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John Dewey's Laboratory School in Chicago: Theory vs. Practice

Conference Paper · August 2016

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 John Dewey’s Laboratory School
Theory versus Practice

Michael Knoll
Catholic University Eichstaett, Germany
ISCHE-Conference – 17.08.2016

There are many studies on the Laboratory School John Dewey established at the University of
Chicago in 1896. But surprisingly, the history of this world famous experimental school –
which existed for seven years until 1903 – has not been researched exhaustively. To my mind,
one topic deserves to be tackled above all: the relation between Dewey’s theory of teaching
and the way his educational principles were implemented by his teachers.
When writing about the workings of the LabSchool, historians rely almost exclusively
on Mayhew and Edwards’ book “The Dewey School” of 1936, a study that, in general,
presents its information in such a way that theory and practice coincide and that Dewey’s
concept of curriculum and instruction is being validated and confirmed. However, a new look
at the teacher reports and other primary sources reveals another story. Actually, it puts the
myth of the Dewey School as an amazingly innovative and creative enterprise at rest and
shows most notably that Dewey’s concept and its realization are not identical. In fact, the
“grammar of schooling” took its toll. After tentative beginnings, the LabSchool practice
differed considerably from Dewey’s educational program and differed only slightly from other
contemporary progressive schools such as the Cook County Normal School of Francis Parker
or the Horace Mann School of Teachers College. As we shall see, in some respect, the
LabSchool even lagged behind innovative schools of the time that were in public charge.
In my presentation, I will deal therefore with two aspects. I start out with a description
of Dewey’s concept of curriculum and instruction. Then, I will cope with the problems and
limitations the LabSchool teachers faced when they tried to implement Dewey’s educational
philosophy.

I begin with Dewey’s concept of curriculum and instruction

As a great philosopher, but inexperienced practitioner and administrator, Dewey did not give
the LabSchool teachers detailed instructions on what and how to teach. He rather provided
them with general principles and suggestions for developing a vital and novel curriculum.
While designing the school as “an embryonic society“, Dewey made use of two
psychological concepts. In accordance with his functional psychology and Froebel’s concept
of self-activity and self-creation, he regarded curiosity, action, and experience as basic
conditions of learning – all the more, as he was convinced that children were not passive
recipients of facts and matters but active agents constructing their own reality and worldview
in continuous interaction with their environment. Ideally, children acquired new knowledge
and skills naturally by experiencing real life situations at first-hand.
Yet action was not enough. In accordance with his psychology of thinking and the
Herbartian theory of apperception, Dewey introduced the notion of “problem” as another
important factor of curriculum construction. For if the continuous interaction with the
environment was interrupted, and if the use of familiar precepts and routines was hindered, the
individual would use the rational method and pass through the complete act of inquiry
scientists use for solving their research problems. Therefore, the children were supposed to
stop, analyze the problem, search for an alternative, develop a strategy of action, and try to
overcome the hindrance by applying the plan that had emerged. Coping with problematic
situations by thinking and doing, Dewey asserted, children would learn, retain, and retrieve
significant information definitely better than using the traditional method of memorizing and
reciting.

