George Sylvester Counts (b. 1889, d. 1974) was an American educator and influential education theorist.

Influences
Counts' first position was head of the Department of Education at Delaware College, then as a professor at Harris Teachers College in 1918. Counts taught at the University of Washington in 1919, then Yale in 1920. In 1924 he published The Principles of Education, (1924) with J. Crosby Chapman. During this period Counts favored Dewey's progressive education model of child-centered learning, and this book provided a broad overview of education from that perspective.

Profession
After publishing two comparative studies of the Soviet education system, The New Russian Primer. (1931) and The Soviet Challenge to America. (1931), Counts was invited to address to the Progressive Education Association. His papers, delivered over three separate speeches, formed the core of the book, Dare the School Build a New Social Order, published in 1932. from modern educators.

Dare the School Build a New Social Order?
From 1942 to 1944 Counts served as New York State chairman of the American Labor Party, and after he established the Liberal Party in New York, he ran as its candidate for the United State Senate in 1952. Counts was the chairman of that party from 1954 to 1959. He was a member of the National Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1940 to 1973, and was President of the American Federation of Teachers from 1939 to 1942.

Bibliography of writings on Counts

Harold Rugg
Theodore Brameld
Charles Beard
Education theory