ABSTRACT
John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859 and died on June 1, 1952. 1 Hence, his eventful life stretched from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Born in Burlington, Vermont, a few years before the start of the Civil War, Dewey died in New York City seven years after the end of World War II. Dewey was “a replacement child” for his brother, also named John, who died precisely nine months before “our” John Dewey’s birth. The first John Dewey fell into a bucket of boiling water when he was two and a half years old and died of his burns. The second John Dewey, with whom we concern ourselves, died nearly ninety-three years later as a result of complications from a broken hip, an injury he sustained while playing with his adopted children. Over the course of his life, the world changed massively, not least in the sense that his country had gone from being the Wild West to a global superpower with nuclear weapons and economic, scientific, and cultural dominance.
