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John Dewey and the Mutual Influence of Democracy and Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2009

David Fott
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Abstract

For Dewey education is the growth of mental powers, where “growth” has no fixed content but involves the increasing harmonization of individuals with society. That harmonization must respect the uniqueness of each person and his capacity for intelligence. Education aims to develop a model democratic society, which Dewey sees as similar to an ideal community of scientific inquirers. That comparison is highly questionable, however. Dewey's curricular emphases include science, geography, history, literature, and fine arts, the last two of which promote a greater appreciation for all of human life—provided society is not too separated into classes. Related to social division is what he considers the false problems of epistemology, with its separation between mind and world. But Dewey's failure to think more rigorously about the relation of philosophy to science makes his philosophy a poor bulwark against postmodernism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , Winter 2009 , pp. 7 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2009

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References

1 References to Dewey's writings are to the critical (print) edition, The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969–1991), and published in three series as The Early Works (EW), The Middle Works (MW), and The Later Works (LW). These designations are followed by volume and page number. “LW 1.14,” for example, refers to The Later Works, vol. 1, p. 14.

2 Parenthetical references are to the page numbers of MW 9, which contains Democracy and Education.

3 Human Nature and Conduct (1922), in MW 14.225.

4 See “Does Human Nature Change?” (1938), in LW 13.286–87.

5 See Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, essay 2, sec. 12.

6 Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), in MW 12.181.

7 See Dewey's, contribution to Encyclopaedia and Dictionary of Education (1921)Google Scholar, in MW 13.404–5.

8 Experience and Education (1938), in LW 13.19–20.

9 The Public and Its Problems (1927), in LW 2.329.

10 The Need for a Philosophy of Education (1934), in LW 9.203.

11 Nichols, James H. Jr., “Pragmatism and the U.S. Constitution,” in Confronting the Constitution, ed. Bloom, Allan (Washington: AEI Press, 1990), 382Google Scholar. I have profited much from Nichols's essay.

12 Experience and Education, in LW 13.19–20.

13 Ethics (with James H. Tufts) (1908), in MW 5.17.

14 Plato Republic 450c–451a.

15 Need for a Philosophy of Education, in LW 9.196.

16 Freedom and Culture (1939), in LW 13.135.

17 Ibid., 156.

18 See Schools of To-Morrow (1915), chaps 4 and 5, in MW 8.

19 See Experience and Education, in LW 13, for Dewey's fullest attempt to separate himself from the position that education should leave children to act on their own desires.

20 Experience and Nature, 2nd ed. (1929), in LW 1.9, 211–25, 259–62. The first edition was published in 1925.

21 Ibid.,18.

22 Ibid., 52.

23 Dewey here implicitly draws upon his own seminal article “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology” (1896), in EW 5.

24 For Nietzsche see, e.g., Beyond Good and Evil.

25 The Future of Liberalism (1935), in LW 11.290. See also “Liberalism and Social Action” (1935), in LW 11.26; “Introduction to Problems of Men: The Problems of Men and the Present State of Philosophy” (1946), in LW 15.162–63.

26 “The Future of Liberalism,” in LW 11.291.

27 Ibid., 292.

28 German Philosophy and Politics (1915), in MW 8.201.

29 “Pragmatic America” (1922), in MW 13.308–9.

30 See, e.g., How We Think (1910), in MW 6.