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John Dewey as administrator: theinglorious end of the Laboratory Schoolin ChicagoMichael KnollPublished online: 08 Aug 2014.

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John Dewey as administrator: the inglorious end of

the Laboratory School in Chicago

MICHAEL KNOLL

The Laboratory School of the University of Chicago founded by John Dewey in 1896 isconsidered as one of the most innovative schools of progressive education. Its history,and specifically its sudden end, is still of general interest. In sympathy with Dewey, mosthistorians tend to put the main blame for the tragedy on University President William R.Harper who—by refusing financial and organizational support—seemingly harassedDewey out of office. A new look at archival sources reveals a different picture. The mainpoint of contention was not bureaucratic matters between Dewey and Harper but irrec-oncilable differences between Dewey’s wife Alice and the faculty of the school who com-plained bitterly about her social and administrative incompetence as principal pushingthe school on to the brink of disaster. Because of the extreme pressure exerted by trust-ees, colleagues and faculties, Harper could not help but ask Alice Dewey for her resigna-tion. Given his own inability to manage business affairs, Dewey quit his job, too, in April1904. Without his wife as principal, he saw no chance of realizing his educational ideasand left Chicago with a sigh of relief, freeing him forever from the unloved burden ofadministrative duties.

Keywords: administrative change; educational experiments; history ofeducation; Laboratory Schools; school reform

[T]he democratic principle requires that every teacher should have some regu-lar and organic way in which he can, directly or through representatives demo-cratically chosen, participate in the formation of the controlling aims, methodsand materials of the school of which he is a part. (Dewey, 1987, p. 222)

The Laboratory School, or as it was originally called, the UniversityPrimary School, was opened on 13 January 1896 in a small private housewest of Washington Park near the University of Chicago. After just twomonths of preparation, the event was quite unspectacular and went almostunnoticed. According to the single account known and published threedays later in the university’s student newspaper, neither John Dewey, theschool director and professor of philosophy and pedagogy, nor WilliamR. Harper, President of the university and sponsor of the school, gave afestive reception or held a commemorative speech. As the University ofChicago Weekly reported under the heading ‘The Model School’:

Michael Knoll, Hebelstr., Konstanz, Germany, was principal and managing director ofSchloss-Schule Kirchberg, Kirchberg/Jagst, Germany; e-mail: mi-knoll@t-online.de. Hisprimary areas of scholarship are history of education, curriculum and instruction, schooladministration, comparative education. His most recent publications in English are ‘FromKidd to Dewey: The origin and meaning of “social efficiency”’, Journal of Curriculum Stud-ies (2009) and ‘“I had made a mistake”: William H. Kilpatrick and the Project Method’,Teachers College Record (2012).

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

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The primary school connected to the pedagogical department of theUniversity opened Monday morning with twelve children in attendance,and twice that number of parents and visitors. The building, No. 369Fifty-seventh street, is a new house; has large windows, sunny rooms, andis surrounded by a playground. The work of the first morning began with asong, followed by a survey of the premises to test the knowledge of thechildren regarding the use of garden, kitchen, etc., as well as their powersof observations. They were then seated at tables and provided withcardboard. At the end of the morning each child had completed a paperbox for pencils and other materials. A story was told by one of the children,and physical exercise concluded the program. (quoted in Dykhuizen, 1973,p. 88)

However modestly, the school started its work, the Laboratory Schoolsoon established itself as an apparently innovative and exciting experi-ment. And although the school existed for a mere eight years, it is stillregarded as one of the most distinguished pioneer schools of the progres-sive education movement and can—according to many educators(Bickman, 2003; Cuffaro, 1995; Fishman & McCarthy, 1998; Simpson &Jackson, 1997; Stuckart & Glanz, 2010; Tanner, 1997)—teach usvaluable ‘lessons for today’. Nonetheless, the history of the LaboratorySchool has not been researched extensively (DePencier, 1967; Harms &DePencier, 1996; Mayhew & Edwards, 1936), and there are numerousissues to be resolved (cf. Durst, 2010; Fallace, 2011). One of the mostpuzzling questions will be reconsidered here: why did Dewey leave theUniversity of Chicago in 1904 and abandon suddenly and unexpectedlyan experiment he had initiated with so much hope and ambition?

More than 50 years ago, Robert L. McCaul, in a series of three arti-cles titled ‘Dewey and the University of Chicago’ rendered a thoroughaccount of the issue, quite rightly regarded as a landmark piece onDewey, his school administration and educational leadership. Havingreviewed a plethora of documents housed at the University of Chicagoand the Wisconsin State Historical Society, McCaul (1961, p. 206) con-cluded that Dewey’s resignation, especially as Director of the LaboratorySchool and the School of Education, was a major ‘tragedy’ since the twoprincipal actors of the drama, Dewey and Harper, were ‘good men whosemisfortune was brought upon them not by malice or deceit, but by insti-tutional circumstance and errors of judgment’. If he had stayed on andHarper had not provoked his leaving, McCaul claimed, Dewey could havedone much more than he already had to further research and develop-ment in education, teaching and teacher training. On the other hand,McCaul was not quite sure whether Dewey had enough interest and thenecessary talent for administrative matters. ‘It may be’, he (1961, p. 206)observed, ‘that his worst mistake was in ever accepting the directorship atall’. Relying on McCaul’s report, Robert B. Westbrook reached a similarconclusion in his magisterial biography on John Dewey and AmericanDemocracy. His untimely departure, Westbrook (1991, p. 113) pointedout, ‘not only left it to others to interpret, apply, and usually distortDewey’s pedagogical ideas but also deprived him of the one concrete

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manifestation of his democratic ideals that he could point to and say “thisis what I have in mind”’. At the same time, Westbrook was certain thatthe final word on the issue of who was to blame for the separation hadnot been spoken. Beyond the substantial antagonism between Harper andDewey, he (1991, p. 113) explained, ‘the deeper reasons [why] Deweyleft the university, have been obscured by the politics of protective colora-tion’. Although McCaul and Westbrook tried to do justice to both parties,their sympathy was clearly with Dewey, and in this respect they did notstay alone. Till today, the tendency to favour Dewey to the disadvantageof Harper has been maintained by succeeding generations of historiansand educators (cf. Durst, 2010; Dykhuizen, 1973; Johnston, 2006;Martin, 2002; Menand, 2001; Rockefeller, 1991).

Yet two scholars departed significantly from the standard interpretationas provided by McCaul. In her study, Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweavingthe Social Fabric, Charlene H. Seigfried (1996) made Harper the scapegoatand solely responsible for Dewey’s parting from Chicago. The antifeministUniversity President, Seigfried asserted, had forced Dewey’s wife Alice forno objective reason out of her executive office at the Laboratory School thusprovoking the husband to protest against sex discrimination and cut all histies with the university at once. Joan K. Smith (1976) took in her biographyElla Flagg Young: A Portrait of a Leader the opposite stance. Contrary toSeigfried, however, Smith presented new archival material, in particularfrom the Anita M. Blaine papers that considerably increased our knowledgeabout Dewey’s conduct as superior and school administrator. It was not somuch Harper, Smith argued, who mismanaged matters, but essentiallyAlice and John Dewey who—lacking the personal and administrative skillsnecessary to handle people and head institutions—misjudged the situationand contributed most of all to the unhappy end of the experiment.

On the whole, Smith’s biography is ignored or overlooked by Deweyscholars. With the exception of Brian Hendley (1986), Alan Ryan (1995),Ellen C. Lagemann (1996), Benson, Harkaway, and Puckett (2007) nohistorian writing about Dewey and the Laboratory School has ever madeuse of her findings or taken issue with her propositions. In fact, apartfrom Smith, only Ryan dared to criticize frankly Dewey’s performance asschool director. ‘An impartial observer’, he (1995, p. 154) remarked,‘would think almost everyone behaved badly during the two years beforeDewey left, but Dewey worse than anyone’. On the one hand, the generalneglect of Smith’s findings is amazing since her book should be requiredreading for historians and Dewey scholars; after all it deals with Ella FlaggYoung, a confidant of Dewey and his close collaborator at the LaboratorySchool. On the other hand, the absence of Smith’s critical appraisal ofDewey’s conduct as school administrator is not surprising. Educators lovetheir heroes, especially when they promise freedom, democracy andprogress (cf. Labaree, 2005, p. 286f.). At the most, they shy away fromcutting legends down to size and taking great individuals as human beingswho exhibit not only strengths and virtues but faults and weaknesses aswell. Yet timidity or ideology cannot be guiding principles of scientificresearch.

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Sixty years after his death, it is time to historicize Dewey and reevalu-ate his educational achievements in depth. In this context, the analysis ofhow Dewey assumed leadership and solved administrative challenges is ofspecial interest, even from the curriculum point of view, because itcontributes greatly to deciding whether the philosopher was indeed theright person to demonstrate, not only in theory but also in practice, howAmerican education and schooling could have been advanced in the pastand should be improved in the future. By sharing hitherto unknown orunavailable documents notably from the correspondence of John Dewey,Anita Blaine, and William Harper, as well as from the Laboratory Schoolcollections held at the University of Chicago and the Mayhew andEdwards papers kept at Cornell University, the essay at hand willreaddress the issue and review—and if appropriate, extend or discard—inparticular the theses and propositions distinguished historians and Deweyscholars such as McCaul, Smith, Westbrook and Seigfried put forward onDewey’s tenure in Chicago.

Harper and Dewey—the two founders

The future that the founders of the Laboratory School imagined for theirventure was bright. William Rainey Harper, who had lured the 35-year-old John Dewey with a substantial salary increase in 1894 from theUniversity of Michigan to Chicago, was a man who, blessed with courage,vigour and vision, had seduced the oil magnate John D. Rockefellermerely two years before to establish a full-fledged university and to pro-vide it generously with funds and property. Ambitious as Harper was, heaspired to transform the University of Chicago in the shortest time possi-ble and in all fields of learning to the foremost institution in the USA.Actually, he dreamed of a pedagogic empire that included all facets ofeducation from elementary and high school to college, graduate schooland the research institute. Even before Dewey’s arrival, he had launchedpartnerships with high schools such as the Morgan Park Academy, theManual Training School and the South Side Academy which he couldsoon incorporate into his kingdom. Moreover, Harper was an exceptionalteacher. Ever since he was a lecturer at the Baptist Union TheologicalSeminary, and later a professor at Yale, an organizer of summer schoolsat the Chautauqua Institute, and an author and editor of numerous text-books and journals on curriculum and instruction, he had reawakened theinterest in Hebrew and Semitic languages, not only for clerics but for laypeople as well. From Dewey, the newly appointed head professor of phi-losophy, psychology and education, Harper expected initiatives to estab-lish the University of Chicago as the leading teacher training institute inthe country, if not the world, and to catapult the Department of Pedagogyto the forefront of educational progress. To this end, he was ready to pro-vide moral support and, to a limited extent, institutional funds.1

Like Harper, Dewey was not inexperienced but after all a ‘novice’ inthe educational field. Having received his bachelor’s degree in 1879 at theUniversity of Vermont, Dewey taught for 2 1/2 years at high schools in

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Oil City, Pennsylvania, and in Charlotte, Vermont, contrary to Harper,however, with little success: the school board of Charlotte did not extendhis contract since, because of his permissive attitude and liberal principles,he was unable to tame the students and urge the unruly teenagers tostudy and learn satisfactorily. As professor at the University of Michigan,Dewey formed a Bible class in cooperation with the Student ChristianAssociation, served as inspector of high schools to be accredited at thecollege, and wrote his first works on education. Probably under the influ-ence of his wife Alice, an avowed feminist, he published two papersaddressing the correlation between the health of young women and theireducational achievements (Dewey, 1969a, 1969b); upon request of theCanadian normal school principal James A. McLellan (1889), he collabo-rated in writing the book Applied Psychology: An Introduction to the Princi-ples and Practice of Education; and being a founding member and presidentof the Michigan Schoolmasters’ Club, he delivered two lectures discussingthe question of why and how psychology and ethics, respectively, shouldbe taught in high school (Dewey, 1969c, 1971a). With the birth of hischildren and his concern for their growth and ‘natural’ development, hebecame increasingly interested in the issues of child study and elementaryeducation. The first published outcome of this endeavour was a smallempirical report on the linguistic competence of infants (Dewey, 1971b).

The Cook County Normal School—the Mecca ofprogressive educators

For Dewey, as for Harper, it was clear from the beginning that education—if it were to gain acceptance as a science—could not dispense withpractical activities. Therefore, in November 1894, the two men decidedto attach to the Department of Pedagogy a practice and demonstrationschool as they existed at Normal Schools and, in particular, at theUniversity of Jena and at Teachers College of Columbia University.Although Dewey regarded Wilhelm Rein’s ‘practice school’ in Jena andNicholas M. Butler’s Horace Mann School in New York as ‘outposts ofeducational progress’, he emphasized that these schools could not be amodel for his project since they subscribed to no significant educationaltheory and conducted no serious experimental research. In contrast,Dewey wanted to establish an ‘experiment station’ where excellent teach-ers and students with professional experience and innovative ideas woulddevelop a radically new system of education and teaching. ‘The concep-tion underlying the school is that of a laboratory’, Dewey (1972a, p. 437)explained. ‘It bears the same relation to the work in pedagogy that a lab-oratory bears to biology, physics, or chemistry. Like any such laboratoryit has two main purposes: (1) to exhibit, test, verify, criticize theoreticalstatements and principles; (2) to add to the sum of facts and principles inits special line’.

The notion of a school as a laboratory of education was not new,however. As early as 1809, Johann F. Herbart had established a small‘experimental school’ at the Pedagogical Seminary in Konigsberg to find

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out scientifically the best methods of teaching; in 1879, the Swiss educa-tor Theodor Wiget had referred to the Herbartian ‘practice schools’ inLeipsic and Jena as ‘pedagogic laboratories’; in 1884, the Normal Schoolin Nebraska had proclaimed that ‘[t]he Model and Practice School—thereal laboratory of the teachers in training—is indispensable to true profes-sional instruction’; in 1894, the Normal School in North Carolina hadpronounced: ‘The Practice School is to the [pedagogic] department whatthe Laboratory is to chemistry or to any other department of science’;and in 1896, i.e. in the same year Dewey used the term for the first time,his former colleague Burke A. Hinsdale of the University of Michiganmade the following critical comment: ‘to call a practice school a “labora-tory” in any scientific sense of that term, or to say that children stand toteaching pedagogy in the same relation that plants stand to the teachingof botany, is to fall into a mistake that is now unhappily not uncommon.This mistake is to overstrain an analogy, and to do violence to facts’(Hinsdale, 1896, p. 112; Metz, 1992, p. 177; Nebraska, 1884, p. 62;North Carolina, 1894, p. 21).

