Craig A. Cunningham, Ph.D.
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Biography
(with thanks to Raymond Boisvert's John Dewey: Rethinking Our Time
(Albany: SUNY Press; 1998)
- born Burlington, VT October 20, 1859
- father: merchant who served as quartermaster in Civil War
- mother: devoutly religious
- attended public schools
- 1875, attended University of Vermont; major: philosophy
- 1879, after college, taught 2 years of high school in Oil City PA
- 1881-2, spent one year back in Burlington tutoring at U. and teaching
one term in Vt. high school
- 1882, attended Johns Hopkins University with loan from aunt
- studied philosophy and psychology
- wrote dissertation (now lost) on Kant's psychology
- 1884, first job at University of Michigan under George Sylvester
Morris (former teacher)
- 1886, first marriage to Alice Chipman
- 1888, second job at University of Minnesota as head of philosophy
dept.
- 1889, third job back at U. Mich as head of philosophy dept. after
Morris dies
- 1894, fourth job as head of philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy
depts. at University of Chicago (1894 - 1904)
- 1894-6, founded University Elementary School, now the University
of Chicago Laboratory Schools
- 1904, falling out with William Rainey Harper (U of C president);
resigned
- 1905, fifth job as professor of philosophy at Columbia University
with join appointment at Teachers College
- 1915, helps found AAUP
- 1919, visits Japan
- 1919-20, visits China
- 1922, visits Turkey
- 1927, first wife dies
- 1928, visits USSR
- 1930, retires from Columbia
- 1946, second marriage, to Roberta Grant
- 1952, dies June 1
- Wrote many articles and books, including:
- 1887, Psychology (a textbook with an overtly Hegelian emphasis,
Psychology was a commercial success but was roundly criticized
for its metaphysical basis by William James, G. Stanley Hall, others)
- 1899, The School and Society (a collection of talks to parents
of University Elementary School together with some published essays)
- 1901, "The Child and the Curriculum"
- 1905, Ethics (written with James R. Tufts, colleague at
U of C; revised 1932)
- 1910, How We Think (revised 1933)
- 1916, Democracy and Education
- 1920, Reconstruction in Philosophy (revised 1948)
- 1922, Human Nature and Conduct
- 1925, Experience and Nature (revised introduction 1929)
- 1929, The Quest for Certainty
- 1934, Art as Experience
- 1934, A Common Faith
- 1935, Liberalism and Social Action
- 1938, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry
- 1938, Theory of Valuation
- 1938, Experience and Education
- 1949, The Knower and the Known (with Arthur Bentley)
Influences
Aristotle
Dewey began re-reading Aristotle around 1910 under the influence of
his colleague, F. J. E. Woodbridge. Aristotle's notions of
habit, and his "empirical" notions of metaphysics and "natural" teleology,
shaped Dewey's later thinking.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (d. 1831)
Dewey was an avowed Hegelian early, due to the influence of George
Sylvester Morris. Hegel allowed Dewey to unify the real and the
ideal, and to combine a Christian reverence with a naturalistic bent.
However, Dewey began, around 1892, to replace his Hegelian metaphysics
with a more naturalistic metaphysics.
Charles Darwin
Dewey adopted very early Darwin's notion of change as essential to
nature. He also gradually accepted Darwin's completely naturalistic
theory of evolutionary change, and abandoned the transcendental assumptions
of Hegelianism.
William James
James' The Principles of Psychology was one of the most influential
books Dewey ever read. James' theory of mind as "the objective,
conscious process by which the organism and its environment become integrated,"
and his view "that organism and environment mutually determine each other,
that thinking is simply a function of the interaction between the two,
like breathing and walking," became central to Dewey's own views. (Dykhuizen,
George, The Life and Mind of John Dewey (Carbondale: SIU Press1973),
p. 68)
Evolution of Ideas
Early Period, 1879-1892
Explicitly Christian orientation, Hegelian "idealistic" metaphysics,
notion of trasncendental "absolute" directing nature, ethical notion of
"self-realization"
Middle Period, 1892-1924
Gave up Christianity, experimentalist metaphysics, emphasis on scientific
method and rationality, ethical goals found in "intrinsic capacities,
emphasis on democracy as social good
Later Period, 1925-1952
Wrote of "common faith" found in expereince, naturalistic metaphysics,
emphasis on creation of objects in experience, nature as "affair of affairs,"
"event" as ontological unit, focus on relationships among impulses, habits,
and intelligence, importance of direct social action and participation
Educational Ideas
The Child and the Curriculum (1901)
- theoretical gap between child-centered and subject-centered curriculum
due to failure to recognize interaction between child and curriculum
- emphasis on need for "studies" to be psychologized in order
to be taught to child
- critical of traditional curriculum's tendency to see education as
preparation, and of ways in which seeing curriculum as "subject-matter"
to be "presented" to the child
- curriculum seen as carrying funded experience of human race, contains
"possibilities of development inherent in the child's immediate crude
experience," revealing the "real child"
- development as a definite process having its on law (recapitulating
the development of the "race")
- directions for growth found in child's own activities
- interests provide leverage for growth
- teacher's job to select appropriate stimuli to bring out desired
interests and impulses
- students MUST experience in order to learn
- criticizes tendency to use "interest" extrinsically rather than intrinsically
Resources
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