ABSTRACT
The University of Chicago's contribution to the general education movement took place over the course of a century. At the heart of the educational tradition that developed there, one finds the convergent ideas of John Dewey and Robert Maynard Hutchins. Both Dewey and Hutchins came to Chicago from the East, where virtually nothing in their early work suggested the kinds of iconoclastic positions they would come to espouse there. Dewey's educational philosophy embodied a pointedly sociological vision. One may condense Dewey's complex concerns about the links between education and modern society into two points. For one, the unparalleled growth of objectified knowledge and technical skills led to programs of training that were increasingly in danger of being split off from connection with one another and with the experience of everyday activities. For another, the expansion of society and the eruption of novel social problems created unprecedented demands for individuals educated for thinking and communicating about these problems in democratic forms.
