Studies in Philosophy and Education 19: 69-82, 2000. 9 2000 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Giessen, Germany Abstract. The present article on John Dewey aims at pursuing the traces of the reception of Dewey's work in France. It is intended as a survey of the writers who have taken note of Dewey and his ideas, and is meant to function as a sort of additive inventory, with no claim to comprehensiveness. Some of the articles mentioned were unfortunately unavailable for direct examination and are thus listed merely for purposes of information. Although the educational and philosophical writings of John Dewey are actually indivisible, Dewey's oeuvre has not been read in France and Europe generally as of a piece, but has largely been registered in terms of those parts which have relevance to education and teaching. Indicative of this is the fact that it took until 1975 for Democracy and Education (1916) - the book which, in Dewey's own view, most clearly presented his linking of pedagogy and philosophy (Delledalle, 1975; Suhr, 1994) - to be published in France. Grrard Delledalle, the translator of Democracy and Education, is the only person so far in France to have dealt systematically with the whole of Dewey's writings. He has translated other works by Dewey and has written several books on him, dealing expressly with Dewey's philosophy of pragmatism as the foundation of his theory of education. It is actually inadequate to restrict the reception of Dewey's work to France alone. Rather, one should speak of francophone Europe, for the first translations of Dewey's educational writings into French were made by Adolphe Ferri~re, Ovide Decroly and l~douardClapar~de - a Swiss, a Belgian, and a Frenchman. It was thanks to them that Dewey's thoughts on education began to make an impact on the francophone movement for school reform in the early twentieth century. Discussion of his theory of education is typified in France as well by a division into proponents of a concept of 'learning by doing' indebted to Dewey (particularly in France) and representatives of authoritarian forms of education, which reject Dewey. Although French thought has not yet concerned itself closely with pragmatism, Dewey's opponents believed (and still believe) that they could denounce him and his theories simply by levelling the charge of "pragmatism." This dualistic mode of thinking which appears to be deeply rooted in France has proved to be an obstacle to the reception of Dewey and has led to neglect and rejection of his theories.

Beginnings of Dewey's Reception in France Dewey is first recorded in France in the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'(tranger of 1883, which printed, under the title "John Dewey: Les hypotheses du mat6rialisme,''1 an a n o n y m o u s review of a philosophical text by Dewey that had appeared in the April 1882 issue of the New York Journal of Speculative Philosophy. After this, no notice was taken of Dewey in France for several years until the journal L'l~ducation, edited from 1909 onwards by Georges Bertier, director of the ]~cole des Roches, listed him in its editorial as a leading contributor. F r o m this period until the 1960s, the reception of Dewey was restricted to the pedagogical element of his oeuvre.

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Initially, translations and reviews of articles by Dewey appeared only in

L'Education, the second number of which (June 1909), for example, contained a translation by J. Desfeuille of part of The School andSociety (1899, rev. 1908/1915; as "John Dewey: L'l~cole et le progr~s social"). In November 1911 there appeared a review of the Educational Essays, in September 1912 a list of Dewey's works was published, and the December issue contained a further section of The School and Society translated by J. Desfeuille ("L't~cole et la vie de l'enfant"). Henry Marty's translation, "John Dewey - Le gaspillage en Education," appeared in March 1914, and one of the 1920 issues had a review of Dewey's essay "New Schools for Old." L'l~ducation also published the first documentation of La Nouvelle Education, the pedagogical organization founded in 1921 by Roger Cousinet and Mme T.J. Gueritte. Cousinet quoted extensively from Dewey's Schools of Tomorrow (written in 1915 by Dewey and his daughter Evelyn) in the "Sixi~me Bulletin de la nouvelle Education" and "Septi~me Bulletin de la nouvelle Education" (L'Education, June and July 1922 respectively). In February 1927, Adolph Ferri~re's article "La dEmocratie et l'Education selon Dewey" appeared in L'Education. In 1913, L.S. Pidoux's compilatory translation L'Ecole et l'enfant made four important studies by Dewey accessible to a French-speaking readership: the essays "Interest as Related to Will" (1896), "The Aim of History in Elementary Education" (1900), and "Ethical Principles Underlying Education" (1897), and the monograph study The ChiM and the Curriculum (1902). For this translation, l~douard Claparede provided a spirited introduction in which he was the first to expound the particular significance of Dewey and pragmatism for educational practice in France and Europe. He explained Dewey's theory of education and the pragmatic principles underlying it, summarizing these under the categories 'gdndtique,' 'fonctionelle; and 'sociale.' In his introduction, Clapar~de tried, on the one hand, to make Dewey better known and, on the other, to establish connections between his thought and the findings of educational reformers and researchers in Europe. He thus drew attention to the similarities and differences existing between Dewey's theory and that of Kerschensteiner's work-school. Also in 1913, an essay by Dewey appeared in L'l~ducation under the title "L'tducation au point de vue social." This was followed, in 1914, by the essay "Le travail manuel ~tla base d'une Education harmonieuse," published in L'Educateur moderne and written by Julien Font~gne, professor at the l~cole Nationale professionelle at Armenti~res and at the t~cole Nationale d'arts et metiers at Lille, in which the author drew on Dewey's ideas.

