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For John Dewey, the fulfillment of the promise of democracy was an inherent challenge of the American educational system. Eschewing authoritarian teaching practices, the highly influential educator and philosopher believed that the process of educating was best served as a social exercise. Outside of a system of rote memorization, Dewey postulated that the students learn most efficiently about the society into which they were entering through holistic experiences.

Children, just moments after birth and whether they knew it or not, enter a socializing world. Dewey claimed that “true education” came from the interaction with other people and the practice of navigating through these situations. However, socialization was only one-half of the equation for properly educating students. Each child had a psychological component to be understood as well as it was “the starting point of all education.” As best as possible, the educator must adapt techniques that the child would most likely and successful use.

Dewey’s educational theory would search for a balance between two polarizing tendencies: the individuality psychological make-up of each student and the essential introduction into the social world. The most effective schools would serve as a learning laboratory, separate yet not isolated from the outside world. Instead of churning out new cogs to fit within the industrialized economy, children should be groomed as well-adapted members, new participants in the American democratic experience.

Dewey strongly advocated the notion of democracy within the classroom. He also believed that to learn knowledge was to experience it (and vice versa). Combining these two credos involved exercises where the students would use their new knowledge in real-life situations. For example, train schedules and itineraries could be deciphered using multiplication tables; understanding the history of Native Americans should entail experiencing conditions they faced pre and post European contact. Permitting some elements of anachronism, Dewey would heartily approve of the computer-interactive game offered by Donaldson and Knupfer as the children worked cooperatively, with minimal authoritative measures.

Alas for Dewey, the benefits of his educational approach were not apparent in the schools he set up. In short, they were failures. Despite this setback, his experiential and experimental ideas would catch on in American education. This success is most visible in the interactive and digital classrooms of today. In spite of the technological advances we presently rely on, Dewey would remind us that the box of instant information was insignificant without the socializing aspects and real-life applications inherent in his teaching philosophy.