In 1991, writing in the Wall Street Journal, Robert Cwiklik declared in a headline: “Dewey Wins!: If the ‘New’ Teaching Methods Pushed by High-Tech Gurus Sound Familiar, It Isn’t Surprising.” The title of his article was a reference to the famous headline in the Chicago Daily Tribune, which incorrectly announced on November 3, 1948, “Dewey Defeats Truman,” the day after Harry S. Truman won the election for president in an upset victory over Thomas E. Dewey. Though intended to be playful, Cwiklik’s play on words is intended as an announcement of some similar historical significance. That is, the widespread adoption of John Dewey’s philosophy, whose ideas on education appear to have been years ahead of their time.
According to Chafy (1997), Dewey was the last important thinker in a line of reformers that stretched back to the Enlightenment (p. 14). What resulted from the influence of Enlightenment thinkers and their heirs like Dewey, was the transformation from a religious-based education that sought to advance one’s spiritual well-being, to the mission of making use of compulsory education to not only meet the needs of industry, but to shape young minds into becoming aligned to the democratic ideals espoused by Dewey (Chafy, 1997, p. 13). American historian Page Smith has characterized the transformation from religious tradition to a “Secular Democratic Consciousness,” embodying the values of the Enlightenment and which she described as “faith in limitless progress through reason and science” and “the natural goodness of man once he was free from superstition/religion” (as cited in Chafy, 1997, p. 12).
John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859, in Burlington, Vermont. While at the University of Vermont, Dewey was exposed to evolutionary theory through the teaching of G.H. Perkins and Lessons in Elementary Physiology, by T.H. Huxley, the famous English evolutionist known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his ardent support of the theory (Field, 2018, n.p.; Desmond 2018, n.p.). In his early philosophical career, Dewey was a committed Hegelian idealist (Field, 2018, n.p.). In 1894, Dewey went to the recently founded University of Chicago where his interest in Hegel gave way to what would become a life-long devotion to pragmatism (Field, 2018, n.p.). The American school of pragmatism, which is attributed to William James and Charles Sanders—both members of the Metaphysical Club—as well as Dewey, rejected the dualistic epistemology and metaphysics of traditional philosophy, in favour of a view of knowledge as shaped by subjective perception, rather than a mirrored understanding of the objects being perceived (Pierce, 1878, pp. 283–4).
Dewey’s unfailing faith in progress fundamentally shaped his notions of the purpose of education. In an article he wrote titled “Progress,” for the International Journal of Ethics (1916), Dewey shared his observations about how faith in progress could be rehabilitated, given the pessimism that resulted from the catastrophe of World War I. Dewey (1916) reveals that up until that time, given the globalization of commerce and the interdependence among nations created by financial industry, that war should have been impossible (p. 313). Even science itself should have rendered war obsolete, but instead magnified the military power at its disposal (Dewey, 1916, p. 313). The fault, Dewey (1916) observed, was that, “We confused rapidity of change with advance, and we took certain gains in our own comfort and ease as signs that cosmic forces were working inevitably to improve the whole state of human affairs” (p. 312).
Dewey (1916) wanted to correct the ensuing pessimism by clarifying that it was not progress itself that should be doubted, but the understanding of how it unfolds. According to Dewey (1916), as scientific progress takes place, it is humanity that is ultimately responsible for the quality of its outcomes (p. 318). The conservative, according to Dewey, is the one who does not believe in the perfectibility of man or society. It is the progressive who calls for scientific study to be devoted to elucidating those conditions which will contribute to the improvement of social structures (Dewey, 1916, p. 318).
It was Dewey’s concern that education should go beyond immediate needs and develop citizens that would contribute to a democratic ideal. Dewey wrote in his 1900 essay “Schooling as a Form of Community Life” that a school should be organized as a “miniature community, an embryonic society” (as cited in Anton, 1965, p. 14). In The Public and Its Problems, particularly in an essay titled “The Search for the Great Community,” we find the source of Dewey’s ideal Platonic liberalism (Anton, 1965, p. 490). However, as has been demonstrated by Anton (1965), Dewey’s opinions with regards to classical philosophy were often shaped by misinterpretations or distortions to suit his polemics (p. 477). Thus, for Dewey, reflecting the language he adopted in his essay “Progress” (1996) “Plato is revolutionary,” more akin to Dewey’s own ideals, while Aristotle was “conserving” (as cited in Anton, 1965, p. 488).