The Status of Dewey's Work Between the Wars Following the First World War, there was initially an increase in works which concerned themselves with Dewey. In the two books by Adolphe Ferfi~re that appeared in 1922, L'Ecole active and L'Ecole active: Principes et applications,

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there are numerous references to Dewey, and the combined edition of 1929 shows a marked increase in such references. Despite the positive attitude taken towards Dewey's school theory, Ferfi~re feels compelled in his introduction to differentiate somewhat between Dewey's pragmatism and his own notion of the '~cole active,' endeavouring to establish a bridgehead between pragmatic and essentialist philosophy by stating that the will must subordinate itself to the intellect. 2 In 1923, Julien Font~gne (at this time director of the Service R6gional d'Orientation professionelle of Alsace and Lorraine) published his book Manualisme et ~ducation, which displayed him as a central theoretician and proponent of the idea of the work-school. In this study, he drew attention to the Swedish example of the "Sly6d su~dois" (in "August Abrahamson et l'6cole de N/i/is"), to Kerschensteiner (in "Les id6es p6dagogiques de Kerschensteiner"), and to various practical instances from France, Belgium, Italy (Congress of Milan) and Switzerland (the 'M6thode Oertli'), as well as devoting a whole chapter to Dewey and developments in America ("Le 'learning by doing' aux I~tats-Unis"). Font6gne understood the 'manualisme' of the new school as a counterweight to the 'intellectualisme' of the old school, and placed the main stress on Dewey's advocacy of manual skills and his socio-pedagogical ideas. In 1925, Ovide Decroly published his translation of Dewey's How We Think (1910) as Comment nous pensons. Decroly was clearly influenced by Dewey's ideas, and his development of the 'centre d'int(r~ts' reveals his orientation towards the notion of 'interest' as expounded by Dewey in various essays culminating in Interest and Effort in Education (1913). In two essays that appeared in L'ann~e sociologique in 1923/24 and 1925, Marcel Mauss indicates that t~mile Durkheim must have read Dewey and registered the importance of pragmatism at an early stage. He reports that Durkheim gave a lecture on Dewey and pragmatism, characterizing it as "the crowning achievement of Durkheim's philosophy.''3 Indeed, a book by Durkheim appeared posthumously in 1955 under the title Pragmatisme et sociologie. This book reconstructs, from notes made by two former students of Durkheim, a lecture that he gave in winter 1913/14, the manuscript of which is not extant. In this lecture, Durkheim expresses critical reservations about Dewey and pragmatism, which he terms "logical utilitarianism" and which he sees as a danger to France and its rationalist tradition. The 1920s saw two comparative studies of Dewey's work. In 1926 there appeared Choy Jyan's doctoral dissertation, E,tude comparative sur les doctrines p~dagogiques de Durkheim et de Dewey, in which Dewey is classified as a 'psychopedagogue' and Durkheim as a 'socio-pedagogue.' In 1927 M. Jezequel published an essay on "La Sociologie de Dewey et de Giddings." In November 1930, Dewey was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Sorbonne, the laudatory address being delivered by the doyen Delacroix. In the following year, R. Duthil published John Dewey: Les ~coles de demain, his translation of Schools of Tomorrow. In 1940, Marie-Anne Carroi published her study "U~euvre psycho-p6dagogique de John Dewey" in the journal L'information p~dagogique; this was followed in 1947 by

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Expgrience et gducation, her translation of Dewey's Experience and Education (1938). Pierre Messiaen's John Dewey: Libert~ et culture appeared in 1955. A milestone in the reception of Dewey is represented by Ou Tsui Chen's book La Doctrine p~dagogique de John Dewey, first published in 1931. This study (significantly, by a Chinese scholar) provides for the first time in French a systematic description of the development of Dewey's philosophical and educational thought up to the year 1929, and incorporates a French translation of Dewey's essay "My Pedagogical Creed." The author traces in detail the philosophical foundations of Dewey's pedagogical theories. Like the work of Choy Jyan, Tsui Chen's study is evidence of the broad intemational reception of Dewey's work, however hesitant this was within Europe at the time the Chinese scholar's work appeared. Ou Tsui Chen was Deputy Minister in China's National Ministry of Education when the second edition of his book was published (1958), on which occasion he noted laconically that Dewey had been more intensively received in America and Asia than in Europe, and that in France Dewey's work had aroused interest only among educational theorists. 4 This observation is still valid today, save perhaps for the activities of the l~ducation Nouvelle organization and Roger Cousinet's ideas on the reform of educational practice.

The Reception From the 1940s to the Present There have been a considerable number of authors over the years who have occupied themselves with Dewey, albeit often superficially. In the introduction to her 1940 dissertation L'Education Nouvelle: ses fondateurs, son ~volution, Angela Medici quoted from the French translation of How We Think, seeing Dewey as someone who had applied the American democratic ideal to education and demanded a school system appropriate to the various stages in child development.5 In 1948, Marc-Andr6 Bloch, in his Philosophie de l'~ducation nouvelle, drew mainly on Kerschensteiner and Dewey, while Paul Foulquir, in the same year, made use of the latter in Les ~coles nouvelles. Ren6 Hubert's Traitg de pgdagogie et ~ducation (1949) makes several references to Dewey, as in the introductory section on "Prdagogie et 6ducation," where he discusses Dewey's definition of science in relation to Durkheim and Kerschensteiner. Hubert regards Dewey as one of the most important pioneers in the scientific study of the phenomenon of childhood and education, as, later on, does Louis Raillon, who calls Dewey the "inventor of scientific pedagogy" (Raillon, 1990). But Hubert goes no further than to see Kerschensteiner and Dewey as representatives of the work school, proponents of occupational training, and inventors of the project method. In 1964, Albert Kessler published his study La Fonction ~ducative de l'gcole traditionnelle/gcole nouvelle, which provided a critical survey of the practice of the Education Nouvelle movement as compared with 'traditional' pedagogy. Kessler deals with Dewey on several occasions, most notably in his chapter "Ignorance ou mrconnaissance de la psychologie de l'enfant," where he cites exclusively from

