Radical Dewey: Deweyan Pedagogy in Mexico, 1915–1923

Abstract

From 1915 to 1923, the pedagogy of John Dewey became an important pillar of anarchist and socialist projects of education in Mexico. These radical experiments were based on the belief in an open-ended world amenable to the intervention of a new subject of modernity whose unconstrained operations created rather than disrupted social order. Ironically, these experiments paved the way for the appropriation of Dewey by an emerging national state that posited homogenization, the eradication of difference, and the displacement of Native and religious worlds as necessary to create a shared set of values necessary for the operations of this subject.