One of the people to whom he dedicated The Paideia Proposal was JohnDewey, his old nemesis,

reframing a crucial question: is commitmentto the Great Books the enemy of progressive education (the scholarlyconsensus that has largely followed Dewey), or in fact a foundation forit?

Merchants and traders have a waste book (Sudelbuch, Klitterbuch in GermanI believe) in which they enter daily everything they purchase and sell,messily, without order. From this, it is transferred to their journal, whereeverything appears more systematic, and finally to a ledger, in double entryafter the Italian manner of bookkeeping, where one settles accounts witheach man, once as debtor and then as creditor. This deserves to be imitatedby scholars. First it should be entered in a book in which I record everythingas I see it or as it is given to me in my thoughts; then it may be enteredin another book in which the material is more separated and ordered, andthe ledger might then contain, in an ordered expression, the connectionsand explanations of the material that flow from it. [46]

Democracy and Education was written before the assemblyline had achieved its dominant position in the industrialworld and before mechanization had depopulated the farmsof America.

Dewey's chief reason for this recommendation is found inhis psychology of learning. "An occupation is a continuousactivity having a purpose. Education through occupations con-sequently combines within itself more of the factors condu-cive to learning than any other method. It calls instincts andhabits into play; it is a foe to passive receptivity. It has anend in view; results are to be accomplished. Hence it appealsto thought; it demands that an idea of an end be steadilymaintained, so that activity must be progressive, leadingfrom one stage to another; observation and ingenuity are re-quired at each stage to overcome obstacles and to discoverand readjust means of execution.

Dewey was first of all a social reformer.

The chief exponent of the view that times have changedand that our conception of the best education must changewith them is that most misunderstood of all philosophers ofeducation, John Dewey.

One of Dewey’s principal concerns was for the relationship between educationand democracy. He made the point that democracy is not just a form ofgovernment—it is, rather, ‘a mode of associated living, a conjoint communicated

A particularly important figure in the development of progressive education wasJohn Dewey, whose Laboratory School was founded in 1896 with the aim ofproviding the kind of progressive education that it was not possible to find inother schools in the USA at the time.

On this point, for instance, thebook on John Dewey's technique of thought by Bogos-lovsky, The Logic of Controversy, and C.E. Ayers' essayon the gospel of technology in Philosophy Today andTomorrow, edited by Hook and Kallen.

now we go back to jakub von ogskul and we find him critiquing exactly the 00:09:20 same thing for exactly the same reasons 30 years after john dewey there on the left he has picked out the reflex arc pointing out that it is a linear throughput which leaves no room 00:09:34 for subjectivity no room for intentional action no room for meaning to arise if you if the middle is only animated by inputs then it's a puppet 00:09:47 he replaces this with a model on the right that will whose terms will not be entirely clear to you as you read the article but i want you to notice one thing about it it's circular it's not a linear 00:09:59 throughput it's circular he starts by noting the embeddedness of the body in the world and the fact that the activity of the 00:10:13 body is meaningful at all times and not separable into inputs and outputs his replacement of the linear throughput with this circular model that he elaborates in various ways 00:10:25 is remarkably prescient of the basic cybernetic insight that will arise after the second world war in which it's all feedback systems positive feedback systems negative feedback systems 00:10:37 homeostatic systems um reciprocity is always involved the fact that you do something and something is done to you at the same time that that we dance in the world 00:10:50 rather than standing apart from it and recording a movie of it so his um uncovery of this basic cybernetic principle with which one might approach the body and its being in the world is 00:11:02 remarkably prescient but these profound ideas of vulnerable are often hidden because he's well frankly so charming well he's a problematic character as we'll see lately 00:11:14 but he tells a good story and he does cool experiments

i want to take you back to our lecture on cognitivism where we surveyed among other things the origins of this notion of a psychological subject within our inner architecture 00:05:52 that comes into being in 1896 john dewey wrote a very famous article called the reflex arc concept in psychology you may have missed it it's listed it's provided on 00:06:06 the page for cognitivism and what dewey was doing was surveying the very many very diverse uh research activities that were beginning to bring into being something like a 00:06:19 psychological science there was so many questions so many methods and a single theoretical construct had emerged that many people were leaning on to and was acting as a kind of a unified 00:06:32 construct with which notions of mind and body might be brought together that notion is the reflex arc now the reflex arc you may be familiar with from physiology if you touch something hot 00:06:45 then we can follow a physiological path from the receptors in the skin in this case if you touch a hot stove we can follow a very short path that goes through the spinal cord and immediately causes you 00:06:58 to move your hand away no thinking involved that's a reflex and you're familiar with the notion of reflex but that notion had been elaborated and was being developed by many people into a picture of the an account of the 00:07:11 embedding of the entire body and nervous system in the world john dewey was saying don't do that stop doing that it's a serious critique of this input output model and the 00:07:25 reflex arc starts with a stimulus and results in action and as a one-way throughput john dewey correctly said that an input output model reduces 00:07:40 the intervene the thing in the middle into a puppet there is no subjectivity possible here now this is a fundamental critique as the fundamental shift in perspective we're adopting in 00:07:53 this module which is to get away from the silly notion of the body and person and subject as being driven by inputs producing the 00:08:05 ghost of the cognitive sandwich there we go you've got the cognitive sandwich you've got sensation providing input you've got action on the output in between you have a great big mystery stuffed into the head it's very easy to make fun of this as 00:08:18 susan hurley does with her term cognitive sandwich it's much more difficult to make fun of exactly the same thing when we draw it like this there is an orthodox belief in our 00:08:30 society our society works on the assumption that there is the psychological subject who has inner processes of perception feeding into inner processes of higher cognition 00:08:43 all fueled by the world through senses and this model doesn't even have an output such constructive psychological representational stories typically 00:08:55 ignore action altogether so the cognitive sandwich may be ridiculous when we look at it in one way but it is also the most wide held belief in our society about the person and we 00:09:08 institute our laws our education systems our workplaces are built on this problematic model

The ringing of the bell to signal the beginning and end of a class period, rather than just the beginning and end of the school day is often traced to William Wirt, who became superintendent of schools in Gary, Indiana in 1908.

You don't absorb the ideas of John Dewey the way you absorb the crooning of Mr. Vallee.

John Dewey

individualism offers a distorted vision of human freedom, genuine freedom is found in social cooperation, and true social freedom is impossible in a class society.

the mass of workers are to be blind cogs and pinions in the apparatus they employ

Jean Piaget, John Dewey, Maria Montessori, or Paulo Friere