Studies in Philosophy and Education 19: 69–82, 2000. © 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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John Dewey in France JAN-H. SCHNEIDER 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. Gérard 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 Ferrière, Ovide Decroly and Édouard Claparède – 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’étranger of 1883, which printed, under the title “John Dewey: Les hypothèses du matérialisme,”1 an anonymous 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’Éducation, edited from 1909 onwards by Georges Bertier, director of the École des Roches, listed him in its editorial as a leading contributor. From 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’Éducation, the second number of which (June 1909), for example, contained a translation by J. Desfeuille of part of The School and Society (1899, rev. 1908/1915; as “John Dewey: L’École et le progrès 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’École et la vie de l’enfant”). Henry Marty’s translation, “John Dewey – Le gaspillage en éducation,” appeared in March 1914, and one of the 1920 issues had a review of Dewey’s essay “New Schools for Old.” L’Éducation also published the first documentation of La Nouvelle Éducation, 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 “Sixième Bulletin de la nouvelle éducation” and “Septième Bulletin de la nouvelle éducation” (L’Éducation, June and July 1922 respectively). In February 1927, Adolph Ferrière’s article “La démocratie et l’éducation selon Dewey” appeared in L’Éducation. In 1913, L.S. Pidoux’s compilatory translation L’École 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 Child and the Curriculum (1902). For this translation, Édouard Claparède 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 ‘génétique,’ ‘fonctionelle,’ and ‘sociale.’ In his introduction, Claparède 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’Éducation under the title “L’éducation au point de vue social.” This was followed, in 1914, by the essay “Le travail manuel à la base d’une éducation harmonieuse,” published in L’Éducateur moderne and written by Julien Fontègne, professor at the École Nationale professionelle at Armentières and at the École Nationale d’arts et métiers 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 Ferrière that appeared in 1922, L’École active and L’École 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, Ferrière feels compelled in his introduction to differentiate somewhat between Dewey’s pragmatism and his own notion of the ‘école 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 Fontègne (at this time director of the Service Régional d’Orientation professionelle of Alsace and Lorraine) published his book Manualisme et éducation, 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 “Slyöd suédois” (in “August Abrahamson et l’école de Nääs”), to Kerschensteiner (in “Les idées pédagogiques de Kerschensteiner”), and to various practical instances from France, Belgium, Italy (Congress of Milan) and Switzerland (the ‘Méthode Oertli’), as well as devoting a whole chapter to Dewey and developments in America (“Le ‘learning by doing’ aux États-Unis”). Fontègne 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’intérêts’ 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’année sociologique in 1923/24 and 1925, Marcel Mauss indicates that Émile 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, Étude comparative sur les doctrines pédagogiques 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 écoles de demain, his translation of Schools of Tomorrow. In 1940, Marie–Anne Carroi published her study “L’œuvre psycho-pédagogique de John Dewey” in the journal L’information pédagogique; this was followed in 1947 by

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Expérience et éducation, her translation of Dewey’s Experience and Education (1938). Pierre Messiaen’s John Dewey: Liberté et culture appeared in 1955. A milestone in the reception of Dewey is represented by Ou Tsui Chen’s book La Doctrine pédagogique 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 international 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 Éducation 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’Éducation Nouvelle: ses fondateurs, son évolution, 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-André Bloch, in his Philosophie de l’éducation nouvelle, drew mainly on Kerschensteiner and Dewey, while Paul Foulquié, in the same year, made use of the latter in Les écoles nouvelles. René Hubert’s Traité de pédagogie et éducation (1949) makes several references to Dewey, as in the introductory section on “Pédagogie et éducation,” 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 éducative de l’école traditionnelle/école nouvelle, which provided a critical survey of the practice of the Éducation Nouvelle movement as compared with ‘traditional’ pedagogy. Kessler deals with Dewey on several occasions, most notably in his chapter “Ignorance ou méconnaissance de la psychologie de l’enfant,” where he cites exclusively from

