Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
...one of the movement’s greatest champions, John Dewey himself , publicly objected to the practices being designed and promoted in the name of his ideas.... See more
For one, Dewey declined membership in the Progressive Education Association from its outset. (He did accept an honorary presidency after the death of Charles Eliot, but this appears to have been
Do not go stupid into that pumping blood
What the student needed above all was the chance to learn to think for himself. So he ought to pursue the line of investigation that interested him most, just as, conversely, a professor ought to be perfectly free to devote his own efforts however he chose. One term, a course of twenty-one lectures was offered on sharks alone, a favorite topic of t
... See moreDavid McCullough • Brave Companions
One of Dewey’s principal concerns was for the relationship between education and democracy. He made the point that democracy is not just a form of government—it is, rather, ‘a mode of associated living, a conjoint communicated experience’ (1916: 101). A good society was for Dewey an open society where people related on equal terms and all benefited
... See moreGary Thomas • Education: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
This emphasis on criticality is crucial: it’s the nub of Dewey’s philosophy of education. Like Locke in the 17th century, Dewey was stressing the need for the cultivation of critical thinking for the making of a fair, open-minded citizenry—one which is able to think independently to contest bad ideas and question leaders. And it is raised again and
... See moreGary Thomas • Education: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
Learning to think is all about what another 20th-century philosopher, Karl Popper, came later to call ‘conjectures and refutations’. Everyday problem solving, suggested Dewey (and Popper), comprises a process a bit like going into a coconut shy: you put ideas up and you do your best to knock them down again; you shouldn’t just accept the first idea
... See moreGary Thomas • Education: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
At the end of the nineteenth century, John Dewey, the American philosopher and educator, had pioneered the concept of the experimental, or laboratory, school. For most of his career, Dewey had no special interest in China, but in the spring of 1919 he was invited to deliver a series of lectures in Japan. When Dewey was in Tokyo, a delegation of Chi
... See morePeter Hessler • Other Rivers
