practice In education practice, especially in America, Dewey was the high priest. Based on Dewey’s How We Think (1910, 1933), Robert Boostrom (2005) wrote Thinking: The Foundation of Critical and Creative Learning in the Classroom. It is more or less like a manual to teach thinking. Dewey was also seem as preaching multiple intelligences as Thomas Armstrong’s (2000) Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom pointed to “Dewey’s vision of classroom as a microcosm of society” (Armstrong 2000: 39). When the Long Island Ross School prided its teaching systems of reflective teachers, innovative curriculum and studentcentered instruction, the Dewey School (laboratory school) was taken as a research school connecting research with practice (Suárez-Orozco and Sattin-Bajaj 2010: 69–79). More importantly, two young men, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, started the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) for a mission of helping the underprivileged to get into college (Mathews 2009). It began in 1994 and KIPP has since grown into over 100 schools with over 10,000 college graduates in 2018. The success story is another social action of education reform, education for democracy and equity, an education vision more or less cherished and inspired by Dewey.

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My Final Words to My Dear Readers John Dewey lives in the heart of many philosophers, educators, practitioners and the public. He offers a progressive vision of the twentiethcentury modern world. His ideas continue to stay with us, as we await for more intellectual giants of the twenty-first century.

Further Readings of Chapter 9, 10, and this chapter On my journey to studying and understanding John Dewey, I have come across hundreds of books and articles that spread for more than a century: from his writings in the late nineteen century to the evaluation of his ideas in early twenty-first century. My focus is on his psychology and education, but it naturally interlocks with his philosophy and his life career. Below I pick what I deem important to help you understand him. In this sea of scholarship, I limit myself to a list of 20 books and papers on the interpretation of his educational ideas. 1. Archambault, R. D. (1964). John Dewey on Education: Selected Writings. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Reginald Archambault, a philosopher of education, compiled this selected works 12 years after Dewey’s death. The lengthy introduction offers a clear outline of Dewey’s theory of education: educational aims, curriculum, the pupil and the role of the teacher. Archambault has identified science, inquiry and ethics as Dewey’s core concepts. His selection of Dewey’s writings covers all important domains touched by Dewey. 2. Cremin, L. A. (1959). John Dewey and the Progressive Education Movement, 1915–1952. The School Review, 67 (2), 160–173. Historian Lawrence Cremin wrote this most illuminating article which was published in the Dewey Centennial Issue (Summer, 1959). It gave a historical account from American industrialism (1895–1914), the First World War (1914–1918) to the roaring twenties (1920s), the Great Depression (1930–1937), the Second World War and the rise of communism (1940s). Dewey’s role was examined as the progressive education movement rose and spread throughout America. Cremin was among the first to underscore that Dewey did not lead the progressive education movement.

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3. Cunningham, P., & Heilbronn, R. (Eds.). (2016). Dewey in Our Time: Learning from John Dewey for Transcultural Practice. London: UCL Institute of Education Press. As noted in Chapter 10 of this book, Peter Cunningham of Cambridge University and Ruth Heilbronn of UCL Institute of Education gathered ten Deweyan scholars worldwide for this volume. It was published in 2016 on the occasion of the centenary of Dewey’s Democracy and Education. Readers can see how Dewey’s ideas were received and adopted in Britain, Spain, Japan, Taiwan and Mainland China. 4. Dworkin, M. S. (1959). Dewey on Education: Selections. New York: Teachers College Press. Deweyan scholar Martin S. Dworkin wrote John Dewey: A Centennial Review in 1959 and was published as an introduction to this selected works. Dworkin gave a historical account from Dewey’s Michigan years, the milieu of the 1890s, the underlying streams of thoughts in the Progressive Era, to Dewey’s views on progressive education. No doubt Dworkin has selected Dewey’s most essential works in education, each of which he gave an introduction. 5. Fairfield, P. (2009). Education After Dewey. London: Continuum. Himself a philosopher familiar with the continental tradition of the twentieth century, Fairfield pointed out that Dewey is unfamiliar with and has only scant knowledge of his European contemporaries (Nietzche, Husserl, Heidegger) though he has deep phenomenological sensibility (Fairfield 2009: 9). He is comparing John Dewey with Gadamer’s experimental phenomenology (Chapter 2), Heidegger’s hermeneutics thinking (Chapter 3), Arendt’s theory of judgment and Freire’s diological education. Based on these comparisons, Fairfield formed a framework for the teaching of human sciences: philosophy (Chapter 4), religion (Chapter 5), ethics (Chapter 6), politics (Chapter 7), history (Chapter 8) and literature (Chapter 9). It could be applied to evaluate the aims and success in university teaching and learning of these disciplines. 6. Garrison, J., Neubert, S., & Reich, K. (2012). John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education. An Introduction and Recontextualization for Our Times. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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The authors “seek to recontextualize Dewey for a new generation who has come of age in a very different world than that in which Dewey lived and wrote” (introduction). It is a mostwelcome introduction for its innovation and novelty. Dewey’s ideas are not presented historically nor chronologically, but organized in three conceptual underpinnings relevant to the present-day understanding: the cultural turn, the constructive turn and the communicative turn. The authors also relate Dewey’s ideas to a discourse with modern philosophers such as Bauman, Foucault, Bourdieu, Derrida, Levinas and Rorty. 7. Hansen, D. T. (2006). John Dewey and Our Educational Prospect: A Critical Engagement with Dewey’s Democracy and Education. Albany: State University of New York Press. David T. Hansen is a professor with Teachers College, Columbia University. He served as chairman of John Dewey Society (2003– 2005), and the book is a collection of presentations in the Society’s annual symposium together with the American Educational Research Association. It covers education issues that Dewey is most concerned with: communication, curriculum, growth, student, teacher and the moral self. 8. Hickman, L. A. (Ed.). (1998). Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a Postmodern Generation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Larry Hickman is Director of the center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. All his life he is studying Dewey and editing Dewey’s works: logic, ethics, social and political philosophy, metaphysics, religion, art and the human sciences. This is a comprehensive review of Dewey’s ideas by contemporary Deweyan scholars. Readers with a basic understanding of Dewey may advance further in this edited work. 9. Hickman, L. A. (2007). Pragmatism as Post-modernism: Lessons from John Dewey. New York: Fordham University Press. In this work, Hickman reinvented John Dewey and pragmatism, this time in the postmodern context. “No one does better than Hickman in translating the implications of pragmatism into its contemporary relevance,” Praised a book reviewer. In fact, Hickman has connected these ideas to the diverse schools of thought in postmodernism and Dewey’s pragmatism. 10. Hickman, L. A., & Spadafora, G. (2009). John Dewey’s Educational Philosophy in International Perspective: A New Democracy for

