Please provide a source for that quote.
Here's the full quote:
“You can’t make Socialists out of individualists — children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent.” --John Dewey
Dewey didn't want children to learn how to read independently, which is why he re-introduced to Columbia Teachers College "whole language reading," where children are taught to read words as pictographs, as in Chinese, rather than phonetically.
This is a major reason why children graduate from high school without being able to read.
Dewey wanted young children to work together to guess at the meaning of texts. He wasn't interested in the stories or teaching reading. He wanted them to work together, and be "interdependent."
The full story of American Education is far more nefarious.