Introduction to Part II

Human Nature and Conduct (1922) does not appear to be overtly about education at first glance. For one, Dewey uses the term education sparingly in the book. And, what is more, in terms of its scholarly reception, HNC has not commonly been considered within the central works of Dewey’s corpus on education. However, notably, the conclusion of HNC, a book on morals, is that “morals is education,” suggesting that the upshot of Dewey’s argument for education writ large is significant. The chapters in this section illuminate how Human Nature and Conduct is intertwined with Dewey’s theory of education. Human Nature and Conduct was published in the time period between the publication of two of Dewey’s major works on education, Democracy and Education (1916) and Experience and Education (1938).