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the Twenty-First Century. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Another testimony of John Dewey’s impact on education worldwide. This edited work is the collaborative effort of American and Italian scholars with eleven contributors from countries in Europe, North and Latin America. This volume presents exploration of Dewey’s enduring relevance and potential as a tool for change in twenty-first-century political and social institutions. Issues in the changing educational trends, intelligence, ethical problems, the scientific method and its application to educational practices are discussed. 11. Higgins, S., & Coffield, F. (Eds.). (2016). John Dewey’s Democracy and Education: A British Tribute. London: UCL Institute of Education Press. Steve Higgins of Durham University and Frank Coffield, a retired UK educator, edited this title. It surely is a British tribute because it had showed Democracy and Education’s positive reception in the 1920s (Chapter 1) and Dewey’s relevance in today’s neoliberal times: shared goals, equality, self-fulfillment, vs. competitive individualism, inequalities, reward the success (Chapter 2). Higgins reviewed the role of education in society and the nature of curriculum (Chapter 4) while Coffield argued that teachers/students should participate democratically to evaluate goals (Chapter 5). When a critic showed the problem of coherence in Dewey’s arguments (Chapter 9), it is nonetheless clear Dewey is the dominant paradigm of education theories in the UK today. 12. Hildebrand, D. (2008). Dewey: Beginners Guide. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. David Hildebrand’s book is more than a beginners guide. It gives a deep and lucid introduction on Dewey. It is analytical: “taking the car apart, then putting it back together” (Preface, xi). He does not touch intellectual history. He identifies Dewey’s two key beliefs: practical starting point and melioristic motive (Hildebrand 2008: 4–5). Hildebrand devoted his Chapter 5 to Dewey’s education, but readers must understand Dewey’s ideas of experience (Chapter 1), inquiry (Chapter 2) and morality (Chapter 3) before attempting Chapter 5.

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13. Hook, S. (1980). The Collected Works of John Dewey. The Middle Works, Volume 9 Introduction, ix–xxiv. Sidney Hook (1902–1989), Dewey’s student and an accomplished philosopher, wrote much about Dewey. This is the introduction he wrote for Dewey’s Collected Works, Middle Works 9, which collects Democracy and Education (1916). Hook reassures us that Dewey’s work is filled with “a refreshing sense of contemporaneity.” He tries to interpret Dewey’s democracy in education as “openness to experience,” with insightful contribution to the psychology of education or learning (MW9: x). The issues of moral equality, individual differences, citizen participation and vocational education are examined with present-day relevance. When Richard Hofstadter criticized Dewey for giving rise to anti-intellectualism in American life, Hook defended the latter in his How We Think and the methods of intelligence (MW9: xxi). To my mind, it is a lucid paper to introduce and review Dewey’s most important work on education. You may wish to note that Hook has also written another introduction for Middle Works Volume 8 (1915). This volume includes Dewey’s Schools of Tomorrow and other important philosophical ideas coming to maturity: metaphysics, logic, theory of knowledge, political philosophy. It is a helpful introduction on how Dewey’s major philosophical ideas evolved. 14. Jackson, P. W. (2002). John Dewey and the Philosopher’s Task. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Philip Jackson obtained his Ph.D. in Teachers College and worked in the University of Chicago before retirement. He was past president of John Dewey Society and delivered this John Dewey Lecture in 1999. There he examined Dewey’s metaphysics in Experience and Nature and stated succinctly Dewey’s philosopher’s task: to live and examine daily issues critically, engage in thinking for better solutions, review consequences, share free flow of ideas and improve them through more social intelligence and humanity. According to Dewey, education is a most important human endeavor, and the educator is a philosopher in action in educating the young. 15. Jenlink, P. M. (Ed.). (2009). Dewey’s Democracy and Education Revisited: Contemporary Discourses for Democratic Education and Leadership. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

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Patrick H. Jenlink of St. Edward’s University, Austin, edited this book. He gathered teacher educators, public school administrators and college professors to focus on democratic leadership in school. He challenged educators for “the transformation of public schools into public spaces of democratic practice, which is a new vista of teachers and school leaders as public intellectuals, as critical agents of democracy” (Jenlink 2009: 393). It appears Jenlink is a liberal passionate with democratic leadership at school and nurturing/practicing democratic values in school, thus the issue of education in a democracy, education for democracy. Issues of 911, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), globalization and so forth are of concern amidst the “falling standard” of American education. 16. Maxcy, S. J. (Ed.). (2002). John Dewey and American Education. Volumes 1–3. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. In these three volumes, historian Spencer Maxcy gathered the three most renowned works of John Dewey, The School and Society (1899), Schools of Tomorrow (1915) and Democracy and Education (1916) and collated them with contemporary book reviews. Readers can get some first-hand information of how well Dewey’s books were received a century ago. In addition, Maxcy had written a general introduction and an introduction to each volume which contain lots of historical details. 17. Pring, R. (2007). John Dewey: A Philosopher of Education for Our Time? New York: Continuum. A retired Oxford professor wrote about Dewey. Richard Pring had a youthful encounter of Dewey’s voluminous dusty books (the Collected Works ) in the library of University College of London in the 1970s. In this small book, Pring started from a short intellectual biography, offered a critical exposition of his work and arrived at Dewey’s philosophical underpinnings. He gave a clear and simple conclusion: “a consistency throughout Dewey’s long life both in his idea of ‘doing philosophy’, in his criticism and suggested reforms of education, and in the integration of philosophizing and thinking about education” (Pring 2007: 180). 18. Rud, A. G., Garrison, J., & Stone, L. (2009). John Dewey at 150: Reflections for a New Century. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.

