Dewey's vision for schooling can perhaps be described as an early positive education, a term now attributed to programmes derived from positive psychology. Positive psychology's goals for education share many of Dewey's ideas about community-mindedness and the role of education in nurturing citizenship. Having emerged from positive psychology, however, current programmes under the umbrella of positive education differ in that they are grounded in science rather than philosophy and are sometimes criticised for being morally neutral and individualistic. In this paper, we argue that the work of Dewey may address these challenges by contributing an understanding of the pragmatic connection between philosophy and psychology, as well as a more social view of education through occupations.