Transcript The Arts and Education

Democracy and Education
Week 2:
Dewey’s Democratic Conception of Education
Each generation is inclined to educate its young so as to get along in
the present world instead of with a view to the proper end of
education: the promotion of the best possible realization of
humanity as humanity. (Dewey, 7.5)
John Dewey
• For Dewey society should not be considered a
failure simply because it does not fit with notions
of an ideal society.
• He is actively non-Platonic in terms of his
challenging of classes and externally or
hierarchically imposed aims.
• For him, society is made up of many smaller
societies with conflicting interests, which
compete for accommodation.
• Cities, for example, are ‘congeries of loosely
associated societies’.
Congeries of Loosely Associated
Societies
• ‘Within every larger social organization there are numerous
minor groups: not only political subdivisions, but industrial,
scientific, religious, associations. There are political parties
with differing aims, social sets, cliques, gangs, corporations,
partnerships, groups bound closely together by ties of
blood, and so on in endless variety. In many modern states
and in some ancient, there is great diversity of populations,
of varying languages, religions, moral codes, and traditions.
From this standpoint, many a minor political unit, one of
our large cities, for example, is a congeries of loosely
associated societies, rather than an inclusive and
permeating community of action and thought.’ (Dewey, 7.1)
Ideal Society?
• ‘If it is said that such organizations are not
societies because they do not meet the ideal
requirements of the notion of society, the
answer, in part, is that the conception of
society is then made so "ideal" as to be of no
use, having no reference to facts; and in part,
that each of these organizations, no matter
how opposed to the interests of other groups,
has something of the praiseworthy qualities of
"Society" which hold it together.’ (ibid.)
Societies Which Actually Exist
• Dewey’s pragmatic and realist political emphasis
was on ‘societies which actually exist’.
• His aspirations for democratic society attempted
to take advantage of the differing interests of
individuals and groups and use them to the
progressive benefit of society as a whole.
• ‘We cannot set up, out of our heads, something
we regard as an ideal society. We must base our
conception upon societies which actually exist, in
order to have any assurance that our ideal is a
practicable one.’ (ibid.)
The Elimination of Distance as the
Expansion of Horizons
• For Dewey, breaking down boundaries between groups
helped to expand the productive context that exists
within society.
• ‘Every expansive era in the history of mankind has
coincided with the operation of factors which have
tended to eliminate distance between peoples and
classes previously hemmed off from one another. Even
the alleged benefits of war, so far as more than alleged,
spring from the fact that conflict of peoples at least
enforces intercourse between them and thus
accidentally enables them to learn from one another,
and thereby to expand their horizons.’ (ibid.)
Democracy and Education
• The relationship between democracy and education is
clarified succinctly by Dewey when he writes:
‘The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar
fact. The superficial explanation is that a government
resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless
those who elect and who obey their governors are
educated. Since a democratic society repudiates the
principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in
voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created
only by education.’ (Dewey, 7.2)
Plato’s Undemocratic Education
• In contrast to this he challenges (but also accepts the benefits of)
Plato’s preferred society and education:
‘We cannot better Plato's conviction that an individual is happy and
society well organized when each individual engages in those activities
for which he has a natural equipment, nor his conviction that it is the
primary office of education to discover this equipment to its possessor
and train him for its effective use. But progress in knowledge has made
us aware of the superficiality of Plato's lumping of individuals and their
original powers into a few sharply marked-off classes; it has taught us
that original capacities are indefinitely numerous and variable. It is but
the other side of this fact to say that in the degree in which society has
become democratic, social organization means utilization of the
specific and variable qualities of individuals, not stratification by
classes.’ (Dewey, 7.3)
Economic and National borders to the
Social Ends of Education
Economic and national differences put limits on the ability for
democracy and democratic education to reach its full potential. His
emphasis on common ends is similar to Plato’s focus on the ‘good’ but
for him must come from the ground up:
‘Is it possible for an educational system to be conducted by a national
state and yet the full social ends of the educative process not be
restricted, constrained, and corrupted? Internally, the question has to
face the tendencies, due to present economic conditions, which split
