Dr. Dewey was an American philosopher and educator, whose writings and teachings had a profound influence on education in the United States. Dewey’s philosophy of education (pragmatism) focused on learning-by-doing rather than rote learning and dogmatic instruction, the current practice of his day. Dewey stated in response to critics “ Cease conceiving of education as mere preparation for later life, and make of it the full meaning of the present life.” In a tribute to Dr. Dewey, somebody said: “ He is chiefly responsible for our thinking of intelligence as primarily instrumental. His philosophy has common sense, acceptability and a social bearing which distinguishes it in degree from all other philosophies.”

 

His most popular works on education

• The Pedagogic Creed (1897)

• The School and Society (1900)

• Democracy and Education: In introduction to the Philosophy of Education (1916)

• Experience and Education (1938)

 

Mr. Dewey initialed the progressive laboratory school at the University of Chicago, where his reforms in methods of education could be put into practice. He believed that human thought is understood as practical problem solving, which proceeds by testing rival hypothesis against experience in order to achieve the warranted assert ability that grounds coherent action. He felt that nothing is ever finally and absolutely true, but rather the process is always open to scientific inquiry.

 

Mr. Dewey was a passionate believer in democracy. He felt that democracy could not waste time on recondite speculations that have nothing to do with life. As an avowed anti-Communist, Dr. Dewey tried to balance the power of the state with the liberty of the individual. He felt that what was needed was an authority capable of directing and utilizing changes for a kind of individual freedom unlike that which the unconstrained economic liberty had produced and justified. He felt that our democracy depended upon the mass of people needed to be educated to understand the social realities of their own time.” Dr. Dewey was an early and vocal opponent of fascism both in Germany and Japan. He recognized their warlike aspirations as early as 1933.

 

To the end of his life, Dr. Dewey lent his name to the causes for which he believed. At the end of his life he sponsored a festival of Western music, art, and literature in Paris dedicated to the victims of Nazi, Soviet and Franco Spanish tyrannies.