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L’École 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 Éducation Nouvelle in coming to terms with Dewey’s brand of pragmatism (notably Ferrière, Claparède and Cousinet), which, Kessler argues, they understood in negative terms. In their 1966 book Les Doctrines pédagogiques par les textes, Joseph Leif and Armand Biancheri offer with Le rôle de l’intérêt présent and Savoir d’adulte et savoir d’enfant excerpts from Pidoux’ L’école et l’enfant. In Vers une pédagogie institutionnelle? Fernand Oury and Aïda 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 pédagogie, treated Dewey only briefly as one of the fathers of Éducation Nouvelle. George Snyders made an attempt, in his book Pédagogie 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’École 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 Pédagogie du 20e siècle. 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 Éducation 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 pédagogies 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 Claparède.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 external 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 Pédagogie générale (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’éducation (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 pédagogues 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 pédagogue: 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’École et l’enfant. The role of Dewey in the Éducation Nouvelle movement was clarified once more in the book L’Éducation Nouvelle, issued by ANEN (the Association Nationale de l’Éducation Nouvelle) in 1997. Four writers are introduced here for their decisive part in the rise of Éducation Nouvelle: Claparède, Cousinet, Ferrière, and Dewey. Alongside the study by Ou Tsui Chen mentioned above, the reception of Dewey by Roger Cousinet and Gérard 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’Éducation 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’École et l’enfant appeared in the Éducateur 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 éducation” of the journal L’Éducation (1922). In La Nouvelle éducation, 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 Child and the Curriculum; in the October 1926 issue, he can be found referring to Pidoux’s compilation L’École et l’enfant; in 1927 Cousinet quotes from the French translation of How We Think (“Le mécanisme de la pensée n’est pas comme un appareil à 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 Liberté.” 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 François Châtelain, founded a new pedagogical journal with the title L’École Nouvelle française; this periodical, which lasted until 1964, regularly published contributions that drew attention to Dewey and his importance for the French Éducation 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, Éducation et Développement (1964–1980). In issue 13 (December 1965), there is an article by Cousinet, “L’effort et l’intérêt: textes de Dewey et de Claparède,” in which he quotes and discusses passages from Dewey’s The School and Society and Claparède’s Éducation 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 Éducation Nouvelle movement.8 Gérard 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 Pédagogie 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 Éducation Nouvelle movement, “we actually do not know him very well at all.”10 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.”11 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 École des Roches applied some of Dewey’s pedagogical principles, mentioning three schools (in Sèvres, 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 Claparède, Ferrière 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 pédagogie de l’activité (1891–1902), II – Logique et pédagogie de la pensée, III – Métaphysique et éducation” – thereby providing a concise summary of Dewey’s thought and its foundations. In 1977, Delledalle wrote an article for Éducation et Développement, “Pour situer la pédagogie de Dewey,” in which, following Cousinet, he characterizes Dewey as the father of Éducation Nouvelle (Delledalle, 1977). Delledalle, as in his Pédagogie 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 undeflected 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 (écoles élémentaires) under the rubric of Éducation 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 Éducation 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 Claparède in his introduction to L’École 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 Gérard 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 Éducation Nouvelle will spread further afield. The critical reception of Dewey reflects the conflict in France between the Éducation 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-à-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 1 “Les discussions relatives au matérialisme ont été en général confinées à l’aspect physiologique et

psychologique de la question; l’auteur veut le discuter sous sa forme métaphysique. Son court article aboutit aux conclusions suivantes: Pour établir un monisme strict le matérialisme part de l’hypothèse d’un dualisme originel insoluble. Pour établir que l’esprit est un phénomène de la matière, il est obligé de supposer une substance qui donne la connaissance de cette matière. Pour prouver qu’elle est en effet de la matière, il est obligé de supposer ou un pouvoir d’intuition de l’esprit ou que

