Joined the Dewey Center Staff in  1977 Currently Working on: Class Lecture Notes - electronic publication of notes of John Dewey's Lectures Reflections: Technologically, the Center for Dewey Studies has passed through many changes.  When I began working here, in August 1977, we were midway through the publication of John Dewey's Collected Works.  It was all print, print, print in those days - proofreading from galley proofs, then page proofs.  We created indexes the old-fashioned way by using index cards.  The IBM display writer came in, then personal computers, and eventually we became fully computerized.  The print edition of The Collected Works was put into electronic form.

Harriet Furst Simon Textual Editor Ed. M. Education .

After we finished the thirty-seven volumes of The Collected Works with a cumulative index, we moved on to John Dewey's correspondence, which is only in electronic form (although we hope someday to produce a multi-volume selected print edition).   What hasn't changed much is the quality of work.  We've always prided ourselves on being as careful and persnickety as possible.  Errors are inevitable but we try to keep them to a minimum and correct whenever possible. Dewey's relevance never ceases to amaze me.  So many times, when we're proofing, I am struck by something he says about the economy, about war, about habits, that applies to today as much as to the time in which he wrote.  One of my favorite quotations: "What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children." The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953, edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967-1991), MW 1:5. Dewey is an inspiring role model.  The older I get, the more I appreciate him.  I particularly appreciate his generosity, his ability to keep chugging on despite numerous blows, and his striving to live according to his beliefs.  When he was 77 and took on the chairmanship of the Trotsky Commission of Inquiry, he said: "Speaking finally not for the Commission but for myself, I had hoped that a chairman might be found for these preliminary investigations whose experience better fitted him for the difficult and delicate task to be performed. But I have given my life to the work of education, which I have conceived to be that of public enlightenment in the interests of society. If I finally accepted the responsible post I now occupy, it was because I realized that to act otherwise would be to be false to my life work." The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953, edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967-1991), LW 11:309. And, of course, this is a great place to work, as you've seen - we've been lucky to have a good group of people and, although the composition changes, a group that is congenial. Back to Staff Home.