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John Dewey (1859-1952) was an American psychologist, philosopher, educator, social critic and political activist. He was born in Burlington, Vermont, on 20 October 1859. Dewey graduated from the University of Vermont in 1879, and received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1884.

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estelle ruth jorgensen profile melbourne

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Estelle Ruth Jorgensen, music educator. Member College Music Society, American Society Aesthetics, Music Educators National Conference, International Society for Music Educators, Inc. Society Musicians, Philosophy of Education Society, International Society Philosophy Music Education (founding co-chair 2003-2005).

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Where was John Dewey educated?

How did John Dewey impact the world?

John Dewey (born October 20, 1859, Burlington, Vermont, U.S.-died June 1, 1952, New York, New York) was an American philosopher and educator who was a cofounder of the philosophical movement known as pragmatism, a pioneer in functional psychology, an innovative theorist of democracy, and a leader of the progressive movement in education in the United States.

Dewey graduated with a bachelor's degree from the University of Vermont in 1879. After receiving a doctorate in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in 1884, he began teaching philosophy and psychology at the University of Michigan. There his interests gradually shifted from the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to the new experimental psychology being advanced in the United States by G. Stanley Hall and the pragmatist philosopher and psychologist William James. Further study of child psychology prompted Dewey to develop a philosophy of education that would meet the needs of a changing democratic society. In 1894 he joined the faculty of philosophy at the University of Chicago, where he further developed his progressive pedagogy in the university's Laboratory Schools. In 1904 Dewey left Chicago for Columbia University in New York City, where he spent the majority of his career and wrote his most famous philosophical work, Experience and Nature (1925). His subsequent writing, which included articles in popular periodicals, treated topics in aesthetics, politics, and religion. The common theme underlying Dewey's philosophy was his belief that a democratic society of informed and engaged inquirers was the best means of promoting human interests.

In order to develop and articulate his philosophical system, Dewey first needed to expose what he regarded as the flaws of the existing tradition. He believed that the distinguishing feature of Western philosophy was its assumption that true being-that which is fully real or fully knowable-is changeless, perfect, and eternal and the source of whatever reality the world of experience may possess. Plato's forms (abstract entities corresponding to the properties of particular things) and the Christian conception of God were two examples of such a static, pure, and transcendent being, compared with which anything that undergoes change is imperfect and less real. According to one modern version of the assumption, developed by the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes, all experience is subjective, an exclusively mental phenomenon that cannot provide evidence of the existence or the nature of the physical world, the "matter" of which is ultimately nothing more than changeless extension in motion. The Western tradition thus made a radical distinction between true reality on the one hand and the endless varieties and variations of worldly human experience on the other.

Dewey held that this philosophy of nature was drastically impoverished. Rejecting any dualism between being and experience, he proposed that all things are subject to change and do change. There is no static being, and there is no changeless nature. Nor is experience purely subjective, because the human mind is itself part and parcel of nature. Human experiences are the outcomes of a range of interacting processes and are thus worldly events. The challenge to human life, therefore, is to determine how to live well with processes of change, not somehow to transcend them.

Nature and the construction of ends

Dewey developed a metaphysics that examined characteristics of nature that encompassed human experience but were either ignored by or misrepresented by more traditional philosophers. Three such characteristics-what he called the "precarious," "histories," and "ends"-were central to his philosophical project.

The precarious

For Dewey, a precarious event is one that somehow makes ongoing experience problematic; thus, any obstacle, disruption, danger, or surprise of any kind is precarious. As noted earlier, because humanity is a part of nature, all things that humans encounter in their daily experience, including other humans and the social institutions they inhabit, are natural events. The arbitrary cruelty of a tyrant or the kindness shown by a stranger is as natural and precarious as the destruction wrought by a flood or the vibrant colours of a sunset. Human ideas and moral norms must also be viewed in this way. Human knowledge is wholly intertwined with precarious, constantly changing nature.

