John Dewey’s Concept of the Student

Douglas J. Simpson

In this article, I have examined Dewey’s concept of the student through the lens of his
poetry and prose to show that his poetry clarifies his prose. I have devoted special attention
to a study of Dewey’s poetry to reveal his belief that students are more fragile than his
prose suggests and that they need guidance in their desire for freedom to learn. His
poetry also suggests that students need help to navigate society’s contradictory educational
currents. Without such help, they will likely suffer damaging, permanent outcomes.

L’article analyse, à travers les poèmes et la prose de Dewey, son concept de l’élève. Les
poèmes de Dewey présentent l’élève comme étant plus fragile que ce que pouvait laisser
supposer sa prose et comment il doit être guidé dans son désir de liberté dans
l’apprentissage. La poésie de Dewey laisse entendre aussi que les élèves ont besoin d’aide
pour trouver leur voie dans les courants éducatifs contradictoires de la société. Sans
cette aide, ils risquent d’être affectés de manière permanente.

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John Dewey’s thoughts about students and learning have long interested
educators, although many have failed to study his writings and have
misinterpreted and misapplied his ideas (Archambault, 1964/1974, p. ix).
This lack of attention to his writings extends to his poetry which has been
studied even less than his prose. In this article, I address this neglect by
examining in more detail some of his philosophical and pedagogical beliefs
about students through attention to his poetry.
Dewey thought that the major responsibility for education fell initially
upon adults, teachers, and others. He did not intend that students be held
primarily responsible for their achievements or shortcomings. Instead, he
considered adults responsible for creating learning conditions to promote
educative experiences for children. Even so, he encouraged teachers to
ensure that learners come to understand their limitations and potentialities
through their critiques of student performance and other feedback
(Boydston, 1976/1980, p. 28). This is not to say that Dewey did not place
emphasis on the learner’s initiative and involvement. He clearly stated
that the teacher’s guiding, directing, and navigating were impossible if
the energy for learning does not come from the student: “Since learning is
something that the pupil has to do himself [or herself] and for himself [or

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 26, 2 (2001): 183–200

184 DOUGLAS J. SIMPSON

herself], the initiative lies with the learner” (Dewey, 1933/1960, p. 36). So,
too, Dewey expected the student to adapt to the curriculum as much as he
expected the teacher to adapt material to the student (Dewey, 1938/1963,
pp. 46–47).
When Dewey was writing his poems (1910 to1918), he was in his fifties
and sixties and had completed most of his major works on education
(Boydston, 1977, p. xvii). Interestingly, he did not want his poetry
published. Given the aesthetic interest the poems have generated, one
might conclude that his judgment of the pieces was superior to that
displayed by those who had the works published. Yet, the poetry does
illuminate Dewey as a person and a philosopher. In particular, the poetry
partially informs the reader of Dewey’s opinions of students, teaching,
and education. Of Dewey the person, his poetry provides glimpses of a
“loving, sensuous, playful, perceptive, and at times emotionally torn,
weary, self-doubting, depressed” individual (Boydston, 1977, p. xxii). His
poetry also suggests that his affection for Anzia Yezierska may not have
been completely platonic. Yet in his poetry Dewey echoes, expands, and
clarifies his thinking about several subjects, including philosophical
anthropology and pedagogical theory.

PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Rather than pursue the full scope of Dewey’s thought about the child, I
have limited my comments to his opinions of the student’s nature, soul,
and significance. To begin with, it is worthwhile to comment on a feature
of Dewey’s educational theory that stems from his philosophical
anthropology. Although Dewey is frequently considered a child-centred
educator (Archambault, 1964/1974), this description is somewhat
inaccurate because he explicitly denied this label and stated that he was
better described as community-centred because he thought learning was
a social activity, not an individual one (Boydston, 1981–1991, vol. 11, p.
206; vol. 17, p. 53). Community should be understood to include children,
youth, and adults. On the other hand, Dewey believed “the centre of
gravity” needed to shift from the curriculum and teacher to the child and
her or his impulses as a member of a social group (Dewey, 1956/1990, p.
34). The following three subtopics — the student’s nature, soul, and
significance — are treated separately for the sake of discussion, although
they overlap in Dewey’s philosophy.
DEWEY’S CONCEPT OF THE STUDENT 185