In addition to Jena and New York, there existed in Chicago an educa-tional showpiece of the first rank. The Cook County Normal School, aseminary for elementary school teachers with a practice school attached,was nationally known for its novel contents and methods since FrancisW. Parker had taken over its management in 1883. Francis WaylandParker, Colonel of the Civil War and the real ‘father’ of the progressiveeducation movement, had studied in Europe and especially in Berlinwhere he became familiar with the writings of Pestalozzi, Froebel, andHerbart. In 1875 as principal and school superintendent in Quincy,Massachusetts, he introduced a system that not only postulated but real-ized the central and long-known principles of a ‘new departure in educa-tion’. Against staunch resistance and permanent hostility, Parkerimplemented a pedagogy centred on child, activity and life that is nowa-days primarily associated with Dewey’s name. In fact, it was Parker, not—as generally assumed—Dewey, who with his bestselling book Notes ofTalks on Teaching of 1883 made the motto ‘learning by doing’ the sloganand the focal point of progressive education; and it was Parker, notDewey, who at first condemned the traditional ‘machine education’, whodesigned the school as an ‘ideal home’ and ‘embryonic democracy’, andwho organized the course of study, as far as possible and prudent, ‘natu-rally’, i.e. open, situational and interdisciplinary. Like the schools inQuincy, the Cook County Normal School soon became the ‘Mecca’ foreducational reformers. Countless teachers, principals, professors pilgrim-aged to Englewood to ‘wind up’—with G. Stanley Hall’s (1892–1893,p. 369) words—their pedagogical ‘watch’ and get ‘inspiration’, ‘new ideasand fresh suggestions’.2

Dewey, too, appreciated Parker. He lectured at Englewood, visitedclasses and enrolled his two eldest children, Fred and Evelyn, in the‘practice school’ where they felt comfortable and where the teachers, asDewey noted in 1894, had ‘solved the problem of reading & writing &spelling on the formal side completely’.3 ‘There is every reason tobelieve’, says Lawrence A. Cremin (1961, p. 135), ‘the children would

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have continued, had the Deweys not decided to establish their own schoolearly in 1896’. Moreover, Clara I. Mitchell whom Dewey employed asthe first teacher for his school was a student and experienced member ofthe Cook County Normal School. But despite the deep respect heexpressed for Parker, and despite all the inspiration and suggestions heowed to the Civil War veteran, Dewey quickly developed his own theoryand strategy of how to reform education and schooling. Contrary toParker, he justified his concept of teaching scientifically by introducingfour new features: (1) his functional psychology regarding curiosity, actionand experience as basic conditions of learning; (2) his concept of chil-dren’s interests that identified communication, making, investigation andself-expression as the appropriate starting points for curriculum andinstruction; (3) his problem method that recognized overcoming obstaclesand solving difficulties as the only effective mode of acquiring knowledgeand skills; and (4) his theory of social and active occupations that tookcooking, weaving and constructing as the best means for learning reading,writing, arithmetic as well as history, chemistry and physics (Griffith,1927; Knoll, 2014b; Tanner, 1997; Wirth, 1966). In December 1895,when Dewey conceptualized the curriculum of the Laboratory School andat the same time—through an open letter to the editor of the ChicagoEvening Post—offered the Chicago School Board his services as an‘educational expert’ to restructure the Cook County Normal School(Dewey, 1972c, p. 424; Smith, 1976, p. 79), Dewey announced publiclythat he had completed his novitiate. From that point on, he envisionedhimself as the prophet and advocate of a ‘new education’ that went farbeyond the theory and practice Parker and his associates represented andexemplified.

Dewey vs. Harper—the quarrel over funds

Like all schools, and in particular private schools, the Laboratory Schoolhad to surmount many difficulties. Repeatedly, adequate classrooms hadto be found, poor teachers dismissed, ambitious curricula defused, impro-per methods abandoned, and, above all, financial straits resolved. Unlikethe official names ‘University Primary School’ and ‘University ElementarySchool’ (since autumn 1897) suggest, and unlike any other practice schoolin the country, the Laboratory School was not maintained by the parentinstitution but had—apart from a one-time grant of $1250 and the regularsalary payments for up to 10 student teaching assistants—to generate byitself the necessary revenue through fees, gifts and donations.4

From the start, Dewey tried to induce Harper to financial concessionsbut mostly without success. Harper, whom Dewey appreciated on the onehand because he was ‘a business man, & not a man of culture or a scho-lar’, whom, on the other hand, he despised because he was callous andunscrupulously told ‘capitalists’ and sponsors what they wanted to hear,dismissed numerous applications from Dewey and his friends that mightburden the budget of the university. In May 1896, Harper denied theLaboratory School a grant of $2800 that was to bridge the expected

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financial gap for the upcoming school year; in December 1896, heignored the request to provide a rent-free site by the university for aschool house to be built to Dewey’s own design and to be financed byparents who had offered to raise $5000 to $6000 for the project; and inMarch 1899, Harper rejected the appeal to acknowledge the LaboratorySchool as an ‘organic’ part of the university, thus shattering all hopes ofthe school to obtain an endowment or direct access to Rockefeller’s seem-ingly inexhaustible resources. Neither the petition the university mayabsorb the expenses resulting from educational research and experimentsat the school and as yet paid by parents and patrons nor the threat theschool would be closed if the administration should not change its policyhad any effect. The arguments put forward by Harper to refuse Dewey’sand his friends’ claims were always the same: the university had no moneyand, most of all, no authority to break with fixed administrative principlesand to satisfy financial demands beyond the salaries and start-up fundingalready allocated. Never, said Harper, had Rockefeller assumed responsi-bility for recurrent operating costs, and never would he promote plansand projects, for example, by doubling the funds collected by third par-ties, which were not already decided and pronounced at the founding ofthe university; and the Laboratory School was definitely no part of them.5

Dewey became increasingly disillusioned by Harper. He felt cheatedof his right of support and assistance by a, in his view, narrow-mindedpenny pincher and stickler for principles, and he felt degraded and humil-iated since every year, despite meagre funding, he had to submit the per-sonnel lists, financial statements and economic plans for approval to theuniversity as the body legally responsible for the school. Still, Harper,who himself was overseen by the trustees of the university and constantlyadmonished by Rockefeller’s business advisor Frederick T. Gates not tospend more money than he raised, did not leave Dewey alone with histroubles, if for nothing else but self-interest: his son Paul, after all,attended the Laboratory School, and the President did not desire to putthe reputation of the university as a progressive and enterprising institu-tion recklessly at risk. As suggested by the Parents Association of the Ele-mentary School, Harper took the initiative to balance the budget of1898–1899 by asking friends of the university for donations in support ofthe Dewey School. ‘I am confident’, he explained to the potential bene-factors, ‘that nothing is being done today from which greater good maybe expected for the public school system not only of Chicago and Illinois,but of the entire country, than the work of the Elementary School, whichis, after all, a pedagogical laboratory’. And astute as he was, Harper letthe sponsors—and of course, Dewey—know that he would contribute$100 from his private purse. The necessary $1200 was collected becauseHarper was able to persuade the Trustees of the South Side Academy totake over two-thirds of the deficit. But that was not all: Harper alsofinanced the printing of the Elementary School Record and put forward hisown proposals on how Dewey could protect the Laboratory Schoolagainst debts and, possibly, ruin. To avoid financial hardships in future,Harper wrote, the school administration had to take three measures: ithad (1) to increase tuition, (2) to enlarge group sizes and (3) to reduce

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the school programme. Harper’s recommendations were intrinsicallysound and reasonable but Dewey accepted them only reluctantly, as inthe case of the school fees, or rejected them outright, as with the othertwo proposals, since they would interfere with the experimental nature ofthe school.6

Francis W. Parker—the veteran as competitor

But it was not financial failure that actually endangered the existence ofthe school. A life-threatening crisis announced itself when it becameknown that with the Chicago Institute a potent competitor was to beestablished in the immediate vicinity of the Laboratory School (whichresided after three relocations in 5412 S Ellis Avenue).

To make a long and complicated story short: Anita Blaine, an heiressto the McCormick Harvester fortune and engaged in numerous social andeducational projects, had a sickly, sensitive son, Emmons, for whom shehad sought since 1896 a child-centred school. Blaine knew Dewey, visitedhis Laboratory School, and invited him to present his famous lectures—later published as The School and Society—before affluent guests in her pri-vate home. But she entrusted her son to Francis Parker whom she hadpolitically supported for some time and who was emotionally closer to herwith his heart-warming love of children and his time-proven methods ofteaching. In May 1899, Blaine provided Parker, and not Dewey, with onemillion dollars so that the revered principal of the Cook County NormalSchool (since 1896 Chicago Normal School) could set up a private tea-cher training school independent of communal funding and politicalstrife, and realize his reform ideas undiluted and unadulterated. Origi-nally, the ‘Chicago Institute’, as the new college of education with anaffiliated elementary school was called, was at first to have been built onthe north side of the city and without any ties to another institution. Yet,University President Harper, always interested in prestigious projects andinstitutional expansion, was able, still in the planning stage, to convinceBlaine and Parker that the University of Chicago was the right partnerand the right place for the one-million venture. Under the umbrella of hisuniversity, Harper asserted, the Chicago Institute would have the financialsecurity, structural stability and professional competency it could not dowithout in the long run (Campbell, 1967, pp. 199–230; Harrison, 1979,pp. 84–100).

Dewey was at first relieved, afterwards upset for he had not been for-mally consulted by Harper prior to the outset of the negotiations, and hewas worried for the merger contradicted his current interests and objec-tives. In principle, the inclusion of a seminary for elementary schoolteachers met his idea of the University of Chicago as a place of compre-hensive education but Dewey immediately sensed that with Parker andthe Chicago Institute his school and his own singular position were atstake. Having no means to stop Harper’s merger plan and the takeover ofParker’s elementary school, Dewey tried to control the process. ‘If I hadseen Mrs Blaine again’, he wrote his friend Jane Addams on 26 April

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1899, ‘I wanted to suggest to her that as a purely business proposition, itmight pay her to help support the school for a few years—till it got on itslegs—for what help it could give her. I know we could save her lots oftime & money by putting the results of our work at her disposal;—whichof course we can’t do if the school has to be given up next year’. Dewey’sbusiness deal failed, however. Blaine did not grant any funds or subsidiesfor the Laboratory School. All the same, she bore the printing expenses($510) for Dewey’s School and Society and asked him for advice in regardto the structure and equipment of the Chicago Institute—a wish Dewey,against adequate compensation, generously fulfilled.7

Left to his own resources, Dewey adopted two measures to competewith the new institute and save his own school from decline and closure.In the first place, he reorganized the school management, a method thathe often used and in which he did not always have a lucky hand. A shortreview: at the beginning, Clara Mitchell was responsible for all schoolaffairs, except for administrative and financial matters; in this respect, shewas supported by Frank A. Manny, Dewey’s directorial assistant. Whenthe number of students and teachers grew steadily and Clara Mitchell wasdismissed in March 1897, partly because of her disappointing conven-tional teaching, partly because of her exaggerated liberal attitude, Deweyrestructured the school. To counteract the previous ‘dilettantism’ and‘sentimentalism’, he employed teachers with a college degree or a collegediploma instead of normal school graduates, and appointed Georgia A.Bacon as principal and Katherine B. Camp (both B.S., University ofMichigan) as vice principal, the latter caring mainly for curriculum devel-opment and instruction.

In the spring of 1900, Dewey was dissatisfied with the performance ofGeorgia Bacon and made Katherine Camp, his student and confidant,hope for the vacant position.8 Among the faculty, her prospective promo-tion gave rise to concerns, however. The home economics teacher AltheaHarmer told George H. Mead, that, as a person, Katherine Camp wasgenerally popular, but as a superior was not easy to bear since—‘by con-tinual interference, ceaseless change of programme, and by her dogmaticattitude’ (quoted in Durst, 2010, p. 54)—she disrupted the orderlyprogress of learning and curtailed the educational freedom of teachers.Presumably due to these or similar remarks, Dewey broke his vaguepromise, a fact that hurt Katherine Camp deeply and, like Georgia Bacon,let her think about resigning and leaving the school. In her stead, Deweyseemingly tried to win Ella Flagg Young for the job so that the formerprincipal and Chicago’s esteemed assistant school superintendent wouldimprove both the quality of teaching and the reputation of the school; shehad been his graduate student, colleague, and, since autumn 1899, con-sultant in curricular and administrative matters (Chicago Daily Tribune,1899; Smith, 1976, p. 69f.). But Young, meanwhile a PhD and professor,refused the offer, apparently since she wanted to pursue her universitycareer and finish and publish her books, Isolation in the School (1900),Some Types of Modern Educational Theory (1902) and Scientific MethodEducation (1903). Nevertheless, the 55-year-old woman somewhatcomplied with the wish of her 14 years younger doctoral advisor by

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accepting the function of a ‘University Supervisor’ and thus becomingDewey’s official deputy and an influential representative of the LaboratorySchool. After this partial success, Dewey decided not to reoccupy theposition of principal. In order to mitigate resentment and to detervaluable employees from departure, he spread the administrative dutiesover several shoulders: Georgia Bacon was appointed ‘Supervisor ofInstruction’, Katherine Camp ‘Director of Curriculum’ and LauraRunyon ‘Dean’ being in charge of student admission and economicmanagement.9

The second measure Dewey took for securing the future of his schooldealt with the improvement of public relations. For the first time in thehistory of the Laboratory School, Dewey placed advertisements in theChicago daily newspapers to induce parents to enrol their children at5412 Ellis Avenue. In addition, he commissioned a richly illustrated pro-spectus announcing that there were only ‘eight to twelve children in agroup’ and that there existed no useless ‘waste of time’, no ‘undue fatigueand nervous strain’, no ‘marking system’ nor a scheme of ‘set examina-tions’.10 The bestseller The School and Society (1899) had made his schoolwidely known, and Dewey advanced its fame with the publication of theElementary School Record (1900), a nine-part monograph that depicted thetheory as well as the practice of the Laboratory School in detail. Punctu-ally for the school year 1900–01, there appeared also, with or without hisassistance, four major articles about the school: whereas the LaboratorySchool teacher Laura L. Runyon (1900) and Dewey’s former doctoralstudent William F. Moncreiff (1900) published real or fictitious accountsin professional magazines on ‘A Day with the New Education’, two ofthe leading Sunday newspapers of Chicago printed reports which—written by an Anonymous author (1900) and by Ella Flagg Young’sfriend Olive H. Foster (1900)—spread the good news ‘Here is a NovelSchool. Methods of the Public Schools Are Entirely Cast Aside.Marvellous Progress Made by the Little Ones in Every Line’ and wereintended to interest parents and potential donors in Dewey’s revolution-ary ‘Experiment in Education’.11

The result of all these actions and publications was encouraging. TheLaboratory School set a new record in registration when in October 1900about 130 students applied and could be enrolled. The practice school ofthe Chicago School Institute opened its doors 10 miles away with aboutthe same number of children (127); yet measured against the high expec-tations, it got off to a disappointing start, possibly because the temporarilyrented buildings, the Deutsche Turnhalle and a former piano factory in600N Wells Street, were unsuitable and could not deny their originalpurposes (Campbell, 1967, p. 219f; Katch, 1990, p. 239).

Harper’s plan—the merger of two elementary schools

But the respite Dewey was able to obtain proved to be short-lived. Theformal offer of Anita Blaine of 16 January 1901 whereupon the ChicagoInstitute would become part of the University of Chicago and Parker’s

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practice school would move from its previous location to the universitycampus and thereby in close proximity to the Laboratory School causedfresh trouble. Under these circumstances, the crucial question was howthe competition between Dewey and Parker—by now even discussed inpublic (Chicago Daily Tribune, 1901b, 1901c)—could be defused andhow the disparity of the characters, talents and ambitions of both propo-nents could be turned for the better. To solve the problem, UniversityPresident Harper proposed to balance the conflicting ideas and interestsby dividing the field of pedagogy into two sovereign domains. Accord-ingly, Parker—with an annual salary of $6000—would remain in chargeof the training of elementary school teachers in the Chicago Institute,now renamed ‘School of Education’, whereas Dewey as manager of theDepartment of Education would handle, as before, the education of aspir-ing scientists, principals, normal school professors and, now in addition,the training of future secondary school teachers. Consequently, Deweywould become director of the Manual Training School (founded in 1883)and the South Side Academy (founded in 1892), i.e. the two private highschools that were to be incorporated into the university at the same time(see figure 1). For Dewey, as the head of a seven-member family, the pro-motion and salary increase from $5000 to $7000 dollars per year—extorted from Harper, and as Dewey told Max Eastman (1941, p. 679),more than anything else ‘making a man’ of him—was an important andpleasant side effect. Now, it was possible to install a telephone, rent twoadjoining apartments, employ two maids, a nanny and a washwoman,and still maintain a summer cottage in the Adirondack Mountains(Dykhuizen, 1973, p. 107; Smith, 1976, p. 85).