The constancy of change does not imply a complete lack of continuity with the past stages of natural processes. What Dewey meant by a history was a process of change with an identifiable outcome. When the constituent processes of a history are identified, they become subject to modification, and their outcome can be deliberately varied and secured. Dewey's conception of a history has an obvious implication for humanity: no person's fate is sealed by an antecedently given human nature, temperament, character, talent, or social role. This is why Dewey was so concerned with developing a philosophy of education. With an appropriate knowledge of the conditions necessary for human growth, an individual may develop in any of a variety of ways. The object of education is thus to promote the fruition of an active history of a specific kind-a human history.

Ends and goods

Since at least the time of Aristotle (384-322 bce), many Western philosophers have made use of the notion of end, or final cause-i.e., a cause conceived of as a natural purpose or goal ( see teleology). In ethics, ends are the natural or consciously determined goals of moral actions; they are moral absolutes, such as happiness or "the good," that human actions are designed to bring about. But such ends must be discerned before they can be fully attained. For Dewey, on the other hand, an end is a deliberately constructed outcome of a history. Hence, his expression "the construction of good" encapsulates much of the significance of his philosophy. A person confronted by a spontaneous intrusion of the precarious world into the seemingly steady course of his life will identify and analyze the constituents of his particular situation and then consider what changes he might introduce in order to produce, in Dewey's parlance, a "consummatory" end. Such an end is a fulfillment of these particular conditions, and it is unique to them. Similarly, there is no such thing as an absolute good against which actions may be evaluated; rather, any constructed end that promotes human flourishing while taking into account the precarious is a good.

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John Dewey | Biography, Philosophy, Pragmatism, & Education

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John Dewey, American philosopher and educator who was a cofounder of the philosophical movement known as pragmatism, a pioneer in functional psychology, an innovative theorist of democracy, and a leader of the progressive movement in education in the United States.

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Why Music Matters: The Cognitive Personalism of Reimer and Elliott

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The purpose of this paper is to compare Reimer and Elliott as a means of introducing and examining two current mainstream approaches to the philosophy of music education in North America. To that end, the following queries are posed to Reimer and Elliott to clarify the fundamental contours of their respective frameworks.

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Because the other sections of this web site address many aspects of the praxial curriculum, I will keep this section brief.

As Regelski explains (PME, chapter 12), the praxial philosophy posits a distinctive concept of curriculum for music teaching and learning. The idea is that all music education programs (general music programs and otherwise) ought to be organized and taught as reflective musical practicums. It is imperative to add, however, that the precise contents and details of each school (or community) music curriculum-as-practicum will differ according to local circumstances: that is, specific students and teachers in their own circumstances. I detail the foundations and nature of the curriculum-as-practicum in MM (chapters 10 and 11). I will not add more here. Suffice it to say that, in addition to Regelski's enlightened chapter, the essays by Burnard, Dolloff, Martin, Barrett, and Woodward discuss many important details of the curriculum-as-practicum.

The central tenet of the practicum idea is holistic immersion. The aim is to develop all dimensions of students' musicianship and listenership via students' joyful, active engagements with all forms of musicing and listening. As I say:

"The praxial music curriculum is deliberately organized to engage learners in musical actions, transactions, and interactions with close approximations of real music-cultures. The praxial curriculum immerses students in music-making projects that require them to draw upon the standards, traditions, lore, landmark achievements, 'languages,' and creative strategies of the musical practices of which their projects are a part."

