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John Dewey and the Polish Question: A Response to the Revisionist Historians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Charles L. Zerby
Charles L. Zerby*
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Extract

Two historians, Clarence J. Karier and Walter Feinberg, recently have suggested that John Dewey's commitment to democracy was less than whole-hearted. This view rests in part on their use of a report submitted by Dewey to the Federal Government in 1918: “Conditions Among the Poles in the United States: Confidential Report.” As Karier puts it, the report reveals Dewey as a conservative who was “committed to flexible, experimentally managed, orderly social change, which included a high degree of manipulation.” A closer look at the report and its historical context, however, suggests precisely the opposite: Dewey is shown as strongly and personally committed to the democratic process and opposed to manipulative government. In addition, it is a revealing example of Dewey's efforts to connect his educational theories to more general social and political questions.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , Spring 1975 , pp. 17 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Dewey, John, “Conditions Among the Poles in the United States,” Confidential Report (Washington, D.C., 1918). The significance of this report was brought to my attention in a seminar given by Professor William G. Kornegay, Graduate School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar

2. Karier, Clarence J., Violas, Paul C., and Spring, Joel, Roots of Crisis: American Education in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, 1973), p. 93. Originally published in somewhat different form as Karier, Clarence J., “Liberalism and the Quest for Orderly Change,” History of Education Quarterly, 12 (Spring 1972): 57–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Dewey, , “Conditions Among the Poles,” p. 2.Google Scholar

4. Ibid.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., p. 6.Google Scholar

6. The editors of The New Republic had frequent visits with Colonel House during this period. See Lasch, Christopher, The New Radicalism in America (New York, 1965), pp. 220–221.Google Scholar

7. Dewey, John, Individualism: Old and New (New York, 1962 [1929]), pp. 144–145. Emphasis added.Google Scholar

8. Boydston, Jo Ann, (ed.), Guide to the Works of John Dewey (Carbondale, 1970), p. 232.Google Scholar

9. “… to elect into a body by the votes of its existing members” … Oxford English Dictionary.Google Scholar

10. Karier, , Roots of Crisis, p. 5.Google Scholar

11. Ibid.Google Scholar

12. Feinberg, Walter, “Progressive Education and Social Planning,” Teachers College Record, 73, no. 4 (May 1972): 495.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Ibid.: 492.Google Scholar

14. This account of the conditions as viewed by Dewey will be supplemented when appropriate by Gerson, Louis L., Woodrow Wilson and the Rebirth of Poland, 1914–1920. a Study in the Influence on American Policy of Minority Groups of Foreign Origin. As a student of Samuel Flagg Bemis of Yale, Gerson is undoubtedly a suspect witness for Karier and Feinberg. I have found no reason, however, to doubt the general thrust of his interpretation.Google Scholar

15. Gerson, Louis L., Woodrow Wilson and the Rebirth of Poland, 1914–1920: a Study in the Influence on American Policy of Minority Groups of Foreign Origins (New Haven, 1953), p. 80, footnote.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., p. 51. See also: Dewey, , “Conditions Among the Poles,” p. 21.Google Scholar

17. Gerson, , Woodrow Wilson, p. 13.Google Scholar

18. Feinberg, , “Progressive Education”: 493.Google Scholar

19. Dewey, , “Conditions Among the Poles,” p. 8.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., pp. 26–27.Google Scholar

21. Gerson, , Woodrow Wilson, pp. 92–93.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., p. 89.Google Scholar

23. Dewey, , “Conditions Among the Poles,” p. 68.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., p. 72.Google Scholar

25. According to Gerson, , “Food and politics have an inevitable and inseparable connection during wars; that Paderewski knew.” Gerson, , Woodrow Wilson, p. 68.Google Scholar

26. See Dewey, John, “Second Preliminary Memorandum—Confidential Polish Conditions In This Country, Publicity, August 23, 1918. Reprinted in Gerson, , Woodrow Wilson, pp. 154–156, Appendix.Google Scholar

27. Gerson, , Woodrow Wilson, p. 51, footnote. Quoted from Park, Robert E., The Immigrant Press and its Control (New York, 1922), p. 204.Google Scholar

28. Gerson, , Woodrow Wilson, pp. 89–91.Google Scholar

29. Dewey, , “Conditions Among the Poles,” p. 49.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., pp. 49–50.Google Scholar

31. In evaluating the effect of drawing the electoral boundaries along parish lines, the following quote is significant. “Secessionist groups exist in every community, for the subordination of all social life to the parish system always meets opposition, particularly because it lends to a supremacy of the clergy…. The secessionists form an organization independent of the parish system and often attempt to create a territorial center away from the church in the form of a ‘national home’ as locus for common activities.” Thomas, William I. and Znaniecki, Floian, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Reprinted in The Aliens, A History of Ethnic Minorities in America , Ed. by Dinnerstein, Leonard and Jaher, Frederic Cople, p. 266.Google Scholar

32. Dewey, , “Conditions Among the Poles,” p. 50.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., p. 51.Google Scholar

34. Ibid.Google Scholar

35. Feinberg, , “Progressive Education”: 491.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., Emphasis added.Google Scholar

37. Barnes, Albert C., “Democracy, Watch Your Step!” Dial, 65 (28 December 1918): 596–597. See also Ibid., “The Paderewski Adventure,” New Republic, 17 (25 January 1919): 367–368; Edman, Irwin, “The Fourth Part of Poland,” Nation, 107 (28 September 1918): 342–343; Dewey, John, “Autocracy Under Cover,” New Republic, 16 (24 August 1918): 103–06.Google Scholar

38. Dewey, , “Conditions Among the Poles,” p. 3.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., p. 47.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., p. 45. See also Ibid., p. 56.Google Scholar

41. Feinberg, , “Progressive Education”: 493.Google Scholar

42. Ibid.Google Scholar

43. Feinberg, , “Progressive Education”: 493.Google Scholar

44. Ibid: 494.Google Scholar

45. Karier, , Roots of Crisis, p. 91.Google Scholar

46. Dewey, , “Conditions Among the Poles,” p. 73.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., p. 30.Google Scholar

48. Dewey, , Individualism, p. 68.Google Scholar

49. Dewey, John, review of Creative Impulsive in Industry by Morot, Helen, New Republic, 17 (2 November 1918): 23.Google Scholar

50. Feinberg, , “Progressive Education”: 495.Google Scholar

51. Dewey, , “Autocracy Under Cover”: 103.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., 104–105.Google Scholar

53. Dewey, , “Conditions Among the Poles,” p. 80.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., p. 27.Google Scholar

55. Barnes, , “Democracy, Watch Your Step!”: 595.Google Scholar