The influence of John Dewey’s undeniably pervasive ideas on the course of American education during the last half-century has been celebrated in some quarters and decried in others. But Dewey’s writings themselves have not often been analyzed in a sustained way. In John Dewey and the Decline of American Education, Hank Edmondson takes up that task. He begins with an account of the startling authority with which Dewey’s fundamental principles have been-and continue t… More >>
I was teaching first-grade in Brooklyn when I read this book, and found a lot of Edmondson’s arguments persuasive, given my classroom experience. Deweyan pedagogy is challenging, if not in some ways damaging, to implement even in the smallest ways in an actual classroom. That said, Edmondson’s book isn’t really about Dewey or his thought. It’s a political work, which repeats a number of points made by educational traditionalists, but doesn’t really represent Dewey’s thought accurately, or engage with him critically in a serious way. Edmondson takes the portrait of Dewey presented by Russell Kirk in “The Conservative Mind” and imputes it to Dewey. Again, let me stress, I often agreed with Edmondson’s assessment of American education, but his book is NOT an accurate or effective account of Dewey’s thought and what’s wrong with it. John Patrick Diggins’ “The Promise of Pragmatism” remains the best account of Dewey’s flaws, though it is primarily political, rather than pedagogical.
Rating: 2 / 5
I came across this book by an unusual path. I’m writing a book about Harper Lee’s great classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, and I noticed that her already literate Scout thought that the teaching techniques of her first grade teacher were ridiculous and worse. Later, her brother tells her that her teacher was following something new (in 1930s Alabama) called the “Dewey Decimal System.”
The more I thought about it, the more clearly I realized that, as a six-year-old, Scout had a much better understanding of what the disadvantaged kids at her school needed than the much esteemed dean of American education, John Dewey. The author of this book recognizes that and quotes Lee in his Preface. He also has this to say on page 45:
“To be sure, Dewey offers an unsettling commentary about the use of books in education. He says that in an earlier educational era the school needed to supply books to students because books were otherwise unavailable… ‘But conditions change,’ Dewey insists, as ‘libraries abound, books are many and cheap, magazines and newspapers are everywhere.’ For that reason, ‘the schools do not any longer bear the peculiar relation to books and knowledge which they once did.’”
Dewey’s comments were, of course, true of the privileged kids who attended the University of Chicago’s University Elementary School where he did research. But they weren’t remotely true of millions of children at the time he wrote that (or even today). Scout, with her innate good sense, was picking up on just how harmful Dewey’s ideas are for all but the most privileged of children. Dewey wanted to keep books away from kids whose homes had no books. And as Scout notes, he wanted poor farm kids, whose lives were already filled with the drudgery of farm labor, to be given a romanticized experience with milking a cow. How ridiculous!
What are we to make of that? It’s hard to imagine Dewey being as unintelligent as his remarks about books seem to suggest. Over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that G. K. Chesterton was right, that there are many people in our world who are solely interested in “making good,” meaning being recognized for their alleged achievements. They have no interest in being good, meaning actually accomplishing something good even if no one notices.
Dewey wasn’t interested in the slightest what impact his theories had on actual school children. Those sorts of thought never entered his mind. What concerned him was developing various schemes and theories that created circles of adoring disciples, which is precisely what happened.
Edmondson’s book is a concise and excellent explanation of what Dewey taught, at least to the extent that Dewey’s often muddled and self-promoting ideas can be called a system. It also links the problems with the “Dewey Decimal System” of To Kill a Mockingbird with the same failures in modern education that a fictional Scout was noticing in 1933.
After you finish this book, you just might want to read To Kill a Mockingbird for what Scout had to say about Dewey and those who follow him.
–Michael W. Perry, author of Untangling Tolkien: A Chronology and Commentary for The Lord of the Rings
Rating: 5 / 5
To be in education is to be, at some level, a political activist. After all, education is the water that feeds the tree of a democratic republic, and those who would educate are preparing the youth for citizenship in said society. Edmondson decries the state and direction of our society and this book is his activist response. While the focus of his scapegoating is John Dewey, the book is much less about Dewey’s legacy and his work (which is superficially represented in the book – and naturally so; after all, who could possibly summarize in less than 130 pages the oevre of a man who published over 35 books and scores of articles over the course of his career?) than it is about the tragedy of a judicial interpretation of one of the cornerstones of our founding Constitutional principals: separation of church and state.
The book is interestingly researched and is a unique and lively discussion of Dewey. About half way through the text, though, it becomes clear that the object is not to protest the influence of an educational philosophy but to use the cover of education scholarship to engage in the debate about school prayer. In his discussion of the function of education as an apparatus for moralizing he points towards Dewey and Dewey’s ambivalence for religious indoctrination as the root cause for this deficiency in 21st century American classrooms. It seems Dewey, in other words, is directly responsible for having prayer taken out of schools – an extreme claim to be sure.
If partisan scholarship isn’t problematic for you, the book ofers some interesting insights into the educational philosophies of our contry’s early political leaders. The book offers an interesting spin on the effects of our eduational system – spin that fails to address issues of race and, especially, class in exchange for cliched urgings for a return to a nostalgic educational past.
Rating: 2 / 5
For contemporary educators, this work will prove to be an invaluable resource. Even if, when finished, you find that you disagree with the arguments crafted, you will still be forced to think deeply about the many issues and dichotomies surrounding the various directions of educational philosophy.
Rating: 5 / 5
Dr. Edmondsons’ book on Dewey was a great read. It was an revealing expose’ on the root cause of what is wrong with the present school system. As such, it answered many puzzling questions i. e.: Why do so many public school teachers send their children to private schools? Why do so many parents opt for homeschooling? Why do so many parents desire school vouchers? Is it all an unconscious flight from the insidious influence of “Deweyism”? Dr. Edmondson adroitly answers these queries with insight and clarity.
Rating: 5 / 5