After lengthy negotiations, the two rivals agreed in principle withHarper’s compromise. At least, they were masters in their own house,possessed with The Elementary School Teacher and The School Review theirown journals, and could almost independently of each other make deci-sions on staff, programme and equipment. The chief concern Parker har-boured could be quickly dispelled. Parker was afraid that the School ofEducation as a science-oriented, but deliberately non-academic institutionwould be a foreign and unloved appendage in a university devoted to the-ory and research. For that reason, Harper asked the faculty to welcometheir new colleague and express their respect for his superb and indispens-able work, a desire that was met to Parker’s satisfaction in sufficientnumber and friendliness (Griffith, 1927, p. 104).12

Far more difficult was the task of pacifying Dewey. According toHarper’s plan, the Laboratory School being an elementary school fell defi-nitely into Parker’s range of duties and should therefore be merged withhis practice school since the maintenance of two University ElementarySchools was, to Harper’s mind, illogical, unfounded, and, above all, asheer waste of scarce financial and human resources. For the closure ofthe Laboratory School, Harper invoked four reasons: (1) there were noimportant pedagogic differences between the Parker School and theDewey School; (2) there were not enough students for two similar educa-tional institutions in the same school district; (3) the Laboratory Schoolwas continuously in debt and had to rely heavily on donations and grants;

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and (4) Dewey was burdened and, even without the elementary school,totally wrapped up in teaching, writing and administering (Smith, 1976,p. 82f.). In general, the arguments were justified, after all Harper knewwell enough the strengths and weaknesses of Dewey and his school. Aspresident, he was aware of the heavy workload Dewey had to carry andthe financial problems the school had to address; as father of a son whoattended the Laboratory School, he knew that the parents were not alwaysat ease with the methods of teaching and the academic level their childrenattained at school; and as member of school boards and educational com-missions, he felt certain that the demand for expensive private schoolsand, most of all, for untried experimental schools was limited.

Figure 1. Harper’s School Reorganization I—Summer 1901.

Figure 2. Harper’s School Reorganization II—Summer 1902.

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Dewey as victor—the rescue of the Laboratory School

Harper’s merger plan was detested by Dewey and a ‘rude shock’ to theteachers and parents of the Laboratory School (Durst, 2010, pp. 126–129).Like his associates, Dewey demurred at yielding to pressure and leaving hiswork to Parker, the more so as the request of sacrificing the LaboratorySchool contradicted his long-held goal of establishing an all-inclusiveeducational system. Dewey supported Harper in his effort to develop theUniversity of Chicago to a diversified educational and research institution.In particular, he agreed with Harper to incorporate the Manual TrainingSchool and South Side Academy and to appoint him director of bothschools. Therefore, Dewey accepted the chance to mould the new Univer-sity High School on his own terms. What Harper overlooked or did notwant to see, however, was the fact that the command over the two second-ary schools merely made sense if Dewey had an elementary school as a baseand feeder which, too, was under his authority and exclusive control. ‘Thisunion’, Dewey claimed, ‘affords the rare opportunity for a continuousscheme of education, carried on without interruption, overlapping, changeof aims or methods from the time a child enters school at four years of agetill he leaves college’.13

The Laboratory School was an integral part of a venture that differed,according to Dewey, fundamentally from Parker’s practice school for itcombined original research with innovative teaching. That both types ofschools could coexist and reinforce each other was to be studied atTeachers College, Columbia University, where the Horace Mann Schoolhad been transformed into a practice and demonstration school and theSpeyer School had been established as the new research and experimentalschool of the College (Cremin, Shannon, & Townsend, 1954). ForDewey, the maintenance of an educational ‘experiment station’ was thusmeaningful and justified, indeed indispensable. The ‘laboratory of aUniversity department’, Dewey wrote Harper on 13 April 1901, ‘whosechief end is to find out things in a scientific way, is a totally differentmatter from a practice school conducted as part of a professional school.A proposal to give up an educational laboratory because a professionalschool is to be attached to the University, is on the same level as wouldbe a proposition to give up a laboratory of physics because an engineeringschool was to be founded’.14

Apparently, it was Alice Dewey who first took the initiative to save theLaboratory School. Together with Mary Hill and Katherine Camp, twotrusted Laboratory School teachers, she got in touch with her dear friendJane Addams (Durst, 2010, pp. 109–112). As founder and director ofHull House, Jane Addams had committed herself to the integration andeducation of immigrant families from Eastern and Southern Europe. In1899, she had expressed an interest in ‘a Dewey School for us’ so thatnot only children of the middle and upper classes but also children ofimmigrant and socially disadvantaged families could enjoy the benefit ofan excellent education. The meetings also attended by Helen and GeorgeH. Mead, likewise good friends of the Deweys, led, however, to nothing.The problems in implementing the scheme: the shortage of funds,

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premises and suitable teachers, were too large. But when Harper intendedto shut down the Laboratory School and superb teachers were availablefor the future ‘J.D.H.H. School’ (John Dewey Hull House School),Addams changed her mind. In March 1901, she agreed to look for spon-sors for two of the twenty Laboratory School teachers, namely AltheaHarmer and Katherine Camp, who should set up a school according tothe ‘Dewey Plan’ and hold classes beginning in October 1901 for at leastfive years. This offer was obviously too vague, insignificant and precariousfor Dewey to accept. Meanwhile, he and his friends had considered otherand more promising alternatives than the Hull House option.

One project to continue the experiment was to inform the public ofthe impending closure of the school and win the educational communityover to send protest letters to the University President. This plan was car-ried out by Dewey himself or, presumably, by a colleague at the annualmeeting of the Department of Superintendence of the National EducationAssociation which took place in late February 1901 in Chicago. In anycase, Dewey attended the conference and, on the evening of 28 February,held the lecture, ‘The Situation as Regards the Course of Study’ (tobecome part 1 of The Educational Situation, Dewey, 1976c, pp. 260–282).Moreover, from a letter written by George H. Locke, an assistant profes-sor in the Department of Education, we know that at this convention ofthe leading educators of the country the imminent end of the LaboratorySchool, although until then only known to insiders, was already beingtalked about. ‘[A]lmost every person with whom I had conversation ongeneral educational matters’, Locke reported to President Harper on 8March, ‘brought up this question of what is to become of the DeweySchool, and without exception they expressed the hope that for the sakeof education in this country the Dewey School would be preserved andnot swallowed up in any proposed amalgamation’. Initially, Lockesummed up the prevailing opinion that the school was met with disap-proval, but only the continuation of the experiment could show ifDewey’s pedagogical innovations were really worth the effort.15

Cautioned in this way, Harper could not fail to be surprised that moreletters requesting the perpetuation of the Laboratory School arrived at hisoffice. Actually, within nine days, from 17 to 25 April, 16 renowned pro-fessors, school superintendents and normal school presidents, as forinstance Samuel T. Dutton, Myron Scudder and William H. Payne,posted brief statements or long letters which all had in common that theywished to prevent Harper from a supreme folly. ‘I regard the school asthe most important educational experiment since Herbart’, Ernest C.Moore declared, emphatically echoing the tenor of these letters, ‘and theUniversity of Chicago can be of no greater service than by carrying theexperiment to its conclusion’.16 Yet the petitions that were obviouslycoordinated and came, as with Charles DeGarmo, Frank M. McMurry,John W. Cook and C. C. Van Liew, from progressive Herbartians or, aswith George H. Locke, Ernest C. Moore, Frank P. Bachmann and StuartH. Rowe, from close friends and former students of Dewey did not meetthe expectations placed upon them. Harper was unimpressed. Heanswered the letters politely but firmly and stuck to his decision.

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An action Harper had to take much more seriously emanated fromthe very active and Dewey devoted Parents Association of the UniversityElementary School. The Parents Association was dominated by sociallyengaged women of Chicago’s upper class, such as Mrs Charles R. Crane,Mrs Charles F. Harding, Mrs William Kent and Mrs William R. Linn. Inorganizing lectures, festivals and funds, they were supported by theirwealthy and influential husbands and by University of Chicago professorssuch as George H. Mead, James H. Tufts and George E. Vincent. Havinglearned of the merger plan, the Parents Association passed a resolutionexpressing the wish of continuing the Laboratory School under Dewey’sleadership and inviting Harper to propound his reasons why he advocatedthe dissolution of the school. The meeting held on 15 March 1901, andfor the ‘fathers’ sake in the evening, was exciting and ‘quite thrilling’.‘The schoolroom was packed and reporters were barred’, Laura L.Runyon recollected in 1927. ‘Dr Dewey could not be there because of ill-ness in his family. After Dr Harper had made his address, Mrs Ella FlaggYoung replied to him on behalf of the parents, in a plea for the continu-ance of the school’. Whereas Harper claimed that the fusion of the twoelementary schools would not have been considered if Dewey and Parkerwere not ‘at one in their theories of education’, Ella Flagg Young empha-sized the singularity of Dewey’s conception. ‘I believe’, she said, ‘thatnever before in this world has a theory of education been promulgatedand worked over that is so thoroughly spiritual, and deals so with mindand its development along the truly psychological and philosophical linesas this theory which Dr Dewey has worked out’.17

On 18 April, a second meeting was held, giving Harper once againthe opportunity to defend his decision concerning the unification of thetwo elementary schools. Five days later, William Kent, Charles F.Harding, E. E. Chandler and John F. Holland sent Harper a letter inwhich the Parents Association maintained the position Ella Flagg Younghad taken. The parents dismissed three of the four points Harper had putforth as unsound and invalid. Dewey, they asserted, was not overbur-dened, the two schools were not alike, and the demand for experimentaleducation was not too small. Yet knowing that the University Presidentcould be persuaded only by facts and figures, they offered to raise up to$5000 per annum for the next five years to offset the deficits that mightoccur. Harper hesitated. He required the parents to collect the promisedamount immediately and upfront. ‘Mrs Charles F. Harding and I’, MrsWilliam Kent, mother of four Laboratory School children, recalled aquarter century later, ‘started forth to raise some money so that the finan-cial side could not exert its pressure. Night after night we walked or droveabout in a herdic visiting parents and others who cared for the littleschool and its unique ideals. We raised $5000 payable at once’. WhenElla Flagg Young notified the University President that his condition hadbeen fulfilled and when, moreover, Anita Blaine and Francis Parkerdeclared that they would respect the parents’ wish and ‘do nothing tointerfere in any way with the educational work carried on by Dewey’selementary school’, Harper had no choice but to give in and agree withthe continuation of the Laboratory School.18

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Celebrating the victory at a reception of the Parents Association, amood of cheerful exuberance prevailed. Spirited speeches were held. MrsYoung, noted a prominent participant, spoke ‘eulogistically of Mr Deweyhis ideal and the school and explained that the Colonel’s school was onlya practice school—there could be no competition between them. TheColonel would have raged like heathen if he could have heard’ (quoted inDurst, 2010, p. 129). Dewey, on the contrary, talked ‘naturally’ and didnot let himself carry away by the general excitement. He was fully awarethat what had been achieved was merely a stage victory which had to besubstantiated.

Alice Dewey—the wife as principal

As we know, the collective leadership installed in October 1900 was amakeshift solution that failed to give the laboratory school the clout andleverage necessary for the upcoming struggle for survival and supremacy.Yet there was another side to the problem. For quite some time, Deweywas tired of the chore and drudgery and wanted to put the managementof the school definitively into firm hands, all the more as he was well onthe way to establishing himself as an original thinker and innovator, notonly in education, but also in philosophy. In cooperation with George H.Mead, James H. Tufts, Ella Flagg Young and others, Dewey developedhis own version of pragmatism and created—according to William James—a new ‘school of thought’. In fact, he was fully immersed in academicand honorary work: besides publishing articles and books of 150 to 200pages per year on topics like ‘The Objects of Thought’, ‘Interest in Rela-tion to Training of the Will’, ‘The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology’, heserved as Member of the Hull House Board of Trustees, as President ofthe University Senate and the American Psychological Association. Fur-thermore, he travelled across the country lecturing, sometimes for weeks,in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, in Indiana, Utah, and Hawaii.Because of his heavy schedule, Dewey looked, once more, for a principalbut could not find a competent and reliable person. In June 1901, that isimmediately before a three-month trip to California, he spontaneouslyappointed his wife Alice, with the modest annual salary of $500, as thenew head of the school, making a decision that would prove to be unwiseand weigh heavily on his pedagogical experiment.19 ‘Had he’, assumedthe historian Richard J. Storr (1966, p. 302), ‘withdrawn immediatelyand utterly from school management to devote himself to the philosophi-cal investigation of education, in which other men did not so excel, hewould have saved himself pain’.

Harriet Alice Chipman, a year older than Dewey and married to himsince 1886, was an imperious woman with extraordinary willpower (Hall,2005; Martin, 2002). She persuaded her usually quiet, reticent and shyhusband to leave the ivory tower of science and participate actively in thesocial and political arena, with the result that Dewey rose to become theoutstanding representative of American liberalism and democraticsocialism. As a follower of Tolstoy, Alice Dewey was attracted to free

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thinking and free education. Her children, in total seven boys and girls,should become as fast as possible self-reliant and learn the vital knowl-edge and skills incidentally, i.e. without drill and cramming. If learning,however, proceeded slowly and reading, writing, and arithmetic came offbadly, there was an end to ‘soft pedagogy’ and time to sit down and hitthe books. Alice Dewey cared little for rules and social conventions. Forexample, she let her children do as they liked even when they annoyedand pestered other people; she gathered her two elders in the deliveryroom and allowed them to watch as her mother gave birth to a sibling;and she animated her actually prudish husband to March stark nakedwith her through the house so that their children did not unnecessarilydevelop a sense of false shame and inhibition. In good company, AliceDewey was cheerful and amiable. She ‘is one of the most refreshing per-sons I have come in contact with’, George H. Mead’s brother-in-lawnoted; ‘a mind rich and varied, with a wide experience, and finding theworld constantly interesting and entertaining’.20 But despite all the charmshe could exude and all the love she could shed, Alice Dewey lacked oftenthe common forms of civility and a tactful way of dealing with other peo-ple. ‘She had a brilliant mind’, her daughter Jane Dewey (1939, p. 21)wrote, ‘which cut through sham and pretence to the essence of a situa-tion’. Max Eastman, a writer, political activist and close friend of the fam-ily, put it more specifically. Alice Dewey could not always repudiate her‘uncanny gift of seeing through people’, he (Eastman, 1941, p. 679)observed. Even with strangers and chance encounters, she told themstraight to their faces what incurred her wrath or displeasure. Lucy S.Mitchell, founder of the Bureau of Educational Experiments and theBank Street College, was also a close friend and familiar with her charac-ter traits. As she recalled many years later: ‘Mrs Dewey, though one ofthe great women that I have known, was difficult inasmuch as she neverquestioned that she was right, and she wanted us to do just what shewanted’. It comes therefore not as a surprise that between friends she wasknown as ‘The Admiral’, an allusion to her namesake George Dewey, thehero of the battle at Manila Bay during the Spanish–American War.21

For Dewey, the appointment of his wife had two advantages: it gavehim relief, not only on the school front but also at home. Alice Deweywas dissatisfied with her life. As a former teacher and educated philoso-pher (BPh, 1886, University of Michigan), she yearned for a job thatchallenged her professionally. Now, Dewey offered her a position shecould accept without compunction since their combined income was byfar sufficient for engaging qualified personnel for cleaning, cooking,washing and supervising their five children of one to fourteen years ofage. Soon, Alice Dewey took advantage of her new position and free-dom to spread her educational goals and ideas widely. In 1903, shepublished in the Elementary School Teacher the article ‘The Place of theKindergarten’ (A. C. Dewey, 1903a) in which she opposed traditionalchild-rearing practices and conventional Froebelian occupations, and inthe same year she delivered at a meeting of the Illinois State TeachersAssociation a lecture on ‘Education Along the Lines of Least Resistance’(A. C. Dewey, 1903b) in which she rejected the accusation levied by

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School Superintendent R. A. Haight that the Laboratory School wouldadhere to permissive education and confine teaching to activities andtopics that demanded from children neither discipline nor effort.

