John+Dewey

John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859 in Burlington, Vermont. His father was Archibald and his mother was Lucinda. His father ran a grocery store. He sold it when he joined the army to fight in the Civil War. He was part of the Union Army. When he got back from the war, he opened another store that sold cigars and tobacco. Dewey’s older brother was named Davis Rich Dewey. Both Jon and his brother went to the University of Vermont. At first, Dewey wanted to be a teacher. He taught high school for three years and decided that he didn’t like it after all. So, he went back to school at Johns Hopkins University and earned his Ph.D. in Arts and Sciences. He was married twice. First, he was married to Alice Chipman. They had six children together. He got divorced and later married Roberta Lowitz Grant, but they did not have any children together. In 1894, Dewey went to work for the University of Michigan, where they were beginning to look into Pragmatic philosophy. This means that a person should be socially responsible for things that happen in their life. He was also involved with educational psychology. This supported a new type of education called “progressive education.” He felt that schools did to teach kids to problem-solve. He said they only taught rote thinking, where they memorized facts and told them on tests. It did not mean anything or teach students how to work cooperatively with each other. In the end, John Dewey said they wouldn’t be able to function in life if they couldn’t think and solve higher level problems on their own. Although Dewey was not directly teaching high school anymore, he still belonged to the American Federation of Teachers. This supported his belief that teachers needed to be taught more how to teach rather than what to teach. He also belonged to the American Psychological Association, in which he was the president in 1899 as well as the American Philosophical Association. When Dewey wrote a book called __School and Society__ in 1899, the administrators did not agree with it, so they fired him. He then went to work at Columbia University as a professor of philosophy in 1904 and stayed there until he died on June 1, 1952. In all his writings, John Dewey strongly believed in democracy for everybody. He felt that wherever you are or whatever you are studying, you should be treated fairly. "John Dewey -." //Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia //. Web. 26 Mar. 2010. <[]>.  Dewey, John, and David Sidorsky. //John Dewey: the Essential Writings//. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Print. Dykhuizen, George. //The Life and Mind of John Dewey.// Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1973. Print.