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L'Ecole et l'enfant. At first glance, it would seem that Kessler is concerned only with the pedagogical aspect of Dewey's thought, and then only in part; however, he then goes on to detail the difficulty experienced by important representatives of t~ducation Nouvelle in coming to terms with Dewey's brand of pragmatism (notably Ferri6re, Clapar~de and Cousinet), which, Kessler argues, they understood in negative terms. In their 1966 book Les Doctrines pgdagogiques par les textes, Joseph Leif and Armand Biancheri offer with Le r61e de I'int~r~t prgsent and Savoir d'adulte et savoir d' enfant excerpts from Pidoux' L'(cole et l' enfant. In Vers une p~dagogie institutionnelle ? Fernand Oury and Aida Vasquez remind the reader that Dewey is scarcely known in France and has only been made accessible to French pedagogy via such intermediaries as Decroly, Cousinet and Dottrens, and that Dewey's optimism regarding the American form of democracy, based as it was on conditions obtaining at the beginning of the twentieth century, can only in a limited way be applied to the European (especially the French) situation. In 1969, Jean Piaget, in his Psychologie et p(dagogie, treated Dewey only briefly as one of the fathers of t~ducation Nouvelle. George Snyders made an attempt, in his book P(dagogie progressiste (1971), to establish a comparison between 'traditional' and 'new' pedagogy; he discusses Dewey in critical terms in several passages, particularly with regard to Schools of Tomorrow and the essays in L'l~cole et l'enfant. Snyders is sceptical about the assumption that children learn to speak and walk within the framework of natural processes that are, so to speak, governed by interest, and consequently doubts that methods derived from this assumption can be applied to more complex situations. He argues, for example, that the varying linguistic competence of children from different social classes would alone suffice to show clearly that the process of language learning depends crucially on encouragement and parental behaviour (itself quite clearly a form of learning process), and does not occur spontaneously and autonomously. Snyders likewise criticizes the importance placed by Dewey on interest, raising here a 'classical' objection to self-regulating learning processes by claiming that children would not be able to acquire secure knowledge if they were always to pursue only short-term, constantly changing interests (Snyders, 1971). His critical views are also directed at what he sees as Dewey's unclear definition of the role of the teacher. On the one hand, teachers should only shape the child's environment, without exerting a direct influence on the child; on the other, teachers are expected to show children that their activities take place within a broader cognitive context. Finally, Snyders finds fault with the way in which Dewey confirms the status quo by merely providing guidelines on how to cope with existing circumstances, without, however, wishing to change those circumstances. In 1975, Guy Avanzini edited a volume entitled La P~dagogie du 20e siOcle. One of the contributors to this collection, Dominique Ginet, views Dewey and Durkheim alike as developing the theory of the school 'group.' According to Ginet, both showed that a school class is a society in miniature, and that this fact should

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be taken into consideration in the organization of learning procedures in the school. She restricts herself to describing Dewey's thoughts on the importance of the group in the learning process, but nevertheless confirms that Dewey has played a great part in the development of 15~ducation Nouvelle. Louis Not is also one of those authors who have tried to provide a scholarly and comparative account of the debate surrounding 'traditional' and 'new' pedagogy. In 1979 he published his book Les p(dagogies de la connaissance, in which he discusses Dewey on several occasions. He does not restrict himself to the pedagogical aspect of Dewey's oeuvre, but also deals with Dewey's pragmatism, calling Dewey, among other things, the inventor of instrumentalism, a direction in philosophy which was taken up and refined in France by Clapartde. 6 In his criticism of Dewey, Not adopts much the same positions as Snyders before him. For example, he rejects the validity of Dewey's comparison between physiological and cognitive hunger. He faults Dewey for the system he developed in Experience and Education, and applied to the project method - a system mediating between the personal inward interest of the child and such extemal necessities as the construction of knowledge (as manifested in the objectives set by educational programmes and curricula) - claiming that this system cannot be credibly put into practice. For Not, the problem of the school as an institution consists of the fact that children have to acquire a relatively well determined inventory of knowledge that is viewed by society as important, although the content of this inventory does not always match the interests of the child. Dewey, says Not, tries to deal with this phenomenon by assigning to the teacher the role of a helper who is supposed to decide which topic is going to be of more significance for the child, in terms both of present actuality and of future potential. Not sees Dewey here as relinquishing the very basis he postulated for self-determined learning. He reduces Dewey to the status of a proponent of an 'autostructuration' of knowledge, and assumes that this method is inadequate to the child's need to construct knowledge. As a middle way between externally determined or authoritarian learning (cognitive structuration) and selfdetermined learning (autostructuration), Not proposes 'heterostructuration' as a means of combining the virtues of both modes of knowledge construction. This brings up once again the very problem of the dualism of actions and goals that Dewey intended to resolve through his theory of pragmatism. Gaston Mialaret, in his Pr gdngrale (1991), regards Dewey as the originator of the project method and as one of the fathers of the active method. The translation of an article by Robert Westbrook on Dewey is included in Penseurs de l'dducation (1994), a four-volume collection in French funded by UNESCO and edited by Zaghoul Morsy. In the same year, Jean Houssaye dedicated a chapter of his Quinze p~dagogues to Dewey, covering the chief currents of Dewey's thought: his concept of the person, reason and environment, and his philosophy of education, school, and curriculum. In a follow-up volume published in 1995, Quinze p~dagogue: textes choisies, Houssaye included excerpts from "My Pedagogical Creed," Democracy and Education, The School and Society, Experience and

