How Dangerous Is John Dewey?

by FREDERIC ERNST

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IN RECENT years our public schools have been criticized so frequently and in so many places that their defenders may be justified in believing that, in part at least, these criticisms are a concerted, planned attack on public education. Though the charges have been frequent, they have not been numerous. One that recurs constantly is that the schools do not teach the fundamental subjects. Another is that their discipline is so lax that they may be blamed for an increase in juvenile delinquency. A third accusation calls our public schools “godless,” It is important to note that these three accusations are traditional. About one hundred years ago the same charges were leveled at the public schools of Massachusetts, which were then being reorganized under the leadership of Horace Mann.

Other charges are recent. They reflect the animosities of current political controversies. The commonest of these are that our public schools teach American history improperly or not at all and that they frequently use textbooks that are subversive in their influence. It would seem that the teachers and administrators of our schools have been more excited about these charges than have the parents. Only in a very few instances have these criticisms brought about radical changes in school procedures, and then only when there were other factors in the local situation that did not involve educational issues. A fresh line of attack was needed if the campaign against the “new education” was to succeed. Accordingly, a new strategy has been planned. It carefully refrains from repeating the stock indictments. Instead, it devotes its attention to John Dewey, whose writings on education have profoundly influenced teachers and administrators the country over. Albert Lynd warns parents in his article in the April Atlantic, “Who Wants Progressive Education?” that they must study Dewey’s basic philosophic beliefs. Only then will they really understand what evil influences are at work in our modern classrooms. The dangerous ideas are then listed: there are no eternal truths; there is no mind or soul in the traditional sense of these words: Dewey advocated pragmatism.

Mr. Lynd challenges the followers of John Dewey to engage in a forthright effort to enlighten the parents of his town and other communities on “the blessings of instrumentalism,” which is another of Dewey’s dangerous theories. It is highly improbable that any of the disciples will accept the challenge. It is certain that no substantial group of parents would care to take a course in instrumentalism. Appropriately enough, since Dewey is the problem, when it comes to evaluating the schools to which their children go, the parents take a pragmatic point of view whether they know it or not. If the children are making satisfactory progress in their studies, if they are happy, and if they are developing some social and ethical standards, the parents are content. The parents will be satisfied if the “new education" works.

Mr. Lynd raises another question, which he states in a way that gives the impression that he has hit upon some sort of conspiracy. He wonders who decided that Dewey’s should be the guiding influence with public school educators when there arc so many different and competing philosophies. As a matter of fact, Dewey, more than any other of our distinguished philosophers, devoted himself to a criticism of the schools as he found them some fifty years ago, and in his numerous educational writings supplied our educators with the pedagogical principles on which to build a new primary and secondary education.

Mr. Lynd admits that there is very little in Dewey’s educational writings about the basic philosophic theories he regards as so dangerous. He does not seem to know that educators for whom Dewey’s philosophic theories are anathema find no difficulty in accepting and using many of Dewey’s ideas on school organization, pedagogical methods, and the reform of the curriculum. In an article on John Dewey published in the September. 1951, issue of the Homiletic and Pastoral Review, the author, Father s’Rourke, after criticizing and rejecting the same philosophic theories of Dewey’s against which Mr. Lynd warns parents, says, “Surely we can admit that Dewey has made many valuable contributions to American Education,” and indicates some of these contributions. He then adds: “It is our policy to make our own the good features of any system. Such is our policy with regard to Dewey’s theories of education.”

Though Dewey exerted a far greater influence on the development of our public schools than did any other writer, his was not the only influence. Dewey himself credited Colonel Francis W. Parker, the principal of the Cook County Normal School in Illinois, with being the father of progressive education. Montessori and other progressives organized experimental schools in Europe. The testing and measurements movement here in America exerted a wide influence; and during the last two decades Freud has had numerous disciples among the leaders in American education.

There is no doubt that among American philosophers Dewey stands first in his influence on educational theory and educational practice. Josiah Royce is not generally associated with any educational movement, nor is George Santayana. William James’s contributions are to be found in one or two of his books, particularly in his Talks to Teachers, which is still useful and interesting to the studious teacher. For Dewey, however, education was a primary concern and he expounded his educational philosophy in numerous books and articles, the first of which appeared more than fifty years ago. The Child and the Curriculum, How We Think, Democracy and Education, Human Nature and Conduct, are read more widely today than they were at the time of their publication and are studied by an ever-growing body of laymen interested in public education as a civic problem.

Education was a primary concern for Dewey because for him philosophy was not just something for the books. Its primary purpose was to guide and inspire people to develop to the utmost their potentialities as individuals and as members of society. He believed that the fullest human development was possible only in a democratic society, and he regarded democracy not merely as a form of government, but as a continually developing Way of living together. He believed further that the possibilities of a democratic environment could not be realized unless the schools were a reflection of that environment and unless their methods were based on the principle that the school is an organized form of democratic living.