Figure 3. Prospectus of the Laboratory School, June 1901. By courtesy of theSpecial Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

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Changing names—from the University Elementary to theLaboratory School

Embarrassing was, however, that Dewey had failed once again to fulfil hisadministrative duty and inform Harper about the designation of his wifeas the new school principal. At the recommendation of Ella Flagg Young,Dewey expressed regret for his oversight. ‘I was perhaps overanxious toget as much settled as possible before leaving’, he admitted to the Univer-sity President on 22 July 1901 from Berkeley. ‘Mrs Dewey was suggested—by me, not by Mrs Young—at a late moment, & it was literally at thelast moment that Mrs Dewey consented at all’. ‘She accepted the positiononly after protest & with much reluctance’, he added, ‘& wishes me toexpress her desire for a readjustment if you see anything to object to inthe matter’. Harper was displeased and withdrew his twelve-year-old son

Figure 4. Student enrolment at the Dewey and the Parker School.

Figure 5. Harper’s School Reorganization III—Summer 1903.

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Paul from the school (allegedly, because he did not learn to read andwrite properly). Notwithstanding his anger and his notion of properadministration, Harper took calmly that Dewey had appointed his wife asprincipal and closest collaborator. Apparently, he tolerated the coopera-tion of the spouses at this point since Alice Dewey should merely accom-modate a temporary shortage and was, as head of the privately fundedLaboratory School, not officially on the payroll of the university. ‘Pleaseassure Mrs Dewey’, Harper wrote back conciliatorily, ‘that there is nodesire on my part for any readjustment’.22

Dewey had hardly returned from his lecture and vacation tour toCalifornia when new trouble occurred. This time, however, it was Harperwho had made a mistake when he published the university catalogue forthe upcoming academic year without consulting Dewey. The consequencewas that in the Annual Register July 1900—July 1901 the LaboratorySchool did not show up at all whereas the Parker School faculty hadtaken the opportunity to present its teachers, aims, and courses of studyextensively on five closely printed pages. Moreover, Harper had ignoredor even deliberately accepted that the Parker School registered as the‘University Elementary School’ and had high-handedly usurped the termthe Laboratory School had used as a trademark for years. Quite rightly,Dewey was outraged. He felt betrayed and his school economically dam-aged. Many parents, he argued on 16 September 1901 in a strong letterto Harper, were confused and enrolled their children in the wrong institu-tion. ‘I shall not stand by and see an educational enterprise with whichmy name & professional reputation are bound up, put at a factitious dis-advantage’. The University President tried to appease Dewey by offeringto place on the already printed brochures and letterheads of Parker’s‘University Elementary School’ a sticker with the suffix ‘on the Blainefoundation’.23

This proposal merely caused disconcertment and did not really solvethe problem. In order to avoid any dismay in the future, Dewey decided torename his school. In fact, the terminological confusion was the mainmotive why the Dewey School since the school year 1901–02—probablyon a proposal by Ella Flagg Young—was officially called ‘The LaboratorySchool’ or ‘The Laboratory of the Department of Education’ (see figure3). Although born out of necessity, the new name was well chosen. On theone hand, the term clearly distinguished both institutes from each other;on the other hand, it was supposed to indicate that the Dewey School wassuperior to the Parker School by emphasizing its thoroughly scientific,experimental and innovative character. The school management now con-sisting of John Dewey and Ella Flagg Young as ‘University Directors’ andAlice Dewey as ‘Principal’ published various brochures and announce-ments to popularize the new name and distinct image. Of course, the‘impressive triumvirate’ (Hendley, 1986, p. 34) was well aware that theterm ‘laboratory’ had its pitfalls. ‘In no sense’, they explained in the schoolprospectus of 1901–02, ‘is its work experimental as regards the children.The experimentation is for the children, not with the children’.24

In spite of all the turbulence and a massive increase of the tuition feesfrom originally $36, then $60, and henceforth $75 a year for the first

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grades, the school came to no harm; on the contrary, thanks to the mes-sage: ‘The school building was completely repaired and redecorated dur-ing the summer, and is hygienic and attractive’, and the reassuringinformation: the new name ‘indicates no change in management, location,aims, or methods’, registration reached with 140 children its all-time highin 1901 (and not in 1902 as Mayhew and Edwards, 1936, p. 8 claim; seeKatch, 1990, p. 239). However, the competitor drew closer. To be sure,the Parker School—now housed at the university campus and just fiveblocks away from the Laboratory School—lost most of its students to thesecond, newly founded, and officially called ‘Francis W. Parker School’,also endowed by Anita Blaine but directed by Flora Cooke and situatedeleven miles away in the north of the city near Lincoln Park. Neverthe-less, in October 1901, the Parker School while divided and relocatedcould welcome 104 boys and girls to the hastily erected Ellis Hall (todaysite of the University Bookstore) in 5802 S Ellis Avenue.25

Dewey as administrator—the School of Education incrisis

Francis W. Parker, director of the School of Education, had not been wellfor some time. His health deteriorated rapidly after his wife and majorprofessional aide had died. Thus, the death of the 63-year-old colonel on2 March 1902 came not really as a surprise. The general public such asU.S. Commissioner of Education William T. Harris, Bishop John L.Spalding, telephone inventor Alexander G. Bell paid their deep respect.John Dewey honoured the doyen of the progressive education movementas ‘a loyal and devoted soldier in the battle of humanity for growth andfreedom’. Parker, Dewey (1976b, pp. 97–101) explained, had brokendown ‘the despotism, formalism, and the rigidity of the old-fashionedschool’ and realized educational reforms that ‘are taken today almost as amatter of course, without debate, in all the best schools in this country’.‘Our friend’s physical presence’, Dewey added, ‘has left us, but his spiritremains, reinforced and multiplied’.

If nothing else, this public appreciation of Parker’s merits andachievements decided the question of who should succeed Parker.Although Parker’s right hand, Wilbur S. Jackman, was a second candi-date, Harper, Blaine and all parties concerned, i.e. including the trusteesand faculties of the Parker School, agreed quickly and without controver-sial discussion on Dewey. The philosopher convinced not only as avisionary who could lead the School of Education to a bright future butalso as an acolyte who could preserve the legacy of Parker and the integ-rity of his practice school. Jackman experienced in organization andadministration—honoured with the unusual title ‘Dean’—was appointedhis deputy and manager. Effective 20 May 1902, Dewey ruled over aneducational empire that was only surpassed in size and importance by theshining example, the Teachers College of Columbia University in NewYork (see figure 2). The career that Dewey had carved out in eight yearswas truly impressive. In 1894, ‘simply’ a professor of philosophy and

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director of the Department of Philosophy, Psychology, and Pedagogy;then in 1896 and 1901, additionally charged with the management of theUniversity Elementary School, the South Side Academy and the ManualTraining School. Now that he presided over the School of Education, hisactivity was not limited to science, research and experimentation; itencompassed all areas and levels of education and teacher training,including the associated practice schools and educational journals. Ofcourse, the gain in power and authority increased Dewey’s income, thistime, however, only slightly, from $7000 to $7500 a year, since Deweycould not force the University President once more to grant—in Harper’sview—an exorbitant salary (Dykhuizen, 1973, p. 107).

Against all hopes and expectations, the consolidation of the variousschools and programmes Parker had already initiated did not progressharmoniously (Smith, 1976, pp. 85–87; White, 1977, pp. 95–101). Infact, the School of Education slid under Dewey’s leadership into a full-blown crisis. Time and again, the accusations, insults and recriminationsmade by Director, Dean and faculty led to numerous misunderstandings,disputes and disagreements. In particular, Dewey’s rare presence and hisbrusque rejection of the concepts and methods favoured by his predeces-sor generated resentment and bitterness. Dewey, Jackman wrote theUniversity President on 4 May 1903, articulating the accusations of thefaculty accustomed to Parker’s companionship and cordiality was inacces-sible, inconsiderate and uncooperative. He did not care about his promiseand the Colonel’s legacy; he made decisions in an autocratic manner,played his colleagues off against each other, and threatened to resign ifsomething did not suit him. Moreover, he did not attend meetings thatappeared trivial to him and did not show up at school events even if hewas personally invited. Dewey had been welcomed in the School of Edu-cation with ‘complete confidence’ and ‘great satisfaction’, Jackmanemphasized, but ‘[i]t is utterly incomprehensible to the Faculty why fromthe beginning he should adopt a policy which in its entirety consideringthe year through can only be justly characterized as one of “freezeout”’.26

Declining enrolment figures—the Laboratory School onthe brink

As with the School of Education, the situation at the Laboratory Schoolwas alarming, in fact it was on the brink of disaster. Within 12 months,the number of students had decreased over 40%. Instead of the 140 boysand girls who attended the 10 groups of the kindergarten and elementaryschool at the beginning of Alice Dewey’s principalship, no more than 80students were enrolled in October 1902, despite intensified advertising andtuition fees lowered by 20%.27 After six years of continual growth, theschool faced a crash unparalleled (see figure 4). What had happened? Whyhad so many parents lost faith in the Laboratory School? The answer tothis question is not evident. Except for Jerald A. Katch (1990, p. 240), nocontemporary or historian, including Katherine C. Mayhew and Anna C.

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Edwards (1936), Robert McCaul (1961), Laurel Tanner (1997), and AnnDurst (2010) has ever discussed or even discovered the life-threateningsituation. But four assumptions lend themselves as explanations:

Finance: The parents of the Laboratory School realized that the$5000 guaranteed by them and the $2500 surprisingly approved byHarper would not be enough to offset the incurred and the anticipatedshortfalls. The limit had been reached. The parents did not want to beasked any more for additional contributions and donations. Therefore,the President of the Parents Association, Nellie J. O’Connor, approachedDewey already one day after Parker’s death and suggested to embrace theopportunity and bring about a ‘union’ of the Laboratory School and theUniversity Elementary School—a proposal that Dewey considered butrefused, it seems, as untimely and unfittingly.28

Rules: The parents noticed increasingly that while liberal educationwas an admirable goal, a certain amount of discipline would not do anyharm. Although a devoted follower of Dewey, George H. Mead’s wifeHelen had to admit that her nine-year-old son Henry was ‘very happy’when he temporarily attended a public school in Imperial Germany. ‘It’sso much less trouble’, she wrote Anna R. Camp in June 1901 fromLeipsic (quoted in Durst, 2010, p. 73), ‘to have him [Henry] go to schoolwhere manners, neatness, order, obedience, piety, reverence, reading,writing, spelling & arithmetic are all taught by contract, no nonsense hereabout natural development, growth etc. etc’.

Course of study: The parents were concerned that their children wouldnot learn reading, writing, arithmetic because they played, tinkered,‘researched’ instead of working seriously. A father (quoted in Storr, 1966,p. 298) who had taken his son out of school explained: ‘We need to teachhim how to study. He learned how to “observe” last year’. Visitors to theLaboratory School made similar statements. ‘The university’, they scoffed(quoted in Durst, 2010, p. 45f.), ‘was running a school for teaching chil-dren to sew and bake in order that their mothers might teach them toread at home’.

School management: The parents were unwilling to bear the idiosyn-crasies of the new principal any longer. Alice Dewey could be cold, arro-gant and offensive. As in private life, she occasionally expressed opinionsthat hurt the feelings of her counterparts and did not improve the reputa-tion of a private school depending on the goodwill of parents and patrons.To justify her resignation, a Laboratory School teacher reported that AliceDewey poisoned the atmosphere among teachers and scared away parentsby declaring that Christian Scientists were ‘not wanted’, that the Labora-tory School was ‘no dumping ground for the public schools’ and wouldadmit only those children who came ‘from good homes’ (quoted inSmith, 1976, p. 98).29

In their standard work, The Dewey School, Mayhew and Edwards(1936, p. 11) affirm that the parents’ ‘help was essential in countless waysfor the successful accomplishment of the experiment’. This statement iscertainly correct for the first five years, but it was definitely no longervalid as from the school year 1901–1902 when a large number of parentsdiscontinued their support and their relations with the school. Moreover,

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the widespread dissatisfaction and the massive exodus of students’conflicts with Dewey’s own contention and the virtually unanimous opin-ion of historians that the Laboratory School was a ‘first rate school’ andAlice Dewey as principal a distinct ‘success’ (Cremin, 1961, p. 141;Martin 2002, p. 208).30

What did the disillusioned parents do with their children? Where didthey then send their boys and girls to school? To this question, there isalso a plausible answer. The children switched to the nearby ParkerSchool where the number of applications surged in one year by almost70%, from 104 to 175 children. That is, while the Dewey School experi-enced a decrease of about 60 students, the enrolment of the ParkerSchool rose by 71 students. It seems safe to say that, in October 1902,most of the Laboratory School parents and students opted for an alterna-tive that they considered equally progressive, but financially less burden-some, curricularly less specific, and emotionally less exhausting. Thesetback had, by the way, no effect on Alice Dewey. She remained princi-pal. In the school year 1902–1903, her salary increased from $500 to$1250, due in part to her additional activity as English and groupteacher.31

Dewey’s solution—the hostile takeover of the ParkerSchool

Realizing that enrolment figures had declined dramatically and the moraland financial support of parents was on the wane, Dewey changed hiscourse of action. One year after the Colonel’s death, Dewey was nolonger willing to have regard for the feelings and opinions of the ParkerSchool faculty (McCaul, 1961, p. 181f.). The earlier argument that hisexperimental school and Parker’s practice school were complementaryand that the continuation of both establishments enhanced the renown ofthe university as the rising institution in educational research and teachertraining had lost its usefulness. In the spring of 1903, Dewey chose theseemingly easiest way out the awkward situation. On the verge of despairand, as far as we know, without any interference from the universityadministration, he decided to merge the two University ElementarySchools and co-locate them in the Emmons Blaine Hall originally con-ceived for the Parker School and to be opened in October 1903 at 1362E. 59th Street (see figure 5). The reasons he gave Harper and AnitaBlaine for his change of mind sound familiar. He had, Dewey explained,too little time to give both schools the attention they deserved. What ismore, the parents did not recognize the difference between the Parkerand the Dewey School and did not know where they should send theirchildren—an issue, Dewey then declared that was in truth ‘difficult if notimpossible to answer’.32

Dewey echoed here considerations Harper had brought forward twoyears earlier and which his followers had denounced as farfetched, false,and unfounded. Astonishing is the assertion that the Laboratory and theUniversity Elementary School were as similar in practice as to give rise to

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confusion and induce parents to erroneous decisions. However, Dewey’sstatement did not only contain a staggering confession, it was alsomistaken. The parents could very well distinguish between the programsand the features of the two schools. As noted above, they knew exactlywhy they preferred the Parker School and why they withdrew their chil-dren by the score from the Laboratory School. Astounding, too, is thefact that Dewey did not mention the economic motive behind his newstrategy. By merging the schools, Dewey obviously expected, he wouldeventually get an institution generously endowed and equipped withouthaving to worry anymore about low-enrolment figures and the lack offunds and appropriations.

