University of Chicago Laboratory Schools

The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools is a private, co-educational day school in Chicago, Illinois. It is affiliated with the University of Chicago. Almost half of the students have a parent who is on the faculty or staff of the University.
The Laboratory Schools were founded by American educator John Dewey in 1896 in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. Calvin Brainerd Cady was director of the music department under Dewey. The school began as a progressive educational institution that goes from nursery school through 12th grade. This experiment was an integral part of the University of Chicago during the years 1896 to 1904, and was an undertaking which aimed to work put, through the University, a school system which should be an organic whole from the kindergarten to the university. Conducted under the management and supervision of the University's Department of Philosophy, Psychology, and Education, it bore the same relation to the work of that department that a laboratory bears to biology, physics, or chemistry. Like any such laboratory it had two main purposes: to exhibit, test, verify, and criticize theoretical statements and principles; and to add to the sum of facts and principles in its special line. For it was part of the philosophical and psychological theory he entertained that ideas, even as ideas, are incomplete and tentative until they are employed in application to objects in action and are thus developed, corrected, and tested. The need of a laboratory was indicated. John Dewey, when called to be the head of the department in 1894, had arrived at certain philosophical and psychological ideas which he desired to test in practical application. In consequence, it was labeled as the Laboratory School.

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