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Education, and Pidoux's compilation L'Ecole et l'enfant. The role of Dewey in the l~ducation Nouvelle movement was clarified once more in the book L'Education Nouvelle, issued by ANEN (the Association Nationale de l't~ducation Nouvelle) in 1997. Four writers are introduced here for their decisive part in the rise of l~ducation Nouvelle: Clapartde, Cousinet, Ferfi~re, and Dewey. Alongside the study by Ou Tsui Chen mentioned above, the reception of Dewey by Roger Cousinet and Gtrard Delledalle deserves special attention. These two authors, one a primary school teacher, school board councillor and lecturer at the Sorbonne, the other a university professor, have each been involved with Dewey's theories in their own particular way. In numerous essays and reviews in various journals, Cousinet concerned himself closely with Dewey; in 1921 he presented his own method of free group work, which, like other methods, was indebted to Dewey. Cousinet's method was designed as a practical implementation in French schools of Dewey's central ideas on the school as an embryonic site of social life and human sociality. In Cousinet's book L'Education Nouvelle (1951), one can find a large number of references which make clear the great significance that Dewey had for Cousinet. As early as 1914, Cousinet had begun to write on Dewey: a review by him of L'Ecole et l'enfant appeared in the Educateur moderne of that year. As already indicated, Cousinet quoted extensively from Dewey's Schools of Tomorrow in the sixth and seventh "Bulletin de la nouvelle 6ducation" of the journal L'Education (1922). In La Nouvelle dducation, a periodical edited by Cousinet, he published a review in April 1926 of a Spanish translation by L. Luzuriaga (L'enfant et le programme scolaire) of Dewey's The ChiM and the Curriculum; in the October 1926 issue, he can be found referring to Pidoux's compilation L'Ecole et l'enfant; in 1927 Cousinet quotes from the French translation of How We Think ("Le mdcanisme de la pensge n'est pas comme un appareil &faire de la charcuterie"), and there is a further quotation from Dewey (this time with no reference to its precise source) in Part II of his essay "La Libertt." The same journal, in 1932, contains a review by Mme Gueritte of The Schools of Tomorrow in which she criticizes that Dewey takes insufficient cognizance of Montessori's theories. In 1945, Cousinet, together with Franqois Ch~telain, founded a new pedagogical journal with the title L'Ecole Nouvellefranr this periodical, which lasted until 1964, regularly published contributions that drew attention to Dewey and his importance for the French l~ducation Nouvelle. In issue 6/7 (March-April 1948), for instance, there is a review by Cousinet of Carroi's 1947 translation of Dewey's Experience and Education. 7 Together with Louis Raillon, Cousinet brought out a new journal, Education et Ddveloppement (1964-1980). In issue 13 (December 1965), there is an article by Cousinet, "L'effort et l'intEr~t: textes de Dewey et de Clapartde," in which he quotes and discusses passages from Dewey's The School and Society and Clapar~de's Education fonctionelle in support of the theory that children only learn when they are interested in something. In the same issue there is a review of Reginald D. Archambault's study John Dewey on Education (1964), in which Cousinet draws attention to the fact that there are still hardly any translations

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of Dewey's writings into French, even though, in Cousinet's estimation, Dewey must be regarded as just as important as Rousseau as far as the philosophy and practice of education are concerned; once again, Cousinet underscores the formative - indeed, seminal - role played by Dewey's works in the 15_,ducationNouvelle movement.8 G6rard Delledalle is the only person in France to date who has devoted himself systematically to Dewey and his philosophy of pragmatism. As well as publications focusing on Dewey, Delledalle has written numerous books on pragmatism and its originators. 9 In 1965, there appeared La P~dagogie de John Dewey, with a preface by Maurice Debesse. Debesse comes to the conclusion that, although Dewey is regarded in France as an important writer in terms of the 15~ducation Nouvelle movement, "we actually do not know him very well at all.''a~ Debesse goes on to suggest that the influence of Dewey "is undeniable, but to trace it requires protracted, patient and difficult research, because he has influenced French educators in a fairly indirect manner, through the new ideas they have absorbed. ''ll In this book, Delledalle makes clear the extent to which he has himself absorbed the ideas of Dewey and American philosophy generally, for, in contrast to other French writers, he quotes directly from original texts that are unavailable in French translation. One of his chief concerns is to determine the distinctions between essentialist and pragmatic philosophy and the consequences of these for pedagogy. As far as the influence of Dewey in France is concerned, Delledalle views this as being represented chiefly in Cousinet's model for social education through free group work and in Freinet's active method as applied to the school printery; both of these models "are close to Dewey's theories. ''12 But he also confirms that the l~cole des Roches applied some of Dewey's pedagogical principles, mentioning three schools (in Srvres, Montgeron, and Pontoise) that had undertaken interesting teaching experiments. The so-called 'classes nouvelles,' too, were imbued with the spirit of Dewey's teachings, according to Delledalle. For him, however, the essential focus of the empirical reception of Dewey is, thanks to the efforts of Clapar~de, Ferfi~re and Decroly, to be found in Switzerland and Belgium. Like Ou Tsui Chen before him, Delledalle defends Dewey against what he regards as unjustified attacks on the part of certain of his critics, who would blame him for the 'failure' of the American school system yet at the same time argue essentialistically against Dewey's pragmatism. In 1975, Delledalle published his translation of Democracy and Education. In the extensive introduction to this book, he judges Dewey's study to be an exceptional work "because it provides all the intellectual material necessary for meditation on pedagogy as well as [... ] a 'general theory of education' - which, for Dewey, is the very definition of philosophy. ''13 Delledalle's introduction enumerates five central aspects of Dewey's pedagogy as set out in Democracy and Education: "the pedagogy of John Dewey is a pedagogy of spontaneous and intelligent activity centred on the interests of the child, whose sociability must be shaped in a school which reflects the structures of the existing society, on the

