egard intelligence as a power that people use when they face a conflict or challenge. He believed that people live by custom and habit. Eventually Dewey conceived of democracy as a primary ethical value, and he did much to formulate working principles for a democratic and industrial society, particularly in the field of education, which later became known as the Progressive movement.The sources of Dewey progressive movement are attributed to the pedagogy of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Johann Pestalozzi, and Friedrich Froebel.In education, his philosophy became a primary factor in the abandonment of authoritarian methods and in the growing emphasis upon learning through experimentation and practice. In rejection against abstract learning, Dewey considered education as a tool that would enable the citizen to integrate culture and vocation effectively and usefully. Dewey actively participated in movements to forward social welfare and womans suffrage, protect academic freedom, and effect political reform.Deweys Early WorkJohn Dewey maintained that schools should reflect the life of our society. He suggested that the schools also take on such responsibilities as the acculturation of immigrants in addition to merely teaching academic skills. Dewey also proposed a number of specific curricular changes that had strong impact on his subsequent reformers. At his Laboratory School in Chicago, for example, Dewey developed a method at the turn of the century which younger student groups worked on a central project related to their own interests. (Early cooperative learning). The division of more advanced work into units organized around some central theme was an attempt to adapt the method to the academic needs of older children. Several other significant progressive movements were spurred by Deweys early Chicago School experiments. They included the Gary plan, developed (1908) in Gary, Ind. Devised to utilize the school plant more efficiently, to pro...