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Three American philosophers of education have pieced together reflections of John Dewey at 150. The contributors reviewed Dewey’s religious faith, pragmatism, ethics and education. Of our interest are Chapter 4: Transforming Schooling Through Technology: Twenty-First-Century Approaches to Participatory Learning (Craig A. Cunningham), Chapter 5: Dewey’s Aesthetics and Today’s Moral Education (Jiwon Kim) and Chapter 6: Toward Inclusion and Human Unity: Rethinking Dewey’s Democratic Community (Hongmei Peng). Readers can see Dewey is alive today in issues such as technology, learning, religion, art, ethics and global living (cosmopolitanism). 19. Shook, J. R., & Kurtz, P. (Eds.). (2011). Dewey’s Enduring Impact: Essays on America’s Philosopher. New York: Prometheus Books. This volume collects the revised presentations at John Dewey’s 150th Birthday Celebration: An International Conference on Dewey’s Impact on America and the World in 2009. It is important because the contributors are able to reflect on the philosophical influence of John Dewey’s thought a half a century after his death. Among the six parts in this book, you may be most interested in Part Three: Culture and Values, and Part Six: Education and Society. John Shook taught philosophy at Oklahoma State University and the University at Buffalo. He was also President of the Society of Humanist Philosophers. As an anecdote, Paul Kurtz was a graduate student at Columbia and had met Dewey in 1948 in his talk and in 1949 at Dewey’s 90th birthday party (Shook and Kurtz 2011: 57). 20. Simpson, D. J., & Stack, S. F., Jr. (2010). Teachers, Leaders and Schools: Essays by John Dewey. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Douglas Simpson and Sam Stack Jr. added this edited title in 2010. In addition to selecting Dewey’s classics in education, the authors met the changing trend of American schools by selecting Dewey’s writings on teachers, school leaders and the school itself. The introductory essays integrated Dewey’s educational writings in light of current educational concerns. Their purpose was to select essays for “educational practitioners (who) want to begin thinking about educational and societal questions from a Deweyan perspective” (Simpson and Stack 2010: 14).

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References Armstrong, T. (2000). Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom (2nd ed.). Alexandria: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Boostrom, R. (2005). The Foundation of Critical and Creative Learning in the Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Delors, J. (1998). Education for the Twenty-First Century: Issues and Prospects. Paris: UNESCO Publishing. Dunn, S. G. (2005). Philosophical Foundations of Education: Connecting Philosophy to Theory and Practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Dykhuizen, G. (1973). The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Fairfield, P. (2009). Education After Dewey. London: Continuum. Faure, E., et al. (1972). Learning to Be—The World of Education Today and Tomorrow. Paris: UNESCO Publishing. Francis, M. (2007). Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life. Stocksfield: Acumen Publishing. Greene, M. (1978). Landscapes of Learning. New York: Teachers College Press. Hickman, L. A. (2007). Pragmatism as Post-modernism: Lessons from John Dewey. New York: Fordham University Press. Hildebrand, D. (2008). Dewey: Beginners Guide. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Jenlink, P. M. (Ed.). (2009). Dewey’s Democracy and Education Revisited: Contemporary Discourses for Democratic Education and Leadership. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Kliebard, H. M. (2004). The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893−1958. New York: Routledge. Løvlie, L., Mortensen, K. P., & Nordenho, S. E. (2003). Educating Humanity: Bildung in Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Mathews, J. (2009). Work Hard, Be Nice. New York: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Milojevi´c, I. (2005). Educational Futures: Dominant and Contesting Visions. Oxon: Routledge. Peters, M. (Ed.). (1995). Education and the Postmodern Condition. Westport: Bergin & Garvey. Pring, R. (2007). John Dewey: A Philosopher of Education for Our Time?. New York: Continuum. Ratner, J. (1940). Education Today by John Dewey. New York: Putnam. Shook, J. R., & Kurtz, P. (Eds.). (2011). Dewey’s Enduring Impact: Essays on America’s Philosopher. New York: Prometheus Books. Simpson, D. J., & Stack, S. F., Jr. (2010). Teachers, Leaders and Schools: Essays by John Dewey. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Suárez-Orozco, M. M., & Sattin-Bajaj, C. (2010). Educating the Whole Child for the Whole World. New York: New York University Press.

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Wain, K. (2004). The Learning Society in a Postmodern World: The Education Crisis. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Walsh, P. (1993). Education and Meaning: Philosophy in Practice. New York: Cassell Educational Limited.

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Gu, H. L. (2019) in Chinese: 顧紅亮 (2019)。 杜威在華學譜。上海:華東師範大學出版社。 Hu, S. (1921) in Chinese: 《東方雜誌》 ,第18期13號。 胡適 (1921)。 杜威先生與中國。 Hu, S. (2003) in Chinese: 胡適全集(第一卷)。合肥:安徽教育出版社。 胡適 (2003)。 Hu, S. (1919) in Chinese: 《每週評論》 ,第31號。 胡適 (1919年7月20日) 多研究些問題,少談些「主義」。 Educational Thought. (2019) in Chinese: 百年回首:杜威与中国教育现代化。2019年8月20日http:// 教育思想網 (2019)。 www.sohu.com/a/327794062_100928 Li, J. H. (1985) in Chinese: 黎侫華 (1985)。 杜威在華活動年表。華東師範大學學報,第一至三期。 Tian Xia Shao Shan Website. (2009) in Chinese: 淺析杜威實用主義哲學對毛澤東的影響。2019年8月20 天下韶山網 (2009)。 日:http://www.txssw.com/newswrmzd/maozedongxingjiulunwenku/13558. html Wang, S. C. (2019) in Chinese: 《杜威的三十二堂課》 導讀:五四中國眼中的杜威,和杜威眼中的中 王清思 (2019)。 國。https://www.thenewslens.com/feature/poiema/124656 Yang, Y., & Li, J. P. (2019) in Chinese: 楊旭,李劍萍 (2019)。 文化契合性:杜威教育理論在中國傳播流行的深層原因。 《教 育科學研究》 ,第3期。 Yuan, Q. (2001) in Chinese: 杜威與中國。北京:人民出版社。 元青 (2001)。 Zhang, B. G. (2001) in Chinese: 杜威與中國。石家莊市:河北人民出版社。 張寶貴 (2001)。 Zhang, B. G. (2009) in Chinese: 實用主義之我見:杜威在中國。南昌市:江西高校出版社。 張寶貴 (2009)。 Zhou, H. B. (2011) in Chinse: 周惠斌 (2011)。 1919–1921:杜威在中國。中華讀書報,1月19日第5版。 Takungpao. (1920) in Chinese: 《各公團歡迎名人記》 ,湖南 《大公報》 1920年10月31日. Hu, S. (1959) in Chinese: 1959年7月16日胡適在夏威夷大學所作的英文演講,夏道平譯文載1959年8月16日 《自由中國》 第21卷第4期。