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express condition that this structure is founded on the principle of continuity.''14 Delledalle arranges these five aspects into three thematic groupings which he couples chronologically to various creative periods in Dewey's life - "I - Psychologie et p6dagogie de l'activit6 (1891-1902), II - Logique et p6dagogie de la pens6e, III - M6taphysique et 6ducation" - thereby providing a concise summary of Dewey's thought and its foundations. In 1977, Delledalle wrote an article for l~ducation et Ddveloppement, "Pour situer la p6dagogie de Dewey," in which, following Cousinet, he characterizes Dewey as the father of ~lucation Nouvelle (Delledalle, 1977). Delledalle, as in his Pddagogie de John Dewey of 1965, regards Dewey as having been wrongfully blamed for the 'failure' of the American school system. The latter situation has its causes in the fact that educators attempted to copy Dewey's concept of the school without having understood his method of experimentation (Delledalle, 1977). The idea of experience within continuity demands the constant adjustment of school practice to the shifting conditions of life, and is incompatible with the orthodoxy of undetected passage along a single path of salvation.

Conclusion It can be seen from the foregoing that Dewey's writings have not been noted and absorbed in France to anywhere near their full extent. The relatively brief listing of translations into French makes clear the fact that only a very small number of Dewey's works have been made available to French readers. As I have attempted to show, some of the great names in French educational studies have certainly occupied themselves with Dewey, but French school practice leads one to suspect that his ideas have not penetrated far into the system beyond academic discussion. In France, the earliest translations and reception of Dewey occurred in the period before the First World War, when the teaching situation in state schools was largely marked by teacher-centred procedures with a pronounced nationalistic flavour. The official separation of Church and State took place only in 1905, although schooling had by law been "compulsory, free and secular" since 1881-82. In 1881, as a replacement for religious instruction, Jules Ferry introduced "moral instruction" or ethics classes into the curriculum; these were oriented towards the French tradition and had as their immediate objective the task of educating pupils to be good citizens of the Republic; they were unequivocally aimed at the instilling of the 'highest' and 'ultimate' values. This system of instruction still exists in French elementary schools ((coles dldmentaires) under the rubric of Education civique. If the obstacle to the reception of Dewey and pragmatism in Germany was the country's dualistic idealism, the reasons for the same indifference can, rather, be sought in the Cartesian tradition of the dualistic philosophy of reason. For both philosophical traditions, Dewey's rejection of 'ultimate' or 'highest' values is highly suspect. If adopted in Europe, this rejection would have had profound consequences for the existing systems of education - if there are no ultimate values

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in which to invest as the outward goal of educational activity, in the name of which the exerting of influence on pupils by the state (any and all forms of influence) can be justified, then the teaching profession would no longer have any reason to exist (at least, not according to any traditional understanding of the teacher's role). What Dewey tried to do (and only Roger Cousinet has managed to indicate this with the same degree of clarity) was to confront teachers with new tasks and challenges designed to make teachers the organizers of a learning environment that will enable children in the 'embryonic society' of the school to assemble their very own significant body of knowledge under the stimulus of their own interests, and to experience at first hand what it means to have a democratic attitude to living. Dewey showed that every generation must learn afresh for itself certain rules of coexistence; for him, this was the reconstruction of experience. This reconstruction shapes the individual, but it is a process that is scarcely governable, since each individual establishes different premisses for his actions, selecting different elements from the experiential world that surrounds him. The proponents of the t~ducation Nouvelle movement took note of Dewey's pedagogical writings early on, and made him the defender of their theoretical views. The earliest attempts to come to terms with Dewey, however, were marked at the start of the twentieth century by a tendency to adapt the pedagogical aspects of his work without engaging with the implications of pragmatism. One exception is Clapar~de in his introduction to L't~cole et l'enfant; another is Cousinet, who referred explicitly to Dewey and put his theories into practice. Pragmatism still has to be taken seriously in France; there are only two scholars (Ou Tsui Chen and Grrard Delledalle) who have included Dewey's philosophy in their reception of the man and his thinking. As long as this deficit persists, there can be little hope, that the influence of the Dewey-inspired l~ducation Nouvelle will spread further afield. The critical reception of Dewey reflects the conflict in France between the l~ducation Nouvelle movement and traditional schooling. One of the sources of this tension was the experiments in school practice that were undertaken in Dewey's name - whereby it would seem that neither those who have claimed Dewey for themselves nor his detractors have actually read him properly or at all. Now as then, there is a sense of profound mistrust vis-~t-vis all postulates about self-directed learning - a mistrust behind which possibly lurks the fear that coming generations will not be able to learn enough to maintain French culture and civilization as these are traditionally understood.

