LECTURES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

by John Dewey ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 1966

When John Dewey was a young man of forty, he gave a series of lectures in Pedagogy at the University of Chicago, which two years ago were unearthed in the Grinnell College library by the editor of this collection. The thirty three lectures were taken down in a verbatim stenographic report by an unknown student, and are chiefly of interest as a new guideline to his subsequent development and for shedding more light on the unusual Laboratory School he instituted at Chicago. Much of the material is a critique of contemporary thinking in education, concerned with various scholastic practices and theories he sought to reform, and principally centered in a polemical appeal for social and individual interraction, the cornerstone, in short, of his famous ""instrumentalism."" Questions of methodology and psychology figure prominently; in the first, Dewey favors an informal, experimental, student-centered organization (similar to what became known as progressive education), and in the second, he attacks along biological lines the mind-body dualism. The purely rationalistic science of Herbartianism is viewed negatively throughout. The editor offers an illuminating introduction, amply situating Dewey's philosophical position.

Pub Date: June 2, 1966

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1966

Categories: NONFICTION