John Dewey
John Dewey is a reformer that had a large impact in education reform throughout the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He thought that the concept of "learning by doing" should be the foundation of education and wanted to promote that as much as possible. Dewey and his wife Harriet founded the University Elementary School at the University of Chicago in 1894 as their own experimental primary school 1. Dewey wanted to apply his research and knowledge as first hand as possible by creating his own school.
On January 13, 1896, the "Dewey School" opened officially as University Primary School in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood with twelve students and one teacher in charge. The school continued to expand, reaching its highest amount of students in 1901 with 140 of them, a majority of which came from the wealthy and educated classes. As well as 23 teachers, and 10 graduate students serving as teaching assistants. The school had been officially known as University Elementary School since October 1897 and included a sub-primary department since October 1898 2 .
In the University Primary School, Dewey divided up children soley based on age in terms of activities and curriculum they were to be taught and learn from. As a student gets older, the curriculum was more in depth and rigorous. An important note is that Dewey did not divide students up by gender. Male and female students spent the same amount of time as one another crafting and cooking, whereas in schools prior to this it was more common for males to focus on crafting and females to focus on cooking 3.
1 Biography.com Editors. 2020. “John Dewey.” The Biography.com Website. A&E; Television Networks. June 15, 2020. https://www.biography.com/scholar/john-dewey.
2 Knoll, Michael. 2014. Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy. Sage. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309311586_Laboratory_School_University_of_Chicago.
3 Pedagogy for Change. 2019. “Great Pedagogical Thinkers: John Dewey.” Pedagogy for Change. pedagogy4change.org. October 30, 2019. https://www.pedagogy4change.org/john-dewey/.