John Dewey was a highly influential twentieth-century American philosopher and perhaps the nation’s foremost educational theorist. Along with Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) and William James (1842–1910), he forged an American philosophy known variously as pragmatism, experimentalism, or, as he preferred, instrumentalism. He also helped create an educational theory known as progressivism. In addition to being a prolific author and a philosophy professor, he was socially and politically active in seeking to improve children’s schooling, secure professors’ academic freedom, outlaw international war, protect workers’ rights, extend women’s civil liberties, and enact immigrant and minority political freedoms. Dewey was born into a middle-class evangelical Congregational Church family in Burlington, Vermont, and pursued his undergraduate education in his hometown at the University of Vermont. After earning his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and spending several years as a high school teacher…