The Student’s Nature

Dewey’s ideas regarding the child evolved throughout his life, but there
is a remarkable continuity in his thought on the subject. For example, he
had an abiding confidence in the child’s nature and ability and believed
that, when educators guide a student’s growth, his or her natural tendencies
lead to educative experiences and to a better functioning society. The School
and Society, published in 1899 and revised in 1915, offers Dewey’s clear
early statement on the child’s nature (Burnett, 1976/1980, p. vii). He
explained why he believed that understanding the child’s nature is a
starting point for education and identified four major instincts that
educators should “get hold of” and “direct” toward “something better”
to educate a child (Boydston, 1976/1980, p. 31). Noteworthy is his belief
that the investigative and artistic instincts grow out of the communicative
and constructive tendencies. His ideas are outlined as follows:
Instincts Manifestations
communicative saying, communicating
constructive making, playing, shaping
investigative finding out, inquiring
artistic creating, fashioning
In addition to attributing these four impulses to all children — a term
Dewey used as a synonym for instincts, his affirmation about how to
understand students differed from many of his contemporaries. Dewey
claimed, first, the importance of understanding the “individual mind as a
function of social life — as not capable of operating or developing by itself,
but as requiring continual stimulus from social agencies, and finding its
nutrition in social supplies” (Boydston, 1976/1980, p. 69). This emphasis
ran counter to beliefs that the mind is innate or individually created.
Second, he argued that the child should be understood from the perspective
of emotion and endeavour as well as knowledge and intellect (p. 69). The
student is a feeling, purposive, and intellectual being who needs to be
approached as a whole person. Third, he insisted that mind is not a static
entity that comes fully developed but instead is “a process” and “a growing
affair” characterized by “distinctive phases of capacity and interest” (p.
71). Dewey argued that education is neither a “drawing out” nor a “pouring
in” but a “taking hold” of the activities that stem from instincts. These
activities need to be directed toward valuable outcomes (Dewey, 1956/
1990, p. 36).
186 DOUGLAS J. SIMPSON

In 1909 when he wrote Moral Principles in Education (Dewey, 1909/

1975), Dewey added a new impulse, “innate tendency,” to amplify the
communicative instinct. “The child is born with a natural desire to give
out, to do, to serve” (p. 22), a natural desire that teachers can use to cultivate
character and good citizenship (pp. 9–11, 49–57). Similarly, he thought
that teachers should nurture the “impulse toward justice, kindliness, and
order” (Dewey, 1934/1962, p. 47). Later, he modified his thinking about
the number of impulses and spoke of a “group of instinctive and impulsive
tendencies” that educators ought to take into consideration (Dewey, 1916/
1944, p. 194). If they would design curricula in view of these tendencies,
Dewey thought of the potential outcome: “going to school is a joy,
management is less of a burden, and learning is easier” (p. 194). In a still
later volume, Dewey (1938/1963, pp. 67ff) mentioned a variety of impulses
that need to be converted into desires and, then, the desires need to be
transformed into purposes. This process of moving from impulses to
desires to purposes involves a “complex intellectual operation” (pp. 68–
69). Dewey listed the conditions:

(1) observation of surrounding conditions; (2) knowledge of what has happened in similar
situations in the past, a knowledge obtained partly by recollection and partly from the
information, advice, and warning of those who have had a wider experience; and (3)
judgment which puts together what is observed and what is recalled to see what they
signify. A purpose differs from an original impulse and desire through its translation into
a plan and method of action based upon foresight of the consequences of acting under
given observed conditions in a certain way. (Dewey, 1963, p. 69)

When Dewey compared his thinking with what he saw in schools, he

was troubled. He was especially concerned that many of his contemporaries
minimized the importance of native impulses or, worse, sought to suppress
them because they were considered evil. Because educators suppressed
children’s impulses, he believed they forced schools to be dull, disrupted
learning, and created behavioural problems. In “The Child’s Garden,”
Dewey described an adult who was suppressed too often as a child. He
lamented the hardening effect of the environment upon the child and the
resulting inability to recover his or her hopes and dreams because

. . . the freezing years did harden

And shut me in this barren field
— Docks and thistle its only yield —
And I cannot find that closèd garden. (Boydston, 1977, p. 19)

