The Failure of JOHN DEWEY
By Brandon Clay
Skeptical and atheist architect of US public education and the subsequent moral fallout of American citizens
M any die and are forgotten , but others ’ influences extend beyond their mortal lives . John Dewey was one of those significant men . The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy said that Dewey was “ arguably the most prominent American intellectual for the first half of the twentieth century .” 1
In his excellent work 7 Men Who Rule the World from the Grave , 2 Dave Breese highlighted seven people who impacted the Western world toward a more secular worldview . Two men were obvious : Charles Darwin and Karl Marx . Darwin led Western civilization toward a less Christian , more naturalistic understanding of origins . Marx birthed a more totalitarian regime . We are reeling from the effects of their flawed ideas to this day . Others ’ influence is less obvious yet still consequential . One of those men is John Dewey , often referred to as the father of public education .
JOHN DEWEY ’ S BACKGROUND & CAREER
John Dewey was born on October 20 , 1859 , in Burlington , Vermont — the same year that Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species . Dewey was educated at the University of Vermont and later earned his doctorate in philosophy at Johns Hopkins University . He held a series of university posts until he joined the Ivy League Columbia University in 1904 . At Columbia , he was professor of philosophy and taught there until 1930 . He died in 1952 of pneumonia at age 92 .
Notably , John Dewey was a teacher at a prestigious university at a critical time in American history . During his lifetime , multiple streams of unbelief converged to bombard culture . These ideas included liberal theology that undermined the reliability of the Bible , uniformitarian geology that assumed billions of years of earth history , Darwinian evolution that taught the naturalistic origins and development of biological lifeforms , and Marxism , which attempted to upend the social order . For nearly two hundred years , American culture has endured an onslaught of secular ideologies from multiple directions . These ideas gradually and ultimately undermined the Christian foundations of the United States . And John Dewey was there cheering on this secular march through his work in public education .
Breese said it like this : “[ T ] he complex set of new ideas , thoughts , notions , philosophies , and ways of thinking moved into what was then the world ’ s greatest instrument for the dissemination of ideas , the public school system of America .
12 THE RENEWANATION REVIEW