Rediscovering John Dewey

How His Psychology Transforms Our Education

Rex Li

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9789811579400
• eBook ISBN:
  9789811579417
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

This book tries to trace Dewey's intellectual history from his early years to the end, focusing on the themes of psychology and the psychological aspect of education in Dewey's lifelong writing.The author mixed the discussion on Dewey's work with his life storiesand shows readers how his ideas evolved over time. In turn, the book offers a critical review of his ideas in the areas of psychology and education. Lastly, it assesses Dewey's involvement in and impact on education. In short, it provides a comprehensive account of his legacy in psychology and education.

Part IEarly Years

© The Author(s) 2020

R. LiRediscovering John Deweyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7941-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Boyhood and College Years

Rex Li¹

(1)

G.T. College, Tseung Kwan O, Hong Kong

Rex Li

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

Family historyParent-child relationshipReligious crisisCollege yearsChristian faith

End Abstract

In Search of Significant Episodes and Ideas

This is a book on Dewey’s ideas on psychology and education, not a biography. When I write about his boyhood and college years, I will just give a short account and focus on some issues and background that have had significant impact on the making of John Dewey and his ideas. His Christian faith and his adolescent crisis are, in my mind, significant episodes. Of equal importance are the parent–child relationship and the early influences on his ideas, which include Kant, Hegel, evolution theory and Christianity. Readers interested in a comprehensive biography may refer to the further readings section of this chapter.

Family History and Background

As Industrious as a Dewey

In the few hundred years of American history, nearly everyone was an immigrant descendant, save the few surviving natives. So was John Dewey. His ancestors were early settlers from Flanders (present-day northern part of Belgium), who escaped from political and religious persecution and came to the new world in the seventeenth century. They settled in Connecticut and Massachusetts and became farmers, traders and artisans, keeping alive the pioneering spirit. Their Christian faith was that of Protestantism, who built their own congregational churches. John Dewey’s great grandfather Parson was said to have fought the Revolutionary War for American Independence (1776). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Deweys spread across Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland and Vermont. They were known for the proverb “as industrious as a Dewey” (Martin 2002, p: 16).

Father

John Dewey’s father, Archibald Sprague (1811–1891), was a farmer in Vermont who moved from the countryside to Burlington and started a grocery business there. At the time when John Dewey was born, Burlington was transforming from a village of a few thousand people into a small town of 14,000. The second largest lumber depot of the country and a fishing port, it was growing into the commercial and cultural center of the State of Vermont. The people there, Vermonters, mostly early New Englanders or the old Americans, possessed attributes of a regional character: industrious, shrewd, self-reliant, thrifty, without pretense or show, independent in their thinking, puritanical in their conduct, and deeply pious (Dykhuizen 1973: 1).

Though Archibald received little education and stammered in speech, he read Shakespeare and Milton, and enjoyed the play of words, such as the following advertisements he composed; “Hams and cigars, smoked and unsmoked”; cigars as “A good excuse for a bad habit” (Dewey 1939: 5). His pioneering business motto was telling: “Satisfaction (guaranteed or goods) returned” (Martin 2002: 17). A pragmatic and successful businessman who ran the only licensed medical liquor store in town, he later became a director of the American Telephone Company for Northern New England. However, his generosity warranted his care for others more than his own finances. As Deweyan scholars would appreciate, Archibald’s contrast of opposites and pragmatic paradox (licensed liquor in temperance) is not uncommon in John Dewey’s writings.

Mother

In 1855, Archibald Dewey, already aged 44 and well established in business, married Lucina Rich, aged only 24, who came from a middle-class family in Vermont. Lucina’s family was part of the social and intellectual elites living in Burlington. Her grandfather, Charles Rich, was a congressman in Washington; her father, Davis Rich, was a legislator with the Vermont General Assembly. With the University of Vermont founded in 1791 in Burlington, this small town attracted the rich and the educated. The ethos of the Burlington “cultivated society” were: social equality, intelligence, virtue, minimal snobbishness and some good manners (Dykhuizen 1973: 3).