Index

A action, 8, 9, 33, 34, 54, 87, 104, 105, 114–117, 120, 121, 124, 125, 129, 142, 149, 154, 155, 157, 159, 161–163, 177, 182, 185, 200, 203, 205, 214, 215, 226, 230, 234, 241, 243, 246, 254, 255, 264, 265, 268–270, 285, 313, 315, 316, 333, 347, 351, 352, 356, 363, 364, 367, 373, 378 active mind, 59, 60, 65, 233 act psychology, 141 adolescent crisis, 3, 9, 22, 23, 33, 176 Alexander Technique, 243 Alice, 174, 178–183, 189–191, 193–197, 238, 239, 241, 280, 281, 283, 286–288, 293, 351 an impossible dream, 270 apperception, 41, 57, 58, 65, 66, 112, 116 apperception mass, 56, 58, 66

artificial neural network, 58, 151 attention, 36, 50, 51, 58, 64, 65, 78, 90, 112, 114, 115, 117, 121, 123, 137, 142, 176, 202, 205, 210, 214, 221, 281, 317, 319, 323, 325, 357 B Bain, Alexander, 11, 50, 51, 54, 55, 61, 67, 69, 83, 84, 88, 96, 108, 130, 137, 163, 200, 261 bodily autonomous reaction, 114 brain localization, 61 British mercantilism, 316 C categories of thought, 40, 41, 56, 57, 59, 60, 65, 66, 68 Chicago years, 99, 143, 173, 178, 183, 186–188, 199, 229, 233, 234, 252, 262–265

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 R. Li, Rediscovering John Dewey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7

401

402

INDEX

child-centered education, 222, 228, 320, 325, 333 child-centered schools, 325, 332, 356 child development, 102, 136, 180, 215, 219, 222, 232–234, 243, 249, 323, 328 Christian faith, 3, 8, 14, 17, 20, 35, 89, 311, 320 chronology of China trip, 284, 306 chronology of Dewey’s major psychology, 101, 189, 194, 284 cognition, 65, 111, 112, 141, 150, 226, 229, 267 collaborative learning, 247, 257 college years, 3, 10, 49, 53, 70, 99 comfort zone, 240 consciousness collective, 93 elements of, 110, 129, 130, 137 individual, 84–86, 88, 90–94, 111, 112 nineteenth century, study of, 96, 138 self, 32, 33, 41, 84–90, 92, 93, 210, 324 state of, 113, 139–141 streams of, 77, 90, 161, 164, 167 three aspects of, 110, 111, 113, 117 twentieth century, study of, 167 universal, 57, 82, 84–86, 88–95, 110, 136, 252 universality of, 95, 136 contingent trip entended, 282 Counts, George, 329, 333, 334, 358, 359, 371 criteria of experience, 362 cultural mental enrichment, 262

custom, 40, 79, 154, 160, 162, 163, 166, 211, 234, 264

D Dalton Plan, 326, 327 defense of Russell, B., 334, 350, 351 democracy, 10, 17, 52, 53, 177, 182, 185, 186, 195, 209, 210, 212, 216, 217, 237, 241, 242, 244, 248, 256, 263, 267, 269, 277, 278, 286, 290, 291, 297, 299–302, 305, 318, 326, 333, 334, 338, 339, 352–354, 359, 361, 363, 365–367, 369, 370, 372, 373, 378, 379 and social justice, 212, 237, 339 as way of life, 267, 365 Dewey’s notion of, 267, 269, 365 free exchange, 366 participatory, 195, 242, 301, 302, 333, 372 schools as agents, 256, 366, 379 Democracy and Education, 151, 174, 186, 210, 244, 256, 259–263, 265–267, 269, 270, 277, 295, 296, 299, 300, 322, 330, 352, 361, 369, 371, 375, 377–379 depression, 239, 240, 280–283, 314, 332, 333, 353, 359, 360, 374 desire, 12, 111, 112, 116, 118, 129, 157, 159, 160, 165, 175, 176, 203–205, 210, 257, 279, 283, 355, 362–364, 368 developmental psychology, 99, 106, 143, 219, 369, 371 Dewey, J. – education address to American Association of Teacher College, 358

INDEX

address to Kappa Delta Pi, 362 address to Progressive Education Association, 322, 323, 325, 334, 352, 354, 357 and Counts, G., 329, 333, 334, 358, 359, 371 and Kilpatrick, W., 254, 261, 329–331, 335, 336 and Mitchell, L., 243, 299, 329 and Pratt, C., 329 and Rugg, H., 303, 351, 359 child-centered education, 222, 228, 320, 325 head of department of pedagogy, University of Chicago, 177, 186, 190 honorary president of National Education Association, 352 honorary president of Progressive Education Association, 352, 354 impact on education and practice, 290, 371, 377 “in love” with education, 174, 175, 177 John Dewey’s page, 334, 360 resignation from University of Chicago chronology, 189, 190 mistreatment of Mrs. Dewey, 189 plausible reason, 197 role in progressive education, 334 University College Elementary School. See laboratory school (Dewey School) Dewey, J. – Ethics. See also Ethical Principles Underlying Education; morality

403

character formation, 209, 227, 270 core value, 177, 211 Educational Ethics , 177, 183 ethical science, 176, 177, 208, 211, 221 Ethics (with Tufts), 27, 186, 241, 245, 262 Moral Principles in Education, 210, 245 Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics , 164, 176, 183, 207, 210 The Study of Ethics, A Syllabus , 176, 183, 210 Dewey, J. – life and career. See also Bain, Alexander; Hall, Stanly; Johns Hopkins University; Lost years, Dewey’s; Morris, George; University of Michigan; University of Vermont and children. See Evelyn; Fred; Gordon; Jane; Lucy; Morris; Sabino and father, 4, 7 and mother, 4 and second wife. See Roberta and wife. See Alice at Columbia University appointment, 238 approval of China trip, 283, 288 colleagues. See Counts, George; Kilpatrick, William; Rugg, Harold Gorky affair, 181 professor emeritus, 351 retreating to philosophy, 240 sabbatical leave, 237, 275, 279 at University of Chicago