Dewey was not a proponent of allowing the student to do anything he

DEWEY’S CONCEPT OF THE STUDENT 187

or she wished. Educators need to assist in the conversion of impulses into

desires and purposes which they then could direct. If this conversion and
guidance did not occur, he argued that the crude, undeveloped, and
unconverted instincts of childhood would dominate the child and, later,
the adult. A falsely called freedom that permits a child to pursue impulses
at will does not result in a reflective and autonomous individual but instead
turns her or him “loose to suffer in the lanes/Of thorn trees unpossessed
as yet by man” (Boydston, 1977, p. 6). Students need to have their impulses
and desires directed, converted, and transformed so that they develop
insights that lead to a genuine freedom, a “freedom . . . identical with self-
control; for the formation of purposes and the organization of means to
execute them are the work of intelligence” (Dewey, 1938/1963, p. 67).
In poem #28, Dewey imagined a person who is strong but not sufficiently
self-controlled and independent to overcome his or her burning desires
and societal pressures because he or she was not adequately guided earlier
in life:

He failed. Though he was strong,

He was not strong enough t’ await
The final word of patient fate.
He was hurried by the restless throng
Of feverish desires to seek
The promised land of honeyed streams
Of smooth success. (Boydston, 1977, p. 19)

Although children may be eager to claim a freedom or a dream, Dewey

suggested that educators should not cultivate this eagerness. He made
unmistakably clear the outcomes of people yielding to undeveloped
impulses and ill-advised pressures:

Through searchings for a bright remote

Paradise of joys. Then sudden walls
Closed in. The thorns were hands which smote
Him. Rocks melted. Paths were pitfalls;
The promised land swallowed in cloud. (Boydston, 1977, p. 19)

Dewey, nevertheless, believed that schooling and other forms of

intentional education should strive “to free the capacities thus formed for
fuller exercise, to purge them of some of their grossness, and to furnish
objects which make their activity more productive of meaning” (Dewey,
1916/1944, p. 17). One of the reasons for education, therefore, is to ensure
that “genuine and thorough transmission takes place, [because] the most
188 DOUGLAS J. SIMPSON

civilized group will relapse into barbarism and then into savagery” if
society neglects its educative responsibilities (Dewey, 1916/1944, pp. 3–
4). To successfully pursue desirable outcomes, Dewey thought that society
needed to understand that the purpose of education was not just to transmit
customs, beliefs, and occupations to the young but also to help create souls,
selves, or people. Schools, therefore, are institutions of creation, not just
places of transmission.

The Student’s Soul

Although Dewey believed early in his life in a nonmaterial dimension of

the human personality, he later decided that the soul or spirit was a social
creation. Accordingly, he decided that there was no immaterial essence
called the self. The self was a social construct, an outcome of the effort of
the child in his or her context. He argued that the idea of a self is exactly
that: an imaginative “idea” (Dewey, 1934/1962, p. 18). Moreover, he
maintained that it was critical to understand that “the unification of the
self throughout the ceaseless flux of what it does, suffers, and achieves,
cannot be attained in terms of itself. The self is always directed toward
something beyond itself . . .” (p. 19).
Many years before writing A Common Faith, Dewey wrote in his poem
“My Body and My Soul” that human love is found in the body’s love of
others and that the falsely called ghost or soul of the body was powerless.
He asserted:

For love is proved in power to wait in worship, serve and give,

And soul without body, powerless for these things, does not live,
But pretentious ghost, filled with thoughts of self, wanders alone
While body’s love, in glad surrender, finds other’s soul his own. (Boydston, 1977, p. 8)

In poem #77, Dewey asserted that an active body created the self and one
became her or himself through living and making decisions: “Learning
hate and love and poise in his strife” (p. 56). In the end, it is “the body’s
movement to and fro,/As loving, hating; it everywhere doth go/That
creates a soul from soulless things” (p. 56). Dewey, therefore, argued for
educational environments founded upon a belief in the guided movement
and involvement of the child. The child’s nature demanded such an
environment for her or him to learn and to become a self. He added that
education is an endeavour that was designed to see a community of
inquiring selves creating themselves and one another. Children create
themselves and help create others. Educators contribute to the creation of
DEWEY’S CONCEPT OF THE STUDENT 189

other selves because they are an important part of the environment. Or, as
others say, “each of us becomes those people with whom we work, talk,
share, and grow” (Tharp, Estrada, Dalton, & Yamauchi, 2000, p. 60). The
self as a human creation, then, is a lifetime undertaking, and educators
guide in part this creation as they direct impulses, assist in the conversion
of impulses into desires, and are co-partners with students in the
transformation of desires into reflective purposes.

