Dialogue With John Dewey

Next Tuesday, October 20, marks the hundredth anniversary of John Dewey's birth. In memory of the philosopher, Antonius Savides, a retired professor prominent in certain educational and psychological circles, has written down an interview he remembers having with Dewey in Lowell House some years ago.

A legendary figure in Cambridge, Savides is remarkable for his little-known interviews with such figures as Dean Briggs, George Lyman Kittredge, and Bliss Perry. His piece, which follows, is offered as a bit of Dewey Memorabilia.

For nearly three decades John Dewey has been recognized, and is recognized, as the most influential thinker in education and philosopher in general, not only in America but in the world. What is, at least in part, the secret of his greatness.

In his historic address on his seventieth anniversary on October 19, 1929, I heard John Dewey say in New York, "...one of the conditions of happiness is the opportunity of a calling, a career which somehow is congenial to one's own temperament. I have had the sheer luck or fortune to be engaged in the occupation of thinking; and while I am quite regular at my meals, I think that I may say that I would rather work, and perhaps even more, play, with ideas and with thinking than eat. That chance has been given me...."

Two of the most stimulating ideas I have come across in my educational studies are one by Rousseau: namely that education should be adapted to the heart of the pupil; and another by a Rabbi: "May the educators of youth not clip the wings of youth." I was therefore greatly interested in hearing John Dewey say, in the spring of 1931 before the Harvard Teachers Association, that there were two charges against education: It neglected to make an appeal to the imagination and to the emotions.

During my spring recess in 1931, I counted myself very fortunate to discover, in the Harvard Philosophy and Psychology Library, the recently published philosophical autobiography of John Dewey. I take the liberty of quoting extracts from it.

He writes that he has developed "a certain scepticism about the depth and range of purely contemporary issues; it is likely that many of those which seem highly important today will also in a generation have receded to the status of the local and provincial.... The value (of the history of philosophy) in giving perspective and a sense of proportion in relation to immediate contemporary issues can hardly be overestimated... (Plato) still provides my favorite philosophic reading."

Highest Flight of Metaphysics

John Dewey continues to say that we should go "back (not to traditional Platonism, but) to the dramatic, restless, co-operatively inquiring Plato of the dialogues... whose highest flight of Metaphysics always terminated with a social and practical turn.... Upon the whole the forces that have influenced me have come from persons and from situations more than from books." He expressed the faith that the philosophy of the future would be characterized by unification or integration of thought without artificiality.

He remarks significantly: "I have never been able to feel much optimism regarding the possibilities of higher education when it is built upon warped and weak foundations.... philosophizing should focus about education as the supreme human interest."

Knock on Lowell House Door

After I concluded my study of Dewey's autobiographical sketch, I found out by fortunate coincidence that he was at the time visiting professor at Harvard. So early that afternoon I went to Lowell House and knocked on the door of his room. Happily, he was in. I asked John Dewey whether he would have half an hour for an interview any time in the next few days. He very generously answered, "now." So I put to him the following questions:

Question: May I ask what your message would be to my seniors in education who are prospective teachers?

Answer: Let them pay attention to social and moral relations and the problems involved.

Q: What books would you recommend for the study of ethics?

A: George Palmer's Nature of Goodness, and some of the classics like Mill's Utilitarianism and On Liberty, Aristotle's Politics and Ethics and selections from Plato's Republic.

Q: Does not the American nation, a nation of action par excellence, need contemplation?

A: I would rather say meditation. All forms of poetry and art should also be very valuable to them.

Q: Who is the greatest thinker of all time. Would you say Plato?

A: Yes, I would say Plato in general. Of course it is hard to rank them. Some are significant in some things, and others in other things.

Q: In your books you emphasize action. Don't you think that mysticism is sometimes very important? Has not some of the best good been given to the world by some mystics like Christ, Plato, Emerson, and certain oriental philosophers?

A: It depends on what you mean by mysticism. I would give the Americans an opportunity for it, but I would not force it on them.

Q: Are not dreams sometimes most valuable? You seem to believe in action and in thought connected with action.

A: Yes, dreams are valuable sometimes but it depends on their quality and how much one indulges in them. I believe in action for knowledge.

Q: What does human nature need most in your estimation?

A: Intelligence, judgment. Relations have to be grasped. Intelligence is regulative power. Intelligent judgement gives direction to desires.

Q: What would you consider the minimum essentials for an educated man?

A: Idealism and intelligent control.

Q: Which of your books do you consider the greatest?

A: Oh, I could not compare them. It is like asking a father which of his children he likes best.

Q: Which has given you the greatest trouble?

A: Experience and Nature has given me the greatest trouble and the greatest satisfaction.

Q: Would you say that School and Society is your most original book?

A: Yes, in Education.

Q: Are not some of the greatest thinkers millenia ahead of their time?

A: Yes.

Q: Which is more important, intelligence or the emotions?

A: It is like asking which leg is more important, the right or the left.

Q: Which plays the greater role in life, as it is lived today?

A: The emotions.

Q: Which should play the greater role in life?

A: (After considerable deliberation), they should be balanced.

Q: From your works such as I have studied your stress induction but not deduction. What provision would you make for deduction?

A: You will find deduction given importance in How to Think.