404

INDEX

Chicago years in brief, 177 hellish beginning, 179 Michigan Gang, The, 186 overworked, 192, 193 personal world, 197 resignation. See work on education social world, 184 working with Harper, 177 birthday celebration 60th, 285, 286 70th – 90th, 330, 349, 351 Career-driven knowledge enterprise, 368 childhood, 6 Chinese acquaintances. See Dr. Sun, Y.S.; Zhang, B.L. Chinese disciples. See Guo, B.W.; Hu, S.; Jiang, M.I.; Tao, X.Z. doctoral dissertation, 38, 39, 284, 294, 305, 306 main idea of, 40 “missing” background, 38 emotional engagement. See Yezierska, A. eye strain, 180, 243 family drama, 239 family finance, 279 family trouble, 280 influences from/by Comte, A., 12, 15, 67, 314, 368, 370 Freud, S., 77, 163, 165, 167 Huxley, T.H., 12, 15, 49, 53, 368 James, W., 21, 35, 53, 67, 68, 77, 107, 120, 130, 137, 138, 163, 176, 238, 241, 261, 280, 296, 309, 371 Kant, I., 14 Marsh, J., 13

John Dewey Society, 256, 350, 352, 376, 378 neck pain, 243 oral history, 227 parent-child relations, 7 personal ambition, 187 personality, 10 pioneering spirit, 368 political involvement, 276 replacement child, 6 self-study, 23 Dewey, J. – philosophical writings. See also Ethics; Psychology and Philosophic Method; Psychology as Philosophic Method Experience and Nature, 100, 105, 145, 347, 348, 361, 370, 378 From Absolutism to Experimentalism, 12, 14, 16, 20, 22, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 163 Hegel and The Theory of Categories , 38, 39 Kant and Philosophic Method, 38–40, 43 Knowledge and The Relativity of Feeling , 28, 38 Reality as Experience, 240 Reconstruction of Philosophy, 347, 348 The Experimental Theory of Knowledge, 241 Theory of Valuation, 350, 351 The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism, 241 The Quest of Certainty, 349, 351, 361, 370 The Realism of Pragmatism, 241 The Theory of Inquiry, 350, 351, 370 What Pragmatism Means by Practical , 241

INDEX

Dewey, J. – philosophy. See also Hegel; Metaphysical Club; postmodernism; pragmatism address to Philosophic Union of the University of California, 105, 136 German idealism, 33, 108, 164 impact, 32 influences, 3, 17, 165 integrate psychology with philosophy, 86, 101, 119 interest, 11, 12, 36, 49, 99, 100, 102, 104, 106, 143, 174, 201, 239, 256, 309 philosophic method, 36, 40, 86, 88, 136, 261, 268, 299, 301, 302 retreating to philosophy, 240 subjective idealism, 26, 32, 84 Dewey, J. – psychology chronology, 101 criticized. See illusory psychology founding functionalism, 130 president of American Psychological Association, 34, 100, 103, 106, 135, 136, 189, 369 psychological laboratory, 369 sketch from 1884 – 1933, 99 teaching, 21, 23, 27, 29, 32–34, 36, 37, 49, 82, 99, 103, 136, 174, 177, 179, 185, 186, 219, 221, 229, 238, 240, 244, 245, 249, 250, 262, 263, 279, 288, 320, 326, 368 Dewey, J. – religion. See also Rockefeller, S.C. A common Faith, 187, 349 Christian faith, 3, 8, 14, 17, 20, 35, 89, 311, 320 liberation, 23, 24

405

Obligation to Knowledge of God, The, 89 religious crisis, 9 Soul and Body, 89 theological answer, 15 The Place of Religious Emotion, 9, 89 Dewey, J. – trips trip to China informant, 291, 293 invitation from China, 282 January – December 1920, 287 January – July 1921, 289 May – December 1919, 285 popularization in China, 298, 299, 301 promoting American diplomacy, 290 trip to Europe, 21, 36, 177, 179, 238, 239, 280, 281, 287, 349 trip to Japan, 237, 260, 276, 279, 280, 284, 305, 323 trip to Mexico, 348, 350–352, 370 trip to South Africa, 349, 361 trip to Soviet Union, 334 trip to Turkey, 260, 302, 348, 352, 370 Dewey, J. – works and ideas on education apply psychology to education, 102 Bearing of Pragmatism Upon Education, The, 245 Child and the Curriculum, The, 100, 174, 199, 229, 230, 232, 263, 364, 369 Class Struggle and The Democratic Way, 354 Cyclopedia of Education, A, 265 Democracy and Education

406

INDEX

new ideas, 263 present-day evaluation, 378 publishing background, 260 scope, 262 structure, 262 Democracy and Education in the World of Today, 352, 354 Democracy and Educational Administration, 354 Duties and Responsibilities of the Teaching Profession, The, 354 Education and Social Change, 353, 360, 367 Education and the Health of Women, 174 Education for a Changing Social Order, 353, 358 Education Share in Social Reconstruction, 353, 360 Ethical Principles Underlying Education, 176, 178, 183, 199, 206–208, 210, 212, 245, 369 Experience and Education, 174, 186, 322, 350, 354, 361, 362, 364 background, 361 coverage, 362 new terms, 363, 364 Health and Sex in Higher Education, 174 How Much Freedom in New Schools?, 353, 356, 357, 364 ideal school, 208, 270 Interest in Relation to Training of the Will , 100, 102, 175, 178, 183, 199, 202, 204, 212, 216, 230, 254, 263, 369 Monastery, Bargain Counter or Laboratory in Education, 353 Moral Principles in Education, 210, 245

Need for a Philosophy of Education, The, 349, 353, 358 New Schools for a New Era, 352 on educational innovation, 256, 295 on Frobel, F., 233, 247, 248, 252, 262, 265, 371 on Montessori, M., 247, 248, 254, 255, 371 on Pestalozzi, J., 177, 233, 247–251, 320, 371 on Rousseau, J., 247–249, 262, 265, 266, 371 Pedagogic Creed, My, 174, 178, 181, 183, 199, 206, 215, 216, 220, 221, 230, 232, 250, 352, 364, 369, 371 evaluation, 220 five articles, 216 growth of ideas, 183 Progressive Education and the Science of Education, 348, 354 Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum, The, 103, 178, 183, 212, 214, 216, 231 Rationality in Education, 353 School and Society, The, 100, 174, 178, 188, 199, 221, 222, 227, 312, 322, 369, 379 Schools of Tomorrow, 246, 247, 249, 251, 252, 254, 257, 259, 265, 322, 325, 327, 328, 331, 352, 369, 371, 378, 379 collaboration with Evelyn, 256, 326 educational innovations, 256 investigative report, 247, 331 signature terms, 230 Social Significance of Academic Freedom, The, 354 Sources of a Science of Education, The, 349, 353