Dewey’s idea to unify the Laboratory School with the Parker Schoolcomplied with the wishes of Harper and the Parents Association. Yetapparently, and curiously enough, the teachers, too, accepted the planwithout dispute and argument. At any rate, there does not exist a singledocument of the Dewey School that suggests a struggle for independenceand survival or brings up even one of the four issues inevitably arisingwhen organizations were to be merged. That is: Should the new establish-ment (1) change goals, (2) eliminate jobs, (3) cut salaries and (4) replaceexecutives? Dewey’s name as that of defender of his faculty and protectorof their interests is conspicuously absent from the countless files andrecords stored inside or outside the university. Known is just the fact thatof the actual 14 teachers merely five were taken over and that among thenine teachers who—because of instant dismissal, attractive alternatives, ordeep dissatisfaction—left the Laboratory School in the summer of 1903(and not in 1904 as Mayhew and Edwards (1936, p. 18) contend) werethe three most distinguished members of the faculty: Katherine Camptook a position as lecturer at the School of Education, Althea Harmersettled down as a self-employed designer, and Laura Runyon wasappointed school superintendent at the Missouri State Normal School inWarrensburg.33 Georgia Bacon, incidentally, had changed jobs two yearsearlier when Alice Dewey came into office; since then, she taught historyat the Horace Mann School, Teachers College, New York.

Quite differently to the Laboratory School, we are well informedabout the development at the Parker School. Especially, the detailed min-utes Anita Blaine kept as Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of theSchool of Education and the University Elementary School about herconversations with John Dewey, Zonia Barber, Emily J. Rice, Ella FlaggYoung and William Harper give a vivid picture of the struggle that wasraging in April 1903 about power, authority, and leadership. According tothese accounts, Dewey met repeatedly with Anita Blaine, Zonia Baberand Emily Rice to discuss with them his merger plan. Baber and Ricewere principal and head of the history and literature department, respec-tively, and therefore, from Dewey’s point of view, ‘influential’ and ‘repre-sentative’ figures of the Parker School. At the outset of the many talksthat were to follow, Dewey alluded to conceptual issues. The ParkerSchool, he told his interlocutors in varied arrangements and detail, had tochange considerably. With consolidation, the departmental work had tobe increased, the subject knowledge of practice teachers improved, and

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the supervision of student teachers intensified. First and foremost, theschool for teachers had to become a school for students. Baber and Ricereacted to Dewey’s plan and contempt for their work with amazement.Under Parker, they indicated, subject teaching had never been neglected,teacher training never exaggerated, child welfare never violated. Dewey,Baber claimed, harked back to dualistic thinking if he meant that a‘school could be planned properly for teachers which was not planned tobe an ideal condition for children’. Dewey did not reply to Baber’s objec-tion, instead he changed the subject and came up with financial and per-sonnel issues. He announced that the salaries of the normal schoolteachers would be cut from an average of $1300 to $1000 and that thecontracts of five faculty members would be terminated. In the end,Dewey argued, the school had to break even, and the proposed layoffswould not cause ‘serious losses’ because the affected teachers (ClaraMitchell, Katherine Stillwell, Gertrude Van Hoesen, Antoinette Hollisterand Annette Butler) acted in manners that were ‘hard’, ‘crude’ or ‘dra-matic’, aroused ‘the students’ interest rather than their persistent ‘effort’,and being ‘set in [their] way with the children’, were not good and ‘grow-ing’ teachers.34 Since Dewey discussed details solely with Blaine, Baberand Rice criticized the projected measures apparently so reticently andindecisively that Dewey was able to have the impression that the ParkerSchool faculty agreed not only with the union of both schools but alsowith the massive cuts and changes that would come along with themerger.

Alice Dewey as principal—resistance from all quarters

The fourth issue of the merger, who the head of the new enterprise wasto be, was particularly sensitive. Given that he was personally involved,Dewey did not address the issue himself but sent Ella Flagg Young, hisco-director at the Laboratory School, to the meeting. Young dealt withthe task in her usual blunt and outspoken way. From her point of view,the previous conversations had gone too far and had convinced her ‘thatthe general welfare of the school of education was not being served’(Smith, 1976, p. 89). Therefore, Young revealed to Baber and Rice thatDewey had not ‘given them all that was involved and intended’. In partic-ular, he had not informed them that he would entrust his wife with themanagement of the new consolidated school. Alice Dewey, Young hinted,could be impatient, inconsiderate and readily annoyed. Like her husband,she did not believe in normal schools and all-round teachers and had nosympathy for the work and labour of the Parker School faculty. Moreover,Alice Dewey had ‘regardlessly’ dismissed Laboratory School teachers whofell short of her expectations, even if she did not know how to get ‘satis-factory’ substitutes. Apart from that, Young added, Dewey did not reallymean to cut the salaries of the grade teachers, he simply wanted them toquit their jobs voluntarily so that he could fill the available positions onthe previous terms with college trained teachers of his own choice.Finally, Young pointed out that Dewey aimed for the swift liquidation of

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Parker’s school and teacher training system. Dewey, she intimated, wouldnot ‘sit in his office and do nothing but clerk work another year withouthaving things done in his way’.

It is amazing how frankly Dewey’s confidant passed on highly chargedinsider knowledge and how critically she assessed Alice Dewey’s dismis-sive attitude and John Dewey’s tortuous manoeuvring. Obviously, Youngwas not ‘Dewey’s mouthpiece,’ as Jackman assumed, yet confronted withher statements, Young virtually took back everything of which she hadpreviously disapproved and denounced.35

Nonetheless, Baber and Rice were alarmed. They now knew firsthandwhat was in store for them. ‘If Mrs Dewey came as Principal of theGrades’, they told Anita Blaine, ‘it would mean that the grades wouldsooner or later be all changed, and that it would be distinctly Mr andMrs Dewey’s school’. Ella Flagg Young, however, had drawn quite a dif-ferent conclusion. She thought that her revelations had not shaken theteachers’ faith in Dewey as guardian and keeper of Parker’s legacy.According to Young, Baber and Rice still believed that Dewey would, aspromised, ‘build on what was there’ and make ‘no sweeping corrections’.In any case, Young announced ‘that everything was settled’ and that thefaculty had apparently no objection to Alice Dewey’s appointment.

When Dewey hurried with this good news to Anita Blaine, the chair-woman of the Board of Trustees contradicted him at once. To her knowl-edge, Blaine said, Baber and Rice had never approved the appointment ofMrs Dewey since they had neither been asked succinctly by Mrs Youngor Mr Dewey to give their view on the matter. Moreover, Blaine added,Dewey should have known and taken into account that it was not easy forsubordinates to express their opinions freely, especially when the wife oftheir boss was involved and when a post was to be filled which, as in thecase of Miss Baber, was still occupied by the person concerned. In fact,Rice had repeatedly complained to Blaine that Dewey could not take criti-cism and had literally ‘discouraged’ her from exercising her ‘freedom ofadvice’. This accusation annoyed the ardent supporter of democracy andfreedom. In his defence, Dewey resorted to arguments that cut across hispolitical persuasion and previous statements. Ignoring his pledge ‘that hewould not put through large measures without the agreement of MissRice and Miss Baber at least’, he now claimed that he had never agreedto any form of official or unofficial group and faculty participation. Inparticular, he accused Rice of misunderstanding her position as consultantand behaving as if the power of decision resided not with him but withthe faculty. In his rage, Dewey asked Blaine to give him in writing that heas director of the School of Education possessed the legal and moral‘authority’ to come to his own decisions, i.e. regardless of any advisers,consultants or committees.36 Blaine fulfilled this, peculiar, desire—but inher own way. As for the authority qua office, she told Dewey, he had toturn to the university as his employer, and as far as his ‘moral responsibil-ity’ was concerned, he had to bear in mind that ‘for the present, you holdthe school in trust for a definite purpose and that, as far as possible, situa-tions should be avoided which may jeopardize the fulfilment of the trust’.Not his ‘authority’ was at stake, the issue was rather ‘what he would do

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with his authority’. Yet that was not all. To Dewey’s objection that hecould not execute the merger ‘unless he had a principal who understoodthe workings of his Laboratory School’, Blaine replied coolly that such arequest was ‘inappropriate’. ‘If the nomination of Mrs Dewey as thePrincipal of the grades is unacceptable to the Faculty and the unioninvolves that necessarily, I do feel, in that case, that the measure is of thesort that we have spoken of as ill-advised’.37

That struck home. Dewey was ‘cornered and furious’ and put all theblame on Baber and Rice (Smith, 1976, p. 92). They had deceived himand Mrs Young, he told Blaine. On the one hand, they had ‘sanctioned’the merger of the schools and Mrs Dewey as principal; on the other hand,they had induced Mrs Blaine to attain the ‘nullification’ of the projectpursuance of which they had consented to in the first place. In particular,‘Miss Rice,’ Dewey concluded, ‘has so completely and repeatedly misrep-resented both Mrs Young and my own statements that I attach no furtherimportance to any statement she makes about other people, so far as thatreflect upon them’. Nevertheless, Dewey was unsettled. Spontaneously,he informed Harper that he would call off the school merger; shortlyafter, he withdrew his announcement and let Blaine know that—for his‘dignity’ and ‘self-respect’ as well as for the protection of ‘discipline andauthority’ in the faculty—he had to insist on the implementation of theoriginal scheme. It could not be, Dewey explained, that two—more or lessinsincere and dishonest faculty members quash a needed and legitimatedecision. ‘My dear Mrs Blaine’, he wrote on 30 April 1903, ‘[…] you willsee that is a moral question of the most fundamental kind at stake’.38

Even though he was habitually ‘a good man’, ‘fair to a fault’, and‘prepared to learn from anyone’ (Hook, 1952: 247ff.), in this instance,Dewey defied, through his high-moral posture, any compromise andcooperation and turned, once more, a deaf ear to good advice and validobjections. His characterization of Zonia Baber and Emily Rice misappre-hended the situation. Certainly, Baber and Rice were not the ‘naive youngteachers’ who ‘could not fully comprehend these [Dewey’s] plans’ asSmith (1976, p. 90) argues; and likewise, they were not the mean intrigu-ers who had ‘misled’ him and deviously ‘concealed’ their real intentionsand objectives as Dewey insinuates. In fact, it seems that Baber and Ricewere, like Young, genuinely concerned about the welfare and prosperityof the school. They cherished Dewey as a person but they resented hisunfounded accusations, arbitrary decisions, and, most of all, his insistenceon installing his wife as principal. ‘Personally I like him [Dewey] verymuch indeed’, Baber told Blaine, ‘although he has been so anxious tocarry a certain policy [and although] he has not always been quite frankwith the facts. I hope everything will be done to retain him except “givingup the ship”’.39

Harper’s compromise—a wasted opportunity

The situation had come to a deadlock. Alternatives, for example, that thefaculty would resign or that Ella Flagg Young would, instead of Alice

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Dewey, become principal, were considered but they were soon discardedand not realized. Actually, the Parker School teachers did not want tooffend or put pressure on Dewey but rather build a golden bridge for himto reverse his policy. ‘I am so anxious’, Baber assured Blaine, ‘to keepfriendly relations with Dr Dewey that if he would compromise on MrsYoung as principal of the Grades I am sure our faculty would accept it.She knows’, Baber added, alluding to Alice Dewey’s peremptory tone andintimidating behaviour, ‘how to deal with people humanely and he[Dewey] has entire confidence in her’.40 For Baber and her associates,Young had precisely the leadership abilities Alice Dewey completelylacked. Yet Dewey did not seize the idea, but stood by his wife, despitethe fact that she had significantly contributed to the decline of the Labo-ratory School. Apart from Dewey’s inflexibility, the proposal was anywaydoomed to fail because Young, as before, was not really interested in thejob. She preferred to stay in the background and become the editor of theElementary School Teacher (Smith, 1976, p. 93).

At last, after a month of justified fears, curious quarrels and fancifulallegations, Harper interceded in the dispute. Worrying, like Blaine, thatthe prestigious philosopher and educator would resign as director of theSchool of Education or even leave the university in anger and frustration,Harper suggested in May 1903, as President of the University in charge ofthe process, a compromise which in the end, though grudgingly, wasapproved by all parties concerned (McCaul, 1961, p. 183). Essentially, theagreement consisted of three points: (1) to pacify the faculty, the disagree-able teachers would not be laid off, would get a three-year contract andnot suffer any pay cut; (2) to appease Dewey, his wife would be accepted asheadmistress by the Parker group and provided with a salary increase from$1250 to $2500; and (3) to protect the University in the future againstunnecessary personnel conflicts, the tenure of Alice Dewey as principalwould be ‘temporary’ and limited to a maximum of one year, unless shewere to suddenly turn out to be a brilliant chief and manager. Contrary toBlaine’s request, Harper did not confirm the agreement in writing andinform Dewey about the third point accurately. Hence, a new conflict wasimminent. To avoid any misunderstanding on his part, Dewey wroteHarper in June 1903 to tell him how he understood the compromise. Inhis view, the agreement with respect to his wife was twofold. On the onehand, he argued, she was a teacher with a salary of $1500 who—like hercolleagues—was entitled to a three-year contract; on the other hand, shewas principal with a salary of $1000 who—like all university employees inleadership positions—had to be reappointed ‘year after year’. The differen-tiation was shrewdly conceived. Probably, Dewey hoped that his wife’scontract as principal would interface with the duration of her employmentas teacher and thus make its extension a simple matter of routine, a gamethe President and trustees saw through and dismissed.41

For the first time since 1899, Dewey did not emerge victorious. Withthe loss of most of the Laboratory School teachers and the heavy burdenof unwanted Parker associates, he had to accept a bitter defeat. Neverthe-less, he could console himself with the fact that he had reached at leasthis minimum goal with the confirmation of his wife as principal and had

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herewith maintained an, admittedly slim, chance of transforming theconsolidated University Elementary School into a genuine Dewey School.