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l’esprit lui-même est une cause: hypothèses qui l’une et l’autre détruisent le matérialisme” (Anon., 1883). 2 “[. . . ] c’est que la volonté se mette, elle, tout entière au service de l’esprit [. . . ]” (Ferrière, 1929). 3 “[. . . ] couronnement de l’œuvre philosophique de Durkheim [. . . ]” (Mauss, 1925). 4 “En ce qui concerne la France, qui généralement recueille les théories nouvelles de l’éducation avec moins d’empressement que les autres pays, si la doctrine de Dewey y a affecté à un moindre degré la pratique éducative, elle n’a néanmoins pas manqué de susciter un grand intérêt théorique” (Ou Tsui Chen, 1958). 5 “J. Dewey le premier dont la pédagogie traduit pourtant largement l’idéal américain de la démocratie 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’activité scolaire Dewey demande qu’elles soient en premier lieu ‘adaptées le mieux possible aux divers degrés du développement de l’enfant’ et ensuite qu’elles préparent le plus efficacement aux responsabilités sociales. Comment nous pensons, p. 66, trad. française par Decroly, Paris, éd. Flammarion, 1925” (Medici, 1940). 6 “Dewey est un des fondateurs de l’instrumentalisme qu’on a vu s’exprimer chez Claparède: la pensée n’est pas seulement activité de l’esprit; elle est instrument de l’action au service de l’individu; elle se confond avec elle et c’est son rendement dans l’action qui lui confère valeur de vérité” (Not, 1975). 7 “L’éducation nouvelle ne serait pas ce qu’elle est sans Dewey, l’illustre psychologue américain, à qui elle doit en partie sa naissance et un soutien continuel pendant son développement depuis plus de 50 années. Or il reste peu connu chez nous, alors que ses idées se sont répandues d’une façon anonyme et souvent inexacte. Cela tient à ce que malheureusement, on n’a traduit chez nous qu’un tout petit nombre de ses œuvres et pas toujours les plus importantes. Il faut donc savoir, grand gré à Mlle Carroi d’avoir traduit ce petit livre, un des derniers écrits par le psychologue, ou il résume et précise sa pensée en définissant particulièrement ce qu’il entend par expérience, le rôle que l’expérience doit jouer dans l’éducation, et la manière dont l’éducation doit á la fois se fonder sur l’expérience de l’enfant et la diriger. Une préface de la traduction où elle analyse avec clarté la philosophie et les conceptions pédagogiques de son auteur constitue une excellente introduction aux idées de Dewey” (Cousinet, 1948). 8 “[. . . ] de cette œuvre qui, encore une fois, a été la création de l’éducation nouvelle [. . . ]” (Cousinet, 1965). 9 See the Bibliography below, and Gérard Delledalle, Histoire de la philosophie américaine (Paris, 1954), Écrits sur le signe (Paris, 1979), Charles S. Peirce, phénoménologue et sémioticien (Amsterdam, 1987), and La Philosophie américaine (Paris, 1987). 10 “Mais en réalité nous le connaissons assez mal” (Preface, Delledalle, 1965). 11 “Cette influence est indéniable, mais son étude exigerait de longues, patientes et difficiles recherches, car c’est d’une façon assez indirecte qu’elle s’est exercée sur les éducateurs français acquis aux idées nouvelles” (Preface, Delledalle, 1965). 12 “[. . . ] sont à rapproché des théories de Dewey” (Delledalle, 1965). 13 “[. . . ] parce qu’il fournit toutes les données nécessaires à une réflexion pédagogique et [. . . ] une ‘théorie générale de l’éducation’ qui est la définition même, selon Dewey, de la philosophie” (Delledalle, 1975). 14 “[. . . ] la pédagogie de John Dewey est une pédagogie de l’activité spontané et intelligente, centrée sur les intérêts de l’enfant dont la sociabilité doit s’exercer dans une école reflétant la structure de la société existante à condition expresse qu’elle soit fondé sur le principe de continuité” (Delledalle, 1975).

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References F RENCH

TRANSLATIONS OF BOOKS AND ESSAYS BY J OHN

D EWEY

Anon.: 1882, ‘John Dewey: Les hypothèses du matérialisme [The Hypotheses of Materialism]’, Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’étranger [Journal of Speculative Philosophy, April 1882], 8e année, tome XV (janvier–juin, 1883), 109. Anon.: 1913, ‘John Dewey: L’éducation au point de vue social’, L’année pédagogique. Carroi, Marie–Anne: 1947, John Dewey: Expérience et éducation [Experience and Education, 1938], Bourrellier, Paris. Chen, Ou Tsui: 1931, ‘Mon credo pédagogique [My pedagogical creed, The early works, 1887]’, in id., La Doctrine pédagogique 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, Gérard: 1975, John Dewey: Démocratie et éducation [Democracy and Education, 1916] (2nd edn. 1990), Armand Colin, Paris. Delledalle, Gérard: 1993, John Dewey: La théorie de l’enquête [The Theory of Enquiry, 1928], Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Desfeuille, J.: 1909, ‘John Dewey – L’École et le progrès social’, L’Éducation (juin), 199–217 [exc. The School and Society, rev. ed. 1908]. Desfeuille, J.: 1912, ‘John Dewey – L’École et la vie de l’enfant’, L’Éducation (décembre) 315–327 [exc. The School and Society, rev. ed. 1908]. Duthil, R.: 1931, John Dewey: Les écoles de demain [with Evelyn Dewey: Schools of Tomorrow, 1915], Flammarion, Paris. Marty, Henry: 1914, ‘John Dewey: Le gaspillage en éducation’, L’Éducation (mars), 8–25. Messiaen, Pierre: 1955, John Dewey: Liberté et culture [Freedom and Culture, 1913], Paris, Aubier. Pidoux, L.S.: 1913, John Dewey: L’École 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. Édouard Claparède) Delachaux et Niestlé, Neuchâtel & Paris.