INDEX

Teacher and His World, The, 354 Teacher and The Public, The, 354 What are the Russians Schools Doing?, 352 Why Have Progressive Schools , 353, 356 Dewey, J. – works and ideas on psychology. See also taxonomy of thinking How We Think, 75, 100, 143–145, 150, 163, 245, 262, 299, 330, 359, 369, 373, 378 Human Nature and Conduct conduct, 152, 154 instinct, 151, 163 intelligence, 152, 163 scientific view, 152. See also custom; habits; instinct Mental Development , 99, 103, 136, 143, 144, 229, 369 Mental Development as Illustrated in Early Infancy, 99, 103, 136, 143, 229, 369 New Psychology, The, 38, 43, 49, 66, 75, 81, 82, 99, 100, 119, 151, 175, 183, 215, 229, 368 against faculty psychology, 81 psychological manifesto, 75, 82, 119, 215, 220 psychology as science of human experience, 79, 229 view on physiological psychology, 79 psychological fallacy melodrama, 135 prescription of Dewey, 142

407

revenge, 138 revisiting after 14 years, 136 storyline, 135 Psychological Standpoint, The, 83, 84, 99. See also consciousness, universal integrating psychology with philosophy, 82, 86 creating a unicorn, 82 Psychology. See also desire; impulses; reflex action; selfhood; volition; will approach, 108 publication, 54 references, 107, 108 three aspects of consciousness, 110 Psychology and Philosophic Method, 103, 136, 140 Psychology and Social Practice, 100, 103, 106, 136, 369 Psychology as Philosophic Method, 66, 75, 83, 85, 88, 99–101, 110, 368 IDEE, 87 integrating Kant and Hegel, 88 self-consciousness, 87 title analysis, 85 Psychology of Infant Language, 99, 102, 143, 183, 368 functional division of labor, 123 intellectual context, 125 Psychology of Infant Language and psychological tasks, 128

408

INDEX

Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology, The, 99, 100, 102, 119, 120, 136, 229, 369 Theory of Emotion, 99, 102, 183, 205, 368 Dewey, J. – works on political philosophy. See also Democracy and Education Freedom and Culture, 350, 351 Individualism, Old and New, 349, 351 Liberalism and Social Action, 350, 351 The Public and its Problems , 348, 351 Dewey’s life world, 183 doctoral dissertations on, Dewey’s visit to China, 38, 39, 299, 304, 306 double life, 89 do-with toys, 328, 329 Dr. Sun, Y.S., 284, 285

E economy, 11, 21, 220, 310–313, 316 pain, pleasure, creative, 314 educational aim, 144, 148, 374 educational fascist, 360 educational reform, 241, 335 education as living, 148, 175, 188, 216, 234, 264 education as reconstruction of experience, 213, 231, 266 education as social process, 217, 267, 364 education for a fulfilling life, 258 education, innovative practices, 256–259 education of the gifted, 258, 325, 357

education, subject-matter of, 232, 328 education, three premises of, 230 education, universal purpose of, 356 emotion, 22, 33, 78, 80, 102, 103, 106, 108, 111, 112, 129, 145, 163, 169, 200–203, 205, 214, 229, 233, 245 enduring impact, 367 Ethics , 27, 186, 241, 245, 262, 349 ethics in education, 176, 177, 182, 206, 212, 380 Evelyn, 178–180, 238, 239, 246–248, 254–256, 281, 287, 288, 293, 305, 320, 326, 327, 331 evolutionary, 37, 51, 53, 54, 67, 108, 128, 130, 137, 169, 266, 269 evolutionary theory, 205, 311 evolution, Dewey on, 3, 12, 19, 34, 53, 101, 103, 120, 122, 141, 142, 144, 147, 208, 246, 295, 367 experience, 9, 13, 17, 23–25, 29, 41, 42, 79–81, 83, 84, 87, 89–93, 95, 100, 101, 103, 106, 109, 116, 121–123, 125, 128, 129, 137–141, 143, 145, 152, 158, 166, 173, 176, 178–181, 187, 213, 214, 218, 220, 227, 229–232, 234, 240, 241, 249, 250, 252, 253, 257, 262–264, 266, 267, 269–271, 275, 281, 283, 295, 296, 305, 323, 327, 328, 341, 354, 356, 357, 362–364, 366, 370, 377, 378 experiential continuum, 362 experimentation, 61, 66, 78, 83, 119, 206, 225, 286, 300, 371 expressionism, 328

INDEX

F facts, Dewey on, 78, 79, 81, 146, 254, 352 faculty psychology, 68, 81 Fairhope School, 257, 324 falsification, 151 family history, 5, 238 family trip, 279, 281, 286 feeling, 9, 22, 23, 28, 53–55, 65, 80, 87, 109–113, 115–119, 139, 141, 145, 152, 153, 157, 159, 164, 173, 175, 192, 194, 199–201, 321, 357 formal, 112 qualitative, 112 sensuous, 114, 115 first debut, 25, 199 first journal article, 55 First World War, 152, 237, 242, 260, 276, 278, 291, 314, 374 forecasting, 147, 151 founding father, 120, 131, 135, 366 four pillars of learning, 372 Fred, 178, 179, 238, 239, 320 free communication, 269, 365 functionalism, 49, 82, 99, 100, 102, 103, 115, 118, 120, 130–132, 135–137, 140, 141, 369

G Gary plan, 325, 326 global capitalism, 358 global citizenship, 373 Gordon, 178, 187, 238–240, 281 growth, 17, 32, 102, 103, 177, 183, 202, 206, 213, 214, 218, 220, 222, 225, 226, 230–234, 245, 246, 249, 254, 257, 262, 264, 266, 269, 270, 290, 302, 312, 328, 337, 355–357, 363, 376 Guo, B.W., 282, 290, 295, 306

