Dewey’s View of Education

In the late nineteenth century, a pragmatic view of life, which placed behavior at the center of human life, was born in the United States. John Dewey (1859-1952) advocated instrumentalism, asserting that intellect is a tool useful for behavior and that thinking develops in the process of human efforts to control the environment.

Stating that “education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself,” ⁷ Dewey argued that no sense of purpose should be fixed in advance for education, but that instead, education should be regarded as growth. According to him, “education consists primarily in transmission through communication,” ⁸ and “education is a constant reorganizing or reconstructing of experience.” ⁹

This transmission should be achieved through the medium of the environment rather than directly from adults (teachers) to children. Through such an education, society develops. What Dewey intended to achieve was a kind of practical, technical education aimed at the reconstruction of society. The image of the ideal person in Dewey’s view of education was that of an “active man.”