Sublime

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

...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.

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

This work is deeply personal, and it invites you to do your own transformative work, because who you are is more important than what you teach.

A number of educators who attended Dewey’s lectures and classes subsequently tried to incorporate his ideas into Chinese schools. One of these figures was Hu Yanli, who eventually became the principal of Chengdu’s most important primary school.

The title of Dewey’s first lecture in China was “Democratic Developments in America.” More than a thousand attended, and soon the American was being hailed as a “second Confucius.”