John Dewey on History Education and the Historical Method

Th is essay constructs a comprehensive view of Dewey’s approach to history, the historical method, and history education. Drawing on Dewey’s approach to the subject at the University of Chicago Laboratory School (1896-1904), Dewey’s chapter on the historical method in Logic: A Th eory of Inquiry (1938), and a critique of Dewey’s philosophy of history that appeared in the American Historical Review and the published response to this attack by Dewey’s colleagues (1954), the author argues that Dewey consistently approached history in genetic and historicist terms. Recent theory and research in historical education has focused attention on the structures, processes, and cognitive acts of professional historians. Proponents of historical thinking argue that authentic teaching in history should move beyond the mere memorization of facts and instead engage students directly in the interpretation of primary sources and the construction of original historical accounts. Th ese scholars argue that by “doing history” through open-ended inquiry, students will discover the contingent nature of historical accounts, which is a more accurate refl ection of the fi eld. In particular, books like Howard Gardner’s Th e Disciplined Mind and Keith Barton and Linda Levstik’s Teaching History for the Common Good cite the work of John Dewey as a rationale for engaging students in meaningful historical inquiry. In light of the recent resurgence of interest in history education, an investigation of Dewey’s philosophy of history and history education seems warranted.1 In his 1938 book, Logic: Th e Th eory of Inquiry, Dewey devoted an entire chapter, titled “Judgment as Spatial-Temporal Distinction: Narration Description,” to the historical method. Th is chapter is most frequently addressed and cited when historians analyze Dewey’s philosophy of history.2 Th e literature on Dewey’s philosophy John Dewey on History Education and the Historical Method 21 Volume 26 (2) 2010 of history focuses on questions of whether or not his pragmatic views of history were relativistic, ambivalent, antagonistic, or adequate. For example, judging the effi cacy of Dewey’s theory, Burleigh Taylor Wilkins argues, “Dewey had closed the door to any eff ective distinctions between the fi nding of the historian and the reasons that lie behind his interest in any historical problem.”3 Wilkins considers epistemological dualism, which Dewey rejected, as a necessary precondition for eff ective historical inquiry. Likewise, Th omas Neill remarked, “Because Dewey thought of knowledge in terms of power rather than truth, he could not understand that historians frequently undertake inquiries without trying to prove anything.”4 Neill criticized Dewey’s contention that trained historians could not transcend the social views and narrow interests of their time. For both of these critics, Dewey’s philosophy of history was inherently relativistic and denied that historians could fully separate their understanding of the past from their own social milieus. While these critiques may indeed be accurate, they do not approach Dewey from the proper perspective, because they both view Dewey’s philosophy of history as something fi xed. However, Dewey viewed history itself in historicist and genetic terms. History was one thing for the elementary school student, another thing for the secondary student, and yet another for the professional historian. Dewey believed that the method and content of history was itself part of the process of growth. In this essay, I suggest that to understand Dewey’s philosophy of history fully, we must reconcile the view he put forth in Logic with his earlier views on how history was used at the University of Chicago laboratory school (the Dewey School, 1896-1904). I openly admit that I am constructing a consistency of views that Dewey never fully outlined. He always viewed his own thought in historicist terms; his ideas were never intended to be internally consistent, rather, each idea was introduced in the context of a particular issue and period. As Dewey admitted to a colleague in 1931, “I’ve worked out my views rather piecemeal and not always with consistency in detail.”5 I argue that the consistency of Dewey’s thoughts on history can, in fact, be found in the piecemeal nature of his career, development, and philosophy. Th at is, he was consistent in that he consistently approached knowledge and problems in a historicist manner. Th is approach not only provides a more accurate depiction of Dewey’s own thinking, but it better refl ects his views on the discipline of history itself. My account draws upon three areas of Dewey’s career. First, I demonstrate how the cultural and industrial history of the race provided the underlying conceptual framework for the curriculum at the Dewey School (1896-1904). Next I outline Dewey’s views on the historical method as presented in Logic: A Th eory of Inquiry (1938). Finally, I focus on a critique of Dewey’s philosophy of history that appeared in the American Historical Review—the fl agship journal of the American Historical Association— in 1954 and the published response to this attack by Dewey’s colleagues. Drawing on these three sources, I construct a comprehensive view of Dewey’s approach to history and history education.