This point of view can best be illustrated by quoting briefly something that Dexvey wrote just fifty years ago in criticism of the place of the teacher in the schools of that time. He wrote: “If there is a single public school system in the United States where there is official and constitutional provision made for submitting questions of methods, of discipline, and teaching, and the questions of the curriculum, textbooks, etc., to the discussion and decision of those actually engaged in the work of teaching, that fact has escaped my notice.” It is just a partial measure of Dewey’s profound influence on our schools that the very practices which were totally absent when he first wrote are now standard procedure in our public schools the country over. For him, a school could function adequately in a democracy only if pupils and teachers alike were individuals whose personalities were expanding through associated participation in their daily activities.

Most of Dewey’s fundamental educational principles were so radical that at first they were rejected and in many instances derided. In the course of a few decades they became the accepted guiding principles for our schools. Dewey cleared the ground with his relentless criticism of current practices. He gained adherents by his persuasive exposition of psychological principles and his identification of the objectives of education with those of a developing democratic society. No doubt the social and economic changes that occurred during the period when he advanced his theories led gradually to their acceptance. There was a steady increase in economic security. Hours of labor decreased. The relations of labor and management improved. An increased leisure made possible the play of more humane impulses. It is a proof of Dewey’s greatness as a philosopher that his educational and social theories anticipated and contributed to the gradual development of our democratic way of life.

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So MUCH of what Dewey advocated is now taken for granted that an account of present practices would merely present the commonplace. But it may be useful and interesting to parents of school children to discuss some of the major psychological and social theories advanced by Dexvey and now realized in our classrooms. Furthermore, it may allay the fears of any parents who are disturbed by warnings about Dewey’s vicious philosophic theories.

Basic to his whole scheme of things is the doctrine of interest, first expounded technically in his famous essay, “Interest As Related to Will.” Briefly, the theory is that education must be based on the child’s developing instinctive interests. Those interests are the starting point. The educational environment must in the first place give them play; it must develop them and guide them. Where educational procedures are not based on the child’s interests, what the school succeeds in doing is cultivating “divided attention.” Dewey pointed out that the child’s interests will inevitably find play; and if the school does not give them this opportunity, the school will have to be satisfied with just a slight part of the child’s attention. The best part of him, his real self, will seek expression in daydreaming, if need be, or in a more or less active rebellion against a confining environment.

Since the child’s instinctive interests call for activity, the school must supply the activity that will enlist the child’s entire attention. There must be games, there must be play, and these activities in turn require participation of the child in group action which teaches him to adjust to other children. Hence the importance of the occupations and vocations in the school curriculum. The school garden not only affords an opportunity for healthy exercise and for growing vegetables: depending on the maturity of the pupil, it can be the starting point for a number of closely related subjects. The weather, the fertility of the soil, marketing, social customs, are just a few of the possibilities inherent in this situation. The school shop, the domestic science room, the chemistry and physics laboratories, if not rigidly organized to meet a limited number of specific objectives, can all be used as centers for expanding interests leading to social insights.

Remember that this organization of subject matter was at first denounced as based on “soft pedagogy.” If children are to be merely interested, what becomes of work which they must learn to do? Yet, in spite of the fact that I Jewry’s writings proved irrefutably that interest and work are not mutually exclusive; in spite of the fact that he proved that the most systematic and consecutive work that children and adults do is based either on a direct or mediated interest, the criticisms continued for all too many years. Dewey’s thoughts on the organization of the school curriculum led him to propound the difference between what he called a logical and psychological organization of subject matter, the psychological organization being based on the child’s interests and experiences. The experience is not just passive reception but active experience. The logical organization is for the specialist engaged in adding to a body of knowledge.

Today the intelligent layman visiting a classroom in a good school can easily note the difference between the merely physical aspects of an activity and the wealth of meanings that can be developed on the basis of that activity. The activities become the centers for the assimilation of information. Just contrast information thus obtained with information handed out in paragraphs to be memorized.

Geography and history are subjects that have been transformed by Dewey’s influence. Before Dewey, their chief objective seemed to be to develop competent performers on an “Information Please” program. The pupil who couldn’t rattle off the capitals of every state in the Union and the rivers on which some of these capitals are located was looked down upon by his fellow students as a hopeless laggard. For one student of the old school, all that remains is the startling bit of information that Montpelier is on the Winooski. The names of all the presidents with the dates of their terms was a standard assignment; and writing this patriotic sequence fifty times after school hours was a natural punishment, calculated to discourage disturbing influences in the classroom. Many a pupil ten or twelve years old was introduced to the study of geography with the information that “the earth is an oblate spheroid.” The two studies were separate subjects, interrelated only when such interrelation could hardly be avoided. It is, of course, true that many facts were learned and many of these facts are important even though the learner was probably unaware of their significance. The dictum that history is geography on the march may be only partially true, but it did point the way toward the close integration of these two subjects. Geography and history are concerned with nature and man and, as Dewey pointed out, give “background and outlook and intellectual perspective to what might otherwise be narrow personal actions or mere forms of technical skill.” The change in point of view began when Dewey pointed out that the ultimate significance of mountains and valleys, lakes and streams, is social and when he insisted that though history deals with the past it is the history of the present.