From this perspective, the music teaching-learning environment is, itself, a key element in the music education enterprise. The musical actions of learners are enabled and promoted by the interactive, goal-directed "swirl" of questions, issues and knowings that develop around students' efforts as reflective musical practitioners. The praxial curriculum is, itself, informative. (MM, p. 266)

Regelski agrees and adds that the need to "get back to the unique requirements of active music making as they exist in particular conditions of situatedness is, in fact, a defining trait of any praxial theory of music and, therefore, of a praxial orientation to curriculum for music education" (PME, p. 226). Although some critics believe the practicum is only concerned with teaching technical know-how via models and demonstrations (see PME, chapter 6), Regelski corrects this misunderstanding when he avers that the "learning by authentic doing" of praxis is "not mere techne" (p. 236). He continues: "The required 'authenticity' refers to real-life models of musical praxis, and 'authentic evaluation' of teaching and learning employs holistic assessment of the actual praxis adjusted for students' developmental and age levels" (p. 236). Yes. I also agree with his statement, below, which I count as further support for the praxial view that music education must integrate musicing-and-listening:

"General music instruction, in particular, also needs its own practicum for listening. But this needs to include performing and compositional praxes of various kinds and degrees that inform listening in productive ways. But instead of having 'just listening' as the sole intended consequence of the general music curriculum, as is typically the case with MEAE, a praxial approach to general music class will also focus on developing an interest in and nurturing the skills for various kinds and levels of performing and creating music for recreational purposes." (PME, p. 238)

Overall, then, I believe Regelski and I see eye-to-eye on almost everything. And where he voices concerns and/or suggests adjustments to my view, I feel sure I can accommodate these in the next edition of MM. For example, he is correct in saying that I should have paid more attention to so-called everyday musics, including "amateur, recreational, lay, and naïve" musics. Still, and for the sake of dialogue, I wonder whether many of these musics are actually well known practices (e.g., R&B) that Regelski is calling "amateur" or "lay" because they are largely absent from schools, or non-traditional (compared to "classical" practices), or "anti-establishment" in one way or another? In any event, because I've spent a considerable amount of time in the theoretical and practical worlds of community music during the last decade, I have a much better handle on why and how various kinds of amateur, lay, and recreational musicing should be incorporated into the school music curriculum-as-practicum (see, also, PME, chapter 17).

The last point I want to discuss is Regelski's idea that school music instruction should not be too specialized at first. Instead, and because of the nature of schooling, he argues that we should focus on "shared, common or general musicianship abilities that, at functional entry levels will, for most students, become more 'precise' as they are employed and developed in context-dependent situations" (PME, pp. 236-237). He holds that "musicianship is most pragmatic that amounts to generalmusicianship [italics added]" by which he means "basic yet flexible or adaptable skills and concepts that can be further honed by the unique requirements of a specific praxis" (p. 236).

But if students enter school with a basic, shared, and/or "common" musicianship-listenership, isn't this the same as saying that children already possess a specific, context-dependent form of musicianship? For example, Puerto Rican children in San Juan enter school with their "local" musics in their heads, whereas many inner-city Asian children in Toronto enter school with a socially-culturally different kind of musicianship. So, for example, to "unpack" what children bring to school in favor of instilling one kind of "general musicianship" seems to contradict some of the most basic tenets of praxial music and music education.

Indeed, is there such a thing as "general musicianship"? (Analogously, is there something called "general language-ship" that every child could learn before they specialize in "their language"?) And what does Regelski mean by "adaptable skills"? Does this mean aural acuity in the Western tonal-rhythmic tradition, and/or sight-reading skills?

I raise these questions only to highlight the possibility that "general musicianship" seems to move us backward to the old view of "music" as a universal, undifferentiated phenomenon and, therefore, away from the praxial natures and values of music-as-musical-practices that are deeply embedded in and reflective of their social-cultural communities (which Bowman and Regelski explain so well in PME).

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Because the other sections of this web site address many aspects of the praxial curriculum, I will keep this section brief. As Regelski explains (PME, chapter 12), the praxial philosophy posits a distinctive concept of curriculum for music teaching and learning.

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"Music is a way of knowing and a complex symbol system that can only be fully understood through the educational experiences offered in school" (p. 34)

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Aesthetic Education

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University of Chicago Lab school
Experiencial Learning

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Five Processes
1. family
2. religion
3. politics
4. profession
5. commerce

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Praxial Philosophy
"musicing"

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1. Dissection
2. Performing
3. Composition