Dewey and China

Author: Hebei People's Publishing House
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-01-01
Features: Looking back now, among all his thoughts, the introduction and application of Dewey's educational philosophy are relatively complete, accurate, and least controversial, with the greatest practical effectiveness, though misunderstandings are not entirely absent. For example, when Jiang Menglin introduced Dewey's ethics, his explanation of the relationship between "knowing" and "doing" was somewhat inadequate. He placed "knowing" first and "doing" second, which only had a relative correctness. In Dewey's philosophy, "doing" is the fundamental category of ontology, while "knowing" is merely a tool. This shows that Jiang Menglin's overall grasp of Dewey was insufficient, making his statements inevitably one-sided. Later, Hu Shi, when discussing Dewey's educational philosophy, accurately corrected these misunderstandings, explaining, "This kind of behavior is, from beginning to end, a continuous activity, with no distinction between internal and external. Knowing is external, doing is also internal; motivation is activity, and the results of action are also activity." Therefore, activity is fundamental. Later, Tao Xingzhi's proposal of "Doing is the beginning of knowing" and his subsequent name change to Tao Xingzhi followed the same reasoning. The subjective reasons of the recipients were certainly involved, but Dewey himself bore the primary responsibility. While emphasizing the connection between education and life, he overlooked the independent role of knowledge education. Abstract knowledge should ultimately serve life, but maintaining its relative "abstractness" during teaching is also justified and necessary—this is a need for division of labor and a prerequisite and sign of social progress. Dewey criticized the negative aspects of traditional education, which was certainly good, but if taken to extremes, it became an overcorrection, making it harder for people to understand. Unfortunately, even in his mature academic thought, Dewey did not completely overcome this bias. As a result, in the 1960s, Americans attributed their country's educational backwardness to Dewey when they saw the Soviet satellite launch, and this was not entirely without reason.
Regardless, the educational reform movement sparked by Dewey in China still played a positive role, especially his promotion of democratic education and vocational education, which had an undeniable historical significance for the popularization of culture and the deepening of the New Culture Movement in China. Even today, some fundamental aspects of the educational reforms we implement have not strayed far from Dewey's original ideas. This significance largely stems from Dewey's profound influence on Chinese education, and it can even be said that the basic framework of modern Chinese education is built upon Dewey's educational philosophy. This statement is not an exaggeration—just consider Tao Xingzhi's status in the history of Chinese education, or the widely recognized phrases such as "education is life," "education is society," and "learning by doing" that were familiar for a long time.
Additionally, we should note that Dewey's book Democracy and Education became a standard textbook for education departments in Chinese universities for a long time. Normal schools and their affiliated schools also eagerly emulated Dewey's experimental school model at the University of Chicago, renaming themselves experimental schools to conduct educational experiments. In 1920, during Dewey's lecture at Tsinghua University, he specially wrote to the head John Croft, proposing to reform Tsinghua University into