Outstanding Personalities in

the Curriculum
HISTORICAL FOUNDATION
 John Franklin Bobbit was born near English,
Indiana on February 16, 1876. He was a son of
James and Martha Bobbitt. He was born of true
American stock, who believed that hard work,
study, self-discipline, religious faith, and devotion
to duty were the absolute ingredients for survival in
this life and entry into the life beyond. He was a
university professor and author. He also taught
school from 1903 to 1907 at the Philippine Normal
School in Manilla. John Franklin Bobbitt was a
social efficiency advocate who saw the curriculum
as a means for preparing students for their adult
roles in the new industrial society. His work
greatlyinfluenced the development of curriculum by
emphasizing specifications and responses to current
social needs rather than on teaching classical
subjects. In 1918, Bobbitt authored
The Curriculum. This was the first book to focus specifically on curriculum. This book
has beenrecognized by many scholars as the beginning of structured curriculum.
Bobbitt realized that it was not enough to just develop new curricula, but saw there was
a need to learn more about how new curricula could best be developed. This insight
came through his vast experience in the field of curriculum.
In his book, Bobbitt tells of a personal experience that caused him to look at curriculum
from the point of view of social needs rather than mere academic study. He had gone to
the Philippines early in the American occupation as a member of a committee sent to
draw up an elementary school curriculum for the islands. With the freedom to
recommend almost anything to meet the needs of the population, the committee had the
opportunity to create an original,constructive curriculum. Originally they assembled
American textbooks for reading, arithmetic,geography, United States history, and other
subjects with which they had been familiar in UnitedStates schools. Without being
conscious of it, they had organized a course of study for the traditional eight
elementary grades, on the basis of their American prejudices and preconceptions about
what an elementary course ought to be.
A director of education in the Philippines helped Bobbitt and the committee to look at the social 
realities, and they then threw out their original plan. Ultimately, they brought into the course a
number of things to help the people gain health, make a living, and enjoy self-realization. The
activities they introduced came from the culture of the Philippines and were quite different from
those found in the American textbooks.  His experience in the Philippines helped Bobbitt to see
his difficulty: his complete adherence to traditional curriculum beliefs had kept him from
realizing the possibility of more useful solutions. He had needed something to shatter his
complacency. His experiences stimulated other workers in the field of curriculum. His book,
How to Make a Curriculum, was the forerunner of others in the subject and had great influence
on school practice.
Bobbitt formulated five steps in curriculum making: (a) analysis of human experience, (b) job
analysis, (c) deriving objectives, (d) selecting objectives, and (e) planning in detail. Step one
dealt with separating the broad range of human experience into major fields. Step two was to
break down the fields into their more specific activities. The third step was to derive the
objectives of education from statements of the abilities required to perform the activities. The
fourth step was to select from the list of objectives those which were to serve as the basis for
planning pupil activities. The final step was to lay out the kinds of activities, experiences, and
opportunities involved in attaining the objectives.
Bobbitt�s final book, Curriculum of Modern Education, shows that after three decades in the
curriculum field that he changed his position somewhat in the early 1940�s.
Ralph W. Tyler Facts
The American educator/scholar Ralph W. Tyler
(1902-1994) was closely associated with curriculum
theory and development and educational assessment
and evaluation. Many consider him to be the
"father" of behavioral objectives, a concept he
frequently used in asserting learning to be a process
through which one attains new patterns of behavior.
Ralph Winfred Tyler was born April 22, 1902, in
Chicago, Illinois, and soon thereafter (1904) moved to
Nebraska. In 1921, at the age of 19, Tyler received the
A.B. degree from Doane College in Crete, Nebraska,
and began teaching high school in Pierre, South Dakota.
He obtained the A.M. degree from the University of
Nebraska (1923) while working there as assistant
supervisor of sciences (1922-1927). In 1927 Tyler
received the Ph.D. degree from the University of
Chicago.
After serving as associate professor of education at the University of North Carolina (1927-
1929), Tyler went to Ohio State University where he attained the rank of professor of education
(1929-1938). It was around 1938 that he became nationally prominent due to his involvement in
the Progressive Education related Eight Year Study (1933-1941), an investigation into secondary
school curriculum requirements and their relationship to subsequent college success. In 1938
