“Education should aim at destroying free will… so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished.”
— Johann Gottlieb Fichte, *Addresses to the German Nation*, 1808

Imagine a school where children are intentionally cut off from their families. Where reading is seen as dangerous. The goal of education isn’t to raise thinkers but to produce obedience. This is not a dark fiction. It is the blueprint laid out by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a German philosopher whose ideas still echo through the walls of modern education.

And yet, not far behind, another vision for education would emerge, a radically different one. John Dewey envisioned schools as miniature democracies where learning was grounded in experience, creativity, and inquiry. Schools would be a place to question, explore, and develop a sense of self and society. Sadly, Dewey’s vision didn’t win. The Fichtean model did. And we’re still living with the consequences. Still, Dewey’s ideas are alive and so relevant. We can learn, listen, and press for change.

Two Forks in the Road: Dewey vs. Fichte

The early 1800s were a pivotal moment in the shaping of modern education. In Prussia, Fichte delivered his *Addresses to the German Nation* after the national humiliation of Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Jenna. The German population struggled under Napoleon’s rule. His prescription: rebuild the state by raising generations of obedient, loyal citizens through a strict national education system. His vision involved total separation from family, constant control by the state, and delayed literacy to prevent independent thought. His ideas were nationalistic, authoritarian, and unapologetically anti-individual.

Across the ocean, John Dewey would later advocate for something fundamentally different. To him, schools would not be mega-efficient factories of deadened critical thought. Instead, schools were to be laboratories for life. He believed students should learn by doing. They could and should develop as individuals within a community where dialogue, curiosity, and critical thinking were at the center. Egalitarian education, for Dewey, was the foundation of a functioning democracy.

However, Fichte’s blueprint ultimately shaped the architecture of mass schooling. Why?

How the Industrial Model Beat the Democratic One

Fichte’s model made its way into the U.S. through the hands of Horace Mann, who visited Prussia in the 1830s. Mann admired the order and structure of the Prussian schools. He appreciated their efficiency and their systemization. He took notes. While he did criticize their authoritarianism, he still adopted key features: centralized curricula, teacher training institutes, and compulsory schooling.

He believed education could instill a positive moral character, obedience, and a work ethic. This subtle shift in language, from speaking about people in human terms to referring to us in industrial terms, is a turning point. The goal shifts entirely from the ideals of liberating individuals to shaping productive citizens.

Then came Frederick Taylor, the father of “scientific management.” Taylor wasn’t an educator, but his ideas about maximizing efficiency crept into schools. Bell schedules. Graded classrooms. Repetitive tasks. All are designed to mirror the factory floor. Standardization reigned. Teachers became foremen. Students became products.

By the early 20th century, the American education system was no longer primarily about *becoming*. It was about *producing*.

Enter Dewey: The Counterpoint That Never Became the Norm

Dewey wasn’t naive. He saw what was happening. And he resisted.

He proposed a model of education that was responsive to life itself. Students would engage in real-world problems. Classrooms would function as democratic communities. Conversations for discovery, connection, active investigation, and experimentation would replace rote drills. Dewey believed learning should be as dynamic as the world outside school walls.

However influential Dewey’s progressive ideas were, they were never fully embraced due to a complicated mix of philosophical, practical, and systemic challenges. His emphasis on student-centered, experiential learning did not go well with the entrenched “traditional” values, which centered on rote memorization, or what Freire would later call “The Banking Method” of teaching and teacher control. Critics feared that Dewey’s ideas would lead to a loss of order and discipline and that it would de-emphasize core academic skills. They feared this would potentially leave students unprepared, or maybe they feared it would actually prepare them and awaken them to action.

Implementing Dewey’s model was also logistically demanding. Project-based learning, community engagement, and hands-on exploration require more resources, training, and flexibility than most systems allow. Assessing students in this model doesn’t fit cleanly into standardized testing formats, making it hard to measure and scale.

Misunderstandings didn’t help either. Some interpreted progressive education as permission for unstructured chaos, confusing freedom with a lack of guidance. They could not see how this model’s trust in teachers and students and the nonlinear nature of egalitarian learning could work. I.E., their visions could only imagine the worst outcomes; they could only expect the worst of people’s natures. Others attempted watered-down versions of Dewey’s model without grasping its core principles. This resulted in poor outcomes and, I would guess, some deep feeling of frustration.

Systemic pressures, especially the rise of accountability metrics and high-stakes testing, further sidelined Dewey’s ideas. Political and cultural forces, including a conservative backlash against perceived secular or liberal values, also played a role in resisting change. It is not new to the United States that, while church and state, as well as church and public education, should remain separate, many people cannot abide by this principle.

As Cold War anxieties and global competition mounted, especially after the launch of Sputnik, the first satellite launched by the USSR, in 1957, the U.S. doubled down on standards because they believed this is what would help them catch up. Creativity took a back seat to performance metrics. Critical thinking was sidelined for compliance. Dewey lost. And we lost as well, creativity is key to innovation in every field.

What We Got Instead: Standardized Dreams

The “Standards Movement” that emerged in the late 20th century was the culmination of everything Fichte set in motion, and Dewey tried to resist. No Child Left Behind, Common Core, and high-stakes testing reinforced a model of education that treats students like contraptions on an assembly line.

And the most ironic of all: this model didn’t just win out because it was more effective. It won because it aligned with broader social goals, namely, control, efficiency, and the production of compliant labor.

When schools train students to obey, to meet expectations rather than question them, to fear mistakes rather than explore possibilities, that is not a neutral structure. It is ideological. And it is powerful.

The Case for Remembering Dewey (and Shoving Past Fichte)

And yet, despite all of this, Dewey’s influence lingers. His legacy lives on in the growing interest in experiential learning, critical thinking, and alternative educational models. But his vision of schools as engines of democracy and human potential still waits in the wings, ready to be employed at large.

Today, there’s a hunger for something else. You can see it in the unschooling movement, in how Montessori and Waldorf classrooms are flourishing (both systems developed at the turn of the 20th century), in project-based learning, and even in homeschooling co-ops. You can feel it in every parent who knows their kid is more than a test score, who understands that their child holds a particular capacity of genius in them, and in every teacher who longs to teach a philomathic love of lifelong learning.

And we can trace some of these movements, at least in the U.S., back to Dewey. And to Freire. And to Chomsky. And to hooks. And to Ken Robinson. And to Gatto. They all pointed to the same truth: education is not about molding obedience. It’s about awakening the mind.

“Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin

So Where Do We Go From Here?

If you’re reading this, you might already be feeling the tension between what education is, where it looks to be headed, and what it could be. That’s good. That’s the starting point.

The history of education isn’t static. We can think of the educational system as a series of decisions, sometimes quiet, sometimes loud, that shaped how we learn and live. We can choose differently at any point. We can resist the flattening of minds. We can build curious, creative, collaborative, and free spaces.

Most importantly, we can advocate and model that freedom for the next generation.

We don’t need permission to learn.