As shown by Chafy (1997), Dewey’s interpretation of progress and democracy was a legacy of the Enlightenment, and in the tradition of Condorcet, Thomas Jefferson, and Horace Mann (p. 14). In 1793, Condorcet wrote, “Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind,” in which he argued that humanity must progress from irrationality to rationality, or from superstition to reason (as cited in Chafy, 1997, p. 8). Progress, to Condorcet, consists of ten stages, where the final stages culminates in liberty, equality, democracy and universal education for all. Thomas Jefferson, a former ambassador to France, influenced by Enlightenment thought, advocated for a state-sponsored free and universal educational system. In 1847, Horace Mann advanced on Condorcet to argue that education was the “absolute right of every human being that comes into the world” (as cited in Chafy, 1997, p. 12). Drawing on these traditions, Dewey “argued that schools should strive to emphasize moral goals based upon democratic civic and social experience, vocational and practical usefulness, and individual development in light of the rapid modernizing changes that were taking place in Western civilization” (as cited in Chafy, 1997, p. 14).
Based as well on his philosophy of pragmatism and his rejection of the dualistic epistemology, Dewey’s recommendations for the reform of education involved creating learning environments that were more holistic, less focused on teaching immediate skills necessary for employment, but rather cultivating the individual. Instead of a didactic approach, where the teacher imparted knowledge that a student was required to merely absorb, Dewey wanted to establish environments where students were enabled to construct their own meaning. Thus Dewey helped inspire the modern style of project-oriented teaching, sometimes called “child-centered,” “progressive” or “constructivist” pedagogy. The now popular dictum is that rather than “sage on the stage” a teacher should be a “guide on the side” (Cwiklik, 1997, n.p.).
However, Dewey’s program wasn’t widely adopted until recently, when the advent of computer technologies afforded possibilities to finally achieve the types of instruction he envisioned (Cwiklik, 1997, n.p.). “Progressive education ideas that didn’t work particularly well prior to the technology may prove very effective in an educational environment well-equipped with good technological resources,” explained Robert McClintock, co-director of the Institute for Learning Technologies at Columbia University’s Teachers College, New York (as cited in Cwiklik, 1997, n.p.). A 1997 report prepared for the Clinton administration, titled “Report to the President on the Use of Technology,” stated that though much research was still required, “the student-centered constructivist paradigm may ultimately offer the most fertile ground for the application of technology to education” (P.C.A.S.T., p. 15). Jacob Kandathil, director of marketing for Apple Computer Inc., which sells instructional materials to help teachers, noted that, “We’re seeing that technology makes constructivism more possible” (Cwiklik, 1997, n.p.).
With the advent of the new technology, a number of researchers had come to propose that computers and the Web afforded new interactive and collaborative learning models that were improvements upon the inadequate models of old that Dewey opposed (Bruce, 1998, p. 223). “But computers,” noted Cwiklik (1997), “provide words and pictures on a screen — abstractions, not experience” (n.p.). This is precisely the point also addressed by Bruce (1998). Connecting students to subjects for learning is a layer of abstraction. By analogy, Dewey did not refer to books as educational tools (Bruce, 1998, p. 223). For example, he explained, “the map is not a substitute for personal experience. The map does not take the place of the actual journey” (as cited in Bruce, 1998, p. 223). For Dewey, personal experience is more important than subject matter (Bruce, 1998, p. 223). Therefore, according to Bruce (1998), reflecting on what Dewey would ask about the use of technology should help us consider in what ways the experience is computer a substitute for other modes of learning? And, does it provide new avenues for experience? (p. 223).
Clearly, Dewey was a man ahead of his time. Yet, his vision was shaped by an inheritance from the Enlightenment, whose influence extended well past Dewey. That was a tradition which, through a rejection of religious tradition, replaced spiritual ideals with “democracy.” The reduced purpose meant that teaching then appeared to serve only the mundane, and immediate commercial purposes. Dewey recognized the shortfall, which he sought to fill by expanding on this limited approach to instruction, by cultivating the individual through culture, science and art. And that very much characterizes the ideals that continue to inspire instruction in our time. In particular, the same Enlightenment expectations about the virtues of scientific progress continue to fuel expectations about how technology can contribute to that mission.
References
Anton, J. P. (1965). John Dewey and Ancient Philosophies. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 25(4), 477–499.
Bruce, B. (1998). Dewey and Technology. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 42(3), 222–226.
Chafy, R. (1997). Articles Exploring the Intellectual Foundation of Technology Education: From Condorcet to Dewey. Journal of Technology Education, 9(1), 6–19.
Cwiklik, R. (1997, November 17). Dewey Wins! Wall Street Journal.
Desmond, Adrian J., (2018, September 14). Thomas Henry Huxley. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc.
Dewey, J. (1916). Progress. International Journal of Ethics, 26(3), 311–322.
Field, R. (2018). John Dewey (1859—1952). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (pp. 1–21).
P.C.A.S.T. (1997). Report to the President on the Use of Technology.
Peirce, C. S. (1878). How to Make Our Ideas Clear. Popular Science Monthly, v(12), 286–302.