Tyler continued work on the Eight Year Study at the University of Chicago, where he was
employed as chairman of the Department of Education (1938-1948), dean of social sciences
(1948-1953), and university examiner (1938-1953). In 1953 Tyler became the first director of the
Stanford, California-based Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a position he
held until his retirement in 1966.
Ralph Tyler's scholarly publications were many and spanned his entire career. Among his most
useful works is Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949), a course syllabus used by
generations of college students as a basic reference for curriculum and instruction
development. Basic Principles perhaps influenced more curriculum specialists than any other
single work in the curriculum field. This syllabus, written in 1949 when Tyler was teaching at the
University of Chicago, identifies four basic questions which have guided the development of
untold curricula since the 1940s: 1) What are the school's educational purposes? 2) What
educational experiences will likely attain these purposes? 3) How can the educational
experiences be properly organized? 4) How can the curriculum be evaluated? An author of
several other books, Tyler also wrote numerous articles appearing in yearbooks, encyclopedias,
and periodicals.
When Tyler first went to Ohio State University in 1929 he was already formulating his ideas
regarding the specification of educational objectives. While working with various departments at
Ohio State in an effort to discover better instructional methods, he began to solidify his belief
that true learning is a process which results in new patterns of behavior, behavior meaning a
broad spectrum of human reactions that involve thinking and feeling as well as overt actions.
This reasoning reveals the cryptic distinction between learning specific bits and pieces of
information and understanding the unifying concepts that underlie the information. Tyler stressed
the need for educational objectives to go beyond mere memorization and regurgitation. Indeed,
learning involves not just talking about subjects but a demonstration of what one can do with
those subjects. A truly educated person, Tyler seems to say, has not only acquired certain factual
information but has also modified his/her behavior patterns as a result. (Thus, many educators
identify him with the concept of behavioral objectives.) These behavior patterns enable the
educated person to adequately cope with many situations, not just those under which the learning
took place. Tyler asserted that this is the process through which meaningful education occurs, his
caveat being that one should not confuse "being educated" with simply "knowing facts"; the
application of facts is education's primary raison d'etre.
Tyler's establishment of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences was one of his
most noteworthy achievements. His ideas for the center at the time were very progressive and
remained excellent examples for proposals regarding scholarly study into the 1980s. Scholars
visiting the center were not confined by any set routine or schedule in regard to their research.
They were free to collaborate with each other, schedule meetings and workshops, or simply do
independent research.
Tyler's involvement with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
project was another momentous achievement that had far reaching effects upon
improved education in the United States. This long-term study provided extensive data
about student achievement in school. Tyler also played a significant role in the
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and its
"Fundamental Curriculum Decisions." (1983).
Throughout his career Ralph Tyler demonstrated boundless energy as he served either
as a member or adviser to numerous research, governmental, and educational agencies.
Included among these were the National Science Board, the Research and Development
Panel of the U.S. Office of Education, the National Advisory Council on
Disadvantaged Children, the Social Science Research Foundation, the Armed Forces
Institute, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Service on
many other educational agencies could be credited to Tyler, including his presidency of
the National Academy of Education. His retirement in 1966 as director of the Center
for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences did not terminate his involvement in
education, as he continued to serve as an adviser to both individuals and agencies. He
died of cancer at the age of 91 in 1994.
Psychological Foundation
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov Facts
The Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov
(1849-1936) pioneered in the study of circulation,
digestion, and conditioned reflexes. He believed
that he clearly established the physiological
nature of psychological phenomena.
Ivan Pavlov was born in Ryazan on Sept. 26, 1849,
the son of a poor parish priest, from whom Pavlov
acquired a lifelong love for physical labor and for
learning. At the age of 9 or 10, Pavlov suffered from
a fall which affected his general health and delayed
his formal education. When he was 11, he entered the
