Fred Newton Scott and Journalism
One of Dewey's less heralded contributions to Michigan was his collaboration with Fred Newton Scott, who was responsible for creating the first college course in journalism and who went on to found the distinctive Department of Rhetoric at Michigan in 1903.74 Scott matriculated to the University of Michigan in 1880, and before graduating in 1884, he helped found the student newspaper the Michigan Argonaut and was a member of the Philosophical Society. Scott impressed Dewey as a "clever writer as well as a thorough student."75 Following graduation, Scott worked as a newspaper editor before returning to Ann Arbor and earning a Ph.D. in 1889 and an appointment as an instructor in English.
Scott was only one year Dewey's junior, and in him Dewey found philosophic agreement and reinforcement of his ideas. Each man wrote a complimentary biographical piece on the other, Scott publishing a biography on Dewey in the Castalian,76 and Dewey publishing a piece on Scott in the Oracle.77 In the biography of Scott, Dewey noted Scott's interest in psychology and philosophy, "considered as helps to literary interpretation."78 It was for those reasons that Dewey invited Scott to teach the philosophy department's offering on aesthetics. The two also cooperatively taught a seminar on aesthetics. Scott's course was subtitled "Philosophy of the Beautiful." Its relation to philosophy and psychology was spelled out by defining aesthetics as "the element of ease or freedom in all movement of intelligence." How aesthetics was experienced, "whether in art, politics, science or religion" was the outcome of two factors: how the individual organized or "idealized facts," and "the complex of facts, organized or unorganized, in which the individual exercises his function" and experiences beauty.79 Scott would extend his lectures on aesthetics to students from the University Musical Society and would be joined by Dewey, who lectured on the relation of psychology to music.80
Staff of the Inlander with faculty advisors John Dewey (second from right, front row) and Fred Newton Scott (right, front row). (John Dewey Papers, Bentley historical Library.)
Scott also shared Dewey's interest in the relation of secondary education to colleges and became active in the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club, exploring how composition and English could be taught more effectively. He was also a frequent participant in the high school accreditation inspections. Scott's and Dewey's commonality would show through in other ways as well. In 1891, the two men together would serve as the advisory board for the Inlander a new student literary monthly. The aim of the Inlander, as stated in the inaugural issue, was not to limit its articles "to subjects having only local color, nor limit the range of its contributions to University life."81 Dewey used the new journal as a forum for social commentary, contributing several articles and an unsigned column called "The Angle of Reflection."82 In his first "Angle of Reflection" column, Dewey elaborated on the purpose of the Inlander while also offering comment on women's suffrage. The subject of his column was the creation of an academy of female writers by the New York publication the Critic, and the fact that "no Michigan poetess or authoress seems to have received votes." Dewey advanced several possible reasons for the exclusion of Michigan writers, one of the reasons being that the Midwest "does not seem as yet to count (either by work or voting in the Critic) in the literary world." Therefore, the purpose of the Inlander was "to express and to encourage the articulate voicing of that part of the vast dumb Inland to which it belongs." Dewey sought to cultivate a literary sense consisting of "the free perception and natural reporting of the currents of life which are actually in movement."83 The latter statement foreshadowed Dewey's brief and abortive foray into journalism. Emboldened perhaps by the freedom to comment on social issues in the Inlander, his columns had grown more speculative, and he began to think in terms of a wider audience.
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