Abstract: John Dewey was the pioneer of the American progressive education movement， and his educational ideas shaped the direction and course of education in the United States in the twentieth century. His vigorous educational experiments at the University of Chicago coincided with Max Weber’s famous American trip in 1904. This paper aims to explain the core of Dewey’s educational theory—the concept of interest. Dewey’s view of interest took shape at the beginning of the prestigious Laboratory School he founded and it became a repeatedly visited major theme in his later years. The concept is the key to understand Dewey’s thought about the relationship between the individual， society, culture and civilization. Dewey’s view of interest includes three levels: the distinction between interest and pleasure， the relationship between interest and will in individual actions， and how interest unfolds in children’s daily tasks. Articulating these aspects helps us understand Dewey’s centrality to the progressive movement and pragmatist tradition. Dewey’s thought leads to a novel interpretation of “progress” in modern society， in which Dewey’s archetype-actor whose ultimate interest is to create the meaning of action rather than to preserve a given cultural value. This paper also places Dewey in the light of the critical observation of pragmatism by some prominent continental European social thinkers.

Key words: interest, action, John Dewey, Max Weber, pragmatism