ahead of his time as Hawkins states, but of being too naïvely smug about the problems for which he was providing solutions. Hawkins stated that “Dewey was born before his times, but I am not sure when his times will come.” Nonsense—Dewey was a foremost product of his times and, for all of his educational concerns, he can be characterized by a naïveté that could be said to be characteristic of the progressive forces of his times. If he was at all relevant to the happenings around him, it was precisely because he was in touch with his times: he was willing to get involved. Fundamentally, as a philosopher, Dewey was a moral man. If Dewey failed as an educational philosopher, it was not a moral failure per se—not a failure to be involved with educational problems, but his failure was that of harboring a fundamental misconception about the solutions to the educational and social problems with which he was engaged.
Go back to Dewey’s three lectures (published as The School and Society) delivered in April 1899 before parents and others interested in the University Elementary School, and one sees the way Dewey was in touch with his times, was touched by the problems of his times and whose solutions were products of his times. Allow me to quote at some length:
I make no apology for not dwelling at length upon the social changes in question. Those I shall mention are writ so large that he who runs may read. The change that comes first to mind, the one that overshadows and even controls all others, is the industrial one—the application of science resulting in the great inventions that have utilized the forces of nature on a vast and inexpensive scale…. That this revolution should not affect education in other than formal and superficial fashion is inconceivable.
Back of the factory system lies the household and neighborhood systems. Those of us who are here today need go back only one, two, or at most three generations, to find a time when the household was practically the center in which were carried on, or about which were clustered, all the typical forms of industrial occupation…. Not only this, but practically every member of the household had his own share of the work…. It was a matter of immediate and personal concern, even to the point of actual participation.
We cannot overlook the factors of discipline and of character-building involved in this: training in habits of order and of industry, and in the idea of responsibility, of obligation to do something, to produce something, in the world…. But it is useless to bemoan the departure of the good old days of children’s modesty, reverence, and implicit obedience, if we expect merely by bemoaning and by exhortation to bring them back. It is radical conditions which have changed, and only an equally radical change in education suffices. [p. 21, pp 23-24, p. 25]
Dewey then talks about shop-courses, and courses in sewing and weaving. Why such courses? “It keeps them alert and active, instead of passive and receptive; it makes them more useful, more capable, and hence more inclined to be helpful at home; it prepares them to some extent for the practical duties of later life.” (pp. 26-27)
What a delight to walk into a class and see boys as well as girls sewing!—says Dewey. Working with real materials! Through this work “the child can trace and follow the progress of mankind in history, getting an insight also into the materials used and the mechanical principles involved.” (p. 34) Naïveté—with gilded edges.
Almost forty years later, Dewey retained his naïveté and his dogmatic optimism, but by this time his position had become more abstract and generalized, as epitomized by the following statement he made in his Kappa Delta Ki lectures:
I take it that the fundamental unity of the new philosophy [of progressive education] is found in the idea that there is an intimate and necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and education. If this be true, then a positive and constructive development of its own basic idea depends upon having a correct idea of experience. [p. 2