second grade of the church school at Ryazan. In 1864
he went to the Theological Seminary of Ryazan,
studying religion, classical languages, and
philosophy and developing an interest in science.
In 1870 Pavlov gained admission to the University of St. Petersburg (Leningrad), electing animal physiology
as his major field and chemistry as his minor. There he studied inorganic chemistry under Dmitrii Mendeleev
and organic chemistry under Aleksandr Butlerov, but the deepest impression was made by the lectures and the
skilled experimental techniques of Ilya Tsion. It was in Tsion's laboratory that Pavlov was exposed to
scientific investigations, resulting in his paper "On the Nerves Controlling the Pancreatic Gland."
After graduating, Pavlov entered the third course of the Medico-Chirurgical Academy (renamed in 1881 the
Military Medical Academy), working as a laboratory assistant (1876-1878). In 1877 he published his first
work, Experimental Data Concerning the Accommodating Mechanism of the Blood Vessels, dealing with the
reflex regulation of the circulation of blood. Two years later he completed his course at the academy, and on
the basis of a competitive examination he was awarded a scholarship for postgraduate study at the academy.
Pavlov spent the next decade in Sergei Botkins laboratory at the academy. In 1883 Pavlov completed his
thesis, The Centrifugal Nerves of the Heart, and received the degree of doctor of medicine. The following
year he was appointed lecturer in physiology at the academy, won the Wylie fellowship, and then spent the
next 2 years in Germany. During the 1880s Pavlov perfected his experimental techniques which made
possible his later important discoveries.
In 1881 Pavlov married Serafima Karchevskaia, a woman with profound spiritual feeling, a deep love for
literature, and strong affection for her husband. In 1890 he was appointed to the vacant chair of pharmacology
at the academy, and a year later he assumed the directorship of the department of physiology of the Institute
of Experimental Medicine. Five years later he accepted the chair of physiology at the academy, which he held
until 1925. For the next 45 years Pavlov pursued his studies on the digestive glands and conditioned reflexes.
Pavlov's endeavor to give the conditioned reflex widest application in animal and human
behavior tended to color his philosophical view of psychology. Although he did not go so far as
to deny psychology the right to exist, in his own work and in his demands upon his collaborators
he insisted that the language of physiology be employed exclusively to describe psychic activity.
Ultimately he envisioned a time when psychology would be completely subsumed into
physiology. Respecting the Cartesian duality of mind and matter, Pavlov saw no need for it
inasmuch as he believed all mental processes can be explained physiologically.
Politically, most of his life Pavlov was opposed to the extremist positions of the right and left. He
did not welcome the Russian February Revolution of 1917 with any enthusiasm. As for the
Bolshevik program for creating a Communist society, Pavlov publically stated, "If that which the
Bolsheviks are doing with Russia is an experiment, for such an experiment I should regret giving
even a frog." Despite his early hostility to the Communist regime, in 1921 a decree of the Soviet
of People's Commissars, signed by Lenin himself, assured Pavlov of continuing support for his
scientific work and special privileges. Undoubtedly, Soviet authorities viewed Pavlov's approach
to psychology as confirmation of Marxist materialism as well as a method of restructuring
society. By 1935 Pavlov became reconciled to the Soviet Communist system, declaring that the
"government, too, is an experimenter but in an immeasurably higher category."
Pavlov became seriously ill in 1935 but recovered sufficiently to participate at the Fifteenth
International Physiological Congress, and later he attended the Neurological Congress at London.
On Feb. 27, 1936, he died.
Lev Vygotsky was a seminal Russian
psychologist who is best known for his 
sociocultural theory. He believed that
social interaction plays a critical role in
children's learning. Through such social
interactions, children go through a
continuous process of learning.
Vygotsky noted, however, that culture
profoundly influences this process.
Imitation, guided learning, and
collaborative learning all play a critical
part in his theory
Vygotsky's Early Life
Lev Vygotsky was born November 17, 1896, in Orsha, a city in the western region of
the Russian Empire.
He attended Moscow State University, where he graduated with a degree in law in
1917. He studied a range of topics while attending university, including sociology,
linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. However, his formal work in psychology did
not begin until 1924 when he attended the Institute of Psychology in Moscow.
He completed a dissertation in 1925 on the psychology of art but was awarded his
degree in absentia due to an acute tuberculosis relapse that left him incapacitated for a
year. Following his illness, Vygotsky began researching topics such as language,
attention, and memory with the help of students including Alexei Leontiev and
Alexander Luria.