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 With these premises in mind, Dewey concluded that it was the teacher’s chief business
to psychologize the curriculum and convert its contents into problems and situations that were
appealing and challenging for students and could be solved by them experimentally and, to a
large degree, independently. Therefore, the teacher should facilitate self-activity and self-
expression by allocating the necessary time and resources for joint and individual undertakings
in kitchen, garden, laboratory, studio, work shop.
Putting his ideas into concrete terms, Dewey recommended that the curriculum should
be fundamentally reconstructed. It should not be centered on specific subjects but on so-called
“occupations,” that is, on practical problems and activities that reproduced typical situations of
social and communal life. Instead of beginning with reading, writing, arithmetic as was
traditionally done, learning had to be concentrated on topics and issues pertaining to actual life
and meeting basic human needs like food, clothing and shelter. In keeping with the Herbartian
theory of culture epochs, the children should relive the stages humankind had taken in
thousands of years as the race moved from being hunters and collectors to being farmers,
craftsmen, and manufacturers. Dewey’s intention was that the students acquired the three R’s
naturally and incidentally, that is, when and so far as they needed them for tackling the
situations and problems at hand. In cooking, for example, the students learned and practiced
reading when they wished to decipher cookbooks, writing when they wanted to record their
favorite recipes, and arithmetic when they had to count eggs, weigh flower and measure milk.
The occupations in cooking, weaving and sewing, in woodwork, metalwork and
gardening seemed to be ideal in solving three essential problems of teaching all at once. For
Dewey, the occupations were, firstly, lifelike so that the students could identify themselves
with their tasks; secondly, they were conceived so broadly that they integrated considerable
subject matter in literature, history, chemistry etc.; finally, they were of such nature that the
students had to pass through the complete act of thinking and doing and to integrate
knowledge and experiences of past and present generations (that is, to utilize books, expertise,
and scholarship) if they were to execute their plans and projects properly.
Dewey expected that the teachers would alter their professional attitude and to take
over new roles and functions. For their students, they were not to be a taskmaster and
disciplinarian any more who relied on compulsion and punishment, but a leader and guide in
exciting and challenging activities. Since the school being an embryonic democracy, the
teacher as well as her students would enjoy intellectual freedom and – as far as possible – the
privilege of initiative and participation in decision-making and curriculum-planning. And due
to small classes, Dewey believed that the teacher was able to create an atmosphere that was
liberal, relaxed, and stress free, with the result that the children would behave themselves and
would enthusiastically and eagerly solve their chosen problems. Phenomena like indifference,
indolence, and want of discipline which rendered traditional teaching so demanding and
aggravating would vanish or be reduced to an insignificant level.

Now I come to the second part, the implementation of Dewey’s educational theory
During its seven years of existence, the LabSchool underwent numerous modifications that
responded to intricate or defective structures. Stimulated by Ella Flagg Young, the school’s
supervisor, the original inclination to scholarly dilettantism, institutional disorder and, most of
all, educational sentimentalism was overcome in 1898 and visibly surmounted with the
school’s first and only official “Course of Study” of June 1899. The “Course of Study” –
which, by the way, was organized along the traditional subjects and subject matter – was
freely distributed to parents and visitors but was in fact neither mentioned by Dewey nor by
Mayhew and Edwards. In particular, Mayhew and Edwards wanted to convey the impression
that the students decided autonomously – or at most in loose cooperation with the teacher –
what they would like to do and to study.
Actually, after three years of experimenting and drifting, the students had few and
limited opportunities to influence the curriculum. To be sure, teacher and students regularly

