John Dewey's Laboratory School as a Social Experiment
By J.J. Chambliss
In Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938) Dewey insisted that judgments are not made "in isolation but only in connection with a contextual whole . . . . an object or event is always a special part, a phase, or aspect, of an environing experienced world -- a situation."12 Thus the significance of the context in which objects are determined and judgments made is again emphasized. His turn-of-the-century contextualism is retained in Logic and other writings of his later years. Unpacking this passage in terms of a specific educational situation would show us that a certain event, e.g., the one in which Group IV students decided that the tribe would migrate, was a phase in the work of that group during that school year, was related to other work the group was doing, while both phases of work were related to the overall planning the faculty and students were engaged in and to other phases of the school as an "environing experienced world." The children's decision to move the tribe came about in the context of the objective of the faculty to bring about group projects in which children engage in certain activities in common. Further, the judgment on the part of the faculty that such a project was an activity worth taking on, and their later judgment that the project did enable children to understand how conditions of climate, ownership of flocks, and the like, led to actions on the part of the tribe, were themselves phases of the contextual whole which includes the above-mentioned objects and events. Thus objects, events, and judgments were made as parts of a context, not "generally," apart from specific contexts.
Another passage in Logic: The Theory of Inquiry helps us understand Dewey's reluctance to offer specific proposals for general applicability. In discussing social inquiry, Dewey writes:
On the practical side, or among persons directly occupied with management of practical affairs, it is commonly assumed that the problems which exist are already definite in their main features. When this assumption is made, it follows that the business of inquiry is but to ascertain the best method of solving them.
Here an example of "the best method" would be the "mustard plasters" mentioned just above. Dewey points to two common assumptions, both of which constitute denials of the genuinely experimental nature of social inquiry: (1) the assumption that the features of problems are definite, that we know what they are prior to dealing with them, and (2) the assumption that "best methods" exist for solving definite problems, and that we know how the methods should work prior to using them to deal with the problem. Dewey goes on to say that, when these assumptions have been made,
the work of analytic discrimination, which is necessary to convert a problematic situation into a set of conditions forming a definite problem, is largely foregone. The inevitable result is that methods for resolving problematic situations are proposed without any clear conception of the material in which projects and plans are to be applied and to take effect.
Here Dewey restates an essential condition of social experimentation that stands out in his early ethical, psychological, and educational writings, one that was reiterated in his writings on the Laboratory School and tested in its work: methods of dealing with problems are themselves determined in the process of working out the conditions which constitute the method at work; both method and conditions themselves are made by working with specific materials. The method "works" insofar as the conditions made lead to a less confused and more settled situation.
Now we may return to the point at which this study began, and reply to the criticism that Dewey's writings lack proposed social programs. Dewey's reluctance to propose programs for social action is a consequence of his understanding the nature of experimental social programs to be context-specific. To make proposals apart from the contexts in which their meanings are sought would be to propose theories in the absence of conditions that are necessary to test them. Making proposals for social experimentation, apart from working with the conditions in which particular experiments take shape, would be to contradict the nature of ideas as working hypotheses. Ideas are "working," "worked on," and "worked out" according to Dewey's argument that ideas are incomplete until they take shape in the experiments which test them. In one sense, results of experimentation are specific to the contexts in which they are reached, i.e., they are results in and of those contexts. In another sense, certain results gained, as seen in the work of the Laboratory School -- e.g., the influence of the community on the quality of experience, the nature of stages of growth as portrayed by Dewey early on and by Mayhew and Edwards after the first years of the school -- suggest possibilities for further testing. Yet similar results cannot be guaranteed outcomes of further testing. The question whether possible meanings for further testing become actual meanings is problematic until things are done which enable experimenters to judge whether the possible did become actual. This is a consequence of Dewey's idea that a theory itself is not complete until the conditions which the theory calls for are tried out.
Dewey's reluctance to make specific proposals apart from an understanding of the conditions and materials needed for testing them is consistent throughout his characterizations of experimental social action, moral theory, educational theory, and the making of practical judgments in any social experiment. To make proposals for social experimentation without understanding the conditions of the situation which would constitute its specific character is to fly in the face of the claim that ideas are working hypotheses. As theories, ideas themselves are not complete prior to their working (or not working) but have their nature shaped in the working itself. Dewey's experimental thinking begins with possibilities to be sought -- suggested by the probable results determined by previous experiments -- instead of acting as if probable results are mustard plasters to be applied.
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