Contrary Views of John Dewey

We have had a run of posts from out of 2019 about John Dewey, the philosopher. Long before I got to prison, I knew Dewey was controversial. While finishing off transmitting my prison journal to this blog, I decided I should dip into the critics of John Dewey. 

Here is a sample that should not be taken as anything like comprehensive.

John Dewey on Education: Impact & Theory by Charlotte Nickerson (Simply Psychology, 2024). An overview,

Nonetheless, Dewey’s theory of how students learn aligns with empirical studies that examine the positive impact of interactions with peers and adults on learning (Göncü & Rogoff, 1998).

Researchers have also found a link between heightened engagement and learning outcomes.

This has resulted in the development of educational strategies such as making meaningful connections to students” home lives and encouraging student ownership of their learning (Turner, 2014).

Dewey’s philosophy of education: a critique from the perspective of care theory (Chapter 12) (The Cambridge Companion to Dewey)

...As we examine Dewey's ideas on education, we find much to appreciate. But there seems to be a pervasive lack of attention to relations as they are described in care theory. Dewey has much to say about the individual and the community, but he rarely digs beneath the two to locate what care theorists take to be ontologically basic - the dyadic relation - and his discussion of thinking may be too narrowly confined to scientific thinking....

How John Dewey Destroyed the Souls of Our Children (The Imaginative Conservative)

What really happens when you couple Dewey’s pragmatic and collectivist ideas with the value neutrality that grew out of Mann’s non-sectarianism? The product is a philosophy that sees the student as merely an animal who functions in a kind of stimulus/response/adaptation cycle. Education is tedious because its utilitarian nature subverts development of the ability to see the beauty that underlies much literature, history, and the natural sciences. At the same time, its collective nature devalues them as individuals. Their souls deadened, students see only an ugly world—one which they do not care to understand.  

Progressive education has ultimately failed because its premises are anti-human. Mann’s and Dewey’s ideologies must bear much of the responsibility for the deplorable state of American public education.

The Tragedy of American Education: The Role of John Dewey (The Institute of World Politics)

Some critics believed and still believe that under Dewey’s educational system students would fail to acquire basic academic skills and knowledge. Others were fearful that classroom order and the teacher’s authority would disappear. They probably constituted a minority at the time, but recent events seem to demonstrate that their concerns cannot be ignored. If society rejects or ignores the existence of an objective moral order and throws into the dustbin of history the concept of natural law, relativism takes its place and becomes the ethical norm of conduct in accordance with man’s own personal experience and/or observations. If to these two factors we add the lack of respect and contempt for authority, we have created the formula for chaos and eventually a totalitarianism of the worst kind. Society cannot survive without order and respect for legitimate authority both at the government level and primarily at the family level where children are expected to be taught the difference between right and wrong.9

The family is the centerpiece of a child’s education, and the belief in the need for the paterfamilias cannot and should not be ignored.  He, together with his wife, the mother of his children, have the prime responsibility for the education of their children and should not put this crucial obligation in the hands of the school, whether private or public, much less in those of the State.

Universal education which makes for uniformity has now extended all over the word and, as Dawson reminds us: “behind the smokescreen of blue books and hand-books great forces are at work which have changed the lives and thoughts of men more effectively than the arbitrary power of dictators or the violence of political revolutions.”10 He continues his analysis of universal State run education by warning his readers that “…once the State has accepted full responsibility for the education of the whole youth of the nation, it is obliged to extend its control further and further into new fields: to the physical welfare of its pupils – to their feeding and medical care – to their amusements and the use of their spare time – and finally to their moral welfare and their psychological guidance.”11  This universal education will only serve to create a new Leviathan which embraces the entire field of culture, including all forms of educational institutions not excluding private nursery schools and universities.12 Given the disproportion in wealth between religious and other private institutions and the more powerful modern state, the former ones are prone to face a serious financial and academic (curricula determination) crisis in the near future. 

I find several points in this selection disagreeable. Paterfamilias reeks of patriarchy, even anti-intellectualism. I did not read Dewey as saying the family had no role in education, but that public schools need to be about creating democratic citizens rather than mere economic cogs. I also think the education by one's family is the moral education this writer objects to as missing in Dewey's theories. That we expect public schools to be the sole source of one's moral education has the possibility of trampling on a child's rights to freedom of conscience. Lastly, I find the idea of legitimate authority to be a fetish that becomes authoritarianism, even fascism. Legitimacy is conferred by the citizen, not imposed on them. Free-thinking people know when legitimacy is a cover for control rather than a means for rational organization.

Dewey, John, Critical Reception and Influence (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

sch 4/26/2025

Updated 4/27/2025.

Not exactly a contrarian view of John Dewey, but an item from a person of whom I am no fan: Ralph Nader. Seven Stories Press is publishing Nader's Civic Self-Respect.

This book explains why our educational system must include teaching the essentials of civic responsibility beyond its occupational or technical emphasis, because the emergence of public-mindedness is crucial for understanding the world and shaping civil societies.

"With the deepest concern for the fate of our country and future generations, Ralph Nader presents an indispensable guide to understanding our rights, our responsibilities and the rules of law. In Civic Self-Respect we are given tools to develop our civic personality, turn knowledge into action and prove that the people have the power." —Patti Smith

This, then, seems to follow Dewey from a source I would usually ignroe.

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