John Dewey, New Education, and Social Control in the Classroom

Abstract

This case study investigates John Dewey’s role in debates on the topic of New Education and Progressive Education schools. It deals about William H. Kilpatrick’s learning by projects method, Gertrude Hartman’s learning by activities method, and the late-1920s and early-1930s Activity Program. In his writings between 1902 and 1938, Dewey advised to walk the middle path between teacher-centered education and child- or student-centered education. Surprisingly enough, his Experience and Education holds a hidden message, which promotes the so-called Alexander Technique as a means of achieving the “ideal aim of education,” that is, the “creation of power of self-control”.

Keywords: Harriet Alice (Chipman) Dewey (1858-1927), Louisa Parsons Stone Hopkins (1834-1895), Gertrude Hartman (1876-1955), Marietta Louise (Pierce) Johnson (1864-1938), Caroline Louise Pratt (1867-1954). Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955), Samuel Engle Burr (1897-1987), George Sylvester Counts (1889-1