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As can be seen in his Democracy and Education Dewey attempts to at once synthesize, criticize, and expand upon the democratic or proto-democratic educational philosophies of RousseauPhilosophy of education is the study of such questions as what education is and what its purpose is, the nature of the knowing mind and the human subject, problems of authority, the relationship between education and society, etc. Since at least Rousseau, and PlatoPhilosophy of education is the study of such questions as what education is and what its purpose is, the nature of the knowing mind and the human subject, problems of authority, the relationship between education and society, etc. Since at least Rousseau,. He saw Rousseau's as overemphasizing the individual and Plato's as overemphasizing the society in which the individual lived. For Dewey, this distinction was by and large a false one; like Vygotsky, he viewed the mind and its formation as communal process. Thus the individual is only a meaningful concept when regarded as an inextricable part of his society, and the society had no meaning apart from its realization in the lives of its individual members. However, as evidenced in his later Experience and Nature Dewey recognizes the importance of the subjective experience of individual people in introducing revolutionary new ideas.
For Dewey, it was vitally important that education not be the teaching of mere dead fact, but that the skills and knowledge which students learned be integrated fully into their lives as citizens and human beings. At the Laboratory School which Dewey and his wife Alice ran at the University of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a university located in Chicago, Illinois. Just over a century old, it includes departments and committees of: Physics, Economics, Music (theory), Sociology, Linguistics, Political Science, Social Thought, International Relati, children learned much of their early chemistry, physics, and biology by investigating the natural processes which went into cooking breakfast--an activity they did in their classes. This practical element--learning by doing--sprang from his subscription to the philosophical school of Pragmatism.
Dewey was essentially the seminal thinker of educational progressivismProgressivists believe that education must be based on the fact that humans are social animals who learn best in real-life activities with other people. Progressivists claimed to rely on the best available scientific theories of learning. Most believed th and an important progressiveProgressivism or political progressivism is any of several historically related political philosophies or political ideologies. There are also a number of Progressive political parties in various countries. All of these are primarily (though not necessari in general. His ideas, while quite popular, were never broadly and deeply integrated into the practices of American public schools, though some of his values and terms were widespread. Progressive education (both as espoused by Dewey, and in the more popular and inept forms of which Dewey was critical) was essentially scrapped during the Cold WarThe Cold War (c. 1945- 1991) was the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between groups of nations practicing different ideologies and political systems. On one side was the Soviet Union and its allies, often referred to as the E, when the dominant concern in education was creating and sustaining a scientific and technological elite for military purposes. In the post-Cold War period, however, progressive education has reemerged in many school reform and education theory circles as a thriving field of inquiry.