Notes i "Les discussions relatives au mat6rialisme ont 6t6 en g6n6ral confin6es ~ 1'aspect physiologique et psychologique de la question; l'auteur veut le discuter sous sa forme m6taphysique. Son court article aboutit aux conclusions suivantes: Pour 6tablir un monisme strict le mat6rialisme part de l'hypoth~se d'un dualisme originel insoluble. Pour 6tablir que l'esprit est un ph6nom~ne de la mati~re, il est oblig6 de supposer une substance qui donne la connaissance de cette mati~re. Pour prouver qu'elle est en effet de la matirre, il est oblig6 de supposer ou un pouvoir d'intuition de l'esprit ou que

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l'esprit lui-m~me est une cause: hypotheses qui l'une et l'autre dEtruisent le matErialisme" (Anon., 1883). 2 ,,[... ] c'est que la volontE se mette, elle, tout enti~re au service de l'esprit [... ]" (Ferri~re, 1929). 3 ,,[... ] couronnement de l'oeuvre philosophique de Durkheim [... ]" (Mauss, 1925). 4 "En ce qui concerne la France, qui gEnEralement recueille les theories nouvelles de l'Education avec moins d'empressement que les autres pays, si la doctrine de Dewey y a affectE ~ un moindre degr6 la pratique Educative, elle n'a nEanmoins pas manque de susciter un grand intEr~t thEorique" (Ou Tsui Chen, 1958). 5 ,,j. Dewey le premier dont la pEdagogie traduit pourtant largement l'idEal amEricain de la dEmocratie et du travail productif; voir School and Society, chap.: 'The school and social progress', Chicago, The University Press, 1900. Cependant lorsqu'il parle des formes de l'activitE scolaire Dewey demande qu'elles soient en premier lieu 'adaptEes le mieux possible aux divers degrEs du dEveloppernent de l'enfant' et ensuite qu'elles prEparent le plus efficacernent aux responsabilitEs sociales. Comment nous pensons, p. 66, trad. frangaise par Decroly, Paris, Ed. Flammarion, 1925" (Medici, 1940). 6 "Dewey est un des fondateurs de l'instrumentalisme qu'on a vu s'exprimer chez Clapar~de: la pensEe n'est pas seulement activit6 de l'esprit; elle est instrument de l'action au service de l'individu; elle se confond avec elle et c'est son rendement darts l'action qui lui confEre valeur de vEritE" (Not, 1975). 7 "L'Education nouvelle ne serait pas ce qu'elle est sans Dewey, l'illustre psychologue amEricain, qui elle doit en partie sa naissance et un soutien continuel pendant son dEveloppement depuis plus de 50 annEes. Or il reste peu connu chez nous, alors que ses idEes se sont rEpandues d'une fa~on anonyme et souvent inexacte. Cela tient ~ ce que malheureusement, on n'a traduit chez nous qu'un tout petit nombre de ses oeuvres et pas toujours les plus importantes. I1 faut donc savoir, grand grE ~ Mlle Carroi d'avoir traduit ce petit livre, un des derniers 6crits par le psychologue, ou il resume et precise sa pensEe en dEfinissant particuli~rement ce qu'il entend par experience, le rEle que l'expErience doit jouer dans l'Education, et la mani~re dont l'Education doit ~i la fois se fonder sur l'expErience de l'enfant et la diriger. Une preface de la traduction o~ elle analyse avec clart6 la philosophie et les conceptions pEdagogiques de son auteur constitue une excellente introduction aux idEes de Dewey" (Cousinet, 1948). 8 ,,[... ] de cette oeuvre qui, encore une fois, a EtE la creation de l'Education nouvelle [... ]" (Cousinet, 1965). 9 See the Bibliography below, and GErard Delledalle, Histoire de la philosophie amdricaine (Paris, 1954), Ecrits sur le signe (Paris, 1979), Charles S. Peirce, phdnomdnologue et sdmioticien (Amsterdam, 1987), and La Philosophie amdricaine (Paris, 1987). 10 "Mais en rEalitE nous le connaissons assez mal" (Preface, Delledalle, 1965). 11 "Cette influence est indEniable, mais son Etude exigerait de longues, patientes et difficiles recherches, car c'est d'une fa~on assez indirecte qu'elle s'est exerc6e sur les Educateurs frangais acquis aux idEes nouvelles" (Preface, Delledalle, 1965). 12 ,,[... ] sont h rapprochE des theories de Dewey" (Delledalle, 1965). 13 ,,[...] parce qu'il fournit toutes les donnEes nEcessaires /t une rEflexion pEdagogique et [... ] une 'thEorie gEnErale de l'Education' qui est la definition mSme, selon Dewey, de la philosophie" (Delledalle, 1975). 14 ,,[...] la pEdagogie de John Dewey est une pEdagogie de l'activitE spontanE et intelligente, centrEe sur les intEr~ts de l'enfant dont la sociabilitE doit s'exercer dans une Ecole reflEtant la structure de la sociEtE existante ~ condition expresse qu'elle soit fondE sur le principe de continuitE" (Delledalle, 1975).