S ECONDARY

WORKS

ANEN [Association Nationale de l’Éducation Nouvelle] (ed.): 1997, L’Éducation Nouvelle, Délachaux et Niestlé, Lausanne & Paris. Bertrand, Yves and Valois, Paul: 1994, ‘John Dewey’, in Jean Houssaye (ed.), Quinze pédagogues, Armand Colin, Paris, pp. 124–134. Bertrand, Yves and Valois, Paul: 1995. ‘John Dewey’, in Jean Houssaye (ed.), Quinze pédagogues: textes choisies, Armand Colin, Paris, pp. 108–125. Bloch, Marc-André: 1948, Philosophie de l’éducation nouvelle, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Carroi, Marie–Anne: 1940, ‘L’œuvre psycho-pédagogoque de John Dewey’, L’information pédagogique (janvier–février) 1. Chen, Ou Tsui: 1931 [2nd ed. 1958, 3rd ed. 1982], La Doctrine pédagogique de John Dewey, Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, Paris. Choy Jyan: 1926, Etude comparative sur les doctrines pédagogiques de Durkheim et de Dewey (thèse de doctorat d’université), Bosc Frères et Riou, Lyon. Cousinet, Roger: 1911, ‘John Dewey: Educational Essays’, L’Éducation (novembre), 453. Cousinet, Roger: 1912, ‘L’œuvre de John Dewey’, L’Éducation (septembre), 462–463. Cousinet, Roger: 1920, ‘John Dewey: New Schools for Old’, L’Éducation (september), 76. Cousinet, Roger: 1921, La Méthode de travail libre par groupes pour les enfants de 9 à 12 ans, Garches – Éditions de la nouvelle éducation, Paris.

