The Michigan Schoolmaster's Club
Front cover of the proceedings of the first meeting of the Michigan Schoolmaster' Club, 1886. (Michigan Schoolmasters' Club Publications, Bentley Historical Library.)
Dewey's philosophy, particularly his work in psychology, led him to take greater interest in education and its impact on the development of the individual. This interest in education made him acutely aware of the importance of secondary education, and more specifically its relation to higher education. His interest naturally led him to a group of like-minded individuals, and on February 27, 1886, nineteen educators gathered at the Cook Hotel in Ann Arbor to "consider the feasibility of organizing and maintaining a teachers club."52 The group included faculty members from the University of Michigan and the Michigan State Normal School in Ypsilanti, as well as secondary school teachers and superintendents from throughout the state.
The minutes of that preliminary meeting record that "after discussion of the aims and scope the prospective club should have," a committee, which included Dewey, was commissioned to formulate articles of association. The aim, as Dewey's committee defined it, was "to secure an opportunity to discuss matters that pertain to our common work, with particular reference to high school and collegiate training." The articles went on to add, "we do not wish to antagonize any existing association; but simply to obtain a larger opportunity to discuss such topics... left untouched by associations that now exist."53
The Schoolmasters' Club provided Dewey with an important new forum for discussing his developing concepts of education. He also served as the organization's vice president in 1887 and 1888. At the first official meeting on May 1, 1886, Dewey was one of five speakers and presented the paper "Psychology in High Schools from the Standpoint of the College." He argued that psychology should be taught in high schools as a bond between other studies and a means of making the mind more open to new ideas as well as for the student's own self-awareness by calling attention to "the fact that he himself exists" and "is worthy of study." From the college standpoint, students taught psychology in high school would be better prepared and more receptive to ideas of higher learning. Most important, Dewey discussed how he felt psychology should be taught. He suggested that the role of the teacher should be "largely one of awakening, of stimulation" allowing the student to "realize the material in himself." He advocated teaching psychology in relation to literature, asking, "why should it be impossible to take some literary classic, and read it with especial attention to its psychological features–its treatment of perception, or imagination, of discursive thought, of impulses of choices?" Such a reading would concurrently introduce aesthetic awareness and an appreciation of style. Also of interest at that meeting is the discussion following Dewey's presentation in which William Payne lodged his protest against "the idea which is now held in certain localities, that the young mind can only be strengthened by original investigation in any subject. Certain things have been already learned, and a pupil's mind may grow by a study of the facts that have been given him." Certainly Payne wasn't yet ready for the progressive educational reform Dewey would later advocate.54
The four surviving charter members of the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club in 1936 at the 50th anniversary of the Club's founding. From left, John Dewey, Levi D. Wines, Benjamin L. D'Ooge, and Joseph H. Drake. (Michigan Schoolmasters' Club Publications, Bentley Historical Library.)
When Dewey returned in 1936 to address the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, the organization had grown to 2,100 members. He paused to take stock of education and continued his call for reform. He had, however, remained rooted to the philosophy he had developed at Michigan nearly fifty years earlier, stating, "A philosophy of education, a name that stands for the search for unifying aims and methods in education, is, in reality, a branch of the theory of social ideals and the institutions by which the ideals may be realized."55
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