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References FRENCH TRANSLATIONS OF BOOKS AND ESSAYS BY JOHN DEWEY Anon.: 1882, 'John Dewey: Les hypotheses du matrrialisme [The Hypotheses of Materialism]', Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'~tranger [Journal of Speculative Philosophy, April 1882], 8e annre, tome XV (janvier-juin, 1883), 109. Anon.: 1913, 'John Dewey: L'rducation au point de vue social', L'ann~e p~dagogique. Carroi, Marie-Anne: 1947, John Dewey: Experience et gducation [Experience and Education, 1938], Bourrellier, Paris. Chen, Ou Tsui: 1931, 'Mon credo prdagogique [My pedagogical creed, The early works, 1887]', in id., La Doctrine pgdagogique de John Dewey, Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, Paris, pp. 275-282. Decroly, Ovide: 1925, John Dewey: Comment nous pensons [How We Think, 1910], Flammarion, Paris. Delledalle, Grrard: 1975, John Dewey: D~mocratie et r [Democracyand Education, 1916] (2nd edn. 1990), Armand Colin, Paris. Delledalle, G6rard: 1993, John Dewey: La th~orie de l'enqu~te [The Theory of Enquiry, 1928], Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Desfeuille, J.: 1909, 'John Dewey - L'l~cole et le progr~s social', L'Education (juin), 199-217 [exc. The School and Society, rev. ed. 1908]. Desfeuille, J.: 1912, 'John Dewey - L'l~cole et la vie de l'enfant', L'Education (drcembre) 315-327 [exc. The School arM Society, rev. ed. 1908]. Duthil, R.: 1931, John Dewey: Les Ycoles de demain [with Evelyn Dewey: Schools of Tomorrow, 1915], Flammarion, Paris. Marty, Henry: 1914, 'John Dewey: Le gaspillage en 6ducation', L'Education (mars), 8-25. Messiaen, Pierre: 1955, John Dewey: Libert~ et culture [Freedom and Culture, 1913], Paris, Aubier. Pidoux, L.S.: 1913, John Dewey: L'Ecole et l'enfant ["Interest as Related to Will," 1896; "The Aim of History in Elementary Education," 1900; "Ethical Principles Underlying Education," 1897; exc. The Child and the Curriculum, 1902] (Intro. l~douard Clapar&le) Delachaux et Niestlr, Neuchhtel & Paris. SECONDARY WORKS ANEN [Association Nationale de l't~ducation Nouvelle] (ed.): 1997, L'Education Nouvelle, Drlachaux et Niestlr, Lausanne & Paris. Bertrand, Yves and Valois, Paul: 1994, 'John Dewey', in Jean Houssaye (ed.), Quinze pddagogues, Armand Colin, Paris, pp. 124-134. Bertrand, Yves and Valois, Paul: 1995. 'John Dewey', in Jean Houssaye (ed.), Quinze pddagogues: textes choisies, Armand Colin, Paris, pp. 108-125. Bloch, Marc-Andrr: 1948, Philosophie de l'dducation nouvelle, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Carroi, Marie-Anne: 1940, 'L'ceuvre psycho-p~dagogoque de John Dewey', L'information p~dagogique (janvier-frvrier) 1. Chen, Ou Tsui: 1931 [2nd ed. 1958, 3rd ed. 1982], La Doctrine pgdagogique de John Dewey, Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, Paris. Choy Jyan: 1926, Etude comparative sur les doctrines p~dagogiques de Durkheim et de Dewey (thrse de doctorat d'universit~), Bosc Frrres et Riou, Lyon. Cousinet, Roger: 1911, 'John Dewey: Educational Essays', L'Education (novembre), 453. Cousinet, Roger: l 912, 'L'o~uvre de John Dewey', L'Education (septembre), 462-463. Cousinet, Roger: 1920, 'John Dewey: New Schoolsfor Old', L'Education (september), 76. Cousinet, Roger: 1921, La M~thode de travail libre par groupes pour les enfants de 9 & 12 arts, Garches - I~ditions de la nouvelle 6ducation, Paris.