Vygotsky's Career and Theories

Vygotsky was a prolific writer, publishing six books on psychology topics over a ten-
year period. His interests were quite diverse but often centered on issues of child
development and education. He also explored such subjects as the psychology of art
and language development.
Sociocultural Theory
Lev Vygotsky also suggested that human development results from a dynamic interaction
between individuals and society. Through this interaction, children learn gradually and
continuously from parents and teachers.
This learning, however, can vary from one culture to the next. It's important to note that
Vygotsky's theory emphasizes the dynamic nature of this interaction. Society doesn't just impact
people; people also affect their society.

Contributions to Psychology
Vygotsky's life was cut tragically short on June 11, 1934, when he died of tuberculosis at the age
of 37.
He is considered a formative thinker in psychology, and much of his work is still being
discovered and explored today. While he was a contemporary of Skinner, Pavlov, Freud, and 
Piaget, his work never attained their level of eminence during his lifetime. Part of this was
because the Communist Party often criticized his work in Russia, and so his writings were largely
inaccessible to the Western world. His premature death at age 37 also contributed to his
obscurity.
Despite this, his work has continued to grow in influence since his death, particularly in the fields
of developmental and educational psychology.
It wasn't until the 1970s that Vygotsky's theories became known in the West as new concepts and
ideas were introduced in the fields of educational and developmental psychology. Since then,
Vygotsky's works have been translated and have become very influential, particularly in the area
of education.
Sociological Foundation
Educator John Dewey originated the experimentalism philosophy. A
proponent of social change and education reform, he founded The New
School for Social Research.

Synopsis
John Dewey was born October 20, 1859, in Burlington, Vermont. He
taught at universities from 1884 to 1930. An academic philosopher and
proponent of educational reform, in 1894 Dewey started an experimental
elementary school. In 1919 he cofounded The New School for Social
Research. Dewey published over 1,000 pieces of writings during his
lifetime. He died June 1, 1952, in New York, New York.

