e 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. 20]
Education [is] of, by, and for experience. No one of these words, of, by, and for, names anything which is self-evident. Each of them is a challenge to discover and put into operation a principle of order and organization which follows from understanding what educative experience signifies. [p. 29—Experience and Education, 1938]
But “educative experience” is something which we, as citizens, philosophers, educators, psychologists, sociologists, policemen, and politicians, are trying to learn something about. In terms of this endeavor, re-reading Dewey (as per Hawkins’s request), might accomplish three things:
- Direct us to become morally and professionally involved in problems of education. But it is highly unlikely that we need a moral imperative from Dewey to persuade us to engage in educational problems if we were not already so inclined.
- Provide us with insights concerning child development and growth instincts. But with the amount of substantial work that has been done in developmental psychology, there is no excuse for anyone to rely on Dewey’s sparse insights concerning child development.
- Provide us with a method for grappling with educational problems. But Dewey’s method was one derived from industrial problems as applied to social problems, a dubious method operating today in behavioristic psychology and which, like Dewey, promises much and provides little of sustained worth. (Cf. Noam Chomsky’s well-known review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior for a devastating analysis of behavioristic method; this review is reprinted in Readings in the Psychology of Language, edited by Jakobovits and Miron. In relation to Skinner himself, Dewey and Arthur Bentley showed a real appreciation for Skinner’s “devastating criticism” of “definition in operational analysis.” Cf. John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley; A Philosophical Correspondence. 1932-1951. p. 490, p. 565.)
Dewey, as we all know, was hung up on method. Indeed, as R. B. Perry wrote (in The Thought and Character of William James), “Dewey’s preoccupation 