Picturing progressive texts: images of ‘democratic schooling’ in the work of John and Evelyn Dewey and contemporaries

Visual images played an increasing role in professional discourse and in popular and political debate about progressive education over a century or more. In the early 1900s photography was adopted by some progressive texts to convey new ideas illustrated by practice. This paper highlights an iconic example: John and Evelyn Dewey’s celebrated Schools of To-Morrow (1915), with reference to a small selection of its photographic illustrations. Consideration is given to how images were constructed, their status as historical evidence and issues of interpretation. Comparison is made with other illustrated works, preceding and following Schools of To-Morrow, by advocates of child- or student-centred pedagogies. The article urges critical reflection on visual representation in arguments for and against progressivism in more recent times. Insights drawn from earlier examples should be borne in mind by historians seeking to evaluate the role of pictorial sources in discourses of pedagogical reform.     

John Dewey as administrator: the inglorious end of the Laboratory School in Chicago

The Laboratory School of the University of Chicago founded by John Dewey in 1896 is considered as one of the most innovative schools of progressive education. Its history, and specifically its sudden end, is still of general interest. In sympathy with Dewey, most historians tend to put the main blame for the tragedy on University President William R. Harper who—by refusing financial and organizational support—seemingly harassed Dewey out of office. A new look at archival sources reveals a different picture. The main point of contention was not bureaucratic matters between Dewey and Harper but irreconcilable differences between Dewey’s wife Alice and the faculty of the school who complained bitterly about her social and administrative incompetence as principal pushing the school on to the brink of disaster. Because of the extreme pressure exerted by trustees, colleagues and faculties, Harper could not help but ask Alice Dewey for her resignation. Given his own inability to manage business affairs, Dewey quit his job, too, in April 1904. Without his wife as principal, he saw no chance of realizing his educational ideas and left Chicago with a sigh of relief, freeing him forever from the unloved burden of administrative duties.     

美国近二十年杜威教育思想研究新进展

注重基本文献的收集、整理和编纂是美国学者从事杜威研究的传统特色。近二十年,美国杜威研究界在基本文献的整理和杜威教育思想的深入研究两方面均取得了重要进展,出版了四卷《杜威书信集》光盘,以及《杜威与美国民主》《杜威:宗教信仰与民主人本主义》和《杜威与爱欲:教育艺术中的智慧和欲望》等一批优秀的研究著作。近二十年美国学术界对杜威教育思想研究的重点有以下几个方面:民主教育思想、实用主义教育思想的现代性内涵、杜威的美学理论与教育思想的关系、杜威的宗教理论与教育思想的关系等。近二十年美国的研究成果对杜威教育思想以正面评价为主。这些新进展反映了20世纪80年代以来国际政治意识形态对立趋缓后,人类面对高度现代性社会的共同挑战,开始公正地、全面地研究杜威教育思想的世界性趋势。     

Educating for the real world: an illustration of John Dewey’s principles of continuity and interaction

The principles of interaction and continuity (intersection between experience and education) form a major part of John Dewey’s philosophical discourse. According to Dewey, these principles determine the quality of educative experience for meaningful life‐long learning. In this article, I argue that nowhere is the relationship between experience and education better illustrated than in Carter G. Woodson’s work, The mis‐education of the Negro, and in Malcolm X’s intrinsic life experiences.     

社会民主进程中的学校重建——杜威教育思想中的一个核心主题

社会民主与学校重建的关系是杜威教育思想中的一个核心主题。工业革命以及随之引起的在科技、交通、政治、经济、文化等社会诸领域的全面变革,对美国民主构成了严峻挑战。从哲学高度,深入反思学校如何重建和变革,以在美国社会的民主进程中扮演更为积极、有为的角色,成为一个重大而紧迫的时代课题。杜威从教育的角度,重构了民主概念,主张学校应超越旧个人主义的狭隘性,通过主动作业培养未来公民的民主意识和社会精神。20世纪20年代前后,杜威的教育思想发生转向,对制度化教育在社会民主进程中的功能的有限性的认识更为清晰,但终其一生,杜威都未曾放弃对学校重建问题的关心。杜威有关民主和学校重建关系问题的思想十分深刻,超越了杰斐逊和贺拉斯·曼等前人,影响了克伯屈和拉格等社会改造主义教育家。在美国教育史中,杜威是一位继往开来的大师。     

