John Dewey was not a philosopher of education in the now-traditional sense of a doctor of philosophy who examines educational ends, means, and controversies through the disciplinary lenses of epistemology, ethics, and political theory, or of agenda-driven schools such as existentialism, feminism, and critical theory. Rather, Dewey was both an educator and a philosopher, and he saw in each discipline reconstructive possibilities for the other, famously characterizing "philosophy ... as the general theory of education" (1985, p. 338). Dewey wanted each discipline to overcome its tendency to alienate knowledge and theory from experience and reconstruct itself as an enterprise aimed at personal and collective well-being. That disciplinary ethos is articulated in this issue of "Education and Culture" by authors who, like Dewey, often work at the intersection of philosophy and education and who have considered the significance of children and childhood for both disciplines. Two interrelated, paradigmatic figures emerge from these essays, neither of which can be found directly in Dewey's writing, but neither of which, perhaps, would be articulated so widely or so compellingly today without him: the Child as Philosopher and the Philosopher as Child. The two are mutually dependent in that their growth depends on their encounter in mutual practice. The possibility of that encounter is perhaps the most significant reconstructive possibility to emerge from the mutual encounter of the disciplines of education and philosophy that occupied so much of Dewey's thought. (Contains 11 notes.)