409

H habits, 4, 55, 80, 103, 118, 152–156, 158–163, 175, 176, 203, 208, 209, 223, 230, 231, 243, 264, 266–268, 338, 359, 373 and action, 105, 159, 160, 209, 266 classes, 153 concepts, 55, 152, 153, 175, 208 Hall, Stanly, 20, 32, 34–40, 44, 49, 55, 68, 70, 75, 81, 83, 93, 99, 101, 119, 130, 368 hands-on experience, 328, 329 harvesting on education, 351 Hegel, 3, 25, 28, 32, 33, 35, 37, 40–43, 68, 86, 88, 89, 92, 93, 101, 119, 240, 262, 263, 266, 368, 370 historical inevitability thesis, 276 How We Think, 100, 104, 143–146, 150, 163, 245, 262, 299, 330, 349, 359, 369, 373, 378 human nature, 19, 54, 55, 80, 94, 100, 104, 106, 135, 142, 151–154, 160, 165–167, 169, 221, 248, 264–266, 299, 310, 361 twentieth century, study of, 168 Human Nature and Conduct , 100, 104, 106, 152, 153, 160, 163, 165, 176, 262, 348, 361, 364, 370 Hu, S., 282–284, 289, 290, 292, 294, 296, 297, 299, 300, 302–306 hypothesis, 53, 108, 147, 150, 226, 246, 264 I ideal school, 208, 220, 270 IDEE, 33, 87, 92 illusory psychology, 90, 91, 101, 136 impulse-action circuit, 129

410

INDEX

impulses, 63, 101, 112–117, 124, 126, 129, 137, 152, 154, 156– 163, 166, 175, 201–205, 208, 209, 214, 224–226, 229–231, 233, 255, 265, 299, 337, 340, 362, 364 Independence of Poland, 277–279, 369 individual differences, 120, 257, 357, 378 individualism, 311, 316, 360, 377 individualized instruction, 299, 327, 331 industrialization, 185, 222, 227, 312, 313, 316 informant, Dewey’s Chinese disciples, 291 inquiry, 16, 80, 103, 142, 144, 149, 156, 161, 178, 208, 225, 230, 260, 264, 299, 302, 303, 351, 366, 373, 374, 377 inquiry disposition, 359 instinct, 94, 149, 154, 157, 158, 160, 162, 163, 169, 208, 209, 225, 233, 253 intelligence, 5, 24, 53, 58, 100, 103, 105, 154, 160–163, 166, 169, 245, 278, 291, 293, 296, 353, 362, 364, 367, 377, 378 interactive unfoldment, 264, 266 interest, 6, 11, 12, 14, 15, 36–39, 44, 63, 67, 71, 72, 78, 95, 99, 100, 102–104, 106, 111, 112, 115–117, 143, 174, 186, 193, 200–206, 210, 212–214, 216, 219, 221, 225, 226, 230–233, 239–241, 245, 248, 253, 254, 256, 262, 263, 267, 268, 270, 271, 279, 284, 285, 290, 309,

321–323, 325, 330–334, 338, 347, 350, 357, 362, 368, 369, 372, 380 interest-arousal theory, 205 international understanding, 358 introspection, 5, 8, 9, 14, 59, 65, 66, 68, 81, 157 IQ, Dewey’s criticism, 354, 357 J Jane, 6, 7, 16, 178, 238, 275, 281, 288 Jiang, M.I., 284, 294–296, 303, 306 Johns Hopkins atmosphere, 28, 29, 34, 38, 42, 43, 55, 82, 119, 130, 182, 238, 242, 277, 336, 368 Johns Hopkins University, 20, 28, 31, 32, 35–38, 44, 49, 101 joyful learning, 257 just noticeable differences, 62 K Kilpatrick, William, 254, 261, 329–331, 335, 336 Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), 341, 373 L laboratory school (Dewey School), 100, 102, 120, 177, 178, 186, 188–191, 193–197, 221, 225, 322, 329, 369, 373 law of effect, 336 learning by doing, 221, 251, 254, 259, 325, 329, 336, 364 learning curve, 337 learning society, 372

INDEX

logical positivism, 43, 151 Lost Years, Dewey’s, 29 Lucy, 178, 238, 280, 293, 305

M main themes in psychology, 110 meaning, 41, 42, 57, 76, 81, 84, 85, 95, 102, 116, 118, 139, 140, 145, 148, 149, 163, 167, 176, 181, 200, 214, 216, 221, 230, 231, 234, 264, 268, 269, 320, 362, 372 measuring sensation, 61, 63 melodrama of psychology, 137 mental discipline, 213, 262 Metaphysical Club, 38, 39, 43 metaphysics, 91, 119, 139, 252, 361, 376, 378 mid-life crisis, 242 miniature community, 224, 270, 271, 329 monads, 57, 58 money politics, Dewey on, 359 monopoly of learning, 223 Montessori method, 254 moral choice, 210 moral education, 262, 270 moral habits, 163, 209 morality, 9, 15, 24, 37, 79, 151, 152, 154, 160, 161, 166, 169, 177, 181, 182, 208, 211, 220, 233, 241, 244, 270, 299, 324, 377 Christian, 5, 12, 13, 28, 165, 166 romantic, 165, 166 Morris, 179, 180, 187, 238, 239, 280 Morris, George, 12, 20, 32–35, 37, 38, 42, 43, 75, 82, 83, 88, 93, 101, 177–179, 240, 368 multiple intelligences, 81, 373

411

mutual accommodation and adaptation, 363 My Pedagogic Creed, 174, 178, 181, 183, 199, 206, 215, 216, 221, 230, 232, 250, 352, 364, 369, 371 mystic experience, 22 mysticism, 67, 92

N national efficiency, 318 natural development, 248, 252, 262 nerve conduction speed, 60, 61, 127 network of enterprise, 347, 352 new education, 222, 294, 321, 322, 338, 362 new middle class, 310 new nationalism, 318 nineteenth century German psychology, 219 measuring sensation, 61, 63 physiological research, 59 rational mind, 56 noumenal world, 57, 142

O Organic education, 324

P parapsychology, 67, 68, 72 parent-child relationship, 3, 7, 8 Parker, Francis, 186, 187, 189, 190, 194, 233, 319–321, 335, 336, 341 peer learning, 257 Peirce, Charles, 32, 36–38, 45, 75, 182, 371

