The Education of John Dewey: A Biography

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During John Dewey's lifetime (1859-1952), one public opinion poll after another revealed that he was esteemed to be one of the ten most important thinkers in American history. His body of thought, conventionally identified by the shorthand word "Pragmatism," has been the distinctive American philosophy of the last fifty years. His work on education is famous worldwide and is still influential today, anticipating as it did the ascendance in contemporary American pedagogy of multiculturalism and independent thinking. His University of Chicago Laboratory School (founded in 1896) thrives still and is a model for schools worldwide, especially in emerging democracies. But how was this lifetime of thought enmeshed in Dewey's emotional experience, in his joys and sorrows as son and brother, husband and father, and in his political activism and spirituality? Acclaimed biographer Jay Martin recaptures the unity of Dewey's life and work, tracing important themes through the philosopher's childhood years, family history, religious experience, and influential friendships.

Based on original sources, notably the vast collection of unpublished papers in the Center for Dewey Studies, this book tells the full story, for the first time, of the life and times of the eminent American philosopher, pragmatist, education reformer, and man of letters. In particular, The Education of John Dewey highlights the importance of the women in Dewey's life, especially his mother, wife, and daughters, but also others, including the reformer Jane Addams and the novelist Anzia Yezierska. A fitting tribute to a master thinker, Martin has rendered a tour de force portrait of a philosopher and social activist in full, seamlessly reintegrating Dewey's thought into both his personal life and the broader historical themes of his time.

The Education of John Dewey: A Biography Review

Martin endeavors to write a psychological portrait of John Dewey, but falls short. Ironically, the least developed aspect of Dewey's life in this volume is that of Dewey, the psychologist. Dewey was an early member (& president) of the American Psychological Assn. His observation of the reflex arc is still a staple of introductory psychology and the social psychological concepts and models he developed with George Herbert Mead and others prefigured much of the contemporary work in social cognition. Important figures in academic clinical psychology such as George Kelly and Seymour Sarason drew heavily on Dewey's work and Sarason has remained an important champion. No mention is made that Dewey's great friend, James McKeen Catell (a recurring, but little described figure in the book), was diametrically opposed to Dewey on many important issues in psychology including the roles of inheritance and environment in the development of intelligence and the conception of intelligence, itself. Dewey's ability to remain close to people whose ideas he vigorously opposed was but one of the inspiring aspects of Dewey's character. The shortcomings of this book made me more aware than ever that a full scale biography of Dewey, the psychologist, is needed rather than another biography of Dewey the philosopher, especially a tepid, uneven one like this.

Martin, a humanities professor and a practicing psychonanalyst with an eclectic background occasionally deals with psychiatric disorder in Dewey's life (and the lives of his family members) and trots out some watered down neo-Freudian interpretations of his family life. Yet much of the time, Dewey, the man, remains elusive. Martin makes a number of preposterous claims about Dewey: he tells us that Dewey was "impoverished" for most of his professional life, although his salary was far in excess of that of an ordinary wage earner of his time and his home had servants. We also are told that Dewey was unique among 20th century leftists in his rejection of Marxism and Communism. In fact, Dewey was one of many American leftists who were opposed to Marx and Communism. American socialism probably owes more to the social gospel and non-Marxist political economists like Veblen than to Marx, Lenin, or Stalin. Martin also ignores the vigorous and polemical support Dewey gave to World War I and the strains it caused between Dewey and friends like Jane Addams. Instead, we are told that Dewey was a consistent pacifist driven by a concern that war would undermine democratic values. Remarks like these demonstrate Martin's ignorance of Dewey's life, as well as an ignorance of the social and political environment in which Dewey lived. Much of the discussion of Dewey, the philosopher, is laden with academic philosophy that is insufficiently explained for the educated layperson. Many well-educated people are not familiar with Hegel or the Vienna Circle or only dimly recall these from an introductory course. Many are drawn to Dewey because of his educational ideas or his importance in 20th century demoratic socialism, hence, it is probably not reasonable to expect that readers will automatically be drawn to the various debates within academic philosophy.

This book is an easier read than the dense, often turgid works of Robert Westbrook or Steven Rockefeller. On the other hand, the book lacks the breezy, often humorous, tone of Alan Ryan's biography. Ryan's book is a much better introduction to Dewey---witty and scholarly, yet extremely readable. Although Ryan also focuses on Dewey the philosopher, he is more knowledgable about many aspects of Dewey's life and environment than Martin. He recognizes, for example, the importance and the the deeply flawed character of G. Stanley Hall, who provided Dewey with an introduction to operationism and to developmental psychology. Ryan also points out the limitations of Dewey's sometimes wooly writing. One of the problems with reading Dewey is that Dewey, the philosopher, often requires an understanding of Dewey, the psychologist, or Dewey, the political activist, to understand many of the basic concepts that guided Dewey decades into his effort to develop a coherent worldview of pragmatism. The same problem occurs when one looks at him as psychologist, as a pedagogue or, as a political commentator/activist. He was all of these things in all his professional identities, to some extent. Despite the recent run of Dewey biographies and the renewed interest in pragmatism, there's still more to learn about Dewey. Unfortunately, only well-read afficionados will get much from Martin's book and many may be distracted by it's shortcomings.

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