Americans Develop Original Theory.

Democracy and Education.

One of the most significant educational events of the era was the publication in 1916 of John Dewey's "epoch-making" volume Democracy and Education. Hailed by one scholar as "the most important treatise since Plato's Republic, the work presented a thorough and systematic philosophy of the educational implications of a democracy. Before this book, few Americans had understood the broad and enduring meaning of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century educational trends; furthermore, Dewey's grasp of the science of psychology gave his work a solid intellectual grounding lacking in the work of earlier reformers. Dewey's theories also
appealed to pragmatic businessmen and politicians when he argued that a "stratified society wherein a sharing of ideas was limited to the educated select ruling class must depend in time of crisis on the intellectual and moral resources of a very restricted few." On the other hand, a society...