The Student’s Significance

If a child is not created in the image of God and not a self in an historic
sense, one may wonder how there can be any value attached to the person.
And if there is no significance to children beyond that given to other socially
created objects, why should society value and educate children? Why spend
time in meaningless activities with valueless creatures? Dewey answered
that all nature was of one kind and in the process of time became significant.
The significance rests in the historical development of the universe and
the human race. Humans evolved and acquired the potentiality and
resources to be more than mere matter because “in experiment of Time’s
changes wise,/Recovered, conscious now, eternal peace/And Eternity
knew Death and Care her own” (Boydston, 1977, p. 36). To clarify the
significance of the self, Dewey explained that nature is “the whole complex
of the results of the interaction of man, with his memories and hopes,
understanding and desire, with that world to which one-sided philosophy
confines ‘nature’” (Dewey, 1934/1962, p. 152). Boydston’s observation
about Dewey’s poem “Creation” amplifies his viewpoint:

Creation moves from a picture of pre-creation, when nothing existed but “sterile Time,”
through the beginning of life activity and of physical ordering, into human history that is
at first indiscriminate, “careless of offspring come and gone,” and, finally, to the emergence
of morality and of human sensitivity to value priorities, when “Time was won to love of
feeble things that die,/And turned to tender care of all that grows.” (Boydston, 1977, p.
liv)

Believing that evolution made possible progressive developments, wise

changes, and increased capacities, Dewey concluded in “Two Weeks,” “we
are more than simple brute/Only in that there have entered into us/The
thoughts of others” (Boydston, 1977, p. 16). Humanness is tied in part to
the ability to learn from the “thoughts of others” (p. 16). Thus, Dewey
asserted that, with the evolution of humankind and human thought, the
universe took on meaning. He spoke in poem #31 of the significance of the
190 DOUGLAS J. SIMPSON

growth of human understanding and the meaning that humans gave the
universe when they first appeared on earth. He claimed,

Long time lay the world level and open,

Sharing and parting a common motion
Possesst by all in wide publicity,
Meaningless thus, lacking a me and thee. (Boydston, 1977, p. 21)

He repeated this thought almost verbatim in poem #77 and hinted

that human refinement emerged in humankind’s seeking, searching,
and meaning-making: “And when he found, or when he searched in
vain,/Dull blank things grew to meanings clear and plain” (Boydston,
1977, p. 56).
For Dewey, the arrival of humans in the world, and their learning, gave
significance and value to their world. With the coming of knowledge, the
creation of communities, and the possibility of growth, people became
significant, created meaning and values, and learned to be responsible to
act upon and transmit the best available information. Because nothing
was valued before humans arrived, there is no point in discussing the
value of anything apart from them. Values, significance, and importance
are distinctively human constructs. Specific values depend partially on
particular human beings and their individual situations, cultural
circumstances, and historical context. Yet, what ought to be valued by
humans are those things that promote human understanding, democratic
communities, and personal and social growth. Even so, these elements
which vary somewhat from one historical period to another are always
shaped by what others have learned. Values, therefore, are not whimsical,
idiosyncratic, or arbitrary, because they grow as society learns and matures.
Moral knowledge emerged from disciplined inquiry much as knowledge
did in other realms. Yet, every action and decision is “always specific,
concrete, individualized, unique” (Dewey, 1920/1957, p. 167) and demands
that each student develop moral thinking and traits. He concluded: “[W]e
are only pleading for the adoption in moral reflection of the logic that has
been proved to make for security, stringency and fertility in passing
judgments upon physical phenomena” (p. 165). Because Dewey was
community oriented and believed each person was a member of society,
he claimed that logic is fertile when it is socially or publicly developed
and tested, not validated on a purely personal level. Common or universal
but not absolute values emerge from public or social searches for that
which is good:
DEWEY’S CONCEPT OF THE STUDENT 191

We insisted at the last hour upon the unique character of every intrinsic good. But the
counterpart of this proposition is that the situation in which a good is consciously realized
is not one of transient sensations or private appetites but one of sharing and
communication — public, social. Even the hermit communes with gods and spirits; even
misery loves company; and the most extreme selfishness includes a band of followers or
some partner to share in the attained good. Universalization means socialization, the
extension of the area and range of those who share in a good. (Dewey, 1920/1957, p. 206)

PEDAGOGICAL THEORY

Dewey’s pedagogical theory grew from his thinking about philosophical

anthropology and his related views of child development. Out of these
understandings, he developed a natural learning theory and an
experimentalist philosophy of education. He claimed that learning as it
occurs in a good home should be the model for school learning, not vice
versa. The school should learn from the student’s natural learning activities
and work with other education agencies to take the immature child on a
trip from raw impulses to a maturing youth, progressively developing the
child into someone who reflectively constructs purposes and plans to reach
selected ends. Consequently, Dewey’s ideas of desirable environments,
education, thinking, and teaching illuminate his view of the student.