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held something like “council meetings” to talk shortly about the course of the upcoming lesson
and subject matter. Moreover, the students were frequently allowed to choose between
alternative topics and activities. In manual training, for example, they could freely decide if
they wished to make a pottery vessel for milk, juice or flowers, and in history they were free to
write an essay about the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers, about their daily life or about their first
encounter with native Indians. Every day, one student, appointed by alphabetical order, acted
as a “group leader” who was responsible that, during the absence of the teacher, his classmates
observed the school rules and regulations. However, the LabSchool students had no claim for
co-determination in more important curriculum issues and were hardly ever engaged in big
projects like furnishing a model colonial room or building the famous clubhouse that required
genuine team work and significant collaboration in planning, deciding and executing.
In this context, it is worth noting that – different from the LabSchool – powerful
“student councils” had been institutionalized at progressive public schools in the US since the
mid 1890’s. Even in the immediate neighborhood of the LabSchool, the students of the John
Crerar Grammar School and the Hyde Park High School had the chance to elect a “tribune”
who acted as official spokesperson of the class and as mediator in conflict situations.
Moreover, the students of these schools could elect so-called “citizens” who would sit in
school committees with “the right to vote on all matters pertaining to the general welfare of
the school”. The initiators of the student councils maintained that the traditional “monarchy”
of the school was thereby substituted by a “democracy” consisting of a government “of all, by
all, for all.” To be sure, in accordance with Dewey’s concept, the students of the LabSchool
could from time to time make decisions on minor matters but they had no institutionalized
opportunity to help fashion the teaching and general affairs of their school.
In fact, the LabSchool reality deviated significantly from Dewey’s guidelines. The one
feature that troubled the teachers most of all was the problem method since it was closely
bound up with experimental and creative thinking and coupled with the belief that the students
could discover and reinvent more or less by themselves the solutions people had found for
their survival and comfort in hundreds of years. Used as a general method, the problem-based
concept overtaxed the patience, comprehension and capabilities of the students. In
consequence, the LabSchool teachers fell back on techniques like telling, explaining and
demonstrating to transmit the knowledge, skills and attitudes they wanted to convey. For
instance, the experiments in science rarely served to solve authentic problems or rediscover
scientific laws but functioned as illustrations of facts and principles the teacher presented and
the students should observe, learn and know. Contrary to Dewey’s intention, the problem
method was just one procedure besides the traditional lecture and lesson plan. Yet, the
LabSchool teachers – like other progressive educators of the time – had by now liberalized the
book and recitation method of old days to suit modern needs and purposes.
Even the concept of occupations, the backbone of the school’s curriculum, did not
fulfill the high expectations Dewey associated with it. The notion of concomitant and
interdisciplinary learning in real life situations was actually too complex and elaborate – it
could not be applied permanently and thus proved to be only a partial success. Indeed, for
some parents and visitors, Dewey had turned the world upside down. They criticized that in
the morning at school, the students learned cooking, knitting and weaving, while in the
afternoon at home, they learned reading, writing and arithmetic. This scathing criticism was
definitely exaggerated but not totally off target. In their weekly reports, the LabSchool
teachers observed time and again that it was wearisome and laborious for students and
teachers alike to catch up on the 3 R’s and other basic skills when the students of advanced
age were, contrary to previous years, negatively disposed towards repetition and continuous
practice. Since too opaque and unsystematic, Dewey’s concept of concurrent and incidental
learning created its own forms of frustration, distraction and disorder. And inevitably, it
became of lesser importance the higher the grades, and the more the subject matter became
abstract and remote from the students’ actual life.

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 In fact, “the child and curriculum” could not be reconciled as easily as Dewey assumed
in his famous essay. Even with the greatest engagement, the teachers could merely lessen but
not solve the contradiction that existed between the subjective, fleeting interests and the
objective, enduring interests of the children. In general, the teachers were satisfied with
increasing the part of bodily and individualized activities and in creating a school atmosphere
that was characterized by respect, appreciation and care. However, although the groups were
extremely small and consisted of five to ten students, the 23 teachers and 10 assistants had
sometimes a hard time to convince the at most 140 students to get on with the tasks and
problems they had prepared for them. And although the students came from Chicago’s upper
and middle class that valued education and culture highly, the students were by no means all
the time eager and ready to be interested, study hard and do their home work.
Undoubtedly, the LabSchool ranked among the most creative and progressive schools
of its time. Like the Cook County Normal School of Francis Parker and the Horace Mann
School of Nicholas Butler, the Dewey School contributed considerably to the liberalization of
education, the humanization of schooling and the vitalization of teaching. But unlike Parker
and Butler, Dewey overestimated the value of instrumental and problem-based learning and
underestimated the grammar of schooling and the benefits the students could reap from direct
and systematic instruction. After chaotic beginnings and fruitless experiments, the teachers
returned to more conventional patterns and procedures so that ultimately the LabSchool
differed – in practice, not in theory – surprisingly little from other innovative schools of the
time.

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