page_title: The School and Society
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: The School and Society / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Children in Washington D.C. learning how a compass works. An example of the experiential learning of the time. Photo by Frances Benjamin Johnston. (1899).
context_page_description: The School and Society: Being Three Lectures was John Dewey's first published work of length on education. A highly influential publication in its own right, it would also lay the foundation for his later work. In the lectures included in the initial publication, Dewey proposes a psychological, social, and political framework for progressive education. Notably, this includes collaborative practical experimentation as the central element of school work. He argues that the progressive approach is both an inevitable product of the Industrial Revolution and a natural fit with the psychology of children. A final chapter details some of the experiments done at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.
  Articles in the 1915 edition extended his argument with reprints of Dewey's work published in the Elementary School Record.
context_section_description: Experimentation in education was widespread in the 19th century, and much of late 19th century experimentation involved the introduction of "hands on" activities into the classroom. Louisa Parsons Stone Hopkins captured the spirit of the time in her speech to the 1890 Boston Mechanic's Fair:
  It has been difficult to escape from the traditions of an exclusively book education. The grammar schools, as their name indicates, have tied the child to the dead past, and confined him to the medieval form of brain activity and thought expression, until his connective tissues have ceased to be sensitive to the environment of nature, and he forgets the material and laws that touch him on every side : he observes nothing ; he discovers nothing ; he constructs nothing.
  While the introduction of manual tasks in classroom was underway well before The School and Society's publication, Dewey's work helped to lay a coherent theoretical foundation for progressive experimentation in education.
  The three lectures that comprise the bulk of the 1899 and 1900 editions were initially given as a fundraising lecture series in support of the Laboratory School. From these lectures, Dewey raised $350 for the school.
  The lectures proceed in a pattern, the first dealing with the relation of the school to social progress, the second with the relation of the school to the psychology of the child, and the third with the organization of the school as an institution in accomplishing these aims.
caption: There were many experiments with experiential learning at the time Dewey delivered his lectures. Here young children learn how a compass works by making one in a Washington D. C. school in 1899.
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