John Dewey

John Dewey (1859–1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. Born in Burlington, Vermont, he earned a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University and taught at Michigan, Minnesota, Chicago, and Columbia. He was a leading figure in pragmatism — a philosophical current holding that ideas are tools tested by their practical consequences — and developed a version he called instrumentalism. In education he argued for learning through experience and inquiry rather than rote memorization, founding a laboratory school at Chicago. He also wrote on democracy, ethics, aesthetics, and logic, and engaged widely in public affairs across a long career.