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Cousinet, Roger: 1922a, ‘Sixième Bulletin de la nouvelle éducation’, L’Éducation (juin), 455–458. Cousinet, Roger: 1922b, ‘Septième Bulletin de la nouvelle éducation’, L’Éducation (juillet), 502– 505. Cousinet, Roger: 1926, ‘L.S. Pidoux, John Dewey: L’École et l’enfant’, La Nouvelle éducation (octobre) 48, 153. Cousinet, Roger: 1926, ‘L. Luzuriaga, John Dewey: L’enfant et le programme scolaire’, La Nouvelle éducation (avril) 44, 96. Cousinet, Roger: 1927a, ‘La Liberté’, La Nouvelle éducation 54, 49–52. Cousinet, Roger: 1927b, ‘La Liberté – suite’, La Nouvelle éducation 55, 65–68. Cousinet, Roger: 1945 [2nd ed. 1949; 3rd ed. 1967; 4th ed. 1969], Une Méthode de travail libre par groupes, Les éditions du Cerf, Paris. Cousinet, Roger: 1948, ‘M.–A. Carroi, John Dewey: Expérience et Éducation’, L’École Nouvelle française (mars–avril) 6–7, 142. Cousinet, Roger: 1965a, ‘L’effort et l’intérêt: textes de Dewey et de Claparède’, Éducation et Développement 13, 47–53. Cousinet, Roger: 1965b, ‘R.D. Archambault, John Dewey on Education’, Éducation et Développement 13, 71. Crowell, N.J.: 1928, John Dewey et l’Éducation Nouvelle, Pache–Varidel et Bron, Lausanne. Debesse, Maurice: 1965, Preface to Gérard Delledalle, La Pédagogie de John Dewey, Éditions du scarabée, Paris. Delledalle, Gérard: 1965, La Pédagogie de John Dewey, Éditions du scarabée, Paris. Delledalle, Gérard: 1967, L’idée de l’expérience dans la philosophie de John Dewey, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Delledalle, Gérard: 1971, Le pragmatisme, Editions Bordas, Paris. Delledalle, Gérard: 1975 [2nd ed. 1990], Démocratie et éducation, Armand Colin, Paris. Delledalle, Gérard: 1977, ‘Pour situer la pédagogie de Dewey’, Éducation et Développement 115, 4–10. Delledalle, Gérard: 1995, John Dewey, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Durkheim, Émile: 1955, Pragmatisme et sociologie: Cours inédit de 1913/14, Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, Paris. Ferrière, Adolphe: 1922a, L’École active, tome I, Forum, Genève. Ferrière, Adolphe: 1922b, L’École active, tome II, Forum, Genève. Ferrière, Adolphe: 1929a, L’École active, Forum, Genève. Ferrière, Adolphe: 1929b, La Pratique de l’école active, Forum, Genève. Fontègne, Julien: 1914, ‘Le travail manuel à la base d’une éducation harmonieuse’, L’Éducateur moderne (avril), 193–205. Fontègne, Julien: 1923, Manualisme et éducation, Librairie de l’enseignement technique, Paris. Foulquié, Paul: 1948, Les écoles nouvelles, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Ginet, Dominique: 1975, ‘Durkheim et Dewey’, in Guy Avanzini (ed.), La Pédagogie du 20e siècle, Privat, Toulouse, pp. 189–191. Hubert, René: 1949, Traité de pédagogie générale, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Kessler, Albert: 1964, La Fonction éducative de l’école: école traditionelle/école nouvelle, Éditions Universitaires Fribourg, Fribourg (Suisse). Leif, Joseph and Biancheri, Armand: 1966, Les Doctrines pédagogiques par les textes, Delgrave, Paris. Mauss, Marcel: 1923–1924, ‘L’œuvre inédite de Durkheim et de ses collaborateurs’, L’année sociologique, 7–29. Mauss, Marcel: 1925, ‘L’œuvre inédite de Durkheim’, L’année sociologique. Medici, Angela: 1940, L’Éducation Nouvelle: ses fondateurs, son évolution, Alcan, Paris. Mialaret, Gaston: 1991, Pédagogie général, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Not, Louis: 1975, Les pédagogies de la connaissance, Privat, Toulouse.

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Oury, Fernand and Vasquez, Aïda: 1967 [2nd ed. 1995], Vers une pédagogie institutionnelle?, Éditions matrice, Vignieux. Piaget, Jean: 1969, Psychologie et pédagogie, Éditions Denoël, Paris. Pidoux, L.S.: 1913, L’École et l’enfant, Delachaux et Niestlé, Neuchâtel & Paris. Raillon, Louis: 1973, ‘Roger Cousinet, 1881–1973’, Éducation et Développement 87, 5. Raillon, Louis: 1990, Roger Cousinet: Une Pédagogie de liberté, Armand Colin, Paris. Snyders, Georges: 1971, Pédagogie progressive, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Suhr, Martin: 1994, John Dewey zur Einführung, Junius, Hamburg. Westbrook, Robert: 1994, ’John Dewey’, in Zaghoul Morsy (ed.), Penseurs de l’éducation, Vendôme: Éditions UNESCO, Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 277–293.

R EFERENCES

TO INACCESIBLE BOOKS AND ARTICLES

Anon.: 1913, ‘John Dewey - L’enseignement scientifique’, L’Éducation (september). Brubacher, J.S.: 1967, ‘John Dewey’, in J. Château (ed.), Les grandes pédagogues, 4th edn., Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Buyse, Omer: 1908, Méthodes américaines d’éducation générale et technique, Paris. Dang Van Toan: 1955, L’éducation sociale d’après Platon et Dewey (thèse de doctorat, Sorbonne), Paris. Delledalle, Gérard: 1959, ‘Durkheim et Dewey’, Les études philosophiques (octobre–décembre). Ferrière, Adolphe: 1927, ‘La Démocratie et l’éducation selon Dewey’, L’Éducation (février). Hatinguai, M.: 1954, L’œuvre de John Dewey, Organisation mondiale pour l’éducation préscolaire, Paris. Jezequel, M.: 1927, ‘La Sociologie de Dewey et de Giddings’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale (octobre–décembre). Suchodolski, B.: La Pédagogie et les grands courants philosophiques, Paris. Address for correspondence: Jan-H. Schneider, Bruchstrasse 19, D-35390, Giessen, Germany