The Dewey School as Triumph, Tragedy, and Misunderstood: Exploring the Myths and Historiography of the University of Chicago Laboratory School

Abstract

Background/Context Over the last century, perhaps no school in American history has been studied more than John Dewey's Laboratory School at the University of Chicago (1896–1904). Scholars have published dozens of articles, books, essays, and assessments of a school that existed for only seven and a half years. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This article reviews the extensive firsthand accounts and historiography of the famed school. In the first section, the authors trace the published accounts of those who experienced the Dewey School firsthand between 1895 and 1904. In the second section, the authors review accounts of the school by contemporaries, reformers, and historians between 1904 and 2014, focusing on three historiographical areas: the events surrounding the closing of the school, the rationale underlying its curriculum, and the impact of the experiment on U.S. schools. In the third section, the authors argue that most accounts of the Dewey School convey one of three historiographical myths: the Dewey School as misunderstood; the Dewey School as triumph, and/or the Dewey School as tragedy. Research Design A historiographical essay is a narrative and analytical account of what has been written on a particular historical topic. Following this methodology, the authors are less concerned with establishing what happened at the Dewey School, than they were with how the school was analyzed and interpreted by contemporaries and historians over the past 120 years. Conclusions/Recommendations The authors analyze each myth to conclude that Dewey only subscribed to the myth of the Dewey School as misunderstood, while the other two were historiographical constructions created by Dewey's contemporaries and historians.

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“…interaktion, refleksion og faelles undersøgelser har vaeret en staerk inspiration for den universitetsskolemodel, vi har udviklet på UCSYD. I nyere historiske analyser af universitetsskolen i Chicago har man peget på nogle af svaghederne og begraensningerne ved den, såsom spørgsmål vedrørende race og social lighed og grundene til dens relative korte levetid (Fallace, 2009;Fallace & Fantozzi, 2017).…”

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“…In 1904, Dewey resigned from the University of Chicago after disagreements over the management of the University Laboratory School (Fallace & Fantozzi, 2017) and joined the Faculty of Philosophy at Columbia University, where he developed his ideas in later treatises, such as Democracy and Education (1916) and Experience and Education (1938). However, it was his initial works that were most widely read in the Hispanic world in 1920s.…”

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“…Rather, in Dewey’s work, we saw a kindred spirit of inquiry, centred on the educational context of children’s life experiences. According to Hickman’s (2005) accounts of Dewey’s private correspondence, the school was “primarily a school of methods, only secondarily a school of practice—That is, its primary intention is to attempt a systematic organization of the school curriculum, testing & developing methods” (Fallace & Fantozzi, 2017, p. 5, citing from Hickman, 2005). Of course, that is not to say that Dewey did not prioritize the learning experiences of students who attended his Laboratory School; rather, he saw the school as a site for ongoing, iterative development of the learning context based on connecting the educational experience as effectively as possible with children’s natural selves.…”