The compromise was approved on 19 May by the Board of Trusteesand set in force on 1 October so that at the beginning of the school year1903–1904, according to Dewey, ‘nearly’ 300 boys and girls could settlein the not yet completely finished Emmons Blaine Hall at MidwayPlaisance. Despite their previous opposition, the former Parker Schoolteachers who made up more than 70% of the faculty wanted to calm thewaves and decided to cooperate with Alice Dewey in ‘real harmony’ and‘the most sympathetic spirit’.42

Yet as generally expected, the hope for a peaceful and fruitful collabo-ration proved to be an illusion. Contrary to McCaul’s (1961, p. 202)assumption, there exists a document that furnishes particulars ‘as to howwell Mrs Dewey got along with the teachers under her’. In fact, the reportJackman, at Blaine’s request, presented on 23 April 1904 to the Board ofTrustees of the School of Education about violations of duty and moralitycommitted by Alice Dewey in the preceding six months was long, exten-sive and devastating. According to Jackman, Alice Dewey had failed mis-erably all along the line—as an organizer since for weeks she had beenunable to provide for a reliable school programme and appropriate super-vision of student teachers; as a superior since she was unable to create anatmosphere of trust and mutual respect; and above all, as a person sinceshe could not control her ‘temperament’ and ‘destructive’ emotions. MrsDewey, Jackman admitted, possessed undeniably ‘strong qualities’. Shehad an appreciation of the ‘proper’ educational principles and knew howto realize them successfully through self-activity, manual work and fieldtrips. But her expertise in subject matter and methods did not excuse herblatant lack of social and personal skills. As documented by numerousincidents, Jackman wrote, Mrs Dewey behaved towards those around herunprofessionally and discriminatorily. She met visitors with a ‘rebuff’,‘humiliated’ students ‘beyond endurance’, ‘manipulated’ parents like a‘ward politician’ and characterized the school clerk as ‘merely a cog in ahuge machine’. Teachers, too, she treated badly. ‘Her nature is critical,not constructive; so critical that it becomes destructive’, Jackmanreported. ‘With this she has such a strong personality that it is impossiblefor her to direct others. It is impossible for others to assert themselveswithout continual combat’. Like an ‘autocrat’, she discounted the experi-ence and expertise of others and imposed ‘work upon teachers which theycannot conscientiously do’. ‘Yet to perpetually yield’, Jackman summedup his criticism, ‘is fatal to the personal strength of her subordinates’.Therefore, it was only natural that Alice Dewey aroused opposition. Atleast twenty colleagues, including a former Laboratory School teacher,Jackman assured, were willing to see Harper and speak out against theextension of her principalship.43

Despite Jackman’s known antipathy towards Dewey, the allegationscannot be dismissed out of hand—quite the opposite, they have to be takenseriously because of their abundance, accuracy and precision. Moreover,the claims smoothly comply with the accounts of Jane Dewey, Max East-man and Lucy Mitchell presented earlier. Even close friends of Alice Dewey

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experienced difficulties in getting on with her. They depicted her as a com-manding, self-righteous woman who—especially if stressed, annoyed oroverchallenged—had little regard for the feelings, perceptions and concernsof other people. Alice Dewey was ‘no saint’, her biographer Sam Stack(2009, p. 34) observed. ‘She could be biting in her criticism, and not alwayswilling to listen to those who disagreed with her or her husband’.

Dewey’s resignation—the way out of a deadlock

Given the tense atmosphere, Dewey made an attempt to demonstrate pres-ence, strength and unity of action when he read a paper before the ParentsAssociation on the ‘Significance of the School of Education’. Each of thefour institutions, Dewey (1977a) said on 29 January 1904, which werefused in the School of Education had contributed in the past to educa-tional growth and progress. For instance, the Manual Training School hadadvanced the ‘training of the executive organs’ (p. 275), the South SideAcademy had prepared the children ‘for full participation in all ranges ofsocial life’ (p. 277), and the Parker School had improved the ‘standards,ideals, and working equipment of the teacher’ (p. 274). But for all hisefforts to praise these schools as ‘pioneers’ and ‘storm centers’ ofeducational reform, Dewey could not resist glorifying his own school asthe institution which more than any other had pointed the way to thefuture. After all, it was the Laboratory School, he asserted, that gave theteachers not only ‘inspiration, practical insight, and skill’ but also ‘com-mand of the most fundamental intellectual tools of the work they are calledto do’ (p. 276). The ‘significant task’ of education, that is to say the ‘con-tinuous research into the principles underlying educational practice’ andthe ‘continual criticism of methods that are in practical use’, Dewey addedprovocatively, had been already fulfilled by the Laboratory School ‘to asurprising extent, considering its short history and its modest equipment’.

By honouring Francis Parker as the ‘prophet’ of the progressive edu-cation movement and by praising the School of Education as a project ofnational importance, Dewey flattered the University President and theadherents of the Colonel, yet he could not divert the two parties fromtheir chosen path. Quite the opposite, Harper reminded Dewey in variousmeetings of the arrangement reached in May 1903 and of the fact thatAlice Dewey was to be superseded by a candidate agreeable to the facultyat the end of the school year. To justify why he did not want to extendher contract, Harper did not refer, however, to incidents Jackman and theteachers had so vehemently complained about, but—with respect toDewey’s sensitivity to criticism—solely to the potential of conflict result-ing from the close collaboration of spouses. ‘As you will remember’,Harper wrote Dewey on 29 February 1904, ‘it was the distinct under-standing of the trustees that the appointment of the current principal ofthe Elementary School was contrary to the best opinion of the Committeeand the Trustees; not, of course, from the point of view of the personinvolved, but on the ground of the principle which I have discussed withyou at least two or three times’. Since then, his attitude had not changed.

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‘I am as confident today as I was two years ago’, Harper added, hintingat Alice Dewey’s first appointment as principal, ‘that a fundamental prin-ciple is involved in the employment of the wife of a professor in anadministrative or definite position in the University’. By focusing on theformal aspect and leaving the conclusion for Dewey to draw, Harperhoped to avoid a painful discussion about personal shortcomings andbring an unpleasant affair to a psychologically ingenious resolution.44

That this scheme could not work became evident all too quickly.Apparently, Dewey wanted to ride out the issue and did not respond.After four weeks, Harper made another attempt. On 27 March, he metwith Alice Dewey to remind her of vacating her position by the end of theschool year. The meeting took place without her husband since Deweywas at that time in New York lecturing at Columbia University andBrooklyn Institute. Whether Harper chose the date deliberately to avoid adirect face-off with Dewey and have an easy task regarding Alice Dewey,as Eastman (1941, p. 679) relates, is difficult to say.45 In any case, theconversation did not go well. Alice Dewey was stunned that she shouldresign—her husband had never told her about the one-year rule; and shewas outraged that Harper did not give her notice of termination, insteadexpected her to hand in her resignation, which she did immediately, butnot without comment. In her letter of 5 April 1904, she complained thatHarper had forced her out of office not for ‘educational’ but for ‘personal’reasons, i.e. because of the marital bond with her superior.46 If AliceDewey ever learned the real cause for her dismissal, namely her inabilityto deal professionally with students, parents and teachers, is not known.Given the fact that the refusal to extend her contract could not be legallychallenged and that her husband had confirmed in writing the one-yearstipulation for senior executives the previous year, she expressed herimpatience with amazing self-restraint. Nonetheless, she could not concealher disappointment that Harper had refused to document her pioneeringachievements and thank her for her tremendously successful work asprincipal.

The news about Alice Dewey’s resignation spread slowly but waswelcomed among the faculty with relief or even overt joy. ‘It is perhapsneedless to say’, Jackman wrote Cyrus Bentley on 13 April, a trustee ofthe School of Education, ‘that what you told me on Monday last has hada most cheering effect upon all the teachers who have since spoken tome’. Unlike the teachers, Harper could not really rejoice since one dayafter Alice Dewey’s communication there alighted another letter of resig-nation on his desk. On 6 April, Dewey told the University President thathe would quit his post as director of the School of Education and of theUniversity Elementary School at the end of the academic year. ‘The con-ditions as you outline them’, Dewey explained, ‘are not favorable todevelopment upon the educational side’. However brief and vague,Dewey’s letter can only be understood as a reaction to Harper’s dismissalof his wife. Dewey realized that he could not extract any more conces-sions from Harper and that he had to give up hope of forming the ele-mentary school according to his will. A year earlier, he had announcedthat he had neither the strength nor the desire to start all over again and

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continue the school without a trusted person in charge. Therefore, Harpercould not be surprised about Dewey’s decision; and his disappointmentwas probably not that great as it concerned an administrator who overtime had caused him enough trouble with bold demands, misseddeadlines, exceeded budgets, rebellious employees and, not least, withconcerned benefactors.47

Harper was upset, however, when five days later he received a secondletter from Dewey informing him that Dewey would resign as professorand director of the Department of Philosophy, thus terminating his rela-tionship with the university for good. This news displeased Harperbeyond measure. Immediately, he got in touch with two colleagues andgood friends of Dewey asking for advice on how he could prevent thedeparture of the outstanding philosopher (McCaul, 1961, p. 204f.).George H. Mead pointed out the ‘prominent’ part Alice Dewey played inDewey’s educational ‘research’, and James R. Angell suggested Harpershould ‘apologize’ to Mrs Dewey and give Dewey a free hand in theappointment of a new principal for the Elementary School and a newdean of the School of Education (as a substitute for Jackman whom hedespised and found impossible to cope with). Harper also interviewed twoof his own friends. Both Harry P. Judson and Albion W. Small warnedhim about giving in to temptation and withdrawing Alice Dewey’s dis-missal. Judson, Head Dean of University College, submitted a memoran-dum in which he outlined a compromise that met Mead’s and Angell’ssuggestions to a large extent. ‘Mr Dewey’, Judson wrote, ‘should continuein charge of it, of course with the advice and help of Mrs Dewey, unoffi-cially rendered, to any extent that he may desire. Mrs Dewey should retirefrom an official position which must mean friction and which must ham-per Mr Dewey’s larger usefulness. The staff should be restructured if needbe from the ground up in accordance with Mr Dewey’s views’.48

Harper followed the advice given to him. He apologized to AliceDewey for his erroneous assumption that she had known about the one-year arrangement; he expressed his ‘sincere appreciation of the earnestand laborious work’; and he set off for Dewey’s office to dispel old mis-conceptions and make new plans without, however, pledging to renewAlice Dewey’s contract and in this way breaking his word he had given toBlaine and the faculty.49 Yet, despite all begging and pressing, he did notsucceed. Dewey was finished with Harper and Chicago and had alreadywritten William T. Harris, William James and James McKeen Cattell tohelp him find a new position as professor or possibly—because of thehigher salary—as administrator. Less than three weeks after his resigna-tion, on 2 May 1904, Dewey was offered a chair in philosophy, engi-neered by his close friend Cattell, at Columbia University with a salary of$5000 which he accepted at once especially as the deal included lucrativeside jobs and a well-paid teaching position at Teachers College (Martin,2002, p. 204).

In a last letter to Harper which covered his entire term in Chicago,not just the last few months, Dewey reconsidered the reasons for his sud-den departure. On 10 May 1904, he stated differently to what he hadwritten on 6 April. In particular, he contradicted the notion that he had

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resigned on personal grounds. ‘The alleged failure to reappoint MrsDewey as principal of the Elementary School’, he noted, ‘is in no sensethe cause of my resignation’. The real reason why he was about to leaveChicago was the stiff and malicious attitude of the University Presidentright from the beginning. ‘Your willingness’, he wrote Harper, ‘to embar-rass and hamper my work as Director by making use of the fact that MrsDewey was Principal, is but one incident in the history of years’.50

A pragmatist’s dilemma—theory as passion and practiceas burden

Dewey’s charge that Harper was to blame for his abrupt move to NewYork does not hit the mark. Undoubtedly, Harper kept Dewey financiallyon a short leash, barely involved him in his projects, conferred with himinsufficiently about the construction of the Emmons Blaine Hall, and,especially, strove for the one-million-dollar donation from Blaine withouthis advice and consent. Indeed, the Parker School emerged as a danger-ous rival to Dewey’s Laboratory School, albeit due more than anything toits own educational and administrative deficiencies, as manifested by thelong and fruitful coexistence of the Horace Mann School and the SpeyerSchool at Teachers College (Cremin et al., 1954). Besides these mattersof immediate importance, Dewey and Harper were divided over theextent of coeducation (whether the female college students should betaught separately from their male counterparts; Gordon, 1990) and overthe extent of Dewey’s outside engagements (whether he should limit hislectures—at a lower fee, but for the benefit of the University—primarilyto the Chicago area).51

To avoid any misunderstanding, there is no intention to absolve Harperof all responsibility. Certainly at the beginning of the school experiment,Harper did not satisfy all the wishes and demands Dewey and the ParentAssociation directed at him, not even the ones he could have fulfilled proba-bly quite easily had he chosen to do so. On the other hand, one has to recog-nize that Harper was not an adversary who harassed Dewey beyondendurance—on the contrary: he cherished his celebrated philosopher, notonly because Dewey was able to increase significantly the prestige andimportance of the young university, but also because, in essence, Harperagreed with Dewey’s educational principles, seminal publications and inno-vative projects (McCaul, 1959, p. 260ff.; Tanner, 1997, p. 15ff.). At leastsince 1901, when Dewey became director of the two associated highschools, Harper was willing to accept any term Dewey could have stipu-lated, excluding merely the one that was from his and, much more, from thefaculty and trustees’ point of view an unsuitable and unreasonable demand,namely the continued employment of his wife as principal. FollowingParkers death, Harper had even entrusted Dewey with one of the most pow-erful administrative positions he could give away. This promotion was anobvious token of confidence and support. Two years before the final battle,Dewey had as head of the School of Education extraordinary budgets andbuildings at his disposal, also conceptual and executive possibilities that

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were huge and hardly inferior to those of James E. Russell, the Dean ofTeachers College, i.e. the much admired flagship of US teacher education,so that his contention of continuous oppression and persecution by theUniversity President overstates the case.

Yet Dewey contrasted markedly with Russell, and for that matter withHarper and Parker, too, in so far as he was a loner and individualistdevoid of any talent for organization, management, and institutional lead-ership (McCaul, 1961, p. 181; Ryan, 1995, p. 121). After all, he knewabout his deficiencies from the start. ‘The kind of studies I have pursued,and my natural bent of mind have tended to give me a habit of isolationin work’, he confided to his administrative assistant Frank A. Manny in1897. Moreover, Dewey was well aware that he had little ‘organizing abil-ity’ and ‘serious difficulty’ to collaborate, thus being unable to meet thetenets of his own pragmatic philosophy where cooperation and commonproblem solving occupied the centre stage. An aside to Anita Blainepoints in the same direction. ‘Administrative work’, he confessed to her,paradoxically just a few months after his appointment as Director of theSchool of Education, ‘is not just in my line’.52

Basically, Dewey lacked not only the talent and temperament but alsothe devotion and interest in continuous practice work. As a philosopherand theorist, he had much to say about school, curriculum, instructionand learning; yet for taking care of the realization of his educational ideasand projects in the long run, he did not have the patience, nor the pru-dence, understanding and compassion, i.e. the virtues and traits that arenecessary for such a task. ‘Nothing seems important to him but thinking’,Max Eastman (1941, p. 678) observed in an insightful essay about hisfriend. ‘He is as complete an extrovert as ever lived, but the extroversionall takes place inside his head. Ideas are real objects to him, and they arethe only objects that engage his passionate interest’. Sidney Hook, also adear friend and colleague, confirmed that Dewey had a strong tendencyto theory and abstraction. ‘[H]is intelligence was too abstract’, Hook(1952, p.252) wrote in an obituary of Dewey. ‘[H]e had difficulty inthinking of concrete dramatic illustrations to drive home general princi-ples’. Dewey was not a man of practice, and he did not want to be one.Even the relatively few obligations and duties he had assumed with thefounding and administration of the Laboratory School were too heavyand troublesome since he did not try to get rid of them quickly. And evenmore so must he have experienced the responsibility for such a large andcomplex institution like the School of Education as a burden requiringincomparably more perseverance and persistence with its 100 professors,instructors and teachers, 1000 college, high school and elementary schoolstudents, and a budget of several hundred thousand dollars.