The Student’s Environment

From Dewey’s standpoint, one of the most important responsibilities of

an educator is to build and keep constructing educative environments for
students, an ongoing process. In building school environments and utilizing
external ones, the teacher seeks to control variables in such a manner that
the student engages in and reflects upon experiences that are educative
rather than noneducative, miseducative, or antieducative. In pursuing this
end, the teacher is partially guided by the goal — not “the starting point”
— of initiating students into the “subject-matter of the adult” (Dewey,
1938/1963, p. 83). For Dewey, “No experience is educative that does not
tend both to knowledge of more facts and entertaining of more ideas and
to a better, a more orderly, arrangement of them” (p. 82).

While this idea of schooling may be simple, it is not easy. Many factors
may combine to create an unfriendly environment for the natural
tendencies of the student. Certainly, many traditional schools of Dewey’s
period did not welcome the natural propensities of children. Nor did they
192 DOUGLAS J. SIMPSON

seek to guide and transform them. In poem #66, Dewey stressed the critical
nature of the school environment. He envisioned, as he wrote this poem,
an old man asking a boy if he understood what an imaginary educator
had just said to him. The boy responded by exclaiming that he had not
understood a single word. The lad added that a telling approach to teaching
was inappropriate for him and resulted in no learning. If, however, people
genuinely wanted him to learn, the way was clear: “put me with the little
kiddies and I shall learn” (Boydston, 1977, p. 48). Educators must create
an environment that connects children’s common means of learning or is
consistent with natural learning theory. Only then did Dewey envision
the fullness of the spirit of learning being present in classrooms: “the holy
spirit’s dove once more descend/As it hath from the beginning and shall
to th’end” (p. 48).

The Student’s Education

Dewey was concerned that traditional education became often detrimental

to the growth of children, largely noneducative or miseducative, or worse,
antieducational (Dewey, 1916/1944, p. 196). He defined a noneducative
experience as one having no impact on the immediate or future growth of
the child or society. He defined a miseducative experience as one that
intentionally or otherwise directed a person away from personal and social
growth. He defined antieducative experience as one that exploited children
or stunted their inquiring tendencies. In his writings Dewey urged
educators to create, develop, and sustain learning environments in schools
and communities that increasingly displaced non-, mis-, or antieducative
ones. He specified that educative experiences had to meet a variety of
criteria, involving a genuine problem of interest to the learner, a worthwhile
activity within itself, a stimulus for new questions and more information,
and an ordered experience to allow sufficient time for development, based
upon a continuity of past, present, and future considerations (Dewey, 1933/
1960, pp. 218–219).
In his poetry, Dewey wrote often of miseducation and antieducation. In
one piece, he mentioned a child who had barely met his personified and
defied Education (Boydston, 1977, p. lxiii, pp. 51–53) but was very familiar
with studies that supposedly prepared him for a distant future. He
described Education as calling and seeking the child, and, on occasion,
the child as seeking the voice of Education. But the child, who is both the
sought and the seeker, had doubts about his or her relationship to
Education, confessing:
DEWEY’S CONCEPT OF THE STUDENT 193

And tho I knew ’twas me you called,

I shrank afraid, appalled;
I thought it was not proper nor polite
For one like me to dare to claim a right
To speak with you . . . . (Boydston, 1977, p. 52)

The student’s desire to converse with Education, the god from above,
was thwarted at nearly every turn by an adult-constructed wall. The child
was “captured in illusion” by “outward things said clear;/And about was
the confusion/Of all the grown up persons said” (Boydston, 1977, p. 52).
These adults warned the child against listening to Education before the
appropriate time:

It is forbid
That you should hear till lid
Lifts from the things immured
I’ the past; nor is it to be endured
That you should hear direct
Before the hull of your mind be o’erdecked
With stiff well seasoned boards
Brought from dry scholastic hoards. (Boydston, 1977, p. 52)

The proper time for the student to listen was only after he or she had been
thoroughly socialized and his or her mind had been endlessly prepared
(Boydston 1977, pp. 52–53). By the time these social boards had been nailed
in place, adults had built “a thick wall” between the child and educative
experiences, a wall that blocked and distorted Education’s call. Indeed,
Education’s call “Arrives suppressed, altered in sense/Through medium,
sound-proof, dense” (p. 53). Sadly, then, the forces of school and society
often combine to erect “learning’s fence” to hide the student from rich
educative experiences and transform him or her into an alien in a distorted
world: “In lands where we are foreign born/Living protected, safe, —
and forlorn” (p. 53). The student’s natural curiosity and adventuresome
spirit were misshaped and, thereby, he or she was turned into an alien.