JOHN DEWEYIN FRANCE

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Cousinet, Roger: 1922a, 'Sixi6me Bulletin de la nouvelle 6ducation', L'Education (juin), 455-458. Cousinet, Roger: 1922b, 'Septi~me Bulletin de la nouvelle 6ducation', L'Education (juillet), 502505. Cousinet, Roger: 1926, 'L.S. Pidoux, John Dewey: L'Ecole et l'enfant', La Nouvelle ~ducation (octobre) 48, 153. Cousinet, Roger: 1926, 'L. Luzuriaga, John Dewey: L'enfant et le programme scolaire', La Nouvelle gducation (avril) 44, 96. Cousinet, Roger: 1927a, 'La LibertC, La Nouvelle ~ducation 54, 49-52. Cousinet, Roger: 1927b, 'La Libert6 - suite', La Nouvelle ~ducation 55, 65--68. Cousinet, Roger: 1945 [2nd ed. 1949; 3rd ed. 1967; 4th ed. 1969], Une M~thode de travail librepar groupes, Les 6ditions du Cerf, Paris. Cousinet, Roger: 1948, 'M.-A. Carroi, John Dewey: Experience et Education', L'Ecole Nouvelle fran~aise (mars-avril) 6--7, 142. Cousinet, Roger: 1965a, 'L'effort et l'int6r~t: textes de Dewey et de Clapar~de', Education et D~veloppement 13, 47-53. Cousinet, Roger: 1965b, 'R.D. Archambault, John Dewey on Education', Education et D~veloppement 13, 71. Crowell, N.J.: 1928, John Dewey et l'Education Nouvelle, Pache-Vaddel et Bron, Lausanne. Debesse, Maurice: 1965, Preface to G6rard Delledalle, La P~dagogie de John Dewey, ]~ditions du scarab6e, Paris. Delledalle, G6rard: 1965, La P6dagogie de John Dewey, l~,ditionsdu scarab6e, Pads. Delledalle, G6rard: 1967, L'id~e de l'exp~rience dans la philosophie de John Dewey, Presses Universitaires de France, Pads. Delledalle, G6rard: 1971, Le pragmatisme, Editions Bordas, Paris. Delledalle, G6rard: 1975 [2nd ed. 1990], D~mocratie et ~ducation, Armand Colin, Pads. Delledalle, G6rard: 1977, 'Pour situer la p6dagogie de Dewey', Education et D~veloppement 115, 4-10. Delledalle, G6rard: 1995, John Dewey, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Durkheim, l~mile: 1955, Pragmatisme et sociologie: Cours in~dit de 1913/14, Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, Paris. Ferri~re, Adolphe: 1922a, L'Ecole active, tome I, Forum, Gen~ve. Ferri~re, Adolphe: 1922b, L'Ecole active, tome II, Forum, Gen~ve. Ferri~re, Adolphe: 1929a, L'Ecole active, Forum, Gen~ve. Ferri~re, Adolphe: 1929b, La Pratique de l'~cole active, Forum, Gen~ve. Font~gne, Julien: 1914, 'Le travail manuel ~ la base d'une 6ducation harmonieuse', L'Educateur moderne (avril), 193-205. Font~gne, Julien: 1923, Manualisme et ~ducation, Librairie de l'enseignement technique, Paris. Foulqui6, Paul: 1948, Les ~coles nouvelles, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Ginet, Dominique: 1975, 'Durkheim et Dewey', in Guy Avanzini (ed.), La P~dagogie du 20e sikcle, Privat, Toulouse, pp. 189-191. Hubert, Ren6: 1949, Trait~de p~dagogie g6n~rale, Presses Universitaires de France, Pads. Kessler, Albert: 1964, La Fonction ~ducative de l'~cole: ~cole traditionelle/~cole nouvelle, Editions Universitaires Fribourg, Fribourg (Suisse). Leif, Joseph and Biancheri, Armand: 1966, Les Doctrines p~dagogiques par les textes, Delgrave, Pads. Mauss, Marcel: 1923-1924, 'L'oeuvre in6dite de Durkheim et de ses collaborateurs', L'ann~e sociologique, 7-29. Mauss, Marcel: 1925, 'L'oeuvre in6dite de Durkheim', L'annge sociologique. Medici, Angela: 1940, L'Education Nouvelle: ses fondateurs, son ~volution, Alcan, Pads. Mialaret, Gaston: 1991, P~dagogie g~n~ral, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Not, Louis: 1975, Les p~dagogies de la connaissance, Privat, Toulouse.

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Oury, Fernand and Vasquez, Aida: 1967 [2nd ed. 1995], Vers une p~dagogie institutionnelle?, l~ditions matrice, Vignieux. Piaget, Jean: 1969, Psychologie etp~dagogie, ~litions DenoE1, Paris. Pidoux, L.S.: 1913, L'F,cole et l'enfant, Delachaux et Niestl6, Neuch~tel & Paris. Raillon, Louis: 1973, 'Roger Cousinet, 1881-1973', F,ducation et Dgveloppement 87, 5. Raillon, Louis: 1990, Roger Cousinet: Une Pgdagogie de libertC Armand Colin, Paris. Snyders, Georges: 1971, Pgdagogieprogressive, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Suhr, Martin: 1994, John Dewey zur Einfiihrung, Junius, Hamburg. Westbrook, Robert: 1994, 'John Dewey', in Zaghoul Morsy (ed.), Penseurs de l'~ducation, Vend6me: t~ditions UNESCO, Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 277-293. REFERENCES TO INACCESIBLE BOOKS AND ARTICLES Anon.: 1913, 'John Dewey - L'enseignement scientifique', L'Education (september). Brubacher, J.S.: 1967, 'John Dewey', in J. Chateau (ed.), Les grandes pYdagogues, 4th edn., Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Buyse, Omer: 1908, M~thodes am&icaines d'~ducation ggn~rale et technique, Paris. Dang Van Toan: 1955, L'~ducation sociale d'aprks Platon et Dewey (th~se de doctorat, Sorbonne), Paris. Delledalle, G6rard: 1959, 'Durkheim et Dewey', Les gtudes philosophiques (octobre~16cembre). Ferri6re, Adolphe: 1927, 'La Dfmocratie et l'&tucation selon Dewey', L'~ducation (f6vrier). Hatinguai, M.: 1954, L'oeuvre de John Dewey, Organisation mondiale pour l'6ducation pr6scolaire, Paris. Jezequel, M.: 1927, 'La Sociologie de Dewey et de Giddings', Revue de m~taphysique et de morale (octobre~16cembre). Suchodolski, B.: La P~dagogie et les grands courants philosophiques, Paris. Address for correspondence: Jan-H. Schneider, Bruchstrasse 19, D-35390, Giessen, Germany