ABSTRACT
In Democracy and Education, John Dewey draws on Jane Addams's idea of democracy and makes it the central plank in his educational theory. In Democracy and Education, Dewey's most comprehensive work on education, he conceptualizes in more detail the characteristics of a democratic education. He understood that something more was at stake than just developing basic skills. With some exceptions of course, his faith in the unifying, democratic mission of public education would reiterate the optimism and trust that much of the population would place in the public schools. A democratic education is also community renewal and reconstruction. In the absence of transformative progressive schools, he held that urban life and industrialization threatened the child's meaningful incorporation into a democratic community, and he feared that traditional schools would fail to develop in children the basic values required by a democratic way of life.