society into classes some of which are made merely tools for the
higher culture of others. Externally, the question is concerned with the
reconciliation of national loyalty, of patriotism, with superior devotion
to the things which unite men in common ends, irrespective of
national political boundaries.’ (Dewey, 7.5)
Undesirable Society
Dewey sets down his definitions for desirable and undesirable
societies as follows:
• ‘An undesirable society, in other words, is one which
internally and externally sets up barriers to free intercourse
and communication of experience. A society which makes
provision for participation in its good of all its members on
equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its
institutions through interaction of the different forms of
associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must
have a type of education which gives individuals a personal
interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of
mind which secure social changes without introducing
disorder.’ (Dewey, 7.S)
Aims as facilitative
• The aims of education in terms of a desirable society would be to
facilitate individual interest and positive social functions:
• ‘Aims mean acceptance of responsibility for the observations,
anticipations, and arrangements required in carrying on a function - whether farming or educating. Any aim is of value so far as it
assists observation, choice, and planning in carrying on activity from
moment to moment and hour to hour; if it gets in the way of the
individual's own common sense ( as it will surely do if imposed from
without or accepted on authority ) it does harm.’ (Dewey, 8.3)
• This is as opposed to externally imposed aims (see next slide..):
Externally imposed aims
‘The vice of externally imposed ends has deep roots. Teachers receive them from superior
authorities; these authorities accept them from what is current in the community. The
teachers impose them upon children. As a first consequence, the intelligence of the teacher
is not free; it is confined to receiving the aims laid down from above. Too rarely is the
individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on
methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to close quarters
with the pupil's mind and the subject matter. This distrust of the teacher's experience is then
reflected in lack of confidence in the responses of pupils. The latter receive their aims
through a double or treble external imposition, and are constantly confused by the conflict
between the aims which are natural to their own experience at the time and those in which
they are taught to acquiesce. Until the democratic criterion of the intrinsic significance of
every growing experience is recognized, we shall be intellectually confused by the demand
for adaptation to external aims.’ (Dewey, 8.3)
A True Aim
• True aims must be related directly to actual experience of those being
educated in that moment.
• For Dewey, focusing on the present in terms of aims is, perhaps
paradoxically, better for the future.
• ‘A true aim is thus opposed at every point to an aim which is imposed
upon a process of action from without. The latter is fixed and rigid; it is not
a stimulus to intelligence in the given situation, but is an externally
dictated order to do such and such things. Instead of connecting directly
with present activities, it is remote, divorced from the means by which it is
to be reached. Instead of suggesting a freer and better balanced activity, it
is a limit set to activity. In education, the currency of these externally
imposed aims is responsible for the emphasis put upon the notion of
preparation for a remote future and for rendering the work of both
teacher and pupil mechanical and slavish.’ (Dewey, 8.S)
Definition of Culture
• Dewey defines culture and its relation to education as follows:
• ‘…a social efficiency which is defined in terms of rendering external
service to others is of necessity opposed to the aim of enriching the
meaning of experience, while a culture which is taken to consist in
an internal refinement of a mind is opposed to a socialized
disposition. But social efficiency as an educational purpose should
mean cultivation of power to join freely and fully in shared or
common activities. This is impossible without culture, while it
brings a reward in culture, because one cannot share in intercourse
with others without learning -- without getting a broader point of
view and perceiving things of which one would otherwise be
ignorant. And there is perhaps no better definition of culture than
that it is the capacity for constantly expanding the range and
accuracy of one's perception of meanings.’ (Dewey, 9.S)
References
Chapters 7-9 from Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and Education
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/dewey/d_e/chapter07.ht
ml
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/dewey/d_e/chapter08.ht
ml
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/dewey/d_e/chapter09.ht
ml
Whole text here: http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/dewey.html
Ryan, A. (1995) John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism London: Norton
Westbrook, R.B. (1991) John Dewey and American Democracy London: Cornell
University Press