The Student’s Thinking

If educators are to replace injurious social practices with educative

opportunities, Dewey argued that a corrected view of the young student’s
abilities was necessary: the child is a natural and multitalented learner
who does not need to be drawn out or have educators pour anything into
her or him. Instead, Dewey averred that the child is “running over, spilling
194 DOUGLAS J. SIMPSON

over, with activities” (Boydston, 1976/1980, pp. 24–25) and that educators
should direct these activities. But the battle to interpret children as Dewey
did was not easy to win because many adults believed that children had
limited intellectual abilities. Rather than seeing them as active, thinking
beings, these adults saw them as passive vessels waiting to be filled or
creatures that needed their interests extracted. Dewey countered by saying
“the native and unspoiled attitude of childhood, marked by ardent
curiosity, fertile imagination, and love of experimental inquiry, is near,
very near, to the attitude of the scientific mind” (Dewey, 1933/1960, p. v).
He manifested a similar attitude in his poems, revealing his admiration
for nature and nature’s gift: mind. In “Thy Mind,” he delighted in the
person who continued to grow in understanding:

Thy faithful mind reflecting clear

All charming forms, or far or near,
Draws from that high peak its dignity,
And from those depths strange mystery. (Boydston, 1977, p. 13)

He revealed both his admiration for the mind and his naturalistic ontology
in poem #34 where he compared his view of human thought to an example
of holy ground found in Hebrew scripture:

My mind is but a gutt’ring candle dip

With flick’ring beams the wind doth blow around;
Yet the scant space thus lit is holier ground
Than that where prophet did his sandal slip. . . . (p. 23)

But Dewey knew that thinking is not easy and that certain environments
made it more difficult. In “Pulse in an Earthen Jar,” he went even further
and expressed doubt about a student’s ability to recover from the
detrimental consequences of being fully immersed in an unreflective,
oppressive culture:

I think he is dead;
They have smothered him.
Does he dream when the soft wind sighs
At four in the summer’s morn?
I think he is dead.
They have choked and stifled him. (p. 25)

The smothered, the choked, and the dead are those who have had their
impulses and inquiries squelched by others. They do not dream of
DEWEY’S CONCEPT OF THE STUDENT 195

possibilities nor think of solutions, much less think clearly, cogently, and
coherently. In short, they never learn to think. And for Dewey the only
kind of thinking is thinking for oneself. Educators, therefore, must not
smother students but create learning environments to provide authentic
problems that cultivate thinking (Dewey, 1916/1944, p. 303). Paradoxically,
he also thought thinking could be stimulated in negative kinds of settings.
Life need not be good or enjoyable for a child to learn to think. The injustices
and oppressions of the child may awaken powers that a life of ease does
not: “[only] when thinking is the imperative or urgent way out, only when
it is the indicated road to a solution” does it occur (Dewey, 1920/1957, p.
139). When writing about children’s mistreatment, he stated (poem # 86)
that only those who rebel learn to think. And they are happier than those
who never “felt the lash/’Cross their defenceless backs” (Boydston 1977,
p. 64). Dewey (1920/1957) later amplified his thinking:

Men [and women] do not, in their natural estate, think when they have no troubles to
cope with, no difficulties to overcome. A life of ease, of success without effort, would be
a thoughtless life, and so also would a life of ready omnipotence. Beings who think are
beings whose life is so hemmed in and constricted that they cannot directly carry through
a course of action to victorious consummation. Men [and women and children] also do
not tend to think when their action, when they are amid difficulties, is dictated to them by
authority. (pp. 138–139)

While noting a potentially important pedagogical stimulus, Dewey is no

doubt remiss in this context of not mentioning that the traumas of life do
not necessarily provoke children to think and that they can overwhelm
the young. Dewey did not warn sufficiently of the overall harmful impact
of the mistreatment of children.

