The working-out of the possibilities of the experience (Interest of the experimentalism in educational philosophy) John Dewey is the author of an idea of begining specifics reconstructions, notably in philosophy. Such reconstruction involves the disappearance of the old division between theory and practice. I should like to show in my paper why that idea became necessary in philosophy of education (in the sense of a vital bond between the need to philosophize and the necessity to educate). As Dewey (2004) sees it, this reconstruction consist of replacing the solemn handling of general notions with an activity he calls inquiry. He conceived (2008) an inquiry’s logic, a kind of methodology that improves as it is utilized, and enabling to lead to particular knowledge as a result and guaranteed assertion of a particular enquiry. The enquiry turns on the multitude of existing structures and specific transactions in the field of human action as universe of experience. But there is not an “in itself experience“ unique and universal, there are only experiences : things enter in transaction and that plurality is a fact. It would be possible to describe the Dewey’s philosophy as a pluralism of transactions, it is what he himself called experimentalism. To do an experience entails always a situation, and a certain way of doing. Now, Education conceive intelligence as a deliberate reorganization of the experience content by the action processed. In that way, Education is the renewal of the meanings of experience by a passing on process (so as to grow its meaning and its recognized social content). The education is a process by which a community passes on to children its assets and its plans, so that to ensure its survival, to preserve its continuation and permitting its development (the school being the social institution where the children learn to live in society). In a pragmatic conception of knowledge, the social dimension is first with regard to both the process of acquisition and the aim of learning. I propose to think about the reconstruction in education in terms of institutions : the effects of the educational and didactic institutions must be studied according to the type of individuals that they foster. Within an anthropological approach, my inquiry (2007) analyzed the Freinet’s school in Vence (France), and I saw the organization of an environment that manifests itself in its great institutions. Didactics relations are transactions in an environment. To borrow Freinet’s phrase, the classroom is a place for making live the republic to the children. From an ethical point of view, it means that students have to take responsibilities in an environment which is marked by their contributions.

The educational philosophy has to contribute to elaborate didactics systems, that we must experiment without to be limited by the actual schooling forms. As Dewey sees it, the intelligence is an energy which reforms all which obstructs the social well-being, and it opens a new conception of the place of reason in the experience, which carries within itself practical principles : the work of reason is valued according to its ability to come over some changes in the real world.