Essays for John Dewey’s 90th Birthday

99 Pages·1950·3.647 MB·English

by  Kenneth D. Benne and Wm. O. Stanley (eds.)

Kenneth D. Benne
Alfred S. Clayton
Sing-Nan Fen
Max H. Fisch
Horace S. Fries
Foster McMurray
Leo Molinaro
Edited by
Kenneth D. Benne and Wm. 0. Stanley
JOHN DEWEY'S
ESSAYS FOR
N I N E T I E T H B I R T H D A Y
Report of a Conference
on Education and Philosophy at the University of Illinois
This is a publication of the Bureau of Research and Service, College
of Education, University of Illinois, Urbana 1950
CONTENTS
EDITORS’ PREFACE
JOHN DEWEY Introduction: Greetings to the
Urbana Conference..................... 3
KENNETH D. BENNE On Celebrating John Dewey's
Birthday ....................................... 5
MAX H. FISCH Dewey's Place in the Classic Pe­
riod of American Philosophy___ 9
ALFRED S. CLAYTON Dewey's Theory of Language
with Some Implications for Edu­
cational Theory........................... 37
FOSTER McMURRAY The Problem of Verification in
Formal School Learning.................47
HORACE S. FRIES Educational Foundations of So­
cial Planning................................. 59
KENNETH D. BENNE John Dewey and Adult Education 74
SING-NAN-FEN Dewey's Philosophy as a Pro­
grain of Action............................. 82
LEO MOLINARO Closing Remarks........................... 88

EDITOR’S PREFACE
John Dewey’s ninetieth birthday, October 20, 1949, was an oc­
casion for celebration throughout the democratic world. Philoso­
phers, educators and leaders in democratic action on many fronts
met on this occasion to talk and to think together about the ideas
of America’s greatest theorist of democracy and, in so doing, to
rededicate themselves to democratic ideas at a time when the pre­
carious future of democracy requires much dedication.
At the University of Illinois in Urbana, the celebration was
jointly sponsored by the American Education Fellowship and the
Division of Social, Philosophical and Historical Foundations in the
College of Education. It is especially appropriate that these two
groups should sponsor a program in honor of John Dewey. Mr.
Dewey has long been Honorary President of the American Edu­
cation Fellowship. This organization, under its present name
and for many years before under the name of the Progressive Edu­
cation Association, has since 1919 led the progressive education
movement in the United States, a movement based in some large
measure upon Dewey’s educational theories. The Division of So­
cial, Philosophical and Historical Foundations is dedicated to the
task of developing and extending, through instruction and research,
the theoretical bases of a democratic education. It was John
Dewey, more than any other one man, who helped to define the
basic moral and intellectual conditions of this task in America.
The first four essays in this collection were delivered and dis­
cussed at the Urbana celebration. It is hoped that the readers of
these essays in print will derive from their reading many of the
values which those who were able to be present derived from their
oral presentation. To help the reader see these essays in their con­
ference setting, Professor Dewey’s greetings and the remarks which
opened and summarized the conference have been included in this
collection. It is hoped further that the last two essays, published
originally as magazine articles in celebration of Mr. Dewey’s
ninetieth birthday, will find new readers through their reprinting
in the present collection.
Kenneth D. Benne
President, American Education Fellowship
William O. Stanley
Chairman, Division of Social, Philosophical
and Historical Foundations, College of Edu­
cation, University of Illinois

INTRODUCTION:
Greetings to the Urbana Conference
by John Dewey
To my friends of the College of Education, University of Illinois,
Its Division of Social, Philosophical and Historical Foundations,
and the American Education Fellowship:
In sending you through Dr. Benne my grateful appreciation of
the honor conferred upon me by your gathering in commemoration
of my Ninetieth Birthday Anniversary, it adds to my gratification
that, as I allow my thoughts to travel back over the years, I find
so many points of enjoyable and enjoyed connection between us
during the past half century — the latest being pleasurable intellec­
tual contacts had with Dr. Benne while he was at Teachers College,
New York City. At the other end of the fifty years or so of the
close and frequent associations I have enjoyed with members of the
faculties of education and philosophy at the State University and
at the State Normal University, are those had while I was teaching
philosophy and education (pedagogics it was at first) at the Uni­
versity of Chicago. I owe more than I can express to the stimula­
tion and intellectual assistance I derived from contacts at that time.
I am afraid there are not many still living who have personal
memory of the meetings of the Herbart Society during that period,
and of the keen and friendly clashes and exchange of ideas between
the MacMurrays and DeGarmo on one side and Dr. W. T. Harris
on the other. I gratefully recall the contribution to my own edu­
cation in educational matters that proceeded from those contacts
in a formative period of my life. Among the outstanding events of
intervening years the memory of the man McClure, later professor
of Philosophy and then dean at the University of Illinois, who came
to Columbia for graduate work in philosophy is a bright spot.
Aside from personal gratification in recalling these contacts
and associations, to which I may add that with one of your speakers
of the day from the University of Wisconsin, through our joint
indebtedness to and admiration of the work of Max Otto, there is
the realization, peculiarly precious at a time of stress and strain
such as we live in today, that we all are links in an ever-continuing
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JOHN DEWEY
and out>reaching chain of intellectual and moral continuity. In
it each of us is able to give to those who follow because of what
we have already received from others. Even in the most trying
days there is ground for hope, and more than hope, for confidence,
in this fact, to which Josiah Royce years ago gave the name “The
Great Communityand which it is an acute satisfaction to know
is also The Continuing Community.
With gratitude and sincerely yours,
John Dewey
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