The Student’s Teacher

Dewey’s ideal, the seasoned teacher, is a liberally educated, pedagogically

competent, content-loving, student-sensitive, community-understanding,
and scientifically thinking person. He envisioned a teacher who assumes
a set of responsibilities, including those suggested by his analogies of the
teacher as learner, intellectual leader, partner, guide, wise parent, navigator,
social servant, prophet, physician, salesperson, engineer, pioneer, artist,
researcher, orchestral conductor, gardener, farmer, watcher, helper, starter,
director, organizer, mediator, and interpreter (Simpson & Jackson, 1997).
For Dewey, then, there are overlapping professional, classroom, school-
196 DOUGLAS J. SIMPSON

wide, political, and community dimensions to what a good teacher should

understand and do. Becoming such a person is neither a straightforward
task nor an effortless one but such is critical if students are to be well
served. Teaching is “the supreme art,” a demanding undertaking that
requires continual development (Boydston, 1967–1972, vol. 5, p. 94).
Unsurprisingly, Dewey was critical of the student experiences many
districts and teachers prescribed, and was particularly disapproving of
teachers and schools that were so immersed in the past they manifested
little understanding of present-day students. He summarized his objections
as follows:

How many students . . . were rendered callous to ideas, and how many lost the impetus
to learn because of the way in which learning was experienced by them? How many
acquired special skills by means of automatic drill so that their power of judgment and
capacity to act intelligently in new situations was limited? How many came to associate
the learning process with ennui and boredom? How many found what they did learn so
foreign to the situation of life outside the school as to give them no power or control over
the latter? How many came to associate books with dull drudgery, so that they were
“conditioned” to all but flashy reading matter? (Dewey, 1923/1963, pp. 26–27)

Dewey clarified his view of the desirable teacher, not only by his explicit
and positive comments but also by his criticisms of the weaknesses of the
traditional teacher and the excesses of the progressive teacher. His poetry
moved beyond his other writings to reveal a loathing for a certain kind of
teacher: the pedantic teacher who destroyed the natural learning
inclinations of students. The mind of the teacher, in “To a Pedant,” has
storerooms stocked with ostentatious ornaments, a covered pool in a
marble hall with no sign of life, cabinets with numerous pigeon-holes and
other indicators of debt to “stale antiquity’s refurbished store,” a dining
hall with four-hundred-year-old “cold banquets,” a library with second-
hand “substitutes for thought,” and a “pompous sentinel” to ensure the
present did not invade the past. The sentinel stood

With garb of horn and fossil shell,

To catch, arrest and smother
Any chance idea or other
That might find its stray unbidden way
To those dim musty purlieus gray. (Boydston, 1977, p. 78)

Dewey wanted a different model for students. He did not want teachers
who displayed knowledge for others to see, who shielded themselves from
ideas that might breathe new life into their thinking, who interpreted fresh
DEWEY’S CONCEPT OF THE STUDENT 197

experiences in terms of musty categories, who protected themselves from

the present by hiding in antiquity, and who consumed remote intellectual
fare in chilly banquet halls. Nor did he want teachers who frequented
repositories that were filled with hand-me-down ideas and who guarded
themselves from contemporary discoveries. He wanted teachers — and
students — who understood that knowledge was always developing, that
open-mindedness was necessary to continue learning, that reflection upon
current and emerging understandings was invaluable, that searching for
new insights from the past and present was necessary, that seeing and
explaining the relevance of knowledge was an essential part of teaching,
and that thinking for oneself was the only sure way to remain intellectually
alive.
Why was Dewey so critical of the pedant? Beyond the obvious reasons,
he understood that teachers were an important part of the living curriculum
and that students were prone to adopt and develop the attitudes,
dispositions, and understandings of their teachers. He obliquely but
forcefully argued for the development of a particular kind of student by
warning against the pedant. Predictably, his most dramatic warning was
to professional educators, the guardians of antiquated, intellectual
collections and pedagogical practices:

What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history,
to win ability to read and write, if in the process the individual loses his [or her] own
soul: loses his appreciation of things worth while, of the values to which these things are
relative; if he loses desires to apply what he has learned and, above all, loses the ability to
extract meaning from his future experiences as they occur? (Dewey, 1938/1963, p. 49)