Democracy exported,history expunged: John Dewey’s trip to Turkey and the challenge of building ‘civilised’ nations for democratic life

In 1924, John Dewey travelled to Turkey to make recommendations on the Turkish educational system. According to many existing accounts, Dewey brought a sorely needed progressive educational perspective to a nation emerging from centuries of despair. On the whole, these accounts dismiss the Ottoman legacy and overlook how Dewey’s historical thinking coloured his view of Turkish democracy. This article draws on these considerations to offer a critical re-reading of Dewey’s trip, arguing that the visit, rather than supporting the expansion of a bottom-up democratic perspective in the Turkish educational system, actually helped advance top-down Turkish nation-building. In so doing, it explores the connections between history and democracy in Dewey’s thinking, reclaims the significance of the Ottoman legacy, examines the role of education in radically remaking the Turkish public, and points to the need for studying places and times where schooling is used to expunge history in the name of exporting democracy.     

基于地理和历史的杜威环境教育论

美国著名实用主义哲学家、教育家杜威并没有在他的有生之年明确地提出过环境教育的口号和理念,但是在他的教育著作中我们很容易发现与环境教育密切相关的思想。尤其在《地理和历史的重要意义》一文中,杜威深刻地阐释了地理和历史学科对于学生成长的重大意义,集中论述了自然环境和社会环境对学生了解世界、体验世界所发挥的重要作用。这样的理论对于环境教育来说是具有前瞻性的。研究杜威关于环境教育的思想有助于促进对杜威教育思想的深层探究,这对中国的环境教育发展具有理论指导意义。     

Progressive education and the case of a bilingual Palestinian-Arab and Jewish co-existence school in Israel

The purpose of this paper is to exemplify a ‘grass-roots’ change based on Dewey's experimental progressive education model employed in the ‘Bridge over the Valley’ bilingual school, a Palestinian-Arab and Jewish school in Israel. In order to identify the progressive ‘approach' underlying this change, the ‘method' that guided the implementation of a bilingual school, it's evaluation and then its dissemination to other schools, we used a qualitative case study method to understand whether John Dewey’s theory of education for peace was able to effect change in Palestinian-Arab and Jewish school education in Israel. The case findings describes the use of the progressive approach of education for peace in the ‘Bridge over the Valley’ bilingual school, as it is expressed in the school’s pedagogy, the implementation of the progressive method and in the accompanying discourse. Reciprocal teacher–child relations are considered an important factor to create fertile conditions for learning. The case findings contribute to our introduction of democratic education in a spatial reality. Underlying this approach stood a pedagogical method and conceptualization for conflict resolution and the opening of a space for empowering dialog for co-existence.     

Reconstructing Dewey: Habit,Embodiment and Health and Well-Being

This critical paper utilises selective education writings by John Dewey as the basis for considering how a strengths-based and personalised view of habit and embodiment could effectively thrive as part of an enhanced health and well-being focus in schools. The paper centres on Dewey’s belief that habits when allied to continuity and interaction could help children to integrate experiences in ways which enable them to constructively evaluate the contribution of health and well-being to their education. The paper concludes by reviewing how the connections between habit, embodiment and health and well-being could be pedagogically strengthened.     

杜威职业教育思想及对我国高职教育发展的启示

杜威对职业和职业教育内涵的阐释有其独到的见解,其职业教育思想表现出鲜明的现代性特征,分析研究杜威的职业教育思想,能够为快速发展中的我国高职教育提供许多有益的启示。     

科学教育与人文教育的争衡

科学教育与人文教育的矛盾是近代以来我国教育的一对基本矛盾.杜威的实用主义教育思想与赫钦斯的永恒主义教育思想,对于科学教育与人文教育有不同的侧重,他们分别从经验主义与理性主义的视角,系统而深入地探讨了科学教育与人文教育的统一与融通.实用主义与永恒主义教育思想具有互补性,需要在立足传统的基础上借鉴二者,从而真正促进科学教育与人文教育的统一与融通.     