If Dewey saw his vocation primarily in thinking and philosophizing,and felt such a strong aversion to institutional commitments and obliga-tions, then why did he not remain steadfast in 1901 and 1902? Why didhe not reject Harper’s appeal to take over the leadership of the two highschools and the School of Education? It was probably a combination ofmoney, power and ambition that betrayed him into accepting the offices(Martin, 2002, p. 204; McCaul, 1961, p. 180). First of all, the

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supervision of the Manual Training School and the South Side Academyobviously appeared to him as easy money. The University President didnot intervene, and there was no board of trustees which bothered himwith awkward queries and requests. Contrary to his announcement to cre-ate a unified education system from kindergarten to college, Dewey didnot seriously attempt to bring the two high schools into line. Rather, heconfirmed the present principals Henry H. Belfield and William B. Owenin office and gave them—in cooperation with Ella Flagg Young—virtuallya free hand in the consolidation of their schools. When a year later themanagement of the School of Education was under consideration, Dewey,ambitious as he was, also saw himself as the only competent and legiti-mate successor to Parker. He wanted to succeed in all fields of theoreticaland practical education, and was determined to establish himself as areformer and innovator of historical impact. This time, however, Deweycould not evade his responsibility so easily since Anita Blaine and thetrustees of the school invited him to an interview and asked him incisivelyhow he would fulfil his new role. Dewey promised two things: first, hewould make changes of any kind ‘very slowly’; and second, he would—unlike before—carry out his job not ‘in name only but in actuality’ andgive all his time and energy to the development and advancement of theSchool of Education, albeit not without adding that he ‘will not give uphis work in philosophy’.53 In principle, Dewey was well aware of themeaning and importance of institutions (Ralston 2010), but in actuality,he never developed a feeling and understanding for bureaucratic proce-dures and practices. Unlike Harper, Russell and Parker, Dewey did notmake organization and management to his life’s work. Administrationremained a spare-time activity that secured extra money and prestige yetwas time-consuming, disagreeable and in effect unbearable. Dewey, thepsychoanalyst Jay Martin (2002, p. 205) confirms, suffered under ‘impos-sible administrative and professional burdens’ that overworked andovertaxed him enormously.

Dewey as an autocrat—blunders with the merger

Dewey approached the union of the two elementary schools with the sameambivalent attitude he had regarding the high schools and the School ofEducation—on the one hand, striving for sweeping reforms, on the otherhand, investing no time and energy in the venture. However, now, he wasmaking mistakes he had previously avoided in founding the LaboratorySchool. As a quick reminder: in 1896, Dewey was master in his ownhouse and could largely resolve everything himself. He could outline cur-ricula, hire staff and appoint principals. Still, he did not act as an auto-crat. On the contrary, given his democratic conviction and, perhapsmindful of his own negative experiences in Pennsylvania and Vermont,Dewey introduced a scheme which he later idealized as ‘a union of intel-lectual freedom and cooperation’ (Mayhew & Edwards, 1936, p. 372). Atleast in the early years, he met with the Laboratory School teachers to dis-cuss how to improve curriculum, instruction and ‘natural growth’. As far

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as we know, Dewey never insisted on the exact implementation of hisconcept; quite the opposite, he left it largely to the teachers to realize hisideas and suggestions in the classroom by whatever means they wanted.

In 1903, the situation was quite different. It was no longer about aschool reform by foundation but rather a school reform by redevelop-ment. Therefore, instead of vitalizing a newly established institution, twoexisting entities had to be amalgamated that embraced different pro-grammes, faculties and traditions. This task posed a challenge of fargreater complexity and dynamics. All the same, Dewey refrained fromtaking account of the changed conditions and from continuing his hith-erto successful policy of ‘democratic management’. The result was that hecommitted errors that severely damaged his reputation and his standingas the individual who was, according to Ryan (1995, p. 207), ‘in thoughtand deed a democrat through and through’. In fact, Dewey violated fivecharacteristic elements of good school government when merging the twoUniversity Elementary Schools (cf. Fraser & Hertzel, 2002; Lunenberg &Ornstein, 1991):

Continuity: Dewey condemned the methods and measures of his pre-decessor, disregarded the interests and expectations of the Parker Schoolfaculty, and never attempted to win them over, emotionally and rationally,for himself and his educational goals. Instead, he announced profoundchanges that had to irritate and unsettle the followers of the Colonelbeyond the general stress of the school merger. Incomprehensively,Dewey skipped the phase that should precede any organizational realign-ment and is commonly called ‘unfreezing’, intended to reduce reserva-tions, tensions and resistance against reform and change.

Participation: Dewey considered the request of the teachers to involvethem formally in the decisions as misguided and inappropriate since suchan approach meant an effort that he wished to avoid and a result of whichhe did not approve. The opponents were not to have a forum for thearticulation of criticism and alternatives. The idea of discussing his plansfor school and personnel development in a general conference was forDewey as much out of the question as the formation of a committee thatwas democratically elected and equipped with negotiating powers.

Consultation: To prepare for the merger of the two schools, Deweydeliberately refrained from dialogue and the exchange of ideas. He con-sulted neither with the President nor with the Board of Trustees or theDean of the School of Education. Although he spoke with two opinionleaders of the Parker School faculty, he considered Baber and Rice not ascompetent counsellors but merely as collaborators who were to approvehis decisions without comment and assist in overcoming the spirit of resis-tance among the faculty. In essence, Dewey categorically rejected adviceand warnings that reached him—uninvited, but well-meant—from variousquarters: to Blaine, he responded with silence, to Rice with accusationand to Harper with resignation.

Objectivity: Dewey not only had difficulties in accepting legitimate com-plaints and objections; he also tended to dismiss any criticism outright asirrelevant and unfounded. In particular, he was lacking in insight andunderstanding when private and public interests overlapped and demanded

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unbiased analysis and action. Thus, Dewey could not admit that his wifewas out of place for the principalship, formally because she was his wife thustransforming the Laboratory School potentially into a ‘family affair’, andsubstantially because she had neither the social nor the administrative skillsthat were necessary to lead a school successfully and reconcile the facultywith a situation which was difficult and awkward for all.

Presence: Having forced the merger on his terms and having handedover the management to his wife, Dewey did not look after the consoli-dated school. Surely, he was fully occupied with writing, teaching andadministration but under the circumstances, it would have been obliga-tory for him to attend the teacher conferences, parents meetings, schoolfestivals and commemorations to signal to the school community that hecared for their well-being and was receptive to their hints, suggestions andcomplaints. Instead of ‘leadership by walking around’, Dewey practised aleadership style which was characterized by lack of interest, understandingand empathy.

Dewey defied the principles of good management and leadership inthe hope that the school merger could be realized overnight and withouthis personal commitment. But the idea to succeed quickly through con-frontation and conflict rather than cooperation and consensus con-tradicted his—and by the way, Ella Flagg Young’s—theory of democraticparticipation and educational administration. ‘What does democracymean’, Dewey (1977b, p. 233) asked at the height of the controversy inhis programmatic article ‘Democracy in education’ (1903), ‘save that theindividual is to have a share in determining the conditions and the aimsof his own work; and that, upon the whole, through the free and mutualharmonizing of different individuals, the work of the world is better donethan when planned, arranged and directed by a few, no matter how wiseor of how good intent that few? How can we justify our belief in the dem-ocratic principle, and then go back entirely upon it when we come to edu-cation?’ Aside from betraying his own liberal ideals, his policy of lone anduncompromising decisions proved to be a gross illusion. It had to fallshort of its expectations because of two misjudgements: for one thing,Dewey underestimated the resistance autocratic decisions would generatein a faculty accustomed to freedom and democracy; for another, heunderrated the specific problems that arise when two previously indepen-dent schools were to be integrated, especially when the smaller—and evenailing—school wanted to gain control and force the larger institution togive up guaranteed claims and proven structures without further discus-sion and debate. Small wonder is that Dewey suffered shipwreck andfailed miserably in the ‘hostile takeover’ of the Parker School.

Hasty flight and protective colouration—a conclusion

This paper is neither about the great philosopher and gifted educationaltheorist Dewey indisputably was nor about the kind and ‘gentle man’(Cremin, 1961, p. 238) he definitely was in intimate and personal rela-tionships (cf. Eastman, 1941, Hook, 1952); rather it is about the director

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and administrator who was the wrong man in the wrong place and couldnot adequately meet his numerous, and admittedly difficult, executiveobligations. Sure enough, the history of the Laboratory School must notbe rewritten after what has been said, it must, however, be revised andsupplemented.

The prevailing opinion that it was primarily Harper who brought theLaboratory School project to an end and who drove Dewey out ofChicago cannot be kept alive. Joan Smith (1976) was right. The mainconflict existed not between Harper and John Dewey but between AliceDewey and the former Parker School faculty; and it was not so much‘lack of support’ (Storr, 1966, p. 334), ‘bureaucratic infighting’ (West-brook, 1991, p. 111), or ‘a series of misunderstandings’ (Lagemann,2000, p. 55) as the inability of John and Alice Dewey to fill their rolesand deal with superiors, colleagues and subordinates properly, i.e. caring-ly, sympathetically and cooperatively. The failure of both to find fittingforms of behaviour in institutional settings led more than anything else tothe gradual decline and foreseeable collapse of his school project. At leastsince 1901, when Dewey appointed his wife principal of the LaboratorySchool and took over the directorship of the School of Education, disasterloomed. Teachers, parents, students often felt disregarded and badly trea-ted. Moreover, the activity curriculum and the explorative methods oflearning at Dewey’s school did not always meet the high expectations(Katch, 1990; Knoll, 2014b). As a result, support and enrolment figuresdeclined. Within a year, the Laboratory School had squandered its repu-tation and was no longer a match for the Parker School. Modifying EllenLagemann’s (1989, p. 185) well-known dictum, one can say that FrancisParker won and John Dewey lost—once again, and this time conspicu-ously demonstrated by the fact that Parker’s former deputy, WilburJackman, became successor of Dewey’s wife as principal. Contrary to con-ventional wisdom, the inglorious end of the Laboratory School did notcome in the main from outside, whether from the ‘indifference or hostil-ity’ (J. M. Dewey, 1939, p. 34) of the faculty, the trustees, or the univer-sity president. For the most part, it was self-inflicted and Dewey’s ownfault, i.e. his high moral posture and his inadequate institutional expertiseand experience.

In his celebrated essay, Robert McCaul (1961, p. 206) remarked thatthe ‘worst mistake’ Dewey probably made was to accept an administrativeposition. If this statement is correct, and there is, in my view, no doubtabout it, then McCaul’s second thesis which was put forward earlier byFlora Cooke (1937, p. 218) and later adapted by Harold Rugg (1947,p. 555) and Robert Westbrook (1991, p. 113) does not make much sense,namely that it was a ‘tragedy’ that Dewey left Chicago and discontinuedhis school experiment. Given his characteristics and professional prefer-ences, Dewey could never have achieved his educational ideals andaccomplished the educational reform many historians and progressiveeducators expected of him. In his insightful, but frequently neglectedbiography, Alan Ryan evidently drew the right conclusion. ‘Dewey’, he(1995, p. 120) resolved, ‘was not a good administrator and would nothave been a good one even under the best of circumstances’.

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In actual fact, by assuming executive responsibilities Dewey had mis-read his interests, overestimated his capabilities, and in the end manoeu-vred himself into a double bind. For one thing, he consideredadministration and bureaucracy as a burden, and yet he increased hismanagerial load continuously; for another thing, he knew that his wifewas not a ‘good mixer’ and ‘had, as an administrator, the faults of her vir-tues’ (Eastman, 1941, p. 679), and yet he entrusted her twice with a posi-tion that required exceptional abilities in understanding and cooperation.As the situation escalated because he neglected his administrative dutiesand made decisions of a nepotistic and conflicting nature that shockedfriend and foe, Dewey was increasingly isolated and saw no other way outbut to flee and escape the situation that had kept him, as he confessed toJames McKeen Cattell in April 1904, for ‘two or three years’ all too oftenfrom his favoured activity of thinking, writing and speaking.54 The perfectopportunity to shirk responsibility and blame other people for his blun-ders presented itself when Harper asked Alice Dewey for her resignationand thus condemned his school project—from the Deweys’ point of view—deliberately, maliciously and irrevocably to failure. To divert suspicionfrom his own faults and failings, Dewey decided to depart not ‘with awhimper but with a bang’ (Hendley, 1986, p. 33).

Following Dewey’s hints, historians have targeted Harper and accusedhim—in part quite rightly—of indecision, insincerity and poor crisis andpersonnel management (Feffer, 1993, p. 118; Martin, 2002, p. 210;McCaul, 1961, p. 206; Storr, 1966, p. 333). Charlene H. Seigfried goesway beyond the common criticism when she claims that the issue ofnepotism merely served Harper as a pretext to discriminate againstwomen. Like other university presidents, writes Seigfried (1996, p. 87),Harper used the principle that the university would not tolerate closecooperation of couples as an excuse for ‘denying women equal access toacademic positions and promotions’. In the case at hand, the accusationis odd and unfounded. Harper’s decision to force Alice Dewey out ofoffice was necessary and justified as her administration failed to satisfy thestandards of public decency and professional conduct. Thus, for a secondreason, Siegfried’s thesis leads nowhere. With the exception of Jackman,all opponents of Alice Dewey were women. Zonia Baber, Emily Rice andAnita Blaine, on behalf of the 95% female faculty, exerted such strongpressure that Harper, could not have avoided asking Alice Dewey to handin her resignation even if he had wanted to. Even Ella Flagg Young,regarded by Dewey as ‘the wisest person in school matters with whom hehas come into contact in any way’ (Dewey, 1939, p. 29), had a low opin-ion of Alice Dewey as principal and inspired backhandedly the oppositionof the teachers who—this fact should be emphasized once more—hadwelcomed Dewey as Parker’s successor and had repeatedly tried to keephim from rash decisions and unfitting appointments by offering construc-tive criticism. Unlike Seigfried maintains, the issue was not, consciouslyor unconsciously, sex discrimination and gender bias but the simplequestion of whether Alice Dewey had the insight and knowledge sheindispensably needed as head of an educational enterprise.

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To sum up, Alice Dewey was not the victim of deep-rooted prejudicesbut the victim of her own shortcomings, and John Dewey was not anexpellee unjustly defrauded of the fruits of his labours but a fugitive whocould with his sudden, yet calculated flight solve two agonizing problemsall at once. He could save face by escaping a self-inflicted predicamentand at the same time free himself from the unloved burden of administra-tive duties. At bottom, the spouses knew all about their faults and weak-nesses for—apart from Dewey’s short interim period as philosophydepartment chair at Columbia—neither of them ever assumed an execu-tive function again after the fiasco in Chicago. The farewell letter of Aliceand especially the note of John Dewey from 10 May 1904 habitually andapprovingly quoted by historians were surely intended to set the recordstraight; nonetheless, they can also be interpreted as early attempts atputting out a red herring and obscuring the true reasons for their leaving.In any case, a plan of what Westbrook (1991, p. 113) called ‘protectivecolouration’ can be identified when—authorized and partly paid byDewey (Knoll, 2014a, p. 213)—the former Laboratory School teachersand lifelong friends of the family, Katherine C. Mayhew and Anna C.Edwards (1936, pp. 14, 17f.), published their idealized account of theLaboratory School and presented a version that—depicting Harper as askilful schemer and Dewey as the innocent victim—puzzled and irritatedcontemporaries who, like Flora Cooke (1937, p. 219), were well informedabout the intricate actions and activities on and behind the stage. Soonafter and once again with his assistance, two faithful biographers, namelyJane Dewey (1939, p. 33f.) and Max Eastman (1941, p. 678ff.), retoldand embellished the ‘sad story’ about Dewey’s unpremeditated and unfor-tunate departure from Chicago. As to the history of the LaboratorySchool, all three publications have contributed greatly unto this day toblur and confound the issue. They must be taken with extreme cautionsince they favour Dewey unduly and tend to confuse dates, conceal infor-mation, distort facts and spread false allegations (Katch, 1990, p. 85f.;Knoll, 2014a, pp. 215–218).