Early Life
John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859, to Archibald Dewey and
Lucina Artemisia Rich in Burlington, Vermont. He was the third of the
couple’s four sons, one of whom died as an infant. Dewey’s mother, the
daughter of a wealthy farmer, was a devout Calvinist. His father, a
merchant, left his grocery business to become a Union Army soldier in the
Civil War. John Dewey’s father was known to share his passion for British
literature with his offspring. After the war, Archibald became the proprietor
of a successful tobacco shop, affording the family a comfortable life and
financial stability.
Growing up, John Dewey attended Burlington public schools, excelling as
a student. When he was just 15 years old, he enrolled at the University of
Vermont, where he particularly enjoyed studying philosophy under the
tutelage of H.A.P. Torrey. Four years later, Dewey graduated from the
University of Vermont second in his class.
Teaching Career
The autumn after Dewey graduated, his cousin landed him a teaching job at a seminary in Oil
City, Pennsylvania. Two years later, Dewey lost the position when his cousin resigned as
principal of the seminary.
After being laid off, Dewey went back to Vermont and started teaching at a private school in
Vermont. During his free time, he read philosophical treatises and discussed them with his former
teacher, Torrey. As his fascination with the topic grew, Dewey decided to take a break from
teaching in order to study philosophy and psychology at Johns Hopkins. George Sylvester Morris
and G. Stanley Hall were among the teachers there who influenced Dewey most.
Upon receiving his doctorate from Johns Hopkins in 1884, Dewey was hired as an assistant
professor at the University of Michigan. At Michigan he met Harriet Alice Chipman, and the two
married in 1886. Over the course of their marriage, they would give birth to six children and
adopt one child.
In 1888 Dewey and his family left Michigan for the University of Minnesota, where he was a
professor of philosophy. However, within a year, they chose to return to the University of
Michigan, where Dewey taught for the next five years. By 1894 Dewey was made head of the
philosophy department at the University of Chicago. He remained at the University of Chicago
until 1904, also serving as director of its School of Education for two years.
Dewey left Chicago in 1904 to join the Ivy League, becoming a professor of philosophy at
Columbia University while working at Teachers College on the side.
In 1930, Dewey left Columbia and retired from his teaching career with the title of professor
emeritus. His wife, Harriet, had died three years earlier.
Philosophy
Dewey’s philosophical treatises were at first inspired by his reading of philosopher and psychologist William James’
writing. Dewey’s philosophy, known as experimentalism, or instrumentalism, largely centered on human
experience. Rejecting the more rigid ideas of Transcendentalism to which Dewey had been exposed in academia, it
viewed ideas as tools for experimenting, with the goal of improving the human experience.
Dewey’s philosophy also claimed than man behaved out of habit and that change often led to unexpected outcomes.
As man struggled to understand the results of change, he was forced to think creatively in order to resume control of
his shifting environment. For Dewey, thought was the means through which man came to understand and connect
with the world around him. A universal education was the key to teaching people how to abandon their habits and
think creatively.

Education Reform
John Dewey was a strong proponent for progressive educational reform. He believed that education should be based
on the principle of learning through doing.
In 1894 Dewey and his wife Harriet started their own experimental primary school, the University Elementary
School, at the University of Chicago. His goal was to test his educational theories, but Dewey resigned when the
university president fired Harriet.
In 1919, John Dewey, along with his colleagues Charles Beard, Thorstein Veblen, James Harvey Robinson and
Wesley Clair Mitchell, founded The New School for Social Research. The New School is a progressive,
experimental school that emphasizes the free exchange of intellectual ideas in the arts and social sciences.
During the 1920s, Dewey lectured on educational reform at schools all over the world. He was particularly
impressed by experiments in the Russian educational system and shared what he learned with his colleagues when
he returned to the States: that education should focus mainly on students’ interactions with the present. Dewey did
not, however, dismiss the value of also learning about the past.
In the 1930s, after he retired from teaching, Dewey became an active member of numerous educational
organizations, including the New York Teachers Guild and the International League for Academic Freedom.
Birthday: October 4, 1928
Nationality: American
Famous: Quotes By Alvin Toffler American Men
Died At Age: 87
Sun Sign: Libra
Born In: New York
Famous As: Writer & Futurist
Family:Spouse/Ex-: Heidi Toffler
Father: Sam Toffler
Mother: Rose Toffler
Died On: June 27, 2016
Place Of Death: Los Angeles
U.S. State: New Yorkers

Alvin Toffler was an American writer, who wrote on futurism related to

communication, digitalization and corporate growth. He was known to be the ‘world’s
most famous futurologists’ and is considered as an important influence in shaping of
the modern China. He started as being an associate editor at the ‘Fortune’ magazine
and did analysis for them in the field of business and management. Before that, he
devoted some of his youth in working at the labor’s level and then became a labor
columnist, shared his experience and analysis on the working class. His earlier writings
focused on the expansion of technology and its impact on the society which got him
research works form companies like IBM and AT & T. Toffler from there on wrote
books like ‘Future Shock’, ‘The Third Wave’, etc. in which he addressed the problems
of information overload, increasing military hardware, weapons and technology
proliferation, and capitalism. Owing to his impeccable understanding of the future
impact of the current revolutionary technological changes, he was a member of the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, serves on the advisory board of the
Comptroller-General of the United States, and has been elected a Fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. He married to Heidi Toffler,
who was a futurist and intellectual in her own right and had an active influence on
Toffler’s professional growth.
Childhood & Early Life
Alvin Toffler was born on 4 October 1928, in New York City and went to the New York University where he studied English
literature and met his future wife Heidi. They both were radical thinkers and belonged to the Left Wing ideology.
They left the university together and relocated to the Midwest of the United States, working the blue-collar jobs on the assembly
line. After five years, Heidi became a union shop steward and he became a millwright and welder.

