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.
Asking for a quote source is skeptical?
The information revealed in Gatto’s work should have hit national scandal level, long ago.
For a brief encapsulation, his “History Tour” is excellent:
http://johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm
It was interesting to me to read about how, as a school teacher in New York, Gatto had to skirt, bend, or even break the established policies to facilitate the actual education of his students.
That from his book “A Different Kind of Teacher...”
http://www.amazon.com/Different-Kind-Teacher-American-Schooling/dp/1893163407