Abstract

This study investigates Dewey’s concept of education – learning through experience, equal teacher–student activity and freedom of choice – and traces its reception in Georgia. Archival and policy analysis show early scholarly engagement with Dewey, then post‑Soviet institutional collapse, the removal of pedagogy from national curricula, the imposition of poorly adapted foreign reforms, and a consequent erosion of teachers’ theoretical knowledge and conceptual clarity. The author argues these factors, compounded by the pandemic, halted progress and entrenched systemic failure, while pausing recent reforms has at least temporarily prevented further harm.