The time has come to challenge old certainties and continue the his-torization of John Dewey and his work. We should accept that Dewey’seducational ideal did not meet the harsh realities of teaching and learning,and we should agree that his educational project cannot provide the blueprint for a significant school and curriculum reform as often assumed.Like many aspects of the progressive education movement, the criticalreevaluation of Dewey’s world-famous school experiment, includingMayhew and Edwards’ widely acclaimed report of it, is a task to be tack-led, otherwise we cherish an ideology and delight in theories and practicesthat did not pass the test.

Acknowledgements

The research for this paper was generously supported by a grant from theGerman Research Foundation (DFG), Bonn. I am deeply indebted tothe curators of the archives and special collections at Cornell University,the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, and the University

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of Wisconsin. Sincere thanks also go to several anonymous reviewers,Walburga Meintrup of the Katholische Universitat Eichstatt, Hein Retterof the Technische Universitat Braunschweig and Craig Kridel of theUniversity of South Carolina.

Notes

1. For a biography of Harper, see Goodspeed (1916), Wind (1987), for the relationshipbetween Harper and Dewey see McCaul (1959), Tanner (1997, pp. 15–17), Bensonet al. (2007, pp. 14–20). Since Judy Surrat’s (1971, p. 467) entry in Notable AmericanWomen, the opinion prevails that not Harper but Dewey’s wife Alice was the co-founderof the Laboratory School; the evidence presented, however, is scarce or not existing.

2. Hall (1892–1893, p. 369). For Parker and the Cook County Normal School, seeCampbell (1967), for a comparison of Parker’s and Dewey’s personality and educa-tional ideas see, for example, Marler (1965, p. 200–248) and Dykhuizen (1973,pp. 93–94), for the origin of the slogan ‘learning by doing’ see http://www.mi-knoll.de/53664.html, accessed 10 June 2014.

3. Dewey to Alice Dewey, 1894.11.20 (00233), The Correspondence of John Dewey(2005). This resource is electronically recorded and easily located by letter number.Apparently, Fred (*1887) and Evelyn Dewey (*1889) attended the Parker School justfor four months since they stayed with their mother from May 1894 till June 1895 inEurope (cf. Melvin 1946: 323).

4. Dewey (1972b, p. 435), Annual Register, University of Chicago, July 1898–July 1899,185, Dewey (1976a, p. 317).

5. Dewey to family, 1894.11.22 (00236), University of Chicago Board of Trustees towhom it may concern, 1896.05.12 (10281), Dewey to Harper, 1896.12.09 (00554),1899.03.06 (00590), 1899.03.08 (00591), University of Chicago Friends of theElementary School to Harper, 1899.05.31, John Dewey Papers Box 3, Folder 1(Southern Illinois University Special Collections Research Center), Dewey to Harper,1899.03.07, William Rainey Harper Papers, Box 4, Folder 24 (Special CollectionsResearch Center, University of Chicago).

6. Harper to E. A. Turner, 1899.08.15 (00616), University of Chicago Board of Trust-ees, Minutes 1899–1900, Vol. 2, 306 (Special Collections Research Center, Universityof Chicago), Dewey to Harper, 1898.06.23 (00581). For various lists of students seeKatherine C. Mayhew Papers, Box 18, Folder 1 (Rare and Manuscript Collections,Cornell University Library), for Paul Harper see Frances Baur Henkel to Dewey,1949.10.28 (11872).

7. Dewey to Jane Addams, 1899.04.26 (00626), Minutes of the Meeting of the Board ofTrustees [Chicago Institute], 1900.07.30, 1901.01.13 Anita McCormick BlainePapers, McC Mss. 2 E, Box 11, 13 (Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison), NewmanMiller to Harper, 1900.06.23 (00604).

8. Katherine Camp to Elizabeth F. Camp, [1897].03.23, Mayhew Family Papers Box 9(Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library).

9. Katherine Camp to Elizabeth F. Camp, [January, February 1897], Mayhew FamilyPapers Box 10, Mead to Dewey, 1899.06.23 (00262), The University of Chicago:The University Elementary School, 1900–1901, p. 2 (Special Collections ResearchCenter, University of Chicago).

10. The University of Chicago: The University Elementary School, 1900–1901, pp. 3–4.For an advertisement of the school see, for example, Chicago Daily Tribune, September21, 1900, 7.

11. To set the record straight: Runyon was a teacher for history at the Laboratory Schoolsince 1898. Her article ‘A day with the New Education’ (1900) was a ‘popularaccount’, in fact a fictitious story, written at the request of George Vincent, colleagueof Dewey, son of the Chautauqua Institute founder and father of a Laboratory Schoolstudent. Runyon was never married nor had she any children. See Runyon to NellieGriffith, 1927.01.31 (08292), Fallace (2011, pp. 35–36).

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12. Contrary to occasional claims, for instance Smith (1976, p. 81), Dewey welcomed hisnew colleague. See Dewey to Parker, 1901.02.15 (00710).

13. The University of Chicago: The Department of Education. Announcement [Summer1901], 2 (Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago).

14. Dewey to Harper, 1901.04.13 (00720).15. Locke to Harper, 1901.03.08, Office of the President, Box 29, Folder 11 (Special

Collections Research Center, University of Chicago).16. Moore to Harper, 1901.04.23, and the remaining letters, except for Myron T. Scudder,

1901.04.19 (00734), Herman T. Lukens, 1901.04.20 (00735), George A. Luckey,1901.04.22 (00736) in Office of the President, Box 40, Folder 4.

17. Parents Association of the Laboratory School of the Department of Education,1901–1902 (08292), Mayhew/Edwards unprinted manuscript, Chapter II, The His-tory of the School, Katherine C. Mayhew Papers, Box 12. Cf. George H. Mead toHelen C. Mead, 1901.05.16, quoted in Durst (2010, p. 129).

18. William Kent et al. to Harper, 1901.04.23, Harper to Kent et al., 1901.05.01, Officeof the President, Box 29, Folder 11, Mrs William Kent to Anna C. Edwards,1933.02.18, R. H. Edwards Family Papers, Box 44, Folder 1 (Rare and ManuscriptCollections, Cornell University Library), Blaine to Harper, 1901.04.30, Office of thePresident, Box 30, Folder 3, Young to Trustees of the University of Chicago,1901.07.07, University of Chicago Board of Trustees Correspondence 1890–1913,Box 3, Folder 1 (Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago). Seealso Chicago Daily Tribune (1901a).

19. Dewey to Harper, 1901.11.08 (00732). Alice Dewey’s income was actually higherbecause the family claimed a $150 tuition remission for their two youngest children.Cf. Smith (1976, p. 84).

20. Alice Dewey to John Dewey, 1894.11.16 (00230), Savage (1950, p. 275f.), JosephRatner to Frances Davenport, 1946.04.05 (19419), Henry N. Castle to Samuel andMary Castle, 1893.06.10 (14129).

21. Lucy S. Mitchell: Oral History, conducted by Joan Blos and Irene Prescott,1962.08.29, 84 (Rare Books and Manuscripts, Butler Library, Columbia University),Alice Dewey to Richard Edwards, no date, Edwards Family Papers, Box 44, Folder 7(Alice Dewey signed this letter self-mockingly with ‘The Admiral’). Cf. Mitchell(1953, p. 254) and Ryan (1995, p. 155).

22. Dewey to Harper, 1901.07.22 (00724), Suggestions and Statements Made by MrsMary Root Kern, 1927.01.12, Edwards Family Papers, Box 44, Harper to Dewey,1901.08.02 (00725).

23. Dewey to Harper, 1901.09.16 (00727), Dewey to Jackman, 1901.09.26 (00729).Another point of contention between Dewey and the Parker School faculty was howmuch space Dewey’s secondary schools should get in the new Emmons Blaine Hall.See McCaul (1961, p. 156f.).

24. The University: The Laboratory of the Department of Education, 1901–1902, 3(Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago).

25. University of Chicago Board of Tustees, Minutes 1900–1901, Vol. 3, 408. For FloraCooke and the Francis Parker School see Kroepel (2002).

26. Jackman to Harper, 1903.05.04 (08284). For other illustrations of the ‘administrativechaos’ during Dewey’s tenure relating to Jackman, budgets, circulars and rooms, seeMcCaul (1961, pp. 181–182, 202–203) and Smith (1976, p. 84), relating to theeditorship of the Elementary School Teacher see Smith (1976, pp. 94–96), and relatingto the employment of Julia Bulkley as predecessor and colleague of Dewey seeCruikshank (1998). For an appreciation of Jackman see, for example, Butler (1907).

27. Katch’s (1990, p. 240) listing contains 58 elementary students; if we include the twokindergarten groups that are left out in this account we get about 80 children.

28. O’Connor to Dewey, 1902.03.03 (01485), Dewey to O’Connor, 1902.03.07 (01487).29. For example, Alice Dewey rebuffed groups of normal school students and their pro-

fessors from Illinois and Indiana in such a way ‘that they left in indignation’. SeeSmith (1976, p. 98) and John W. Cook to Jackman, Blaine Papers, Box 327, FolderJackman. It is worth noting, too, that in 1894 the Deweys decided not to live nearHull House and its socially underprivileged neighbourhood if nothing else because

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they wanted their children to go to school with boys and girls who came from ‘goodhomes’. See John Dewey to Alice Chipman Dewey and children, 1894.08.05 (00169).

30. Dewey to Georg Kerschensteiner, 1909.07.29 (03303). For a dissenting opinion see,for example, Rugg (1947, p. 556), Good and Teller (1973, p. 363), Jackson (1998,pp. 171–176).

31. Registration in Elementary School 1902–1903, Office of the President, Box 30, Folder3, Dewey to Harper, 1902.07.01 (01530). The increase of Alice Dewey’s salary wasfinanced by pay cuts for four teachers to be hired.

32. Report of Mrs Blaine’s Talk with Mr John Dewey, 1903.04.17 (08088).33. Besides Alice Dewey, the teachers who stayed on were Elsabeth Port (primary

school), Lilian S. Cushman (art), Mary R. Kern (music), Anna T. Scherz (German)and Harry O. Gillet (mathematics). See Annual Register of the University of Chicago,1901/02, 1903/04.

34. Report of Mrs Blaine’s Talk with Mr John Dewey, 1903.04.17 (08088), Report ofConversation between Miss Rice, Miss Baber & Mrs Blaine, 1903.04.17 (08087). Fora biography of Zonia Baber, see Schultz and Hast (2001, pp. 55–57), for Emily Ricewho was a distant relative of Dewey’s father and was perceived as having considerable‘administrative skills’ (Dewey to Alice Dewey, 1894.11.01 (00218)) see Cooke andWygant (1931).

35. Report of Conversation between Miss Rice, Miss Baber & Mrs Blaine, 1903.04.17(08087). Probably, this incident solves the riddle repeatedly discussed why the per-sonal friendship between Young and the Deweys cooled off in 1904, cf. Lagemann(1996, p. 180), nevertheless they occasionally kept in touch: Young (1916) reviewedDewey’s Democracy and Education and John Dewey (1906) and Alice Dewey (1908)published occasionally in Young’s Educational Bi-monthly.

36. Report of a Conversation between Mr Dewey and Mrs Blaine, 1903.04.27 (08091),Report of a Conversation with Miss Rice and Mrs Blaine, 1903.04.27 (08089),Report of Mrs Blaine’s Talk with Mr John Dewey, 1903.04.17 (08088), Dewey toBlaine, 1903.04.30 (00855), Report of Conversation between Miss Baber and MrsBlaine 1903.05.03 (08093).

37. Blaine to Dewey, 1903.04.28 (00844), Blaine to Harper, 1903.04.30 (00857), Reportof a Conversation between Mr Dewey and Mrs Blaine, 1903.04.27 (08091), Blaine toDewey, 1903.04.28 (00845).

38. Dewey to Blaine, 1903.04.30 (00856), 1930.04.30 (00855), Report of a Conversationbetween Mr Dewey and Mrs Blaine, 1903.04.27 (08091), Report of Conversationbetween Miss Baber and Mrs Blaine 1903.05.03 (08093).

39. Baber to Blaine, [Spring 1903], Blaine Papers, McC Mss. 1 E, Box 27.40. Blaine to Harper, 1903.04.30 (00857), Report of Conversation between Miss Baber

and Mrs Blaine 1903.05.03 (08093), Baber to Blaine, [Spring 1903], Blaine Papers,McC Mss. 1 E, Box 27. Cf. Rice to Blaine, 04.05.1903, Blaine Papers, McC Mss. 2E, Box 17.

41. Report of a Telephone Conversation from President Harper, 1903.05.05 (08094).Dewey to Harper, 1903.06.** (00866), University of Chicago Board of Trustees,Minutes 1902–1904, Vol. 4, 290.

42. Dewey to Blaine, 1903.10.04 (00860), Rice to Blaine, 10.05.1903, Blaine Papers,McC Mss. 1 E, Box 218, Folder John Dewey. There is no official report of theUniversity Elementary School for 1903–04, Jackman to Harper 1904.11.25, Office ofthe President, Box 30, Folder 3.

43. Jackman to Trustees of Chicago Institute, 1904.04.23, Blaine Papers, McC Mss. 1 E,Box 327; cf. Smith (1976, p. 97). It should be mentioned that, graduate students ofthe School of Education praised Alice Dewey for her teaching abilities. See Martin(2002, p. 208), Frank P. Graves to Harvey Carr et al., 1904.06.06 (01184).

44. Harper to Dewey, 1904.02.29 (00925). For an extended interpretation of the letter,see McCaul (1961, p. 203).

45. The assumption Harper had wanted to have a talk just before a difficult operationcontradicts a statement made by Goodspeed (1916, p. 199) that the operation tookplace in late February or early March 1904.

46. Alice Dewey to Harper, 1904.04.05 (00931).

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47. Jackman to Cyrus Bentley, 1904.04.13, Blaine Papers, McC Mss. 1 E, Box 327,Dewey to Harper, 1904.04.06 (00954), Harper to Butler 1904.05.05 (08290). Smith(1976, p. 99) contends that Dewey as Director of the School of Education accumu-lated a deficit of $120.000. But that seems not to be the case, see Storr (1966,p. 334).

48. Dewey to Harper, 1904.04.11 (00956), Judson to Harper, 1903.**.** (08283).Regarding the Judson memo, the year given by the editors of the correspondence iswrong. As the context indicates, the undated piece was not written sometime in 1903,but in April 1904.

49. Harper to Alice Dewey, 1904.04.39 (00922).50. Dewey to Harper, 1904.05.10 (00921).51. Dewey to Alonzo K. Parker, 1902.07.25 (00765), Harper to Dewey, 1904.04.07

(01174), Dewey to Harper 1904.04.11 (00920).52. Dewey to Manny, 1897.01.**? (01871), see also Manny (1917, p. 216f.). Dewey to

Blaine, 1902.08.04 (00776).53. University of Chicago Board of Trustees, Minutes 1900–1901, Vol. 3, 226, Minutes

of a Meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Chicago Institute, 1902.05.07 (08086).54. Dewey to Cattell, 1904.04.12 (00989), cf. Dewey to Harris 1904.04.25 (00936).

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