Work · Pragmatism & US Philosophy
Democracy and Education
School as a site of lived democracy.
Introduction
Dewey’s main work on education appeared in 1916 with the subtitle “An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education”. It draws on his years running the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago, where children learned through shared activities such as cooking and carpentry. Education, Dewey argues, is the continuous reconstruction of experience and has no end beyond further growth; school should not merely prepare for a distant future but be a community in which students learn to think by solving real problems together. A democratic society needs such schools, because it depends on citizens who communicate across the boundaries of class and group. The book became a reference text of progressive education worldwide.
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Connections
Builds on
- Emile, or On Education1762 · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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