John Dewey's HUMAN NATURE AND CONDUCT is a book that has the potential to change the world for better. This book establishes the guidelines for social psychology and helps people solve their problems and get rid of their hangups. It is a must read for anyone and everyone who needs to find meaning in life.

No, not "The Matrix" Hollywood brought us, but the cultural matrix: where traditional logic and abstract thought have a tendency to breakdown. Life is like that. As James would remind us, this is not a "block universe" (what non-philosopher/non-scientist ever thought it was?) and so our ideas often end up bursting under the pressure of more and more experience. How is logic to cope with this? Dewey is not a magician, but in this book he sets out (in rather abstruce, brier-patch prose) to give us a radical new tool kit. If you enjoy seriously thinking about thinking, this book is for you. Bring your coffee, though. Dewey's writing style is rather soporific; and weighing in at over 500 pages, this tome can even knockout the most experienced philosophical heavyweight. That said, I encourage you to shuck your gloves and take a swing!

I am a education major at Macon State college. John Dewey's book is simply a summary of three talks Dewey gave to parnets and students at the University of Chicago Laboratory school in 1896. The book covers topics that are often very diverse and shares conflicting political and philosophic positions in education. I found this book hard to read and very wordy. I did not enjoy the read at all.

I liked the book overall. The content was excellent, and the educational ideas which Mr. Dewey expressed, are terrific. To me, the style of the writing was the problem. The book was written in 1899, and the wordy, pedantic style was common at that time. The main ideas in the book are hands-on education, and students' learning by doing. The first three chapters were taken from a lecture by Mr. Dewey that he delivered three years after he opened his University Elementary School in Chicago. The fourth chapter began by telling some of the financial information about the school. The average cost per student was $120. Mr. Dewey thought that advances in education were not keeping pace with advancements in society. He found it interesting that fourth graders in Moline, Illinois, did not realize that the Mississippi River in their geography books, had anything to do with the stream of water that flowed by their homes. This is a fairly small book, but I recommend The School and Society, if you can find the time to read it several times.

If this book doesn't put you to sleep, nothing will. Full of vague and windy generalities, and incrdible repitition, you won't find out much of anything. But you will be bored.