Open‐mindedness and the University Curriculum

This paper discusses the conditions for selecting and structuring media education in the Swedish comprehensive school, with citizenship education at the core. With reference to John Dewey and Walter Lippmann, different conceptions of the nature of the public are elaborated, which also have inherent in them the tension between a modern and a postmodern interpretation of communication. These conceptions, called ‘communication discourses’, affect the selection and structuring of the content of media literacy when interpreted on the basis of curricula, syllabuses and teaching materials. In the paper communication discourses are also considered from a more overarching angle of socialization ‐ how education and media affect the individual's conceptions of his/her own and other individuals’ relationship to society. The question put here is to what degree differing (social) subjects ‐ identities defined on the basis of social class, gender, race and so on ‐ are found in the texts of the institutions: how are subjects presented and represented?

If one wishes to realize the distance which may lie between ‘facts’ and the meaning of facts, let one go to the field of social discussions.

(John Dewey, 1991: 3)

     

论培智学校教学生活化

教育与生活的关系一直是教育理论和实践的焦点。由于智力障碍儿童自身的发展特点以及特殊教育需要,在培智教育中,历来非常重视教育与智力障碍儿童的生活之间的紧密联系。2007年颁布的《培智学校义务教育课程设置实验方案》,已经从课程设置的角度确立了生活在培智学校课程中的地位。但教育与生活联系的关键环节,还在于教学。探讨教学生活化的内涵、理论依据以及具体表现形式,可以为培智学校教学生活化的实践探明方向,也有助于分析教学生活化的实践中容易出现的困难与问题。     

Willystine Goodsell (1870–1962) and John Dewey (1859–1952): history,philosophy and women’s education

This article explores the work of history and philosophy in publications by Willystine Goodsell, professor of history and philosophy at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the entanglement of Goodsell’s approach to scholarship with that of her doctoral supervisor John Dewey. The article experiments with diffractive reading to examine Dewey’s and Goodsell’s approach to history, as well as Goodsell’s configuration of women’s historical and contemporary participation in education. It looks at Dewey’s comment that women’s ‘philosophising’ would not be the same ‘in viewpoint or tenor’ as that composed from the ‘different masculine experience of things’ and investigates the principles that order liberal and vocational education in Goodsell’s view of a reformed education for women. The conclusion asks whether diffractive reading is an enhanced form of intertextuality.     

A Century of John and Evelyn Dewey's Schools of To-morrow: Rousseau,Recorded Knowledge,and Race in the Philosopher's Most Problematic Text

A century ago, John Dewey and his daughter Evelyn published Schools of To-morrow to nearly universal acclaim. However, over the course of the 20th century, critics of Dewey have drawn upon Schools of To-morrow to accuse him of being an uncritical disciple of French philosopher, Jean Rousseau, of being opposed to the transmission of content to students, and most recently of endorsing a curriculum that patronized Black students. As a result, the text has become John Dewey's most controversial and problematic. In this historical study, we seek to place Schools of To-morrow in its historical, intellectual, and social context. The first part of the study traces the writing and publication of the text, as well as its changing reception over the past century. The second part of the study directly responds to the three criticisms previously cited: that Dewey was a disciple of Rousseau, that Dewey was opposed to the transmission of content knowledge, and that Dewey endorsed the racially segregated school system of Indianapolis depicted in the text. Drawing upon Dewey's other writings, his course syllabi, his personal correspondence, and lecture notes, we argue that the first two accusations are unfounded, but the third is partially accurate, although incomplete. We conclude that Schools of To-morrow is an undervalued text in the Dewey cannon that warrants closer study.     

