Leonard J. Waks

John Dewey (1859–1952), one of the most prominent American intellectuals for the first half of the twentieth century, is considered by many to be the father of public education, advocating for the concept that the purpose of public education was to develop an informed citizenry that prepared them for active participation in public life. He was highly regarded for his lectures on the power of pedagogy, best documented in his seminal volume, Democracy and Education, a book that remains as relevant today as when it first published more than 100 years ago.

He was famous for other lectures as well. Among them are the Bridgewater Lectures of 1922, represented here, for the first time, as a freestanding volume. Dewey gave these lectures at the Bridgewater Normal School in Bridgewater, MA, an institution founded by Horace Mann. The lectures touch on three themes:

• Social Purposes in Education
• Individuality in Education
• The Classroom Teacher

They appear as full-length speeches, unaltered from their original form.

Additionally, the volume contains three interpretive essays by recognized experts in the philosophy and pedagogy of Dewey:

• The Course and Its Occurrences
• Individuality, Sociality, and Temporality: Reflections on Dewey’s Bridgewater Lectures of 1922
• Dewey’s Bridgewater Lectures and the Emergence of the Aesthetic in His Later Works

This is a book that all Dewey scholars will want to have in their library. In addition, the themes in the volume make it an appropriate adoption for such classes as History of Education, Philosophy of Education and other foundation courses.