The Education of John Dewey

Rating:
Summary: 2 1/2 Stars, Actually
Review: It is heartening to see that this book is NOT subject to the "star inflation" that plagues much of this website! [I mean, do you really think a majority of books should receive 4 or 5 stars!]. "The Education of John Dewey" is a solid biography of an interesting man who played an important role in American intellectual history. However, the book just didn't grab me. Not like "Lincoln's Virtues: an Ethical Biography" for example. One note about Dewey's philosophy. I don't see what was so new about pragmatism/naturalism/progressivism or whatever you want to call it. Wasn't Dewey's emphasis on the importance of the continuing pursuit of truth just a modern version of the Socratic method????????

Rating:
Summary: The Education of John Dewey
Review: Jay Martin has accomplished a monumental task in his efforts to uncover the true natures of John Dewey and his colorful life. My interest is in educational psychology and pedagogy. I admit a bit of disappointment in that Dewey's theories - - philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical - - were not explored as much as I had hoped. Nonetheless, I feel that Martin's book is a good primer for anyone who is interested in not only Dewey but, also, names such as Parker, and Tyler. The biography's deep historical basis allows readers of this and closely related materials to have a better contextual grasp how U.S. philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical theories were formulated in the late 18th and early 20th Centuries.

Rating:
Summary: A pleasant read, but a substantive disappointment
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. 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 leftists who were opposed to Marx and Communism. American socialism probably owes more to the social gospel and non-Marxist polictical 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 people 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 whin 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 Martin's shortcomings.