Here we see the early genesis of the current idea in today's American schools that the children there should be promoting causes, writing public figures and otherwise "participating" in the arena of social and political issues. Another progressive educator, W.H. Kilpatrick, was likewise exhilarated to find that his books were being used in Soviet teacher training programs.
Kilpatrick was also delighted to learn that the three Rs were not being taught directly but were being learned "incidentally from tasks at hand." Here was the basic principle behind today's "discovery learning."
Even as visiting progressive educators from America were gushing over the use of their ideas in Soviet schools, the bad educational consequences were turning the Soviet government leadership against these fads. The commissar who had imposed progressive education on Soviet schools was removed shortly after John Dewey's visit.
When the romantic notions of progressive education didn't work, the Soviet and Chinese governments were able to get rid of them because they were not hamstrung by teachers' unions. They were able to restore "teaching to the test"-- which was not very romantic, but it worked.
The "barriers between school and society," which Dewey lamented, existed for a reason. Schools are not a microcosm of society, any more than an eye is a microcosm of the body. The eye is a specialized organ which does something that no other part of the body does. That is its whole significance.
You don't use your eyes to lift packages or steer automobiles. Specialized organs have important things to do in their own specialties. So do schools, which need to stick to their special work as well, not become social or political gadflies.