Dewey

john dewey

John Dewey (October 20, 1859 - June 1, 1952) is a famous American philosopher, educator and psychologist. He is also one of the founders of functionalist psychology and modern pedagogy. If Peirce founded the pragmatism method and William James established the pragmatism view of truth, Dewey built the pragmatism theory building. Many of his works involve science, art, religious ethics, politics, education, sociology, history and economics, making pragmatism a unique cultural phenomenon in the United States.

In his academic career, John Dewey has taught for a long time at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and Columbia University, and retired from Columbia University. Dewey respected democratic system all his life and emphasized the complementarity of science and democracy. Democratic thought is the theme of many of his works. At the same time, he is also regarded as one of the greatest educational reformers in the 20th century. While teaching at the University of Chicago, he also founded the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools as the experimental base of his educational theory, and his wife served as the president of the school.

Dewey's thoughts had a great influence on Chinese educational and ideological circles in the early 20th century. He also visited China, witnessed the May 4th movement, met with Sun Yat Sen, and cultivated a number of masters and scholars of Chinese culture, including Hu Shi, Feng Youlan, Tao Xingzhi, Guo Bingwen, Zhang Boling, Jiang Menglin, etc. Dewey is one of the most famous American scholars in the first half of the 20th century. In December 2006, Atlantic Monthly, a well-known American magazine, rated Dewey as the 40th "100 people who influenced America".

Life of the characters

Early life

John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859, which was also the year when Charles Darwin (1809-1882), the British advocator of evolution, published his "origin of species". Dewey was born in a middle class grocer. His hometown is Burlington, Vermont, New England. This place has always been accustomed to autonomy, advocating freedom, and believing in democracy, which can be said to be the traditional spirit of the New England colony.

Dewey was a little shy when he was a child. He was not a very smart child, but he liked reading books very much. After graduating from high school, he went to the local university of Vermont. In college, Dewey took Greek, Latin, analytic geometry and calculus. In his junior year, he began to take courses in natural science. In his senior year, he came into contact with the field of human intelligence more widely.

Primary school

In 1879, Dewey graduated from the University of Vermont, started the teaching job he always wanted to do, and continued to study the history of philosophy.

In 1882, Dewey published his papers for the first time. These three papers were published in the only philosophical academic journal in China, which is a great inspiration to him.

In 1884, he received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University.

He taught philosophy at the University of Michigan from 1884 to 1888, 1890 to 1894, and at the University of Minnesota in 1889.

University of Chicago

From 1894 to 1904, Dewey was the director of the Department of philosophy, psychology and education at the University of Chicago. From 1902 to 1904, he also served as the dean of the school of education.

In 1896, he founded the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools as the experimental base of his educational theory, and his wife was the president of the school. Dewey opposed the traditional method of indoctrination and mechanical training, advocated learning from practice, and put forward the slogan of "education is life, school is society". His educational theory emphasizes personal development, understanding of external things and acquiring knowledge through experiments, which has a great influence.

Later, Dewey and his wife also founded the university elementary school affiliated to the University of Chicago, but because of the merger problem, they disagreed with the president of the University of Chicago, William Harper and others, so they resigned. In 1904, he went to Columbia University to teach.

Columbia University

From 1904 to 1930, he worked as a professor in the Department of philosophy at Columbia University until his retirement. While teaching in various universities, he also helped to establish the American Psychological Association, the American Philosophical Association, and the president of the American Association of university professors.

Working as a teacher in Columbia University is the longest period of Dewey's teaching career. During this period, due to the contact with foreign students, Dewey's educational ideas can also affect other parts of the world. The overseas students include Hu Shi, Feng Youlan, Tao Xingzhi, Guo Bingwen, Zhang Boling, Jiang Menglin and other masters and scholars of Chinese culture. Professor Ono, a Japanese student studying in the United States, was taught by Dewey. After receiving his doctorate, he returned to Japan and became a professor at Tokyo Imperial University. He contributed to Dewey's lecture at Tokyo Imperial University in 1918.

Study abroad

In 1919, Dewey's journey to the East was a good opportunity, so some organizations in China, including Peking University and the new society, invited him to give lectures in China. At that time, although it was ruled by the Beiyang government, there were no restrictions on the interaction between non-governmental academic organizations and foreigners. Five educational groups invited him to give lectures in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and several other cities, and he accepted. It was initiated by Hu Shi, Jiang Menglin, Tao Xingzhi and other Dewey's disciples, representing five groups including Jiangsu Provincial Education Association, Peking University and Peking University Society of knowledge and action. At the end of April, Hu Shi made a special trip from Beijing to Shanghai to welcome the Dewey couple. Dewey and his wife arrived in Shanghai on April 30, 1919.

In 1919, Dewey gave lectures in Beijing, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places successively. Mr. Hu Shi and others acted as the translators of the lectures, sowing the ideas of democracy and science directly in China. Dewey and his wife originally planned to return to the United States after the summer. Later, they changed their plan and decided to stay in China for a whole year. This is because the May 4th Movement has greatly aroused their interest. They want to see what is going on. Columbia University granted Professor Dewey a year's leave, which was then extended to two years. Therefore, he spent two years and two months in China, from May 1919 to July 1921.

When Dewey left Beijing for home, Hu Shi wrote a short essay "Mr. Dewey in China" to see him off, which appeared in Oriental Magazine and Republic of China Daily · consciousness. He said: "since China's contact with western culture, no foreign scholar has had such a great influence on Chinese ideological circles as Mr. Dewey." "We can say that in the coming decades, there may not be another western scholar who will have a greater influence in China than Mr. Dewey."

After that, he went to the Soviet Union, Turkey, South Africa and Mexico.

Family situation

Dewey married his first wife Harriet Alice Chipman in 1886 and had six children, two of whom died at the age of 2 and 8 respectively.

In 1946, Dewey married his second wife, Roberta (lowitz) grant, at the age of 87, until he died in New York at the age of 93 (1952).

Character theory

On the essence of Education

From the perspective of pragmatism empiricism and functional psychology, Dewey criticized the traditional school education and put forward his basic views on the essence of Education: "education is life" and "school is society".

1. Education is life

Dewey believes that education is the process of children's life, not the preparation for future life. He said: life is development, and constant development and growth is life. Therefore, the best education is to learn from life and experience. Education is to provide conditions for children to grow or live fully.

Because life is growth and children's development is the process of primitive instinctive growth, Dewey emphasized that "growth is the characteristic of life, so education is growth." In his view, education is not to force children to absorb the external things, but to make human born ability to grow.

Therefore, Dewey believes that the process of education has no purpose outside itself, and the purpose of education lies in the process of education. In fact, what he opposes is to take the purpose imposed from outside as the official goal of children's growth.

2. School is society

Dewey thinks that since education is a process of social life, school is a form of social life. He stressed that schools should "become a small society, a rudimentary society." In school, we should simplify the real social life to a rudimentary state and present children's social life. As far as the specific requirements of "school is society" are concerned,

Chinese PinYin : Du Wei