Limitations of the pedagogy of John Dewey

Abstract

This work is a theoretical review and consideration on the pedagogy of John Dewey and certain elements of his pragmatist philosophy. We argue that despite his sincere concern for democracy, along with a «progressive» and «social» component of its pedagogy, he does not solve certain contradictions of Liberalism, to which we show he is related. Moreover, he tries to overcome certain deficiencies of Positivism, but he does not fulfill this aim, either. We can characterize him, therefore, as a reformer, but not as a revolutionary, as shown when he is compared with other philosophical and pedagogical twentieth-century schools of thought.