John Dewey: Education as Ethics, Ethics as Education

John Dewey was arguably the most influential philosopher of education in the twentieth century. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the timeliness of Dewey’s philosophy of education for us today with respect to the organic relationship between ethics and education that Dewey saw, by showing the centrality of education for Dewey’s philosophy, that is, how for him, indeed, all philosophy is philosophy of education; further, how all education is moral philosophy; and hence how all philosophy pertains to moral education. Central to Dewey’s understanding of both education and ethics is his notion of ‘growth’: education creates the conditions for students’ ongoing growth, and the promotion of growth defines ‘ethics.’ Dewey’s message is an important one for us today when there are such strong tendencies to reduce education to mere technical training: such training, for Dewey, is neither education nor ethical.