Term Paper on "John Dewey (1859-1952)"

Term Paper 9 pages (2739 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

John Dewey (1859-1952) is widely regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Although Dewey's contributions lie along several fronts, he is perhaps best known for the significant impact he made on the development of educational thinking. However, it is important to note that John Dewey was first and foremost a philosopher, whose work resulted in the "development of a philosophical framework for social thought that fused social science with psychology and the natural sciences in a modern form of logic and empirical philosophy." (Dykhuizen, cited Taylor, p. xiii) Thus, it is the objective of this paper to describe how Dewey's life and work in philosophy contributed to the field of education.

Early Childhood Influences

John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859, the third of four sons born to Archibald Sprague Dewey and Lucina Artemesia Rich of Burlington, Vermont (Field, 2001). Dewey's childhood years in Vermont played a role in shaping his later thought and theories. for, the Vermonters of those days were educated as much by industrial and agricultural activities, as they were by the local school. This led Dewey to realize that the most important parts of his education, until he entered college, were obtained outside the school-room. Dewey then used this realization to focus, both in theory and practice, on occupational activities as the most effective approach to genuine learning and personal intellectual discipline (Dewey, Harris, & Mccluskey, 1958, p. 178).

Although the Dewey family belonged to the middle class, the young Dewey boys were made aware of the abysmal living conditions of the poor through their mother's philanthropic work among the underprivileged sections of society. The poverty that the young John Dewey witnessed near the industrial areas of Burlington probably affected him deeply, accounting for his lifelong concern over the resolution of social problems and ills. Dewey also benefited through the opportunities he had, as a child, for varied cultural contacts since Burlington's population was a culturally mixed one. Thus, it is generally believed that Dewey's association with boys and girls of cultural and income groups quite different from his own provided liberalizing influences (Dykhuizen, 1973, p. 3), and imbued the young Dewey with a sense of democracy that "became part of the marrow of his bones." (Berube, 2000, p. 35).

It is also speculated that Dewey was somewhat affected by his mother's over zealousness on religious matters. The adolescent Dewey, in particular, found his mother's constant questioning on whether he was "right with Jesus" distasteful (Berube, 2000, p. 34). These early experiences can be correlated to the religious views and philosophy of a more mature Dewey who rejected evangelical Christianity, first for absolute idealism with its emphasis on unity, and later for humanistic naturalism, which stressed on the continuity of man and nature (Dykhuizen, 1973, p. 22).

However, Dewey is also known to have acknowledged the role his mother played in encouraging the Dewey boys to break with family tradition and pursue a college education (Berube, 2000, p. 35). Considering the life-long impact that college education was to prove to have on Dewey, society is fortunate that Lucina Dewey was able to persuade her sons to go to college.

The Impact of College Education on Dewey's Thought and Works

John Dewey was fifteen when he graduated from high school. He entered the University of Vermont in the fall of 1875, where one course in the junior year caught his attention. This was a course in physiology, which was taught from a text of Thomas Huxley (Dewey, Harris, & Mccluskey, 1958, p. 178-179), the famous English evolutionist. The theory of evolution excited Dewey's imagination since it rejected the barrenness of static models of nature and suggested instead, the importance of focusing on the interaction between the human organism and the environment. In fact, Dewey was so strongly influenced by Darwinian theory that he later came to believe that a naturalistic approach should be taken to the theory of knowledge (Field, 2001).

Dewey's years at the University of Vermont also resulted in his close contact, both before and after graduation, with his philosophy professor, H.A.P. Torrey (Fields, 2001). Dewey's decision to pursue a career in philosophy, however, occurred several years after he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Vermont. for, Dewey's first decision was to try his hand as a high school teacher (Dykhuizen, 1973, p. 18).