412

INDEX

perception, 40, 41, 50, 53, 57, 60, 65, 67, 78, 83, 88, 102, 104, 105, 112, 116, 137, 142, 156, 161, 200, 212, 213 phases of reflective thinking, 147, 150 phenomenal world, 57, 88 philosophy as theory of education, 268 phrenology, 66–68, 81 physical fatigue, Dewey’s, 243 physiological research, 51, 96 plasticity, 264, 266, 337 platoon system, 325, 326 Play School, 254, 328, 329 Polish immigrants in Philadelphia, 277 postmodernism, 71, 169, 341, 372, 376 poverty, 185, 259, 310, 312, 313 pragmatism, 25, 37, 90, 95, 96, 100, 118, 120, 136, 149, 160, 161, 164, 166, 173, 175, 219, 240, 241, 245, 248, 253, 254, 294, 298, 299, 306, 367, 369, 371, 373, 376, 380 principle of continuity, 362 principle of interaction, 362, 363 progressive curriculum, 331 progressive education, 173, 188, 190, 237, 246, 247, 251, 311, 318, 319, 321, 322, 324, 326, 329–338, 340–342, 353–358, 360–362, 370, 371, 374, 375 father of, 173, 319 Progressive Education Association, 322–324, 333, 350 Progressive Era (1879 – 1920), 312–314, 338 progressive nation, 318

progressive politics, 315, 316, 322 progressivism (1860 – 1920), 311 project method, 299, 329, 330, 336 pseudo-science, 66 psychical unity, 121 psychic phenomena, 67 psychological fallacy, 135, 137 psychologizing the curriculum, 234, 250 Psychology, 49, 51, 55, 94, 99, 101, 102, 107, 108, 118, 119, 129, 136, 144, 163, 164, 176, 183, 204, 229, 261, 364, 368 psychology British framework, 108 contemporary, 225, 226 old, 77, 83, 151, 225, 226 textbooks of late 19th century, 132 Psychology and Philosophic Method, 103, 136, 140 Psychology as Philosophic Method, 66 psychophysics, 62, 63 public intellectual, Dewey as, 237, 241, 242, 244, 256, 331, 369, 379 purge of Dewey, China, 303 purposeful activity, 330, 336 Q Quincy system, 319–321 R rational society, 372 red scare thesis, 292 reflex action, 114, 124, 125, 127–129 Reflex Arc Concept , 120, 125, 131, 140, 177

INDEX

reflex researches chronology, 124–126 readings, 131 religious crisis, 9 resurrection of Dewey, China, 304 Roberta, 7 Rockefeller, S.C., 17 role of teachers, 353, 364 Rugg, Harold, 303, 329, 331, 332, 351, 359

S Sabino, 239, 240 school as workplace, 258 schools for civic societies, 259 Schools of Tomorrow, 246, 247, 249, 251, 254, 256, 259, 265, 322, 325–328, 331, 352, 369, 371, 378, 379 science fiction of 19th century, 309 scientific management, 317, 318, 325, 335 scientific prediction, 151 scientism, 77 Second coming of Confucius, 301 self-consciousness, 66, 86 self-directed learning, 326 self-expression, 102, 200–205, 234, 248, 254, 325, 326, 331 selfhood, 117, 229 self-spaced learning, 326 self-study, 19, 23, 42, 43, 52 sensation, 40, 50, 55, 59–63, 65, 66, 78, 83, 101, 102, 112–114, 118, 121–125, 127, 130, 161, 163, 175, 200, 351 social activism, 237, 241, 369

413

social constructionism, 333, 353 social Darwinism, 53, 130, 314 social efficiency, 262, 316, 335, 354, 357 social evolution, 224 social justice, 181, 186, 188, 211, 212, 241, 267, 332, 339 social progress, 216, 220, 241 social reconstructionism, 332 Spencer, Herbert, 11, 15, 19, 26, 42, 49–54, 68, 69, 88, 95, 96, 101, 103, 108, 127, 128, 137, 233, 234, 311, 314, 321, 367, 368, 370 square deal, 315 stimulus – response framework, 111, 115, 120, 123, 265 suggestion, Dewey’s, 147, 150 symbolic logic, 151 Synthetic a priori, 57

T Tao, X.Z., 282–284, 295, 296, 299, 303–306 taxonomy of thinking, Dewey’s affective thought, 145 qualitative thought, 144, 145 reflective thought and educational aim, 148 five phases, 147, 150 six steps of judgment, 147 to guide action, 149 teachers as facilitators, 221, 257 teaching, 20, 21, 23, 27, 32–34, 36, 37, 49, 82, 99, 101, 103, 136, 174, 177, 179, 185, 186, 200, 212–214, 219, 221, 222, 229,

414

INDEX

231, 233, 237–240, 244, 245, 249–251, 257, 259, 262, 263, 279, 280, 288, 316, 319, 320, 324, 326–331, 351, 355–357, 363, 367, 368, 373, 375 technological progress, 312, 313 testing, 147, 150, 151, 268, 372 The Child and The Curriculum, 100, 174, 199, 229, 230, 232, 263, 364, 369 the michigan link, 173 the missing dissertation, 39 The New Psychology, 38, 43, 49, 66, 75, 81, 82, 99–101, 119, 151, 175, 183, 215, 229, 368 The Psychological Standpoint, 83, 84, 99, 101 The Psychology of Kant , 31, 38, 39, 43, 82, 99, 101 the rational mind, 56 the resignation puzzle, 188 The School and Society, 100, 174, 178, 199, 222, 227, 312, 322, 369, 379 thinking research, 100, 104, 143, 149–151, 168 threshold, 57, 62, 63 threshold of consciousness, 58 transcendental idealism, 57 Trotsky Commission, 350, 351

U University of Michigan, 33, 49, 82, 99, 107, 174, 177, 181, 279, 368 University of Vermont, 4, 5, 10–16, 20, 21, 24, 29, 42, 49, 101 unrestrained freedom, 356, 357 urbanization, 222, 312, 313, 316, 325

V value, 10, 42, 80, 85, 92, 93, 102, 121–123, 149, 176, 177, 181, 187, 201, 202, 207, 208, 210–212, 217, 218, 230, 234, 264, 266, 268, 270, 290, 292, 297, 300, 311, 312, 316, 325, 331–333, 339, 358, 363, 365, 379, 380 volition, 55, 64, 78, 83, 110–112, 115, 116, 118, 127, 129, 203, 205, 229, 233, 368 W warranted assentability, 373 whole child, the, 328 wholeness, 42, 85, 87, 105, 129, 233, 234 wide-awakeness, 372 will, 53, 64–66, 83, 101, 102, 106, 108, 110–113, 115, 117, 118, 124, 126, 129, 141, 142, 151, 153, 163, 165, 175, 176, 200, 202–204, 214, 221, 229, 289, 368 Wilsonian idealism, 277, 302 work on education, 378 work-play-study program, 325 Wundt, Wilhelm, 34, 35, 51, 55, 56, 61, 63–66, 68, 70, 78, 81, 96, 97, 108, 122, 130, 132, 137, 138, 141, 206, 368 Y Yezierska, A., 244, 245 Z zeitgeist in psychology, 50, 67, 68, 75, 77 Zhang, B.L., 295, 296