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THINK, children, think.” This futile admonition is now happily relegated to signs that decorate office walls to the annoyance of the clerical and sales force. But not too many decades ago it echoed through most of our classrooms. Inevitably, the response of the pupils only added to the teacher’s discouragement because it usually amounted to nothing more than the pupils’ frowning heavily to prove to the teacher that they were doing their best to comply.

The publication of Dewey’s How We Think not only showed our teachers the utter uselessness of their exhortation but explained just what the thinking process amounts to, when it takes place, and how they can provoke it. Briefly, Dewey made it plain that thinking takes place when the individual is puzzled, when he must make a choice, or when he faces a problem.

Dewey’s analysis of the thinking process served our teachers well in formulating simple, sensible methods of organizing their subject matter. And here again Dewey eliminated from the teacher’s thinking the traditional dualism of method and subject matter. In the older books on pedagogy, method was one thing, a series of steps; subject matter was another. Dewey’s definition that method is the organization of subject matter removed much of the artificial and complicated development lessons that our teachers were compelled to devise, and supplanted them with natural procedures that brought a thoughtful atmosphere into the classrooms of even the younger children. How We Think, a primer on logical theory, has had inestimable influence.

Dewey’s relentless criticism of educational methods current forty or fifty years ago and his insistence on basing education on the child’s instinctive interests and impulses resulted in unfortunate misinterpretations by the advanced thinkers who were competing among themselves in their efforts to get furthest away from the traditional situation. It is, of course, a fact that much of what called itself progressive education was just a travesty of what Dewey intended. It was due to his intervention that the perverters of the progressive movement, at first limited almost entirely to private schools, were set straight as to just what progressive education could and should be. Dewey made plain that while control of child activity by teacher fiat was wasteful and unproductive, this did not mean that there was to be no control. He pointed out that not every experience was educative and that it was the teacher’s function to supply a stimulating environment in which truly educational controls and directions were inherent.

Teachers soon realized that a program based on Dewey’s educational theories made demands on them far in excess of those required by the older program with its characteristic routines and formal drills. Lesson plans could no longer be used from term to term and from year to year. The curriculum was flexible. It changed with circumstances and the charastteristics of the pupils, but it changed under the teacher’s thoughtful guidance and moved in directions carefully selected to bring about consecutive developments in the child’s experiences and habits.

There is an important area of American education in which Dewey’s influence has been systematically resisted. This is the field of vocational education. Yet it is in this very field that Dewey’s fundamental educational principles should find their most fruitful applications. Basic to his whole educational scheme of things is the elimination of the dualisms, practical versus cultural, vocational versus intellectual. In vain did he point out that these dualisms had their origin and perhaps partial justification in social and economic situations that for a long time have been merely a matter of history.

In a culture in which the laborers’ activities were routine and only those with leisure could become educated, the dominant classes looked down on manual work as something degrading and unintellectual. Yet, in this era, when even people who live in limited circumstances are surrounded by the applications of science, we have too many school systems in which the organization of the schools continues the contrast between the academic and the vocational. Yes, at a relatively early age, as early as fourteen or fifteen, students are expected to make a choice. Students are required to select a vocational or an academic course or school. The defenders of this scheme of things will point out with pride that in all these vocational schools and courses the liberal studies are not neglected. The fact remains that the vocational is isolated — totally isolated — from what is liberal and intellectual, with the result that too much of the vocational becomes routine. Even if the differentiation between the two types of schools has some justification in the later high school years when students’ interests have had time to develop, requiring them to choose at fourteen and fifteen when their aptitudes are just beginning to show themselves is educational malpractice. Much remains to be done in this area before Dewey’s principles dominate an educational situation on which they could exert their most beneficent influence.

In these days of international crisis those who attempt to undermine Dewey’s influence on our educational practices are rendering a grave disservice to the national program of mobilizing to the limit the resources of a democratic society. The contrasting ideologies of the forces that now confront each other are known to all. Added insight into this contrast may be derived from the recall of Dewey’s episodic appearance on the Russian revolutionary scene. In the early years of the Communist regime, Lenin invited Dewey to come to Russia to present his educational theories. Under Lenin’s guidance, the Russian educational reformers put into Dffect many of his recommendations. At the very beginning of the Stalin regime, every educational practice that bore the slightest sign of Dewey’s influence was eliminated. Communist fascism would not tolerate a single democratic influence. Propaganda, indoctrination, drill, routine, chorus chanting, became the orthodox methodology, reinforced by the pupil informer, who reported the slightest deviation by the nonconforming teacher.

Let us beware of this when we hear that fascism is more efficient than the democratic process. On Dewey’s educational principles we can base our faith that our schools can develop for any emergency the potentialities of the oncoming generation.