As a high school teacher, Dewey continued to maintain the interest he had developed in philosophy. His attention was specifically drawn to metaphysical materialism, which led to his writing an article titled the Metaphysical Assumptions of Materialism (Dykhuizen, 1973, p. 22). Dewey sent the article to W.T. Harris, then editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Harris's acceptance of the article is said to be a significant moment in Dewey's life and career since it apparently gave him the encouragement to further pursue his interest in philosophy (Field, 2001). but, ultimately it was Professor Torrey's active encouragement that decided Dewey in favor of philosophy as his life career. With this aim in mind, he enrolled as a graduate student at John Hopkins University (Dykhuizen, 1973, p. 26).

At John Hopkins University, the three men who staffed the philosophy department - Charles Sanders Pierce, George Sylvester Morris, and G. Stanley Hall - played a key role in influencing and shaping Dewey's intellectual formation. It is true that when Dewey was a student, he rejected Pierce's pragmatic approach to issues of philosophy opting instead for the idealism of Hegelianism, in which choice, he was deeply influenced by Morris. However, it is interesting to note that as Dewey developed his own independent thinking, he shed his Hegelianism and arrived at a pragmatic approach to philosophy quite similar to that of Pierce (Dewey, Harris, & Mccluskey, 1958, p. 181-182).

Dewey was also deeply influenced by Stanley Hall's lectures on psychological topics, which emphasized a close relationship between psychology and philosophy that was waiting to be worked out on the basis of the new experimental psychology (Dewey, Harris, & Mccluskey, 1958, p. 185). Thus, the pragmatism of Pierce, Morris's promotion of Hegelianism or the organic model of nature, and Hall's espousing of experimental psychology led to a confluence of viewpoints that propelled Dewey's early thought, besides serving to establish the general tenor of his ideas throughout his philosophical career (Field, 2001). The influence of these seemingly disparate approaches also explains Dewey's attempts to fuse the imperatives of science and nature (Dewey, Harris, & Mccluskey, 1958, p. 177).

Dewey's years at Hopkins produced other fruitful experiences and realizations as well. Chief among these was the discovery that the university did not provide for a philosophical interpretation of subjects such as law, political science, and history (Dykhuizen, 1973, p. 30). Disturbed by the absence of thorough university instruction in philosophy, Dewey opined in a long letter to Harris that universities should play a role in fostering an interest in social problems. The prime areas of need, he felt, were in the fields of ethics and social philosophy, which he labeled as "the philosophy of social relations generally - family, economic, and political." (Dewey, Harris, & Mccluskey, 1958, p. 184) This early concern of Dewey can be said to have laid the foundation for his philosophy of education, which he developed on a continuous basis right through his teaching career with the University of Michigan, Minnesota, Chicago and Columbia (Field, 2001).

Dewey's Contributions to Philosophy and Education

Dewey's views of social philosophy, psychology, logic, and ethics were focally seen as contributions to the solution of the problem of education, as Dewey defined it (Baker, 1995, p. 159). Therefore, it would be appropriate to first discuss some of the more salient points of Dewey's work in these areas before proceeding to any discussion on his philosophy of education.

Theory of Knowledge

Dewey rejected all traditional theories of knowledge, whether rational or empiricist, on the grounds that they drew too stark a contrast between thought and the world of facts. Therefore, Dewey looked for a new model that would accommodate both the methodologies of experimental science and a naturalistic approach to the theory of knowledge (Field, 2001). For Dewey, the imperative for a new model stemmed from a philosophical view that was centered in education as "the supreme human interest in which, moreover, other problems, cosmological, moral, logical came to a head." Besides this imperative, Dewey's interest in experimental science caused him to reject the prevalent dualism in logical standpoint and method between something called "science" on the one hand and something called "morals" on the other (Dewey, Harris, & Mccluskey, 1958, p. 188)

As observed earlier, Dewey was also heavily influenced by Darwin's theory of natural selection. This influence led Dewey to search for a more productive, naturalistic approach to knowledge. Dewey ultimately found his answers in George H. Mead's work on the bearing of biological theories on scientific psychology (Dewey, Harris, & Mccluskey, 1958, p. 190). Thus, Dewey came to believe that the theory of knowledge must begin with… READ MORE

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