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John Dewey ( 1859 - 1952 )
John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont on October 20, 1859. He was raised at a congregationalist church, and attended public schools. He studied latin and greek in highschool, then attending the University of Vermont at fifteen where he began to study philosophy and graduating in 1879 at nineteen. He is one of America's early founders of pragmatism, which, "may be understood as a critique and reconstruction of philosophy within the larger ambit of a Darwinian worldview". -
College Life
Dewey was very active in education, after graduating in 1879 from the University of Vermont, he recieved his doctorate degree in philosophy from John Hopkins University in 1884 and began teaching philosophy and psychology at the University of Michigan. Later in 1894, he joined the faculty of philosophy at the University of Chicago, where he further developed his progressive pedagogy in the university’s laboratory schools. In 1904, he left for Columbia University, writing his most famous work. -
Dewey's Pragmatism
Dewey sought to reconnect philosophy with the general theory of education, a form of social criticism at the most general level, or “criticism of criticisms”. ( Plato Stanford ) Dewey's pragmatism is best known as a view of rejecting the metaphysics and epistemology of modern philosophy, in favor of a naturalistic approach that saw knowledge from an active adaptation of the human organism to its environment, feeling as philosophy had been disconnected from social conditions and values of life. -
Impact on the Philosophy of Science
Dewey saw knowing as something that should be derived from human experience and hands on learning. He argued that inquiry requires active participation. His impact has lead to a majority of schools especially that of elementary changing the fundamental ways in which they learn and teach. John Dewey believed that active doing was in fact a crucial part of childrens learning. In 1896, The Dewey School opened and through trial and error became very sucessful and changed schools everywhere forever. -
Work Cited
Hildebrand, David, "John Dewey", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/dewey/. James S. Gouinlock,"John Dewey",Encyclopædia Britannica,Encyclopædia Britannica, inc.,October 16, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Dewey https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-24-1-c-john-dewey-and-the-reconstruction-of-american-democracy