Lucina was a pious Christian, who stressed religious morality through personal introspection and social improvement. She was against all frivolity and “vices”—drinking, playing pool, gambling, playing cards or dancing (Martin 2002: 21). She taught Sunday school and was deeply involved in the Church’s mission work and for helping the poor and the unfortunate. Her life goal was to “make Burlington a temperate and moral city, a safe, clean place for young men, a city of virtuous and happy home.”¹ As we shall see, Lucina’ evangelical pietism had lasting impact on her children.

Siblings and Education at Home

The Deweys had four children: John Archibald, Davis Rich, John and Charles Miner. The first child died of a tragic accident in infancy in January 1859.² John was born in October 1859 as the third child. Jay Martin, Dewey’s twenty-first-century biographer, dug deep in Dewey’s family history to discover that Dewey was seen as a replacement child, to replace the deceased first child. Our philosopher is named John as the first child, but without a middle name “Archibald” taken from the father. A replaced child as the eldest son in the family, Dewey might have felt unspoken family demand, emotional or intellectual, on him, even as a child.

When the father was easy-going and humorous and the mother was tense and demanding, both parents cared for their children’s education and their boyhood was surrounded with books: encyclopedia, novels as well as books from the public library and the nearby University of Vermont library. That the Deweys afforded more reading opportunity for their children than other families of their background was a parenting choice: at that time books were expensive and difficult to access. John and his elder brother Davis became bookworms; they were interested in reading almost everything except their school books! (Dewey 1939: 9).

CHILDHOOD

Replacement Child

That John Dewey was treated as a replacement child was revealed in many occasions. While he was the third child in the family, he went to the same school and in the same grade with the second child, Davis, who was a year older. Thus John was to speed up and accelerate academically. The two brothers were close to each other throughout their lives, and John even advised on Davis’ further studies plan after his college education. When the younger brother, Charles Miner, had difficulty in schoolwork, he communicated with John, who always gave encouragement and support.

Lucina had an intimate and intense relationship with John than the other two children, as evidenced in her frequent lengthy correspondences with John when he was away from home. John was treated as the replaced eldest child: when his father became old and ill, he came to live with John in Ann Arbor before his death in 1891. So did his mother (Martin 2002: 62 and 120). It looks like John Dewey shouldered the family responsibility of the replaced eldest child.

Dewey Goes to School and the Farm

Both John and Davis grew up as happy, healthy and bookish boys. The three children went to public school in the neighborhood. School was boredom; they were younger than other boys and took little interest in games. They had good grades and a demanding mother. According to Jane Dewey, Dewey’s daughter who wrote and edited Dewey’s biography in 1939, John was “as a young boy, particularly bashful in the presence of girls. As he grew older...... this shyness wore off” (Dewey 1939: 9).

In Vermont in the 1870s, life was simple and rural. The children did housework and helped in the farms. They delivered newspapers and tallied lumber. In summer, they went camping, had fishing trips in Lake Champlain or visited their grandfather’s farm. They had direct contact with nature; they learned the skills “to do something, to produce something, in the world” (MW1:7), and they enjoyed the creative, productive, independent life of farming. Not surprisingly, these became the ultimate ideal Deweyan life: creative, productive and independent.

Archibald was quite modest and pragmatic: he wished one of the boys to become a mechanic, but Lucina, whose brother graduated from college, insisted her sons be the first in the Dewey’s family to go to college. Dewey’s own interpretation of the poor state of his elementary education might have affected his theory of education. In Jane Dewey’s words,

The realization that the most important parts of his own education until he entered college were obtained outside the school-room played a large role in his educational work, in which such importance is attached, both in theory and in practice, to occupational activities as the most effective approaches to genuine learning and to personal intellectual discipline. His comments on the stupidity of the ordinary school recitation are undoubtedly due in no small measure to the memory of the occasional pleasant class hours spent with the teachers who wandered a li...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Part I. Early Years
• Part II. Psychology
• Part III. Education
• Part IV. Involvement in Education and Impact
• Back Matter