John Dewey in Turkey: An Educational Mission
Abstract
One of the great philosophers and educators of the 20th century, the American John Dewey, visited the newly established Republic of Turkey in the summer of 1924. This article deals with that visit, made on the invitation of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, first president and founder of the Turkish Republic. The visit was not intended as an analogy to Plato's visit to Sicily in order to materialize his utopian dream; Dewey was not a utopian and neither was his host. Turkey had just barely survived a brutal war of independence against Greece, Great Britain and France. What remained of the original Ottoman Empire was its heartland, Anatolia, with its new capital, the ancient village of Ancyra, now known as Ankara.
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