Career
After working as a manual laborer for some time, Toffler got a job in the Washington office of a Union sponsored paper. He used
to write on the political affairs of American Congress and the White House for a Pennsylvanian daily.
He worked three years for the Pennsylvanian daily and then moved to New York City to work as a labor columnist for the
‘Fortune’ magazine. He was later asked to write on the topics of business and management.
Thereafter, Toffler left ‘Fortune’ and joined IBM and was asked to write an essay on how computers have changed society and
organizations. While working on this essay, he came in contact with many original theorists on artificial intelligence.
Xerox also asked Toffler to write analysis on its research laboratory and AT & T. His study revealed that that company should have
broken up more than a decade before the government forced it to break down.
In 1970, Toffler wrote his first book called ‘Future Shock’. In this book he explained the psychological changes that come from
‘too much change in too short period of time’. The book was an international bestseller.
After ‘Future Shock’ his second big book ‘The Third Wave’ came out. It was a sequel to the ‘Future Shock’ and talked about the
transition in the developed countries from Industrial Age to Information Age.
In 1983, Toffler got one of his essays ‘Previews and Premises: A Penetrating Conversation About Jobs, Identity, Sex Roles, the
New Politics of the Information Age and the Hidden Forces Driving the Economy’ published .
Tofflers’ ‘Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century’ was published in 1990. It was the third
book in his ‘futurist’ trilogy. Around the same time, he wrote ‘War and Anti-War: Making Sense of Today’s Global Chaos’.
Toffler co-founded ‘Toffler Associates’ along with Tom Johnson in 1996. It is an advisory firm that executes the ideas that Toffler
has written on. The firm worked with organizations in the US, South Korea, Mexico, Australia, etc.
In 2006, he published ‘Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives’, a book that expands on the
ideas of the ‘Third Wave’. It talks about how in the future the wealth will be created and who will get it.
Personal Life & Legacy
He met his wife Heidi Toffler, also a futurist writer, at the New York University in 1928
and got married to her right after that. They both have a child, Karen Toffler, who died
some time back after suffering from Guillain Barre Syndrome.
Alvin Toffler died on June 27, 2016, at his home in Los Angeles.

Trivia
• He is known to be the third most significant business leader after Bill Gates and
Peter Drucker by ‘Accenture’, the management consultancy firm.
• He has been called the ‘world’s most famous futurologist’ by Financial Times and is
known to have been amongst the most important influences in shaping modern
China.
• He is the recipient of the McKinsey Foundation Book Award for Contributions to
Management Literature.
• He has the visiting scholar position from the Russell Sage Foundation.
• He also received the prestigious Officer de L’Ordre des Arts et Letters.
• Heidi Toffler, Toffler’s wife, is on the advisory council of the Center for Global
Communications in Tokyo and the scientific committee of the Piu Manzu
Foundation in Italy.
• Both husband and wife are honorary Co-Chairs of the U.S. Committee for the
United Nations Development Fund for Women
Philosophical Foundation
Educator John Dewey originated the experimentalism philosophy. A
proponent of social change and education reform, he founded The New
School for Social Research.

Synopsis
John Dewey was born October 20, 1859, in Burlington, Vermont. He
taught at universities from 1884 to 1930. An academic philosopher and
proponent of educational reform, in 1894 Dewey started an experimental
elementary school. In 1919 he cofounded The New School for Social
Research. Dewey published over 1,000 pieces of writings during his
lifetime. He died June 1, 1952, in New York, New York.