CONCLUSION

A study of Dewey’s poetry and its illumination of his concept of the student
is not likely to change what many think about his controversial opinions.
Indeed, the new insights, fresh meanings, and powerful expressions found
in his poems may simply confirm the prior judgments of many critics. To
claim, therefore, that the relevance of his ideas for the future depends in
part upon how much his readers agree with his philosophy is almost not
worth saying. Yet, this point cannot be ignored. Those who think Dewey’s
philosophical beliefs about students and pedagogy are seriously flawed
can hardly be expected to welcome his poetic assertions. On the other
hand, some may agree with much that he thought and still object to his
views of human impulses, self, and significance. Moreover, his theory of
198 DOUGLAS J. SIMPSON

self may leave critics wondering how a balanced approach to the creation
of the self by both the child and the school can be ethically and operationally
accomplished. How can so many creators of a child’s self leave room for
her or his personal identity and integrity? So, too, those who argue that
Dewey had an “ultrasocial conception of individuality” will not be
comforted by his poetry (Ryan, 1995, p. 319). Similarly, those who are
immersed in contemporary psychological theory and research may doubt
the validity of Dewey’s classifications and descriptions of original impulses
and their relevance for schooling. Further, those who have learned from
postmodernism may question his tendency to universalize student
impulses. For a variety of reasons, both his critics and proponents may
challenge his assumption that all students need to be physically as well as
intellectually active. Does this belief imply too much, i.e., does it question
the learning abilities of the physically challenged? Likewise, contemporary
thinkers may believe that Dewey placed too much emphasis on a student’s
natural learning propensities and too little on how a school and a student
develop an adult mind. Acquiring an adult mind, critics may insist, is too
complex an undertaking to be guided by natural theory of learning alone.
Of course, one may agree with aspects of Dewey’s concept of students
and pedagogical thought while objecting strenuously to some of his basic
assumptions and beliefs. Rightly understood, for example, it may appear
that his attention to students, teachers, knowledge, and society is a healthy
counterbalance to fashionable trends that sweep certain quarters. These
fashions sometimes take the form of emphasizing teachers or students,
knowledge or students, or some other dichotomy. These components were
important to Dewey because he viewed each as a critical part of the
educational enterprise. Growth is an interactive process that involves
educators, students, knowledge, and the broader environment.
Dewey’s attention to means and ends may also be important in
environments that tend to overemphasize either methodology or outcomes.
He was interested in the means of education as well as the outcomes. The
ethical justification of the means — the lack thereof being a primary source
of smothering, choking, and destroying students — was as important as
the rationale to pursue a set of ends. He may also raise our sights in the
area of ends in a way that too few politicians and bureaucrats appreciate.
For instance, he was interested in moving beyond narrowly defined student
performance standards to nurturing reflective children and youth who
are contributors to the development of healthy societies. Stressing the ends
of personal and community growth may be a healthy counter force to the
overemphasis of some on the relationship of schooling to economic
outcomes. Arguably, Dewey’s treatment of non-, mis-, anti-, and educative
DEWEY’S CONCEPT OF THE STUDENT 199

experiences can be a helpful concept as educators make curricular

decisions. For Dewey, one experience was not necessarily as good as
another because he strongly believed that some experiences nurtured
scientific thinking better than others and some contributed to personal
and social growth in ways that others did not. He was, likewise, aware
that environments and cultures affect students’ thinking in positive and
negative ways. While open to debate and new developments, he was secure
in his belief that some environments manifestly inhibit the reflective
development of students more than others (Dewey 1933/1960, pp. 121ff).
Nothing less than what Dewey himself recommended will determine
the relevance of his concept of the student and related pedagogical thought.
That is to say, reflection — ”Active, persistent, and careful consideration
of . . . [his] beliefs . . . in the light of the grounds that support . . . [them]
and the further conclusions” to which they lead — on his view of students
and teachers as communities of inquirers will determine the
appropriateness of his ideas (Dewey, 1960, p. 9). His poetry offers no escape
from reflection about students and teaching. Indeed, it pushes even more
dramatically for reflection: “By love of learning, let me find/My own last
essence, Mind” (Boydson, 1977, p. 61). This love of learning is not fully
understood if anyone thinks it is always a joy to reflect and forgets that
learning has its share of pain brought on by probing deeper into issues,
questioning beliefs, searching for alternative perspectives, and thinking
through options (Boydson, 1977, p. 58). If Dewey’s concept is sound, it is
the student’s nature and, ideally, destiny to experience the joys and pains
of inquiring, reflecting, and learning. But the pain should come from
educative learning experiences, not from walls that schools and society
create to stymie the learning and development of the student.

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Illinois University Press.
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1–17). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Boydston, J. A. (Ed.). (1980). The school and society. Carbondale, IL: Southern
Illinois University Press. (Original work published 1976)
200 DOUGLAS J. SIMPSON

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