Classroom Teacher and the Individual School Child

Leonard Waks earned his PhD in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin. He taught philosophy at Purdue and Stanford, and education at Temple, retiring in 2005. From 2018 to 2021 he was Distinguished Professor of Educational Studies at Hangzhou Normal University in China. He is past-president of the John Dewey Society and was the founding editor of Dewey Studies. In addition to numerous articles, he is the author of Education 2.0 (2014), The Evolution and Evaluation of Massive Online Courses (2017), and editor (with Andrea English) of John Dewey's Democracy and Education: A Centennial Handbook (2017).

"This centennial edition of John Dewey's 1923 Bridgewater Lectures highlights the continuing relevance of Dewey's idea of individuality. With an accessible introduction by Leonard Waks situating the lectures in Dewey's broader philosophy of education and three well-crafted essays by leading Dewey scholars, this book is invaluable reading for students and experts. Readers will discover significant connections between the Bridgewater Lectures and themes in Dewey's later major works Experience and Nature and Art as Experience. In our current times, when education is increasingly reduced to the mechanical, deadening task of memorization for performance on tests, this book offers new insight into Dewey's vision of the creativity, vitality, and artistry of meaningful education and the important role of teachers in respecting and responding to the uniqueness of every learner." - Andrea R. English, Professor of Philosophy of Education, University of Edinburgh, President of the John Dewey Society "Leonard Waks' gem of a book offers us three remarkable lectures Dewey delivered at the Bridgewater State Normal School in 1922. They show us Dewey directly engaging with the social, individual, and intellectual dimensions of education and articulating his belief that teaching is a form of creative artistry rather than mechanical compliance. Waks' illuminating introduction situates the lectures within Dewey's broader philosophical architecture, while Dewey scholars Thomas Alexander, Vincent Colapietro, and Paul Cherlin provide incisive interpretive essays. Readers will discover why Dewey believed the classroom teacher plays an indispensable role, a vision that remains urgently relevant for contemporary debates about pedagogy, individuality, and democratic education. An essential work for educators, philosophers of education, and anyone who seeks to learn what authentic teaching requires." - David L. Hildebrand, PhD., Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado Denver, Past President of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy

• Introduction Individuality and the Art of Classroom Teaching by Leonard J. Waks The Bridgewater Lectures of 1922 Chapter One Social Purposes in Education (1922) by John Dewey Chapter Two Individuality in Education (1922) by John Dewey Chapter Three The Classroom Teacher (1922) by John Dewey Original Interpretive Essays Chapter Four The Course and Its Occurrences by Paul B. Cherlin Chapter Five Individuality, Sociality, and Temporality: Reflections on Dewey's Bridgewater Lectures of 1922 by Vincent Colapietro Chapter Six Dewey's Bridgewater Lectures and the Emergence of the Aesthetic in His Later Works by Thomas Alexander Bibliography Index NOTE: Table of Contents subject to change up until publication date.