Dewey Laboratory Schools began with a small experimental school that John Dewey opened at the University of Chicago in 1896, designed to test educational ideas the way a laboratory tests scientific ones. The school became one of the most studied experiments in the history of American education.
This article looks at that experiment closely: why Dewey wanted a school of his own, how a typical day worked, who taught there, why Dewey left, and how the wider idea of university laboratory schools developed afterward. It focuses on the institution rather than Dewey’s broader political philosophy.
Why a Philosopher Wanted His Own School
When Dewey arrived at the University of Chicago in 1894, he led a department that combined philosophy, psychology and pedagogy. He believed theories about learning should be tested in practice instead of argued only in lecture halls and books.
Medical schools had teaching hospitals and science departments had laboratories. Dewey argued that the study of education needed a comparable setting, where new ideas about curriculum and teaching could be tried, observed and revised with real children over time.
He also had personal reasons. Dewey and his wife, Alice Chipman Dewey, were raising young children and were dissatisfied with the schooling available to them. Alice, an educator herself, became closely involved in the school and later served as its principal, shaping its daily practice.
A Small Start in Rented Rooms
The school opened in January 1896 with only a small group of children and a very small staff. It moved several times in its early years, occupying rented houses and rooms near the university before settling into larger quarters as enrollment grew.
Funding was a constant concern. The university offered limited support, so tuition and donations from parents and sympathetic Chicago families helped keep the school running. Families who enrolled their children were often academics or professionals interested in new ideas about raising and teaching children.
Its official name changed over time, but it was widely known as the Dewey School. Despite the modest setting, it quickly attracted visitors, including teachers and reformers who wanted to see whether Dewey’s ideas could work with real classes rather than remain theory on the page.
Occupations at the Heart of the Day
The most distinctive feature of the school was its use of occupations: practical activities modeled on the basic work of human societies. Dewey saw these not as vocational training but as doorways into science, history, mathematics and language.
- Cooking, which led into chemistry, measurement and the study of food sources.
- Sewing and weaving, which opened questions about fibers, tools and trade.
- Carpentry and building, which required planning, arithmetic and cooperation.
- Gardening, which connected to botany, seasons and the history of farming.
A group of young children might build a model farm, then study what crops grew in the region and how families once lived there. Reading and writing grew from the need to record plans and findings rather than from isolated drills.
Older students moved toward more formal subject study, but the habit of starting from concrete problems remained. The aim was for students to understand how knowledge had developed from human needs, so that academic subjects felt like tools rather than arbitrary lessons.
How Learning Was Organized
The school’s curriculum was planned with care, even though visitors sometimes assumed it was improvised. Dewey and the staff developed a sequence that followed children’s growing capacities from early childhood into adolescence.
Grouping by Age and Ability
Children were placed in small groups, broadly organized by age but adjusted for development. Groups were far smaller than in typical public classrooms of the era. This allowed teachers to observe each child’s progress closely and adapt activities, an arrangement that critics noted would be hard to reproduce in crowded city schools with limited budgets and large classes.
History as the Story of Human Work
The history program traced how people met basic needs across time, beginning with simple societies and moving toward more complex ones. Younger children studied early forms of shelter, tools and food gathering through hands-on activities.
Older groups examined exploration, settlement and industry. The idea was that children would see their own society as the result of a long chain of human problem solving.
Teachers as Specialists and Researchers
Rather than one teacher covering every subject, the school used teachers with expertise in particular fields such as science, art or music.
Staff met regularly to discuss progress and adjust plans, keeping records of what worked. This collaborative, research-minded approach to teaching was unusual for its time and anticipated later ideas about teachers as reflective professionals.
Visitors, Reports and Public Attention
The school did not operate quietly. Dewey published reports describing its aims and methods, and the University of Chicago issued materials explaining the curriculum. Educators who visited carried descriptions back to their own schools and teacher training institutions.
Lectures Dewey gave to parents and supporters were published in 1899 as The School and Society, which drew heavily on the school’s experience. The book reached a wide audience and helped make the experiment known well beyond Chicago.
Decades later, two former teachers published a detailed account of the school’s daily work, offering one of the best records of how it actually functioned. Historians rely on such sources, while recognizing that participants writing in hindsight may have described the school more favorably than an outside observer would.
Why Dewey Left Chicago
The school’s period under Dewey’s direct leadership was short. Around the turn of the century, the university brought together several education programs, including a school associated with Francis W. Parker. This consolidation produced disputes over control, staffing and direction.
Tensions also involved Alice Dewey’s role as principal and disagreements with university leadership. Accounts differ on the exact balance of causes, but the conflicts were serious enough that Dewey resigned from the University of Chicago in 1904.
He moved to Columbia University in New York, where he taught for the rest of his academic career. He never again ran a school himself. The Chicago school continued under new leadership and eventually became part of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, which still operate today.
The Lab School Idea Spreads
Dewey’s experiment was not the only university-linked school, but it gave the laboratory school concept wide visibility. In the following decades, many universities and teacher training institutions opened schools on or near their campuses where faculty and student teachers could observe and test methods.
Some of these schools focused on demonstration, showing future teachers model lessons. Others focused on research, trying new curricula and studying results. The Lincoln School at Teachers College, opened in 1917, became one of the best-known experimental schools of the progressive era.
Over the twentieth century, many laboratory schools closed or changed character as universities shifted teacher training into public school placements and faced budget pressures. Those that survived often became selective private schools, raising questions about whether results from such settings apply to ordinary public classrooms.
Lessons and Limits of the Experiment
The Dewey School showed that an integrated, activity-based curriculum could be planned seriously and carried out with care. It demonstrated that practical work and academic learning need not be separate, and it treated teaching as a field worthy of systematic study.
Its limits were equally real. Historians and critics commonly point to several features that make the school hard to judge as a model:
- It served a small group of students, mostly from educated families.
- Its classes were far smaller than public school classes of the era.
- Its teachers were carefully chosen and met often to plan.
- Much of its record comes from people who worked there.
Critics have long asked whether its results reflected the method or simply the advantages of its setting and students.
The experiment also depended heavily on teacher skill. Occupations could become empty busywork without thoughtful guidance connecting them to real knowledge. Later schools that copied the activities without the planning often discovered this problem, a pattern that helps explain uneven results when progressive methods spread widely.
Where Laboratory Schools Stand Now
Today, laboratory schools still exist at a number of universities, though their purposes vary. Some emphasize research partnerships with education faculty, others focus on training future teachers, and some function mainly as high-quality schools for local families.
The broader research idea Dewey promoted has taken new forms. Partnerships between universities and public school districts, teacher research groups and design-based studies all aim to test teaching approaches in real classrooms rather than in theory alone.
Debates continue about how far findings from special settings can transfer. A method that works with small classes and expert staff may struggle elsewhere. That question, first raised about Dewey’s own school, remains central whenever educators evaluate promising new programs.
Questions to Ask About Experimental Schools Today
If you are considering a school that describes itself as experimental or research-based, the Dewey School’s history suggests useful questions. Ask how the school records and shares what it learns, and whether teachers have time to plan together and review results.
It is also worth asking how practical activities connect to academic goals. In a strong program, building, cooking or gardening leads to clear learning in science, mathematics or writing. In a weak one, the activities remain enjoyable but do not build lasting knowledge.
Teachers can borrow the lab school spirit without a special institution. Trying a new approach, observing carefully, keeping notes and discussing results with colleagues reflects the same habit Dewey hoped would make teaching a thoughtful, evidence-minded profession rather than a set of inherited routines.