Experience & Education is the best concise statement on education ever written by John Dewey, considered by many the pre-eminent educational theorist of the 20th century.

Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education (Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received.

In Experience & Education, Dewey analyses both "traditional" and "progressive" education, insisting that both are inadequate and miseducative because neither applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. He also outlines his philosophy of experience and its relation to education.

He particularly urges all teachers and educators to think in terms of the deep and larger issues that span all forms of education rather than in terms of divisive "isms" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, one that offers a true learning situation that is historical and social, orderly and dynamic.