Ah Mises. His book Socialism was the first book that actually made be strongly reconsider any support for socialism because of the problem of economic calculation.

But this series is someone(s) antagonist to progressivism interpreting it in the simplest fashion possible and arguing in favor of free market solutions.

Dewey believed his philosophy embodied the ideals of both individualism and socialism. It was individualistic, he said, not because it encouraged the child to develop his own unique interests and abilities, but “because it recognizes the formation of a certain character as the only genuine basis of right living.” His philosophy was “socialistic” because “this right character is to be formed by the influence of a certain form of institutional or community life upon the individual, and that the social organism through the school, as its organ, may determine ethical results.”

“A certain character as the only genuine basis of right living” is what conservatives, especially the more religions ones, argue for. Living in accordance with “god’s laws”, which is somehow never up for debate, is how this “right character is to be formed, by the influence of a certain form of institutional or community life upon the individual”. The only difference is that it’s not school, but church that does the formation. And the reason I personally object to the church has the basis of learning ethical behavior is because belief in god is not a reliable method of character development. It’s enough to look at the evangelical support for Donald Trump to prove my point.

Instead, Dewey saw the school as a way for children to practice being in larger society. It wasn’t enough to teach a kid the scientific method and release them into a religious world where lead-fueled feelings of power persuaded them that they knew god’s will, as if that were possible at all. Rather, the scientific method, the rigorous process itself, gave children, and then the men and women they grew into, a stable, repeatable source of evaluation for everything from propositional claims to personal actions. And then, with other Enlightenment assumption, this would result in a sustainable form of democracy.