Scapegoat: John Dewey and the character education crisis

Many conservatives, including some conservative scholars, blame the ideas and influence of John Dewey for what has frequently been called a crisis of character, a catastrophic decline in moral behavior in the schools and society of North America. Dewey’s critics claim that he is responsible for the undermining of the kinds of instruction that could lead to the development of character and the strengthening of the will, and that his educational philosophy and example exert a ubiquitous and disastrous influence on students’ conceptions of moral behavior. This article sets forth the views of some of these critics and juxtaposes them with what Dewey actually believed and wrote regarding character education. The juxtaposition demonstrates that Dewey neither called for nor exemplified the kinds of character-eroding pedagogy his critics accuse him of championing; in addition, this paper highlights the ways in which Dewey argued consistently and convincingly that the pedagogical approaches advocated by his critics are the real culprits in the decline of character and moral education.     

大学通识教育的科学取向与人文取向——杜威与赫钦斯之争综论

杜威与赫钦斯关于大学通识教育之争始于二人有关通识教育理念问题的论争,在当时政治、经济、文化等因素的共同作用下演变为双方的持久论争。从1936年至1945年前后,这场论争经历了三个阶段,涉及通识教育目标、科学与职业教育范式和名著教育价值等重大问题。杜威等人批评赫钦斯迷信“永恒真理”和古典权威,轻视经验科学与社会需要,更有否定民主之嫌;赫钦斯等人则回应这是对其观点的误解,竭力阐明名著教育的理智价值、道德意义及其与民主的关联。论争双方都在一定程度上误解了对方的观点,他们的分歧主要在于通识教育的价值取向而非根本目的,其论争在很大程度上形塑了20世纪30年代以后美国大学通识教育的基本框架,并推动人文学科获得了与科学同等重要的地位。     

通达民主生长之个性发展——杜威关于儿童个体发展的教育思想解析

个体发展论思想始终贯穿在杜威教育理论建构与实践探究历程中.杜威教育思想中的儿童个体发展论是建立在其过程性与辩证性的“经验人”人性假设之上,与此相应,杜威认为儿童个体是作为整体而存在,且儿童个体发展是经验改造中个性之自由生长过程.这种个人发展论影响了杜威对儿童个体、教育与社会关系的看法,他认为在一定社会中,通过教育通达儿童个性生长之旨趣在于民主发展.     

John Dewey’s conception of education: Finding common ground with R. S. Peters and Paulo Freire

John Dewey adopted a child-centered point of view to illuminate aspects of education he believed teacher-centered educators were neglecting, but he did so self-consciously and self-critically, because he also believed that ‘a new order of conceptions leading to new modes of practice’ was needed. Dewey introduced his new conceptions in The Child and the Curriculum and later and more fully in Democracy and Education. Teachers at his Laboratory School in Chicago developed the new modes of practice (1896–1903). In this article, I explore Dewey’s new conception of education and compare it with the apparently opposed views of R. S. Peters and Paulo Freire. In doing so, I show that, despite their criticisms of Dewey, whether explicit (Peters) or implicit (Freire), these influential philosophers, representing quite different traditions in philosophy of education were in substantial agreement with him. I also show that, despite our own differences, as important as they are, seeing teachers and learners at work in a rapidly changing society, now on a global scale, in classrooms which are also changing, driven largely by new technologies, the conception of education Dewey, Peters, and Freire developed can provide us with the foundation we need to understand the changing teacher–learner relationship and the purposes their shared activities serve.     

Moral deliberation and environmental awareness: reviewing Deweyan-informed possibilities for contemporary outdoor learning

The recent surge in interest in progressive education ideas has often been accompanied by an increased advocacy for learning outdoors, with experiential and holistic learning approaches considered the most beneficial method for cultivating personal and social development and raising awareness of contemporary environmental concerns. However, theoretical and practical unease exists about how increased opportunities to learn outdoors can help young people to reflect on their experiences and make sound decisions. The paper reviews the contribution of John Dewey to debates about experiential education and the development of moral deliberation; as for Dewey there are strong connections between cognition, character and actions. This leads, in conclusion, to analysis of outdoor learning prospects and the extent to which these can benefit personal responsibility and social interaction, and provides learners with the capacity to make dependable voluntary decisions that display stable states of character.