John Dewey

John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer who was the foremost representative of the pragmatist tradition in the twentieth century. Against the traditional view that knowledge is a passive correspondence between mind and reality, Dewey argued that thought is an instrument for solving problems — that ideas are tools to be evaluated by their practical consequences. His philosophy of education held that schooling should be grounded in active inquiry and democratic participation rather than passive reception of established knowledge.