EVIDENCE BASED ON PERCEPTIONS CANNOT BE TRUSTED

JOHN DEWEY

"Men have never fully used [their] powers to advance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing."

—John Dewey
Introduction
This essay will explore the life and thought of John Dewey, a distinctively American pragmatist philosopher. Dewey has influenced famous contemporary thinkers such as Richard Rorty and Donald Davidson in the area of philosophy, as well as countless teachers and educational theorists. What makes Dewey uniquely American is his pragmatism. Dewey held that transcendent “truths” were not as important as the collective experience of ordinary human beings. For Dewey, the ultimate test of a theory or idea was whether it “worked” for ordinary people applying the theory or idea.
After examining Dewey’s interesting life, I will attempt to explain both the philosophy of pragmatism and Dewey’s educational philosophy. Both of these philosophies stem from particular assumptions such as the vitality of experience and usefulness, the primacy of collective and community activity over individual reflection, and the belief that humans can progress and improve themselves over time. A brief synopsis of some general objections of Dewey follows, along with some ideas about how Dewey can be used in value debate.

Life and Work

John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, on October 20, 1859, the son of a grocer. Dewey's father owned a general store in the small Vermont community, and Dewey grew up listening to local customers at the store discuss politics and culture. From a very early age, John Dewey witnessed the kind of community participation that would inspire his views on society, politics and education. Burlington possessed paradoxical traits (and in many ways, still does): It was both a local intellectual center and a community of simple farming and trade. If, as some critics have charged, Dewey possessed an unreasonable utopian trust in communities, it may very well have been his youth in Burlington that inspired that trust. At the same time, Dewey would come to reject the small town provincialism of Burlington in favor of the changing and growing national community that characterized the second half of the 19th century.

Dewey stayed in Burlington after graduating from the public schools, and enrolled at the University of Vermont. He graduated in 1879, at the age of twenty, and taught high school for three years. These early teaching experiences no doubt forced Dewey to realize that something was not quite right with the education system in America. Students were herded in and out of classrooms, taught to memorize proofs and facts and histories, and expected to regurgitate them faithfully. There seemed to be different "tracks" for different students, from base "vocational" education to higher forms of learning, and these divisions were often based on students' economic circumstances rather than any useful distinctions. Not surprisingly, Dewey left public school teaching in favor of exploring the alternatives that might be available.

In the fall of 1882, Dewey enrolled in the philosophy graduate program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Two years later, he received his PhD. in philosophy, and received an appointment from the University of Michigan to teach philosophy and psychology. By now, the young scholar had experienced a wide range of educational models, from the naive provincialism of small town public schools to the progressive possibilities of advanced study in philosophy. He was beginning to realize that what separated these extremes was not so much the "natural talent" of students as the philosophical commitments of the instructors and administrators. He would come to understand that if teachers and administrators believed in students, saw students as valuable in and of themselves, rather than seeing them as defects to be corrected or workers to be trained, most students would take advantage of the opportunities afforded them, and grow accordingly.

In 1894, Dewey was appointed professor of philosophy and chair of the department of philosophy, psychology and pedagogy at the University of Chicago. It was at Chicago where Dewey would begin experimenting with his progressive theories of education, and these experiments, along with his prolific and rigorous essays in philosophy and psychology, brought national fame to the young man from Burlington. However, the experiments and the progressive thinking also brought Dewey directly into conflict with University of Chicago President William Rainey Harper, who by all accounts represented exactly the kind of "old school" traditionalism Dewey opposed. In 1904, Dewey left the University of Chicago to become a professor of philosophy at Columbia University in New York City.

John Dewey would stay at Columbia for the next 47 years. His writings and experiments enjoyed free reign and institutional encouragement, and he would produce a body of work nearly unmatched in the history of American philosophy. He wrote essays and books about epistemology, politics, ethics, and education. He influenced teachers and educational theorists all over the world. To them, he offered a notion that was both politically radical and educationally sound: Education must occur through real, genuine experience, engaged to the child by teachers who visibly value the child, and allow the child to participate in his or her own education. (http://inst.augie.edu/~mafjerke/dewey.htm)

Perhaps one of the most significant, and least known, of Dewey's achievements came in 1937 when he chaired the "Dewey Commission," an effort to clear Soviet revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky of Josef Stalin's charges that Trotsky was a counterrevolutionary sabuteur. A collection of anti-Stalinist left activists and anti-capitalist figures asked Dewey to chair the commission because, although Dewey was no socialist, he was viewed by leftists as fair, impartial, and concerned with social justice. Dewey's commission cleared Trotsky of all of Stalin's charges, which did not stop Stalin's agents from assassinating Trotsky in Mexico a short time later (wsws.org/history/1997/may1997/dewey.shtml).

Dewey's role in vindicating Trotsky is important because it shows how his concern for justice and solidarity overrode his differences with the communists. At a gathering of Trotsky's defenders, Dewey and Trotsky shared a laugh when Trotsky reportedly said "If more liberals were like you, I might be a liberal," and Dewey replied "If more socialists were like you, I might be a socialist." This exchange speaks volumes about Dewey's philosophy and politics. He believed that shared experiences were always more important than ideological doctrines. The fact that he could share such honest and sincere humor with one of the most dogmatic ideologues of the 20th century underscores Dewey's commitment to pluralism.

John Dewey died on June 1, 1952. No other 20th century American philosopher has enjoyed a greater impact on the day-to-day workings of the system, and despite this impact, few philosophers are more misunderstood.