Early Life
John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859, to Archibald Dewey and
Lucina Artemisia Rich in Burlington, Vermont. He was the third of the
couple’s four sons, one of whom died as an infant. Dewey’s mother, the
daughter of a wealthy farmer, was a devout Calvinist. His father, a
merchant, left his grocery business to become a Union Army soldier in the
Civil War. John Dewey’s father was known to share his passion for British
literature with his offspring. After the war, Archibald became the proprietor
of a successful tobacco shop, affording the family a comfortable life and
financial stability.
Growing up, John Dewey attended Burlington public schools, excelling as
a student. When he was just 15 years old, he enrolled at the University of
Vermont, where he particularly enjoyed studying philosophy under the
tutelage of H.A.P. Torrey. Four years later, Dewey graduated from the
University of Vermont second in his class.
Teaching Career
The autumn after Dewey graduated, his cousin landed him a teaching job at a seminary in Oil
City, Pennsylvania. Two years later, Dewey lost the position when his cousin resigned as
principal of the seminary.
After being laid off, Dewey went back to Vermont and started teaching at a private school in
Vermont. During his free time, he read philosophical treatises and discussed them with his former
teacher, Torrey. As his fascination with the topic grew, Dewey decided to take a break from
teaching in order to study philosophy and psychology at Johns Hopkins. George Sylvester Morris
and G. Stanley Hall were among the teachers there who influenced Dewey most.
Upon receiving his doctorate from Johns Hopkins in 1884, Dewey was hired as an assistant
professor at the University of Michigan. At Michigan he met Harriet Alice Chipman, and the two
married in 1886. Over the course of their marriage, they would give birth to six children and
adopt one child.
In 1888 Dewey and his family left Michigan for the University of Minnesota, where he was a
professor of philosophy. However, within a year, they chose to return to the University of
Michigan, where Dewey taught for the next five years. By 1894 Dewey was made head of the
philosophy department at the University of Chicago. He remained at the University of Chicago
until 1904, also serving as director of its School of Education for two years.
Dewey left Chicago in 1904 to join the Ivy League, becoming a professor of philosophy at
Columbia University while working at Teachers College on the side.
In 1930, Dewey left Columbia and retired from his teaching career with the title of professor
emeritus. His wife, Harriet, had died three years earlier.
Philosophy
Dewey’s philosophical treatises were at first inspired by his reading of philosopher and psychologist William James’
writing. Dewey’s philosophy, known as experimentalism, or instrumentalism, largely centered on human
experience. Rejecting the more rigid ideas of Transcendentalism to which Dewey had been exposed in academia, it
viewed ideas as tools for experimenting, with the goal of improving the human experience.
Dewey’s philosophy also claimed than man behaved out of habit and that change often led to unexpected outcomes.
As man struggled to understand the results of change, he was forced to think creatively in order to resume control of
his shifting environment. For Dewey, thought was the means through which man came to understand and connect
with the world around him. A universal education was the key to teaching people how to abandon their habits and
think creatively.

Education Reform
John Dewey was a strong proponent for progressive educational reform. He believed that education should be based
on the principle of learning through doing.
In 1894 Dewey and his wife Harriet started their own experimental primary school, the University Elementary
School, at the University of Chicago. His goal was to test his educational theories, but Dewey resigned when the
university president fired Harriet.
In 1919, John Dewey, along with his colleagues Charles Beard, Thorstein Veblen, James Harvey Robinson and
Wesley Clair Mitchell, founded The New School for Social Research. The New School is a progressive,
experimental school that emphasizes the free exchange of intellectual ideas in the arts and social sciences.
During the 1920s, Dewey lectured on educational reform at schools all over the world. He was particularly
impressed by experiments in the Russian educational system and shared what he learned with his colleagues when
he returned to the States: that education should focus mainly on students’ interactions with the present. Dewey did
not, however, dismiss the value of also learning about the past.
In the 1930s, after he retired from teaching, Dewey became an active member of numerous educational
organizations, including the New York Teachers Guild and the International League for Academic Freedom.