John Dewey made a breakthrough case for universal education with publication of “Democracy and Education" (1916). The power of his idea is found in the highly symbiotic relationship he advanced between widespread public education and the growth and development of democracy.
Dewey’s vision was progressive. He believed that desirable societies are ones in which the free exchange of ideas and experiences is encouraged and that such intercourse is improved when, through public education, it is better informed and available to greater numbers of people. Democracy is one expression of this free exchange of ideas in which candidates and policies are chosen by an informed citizenry. Too bad John Dewey's ideas were never consistently embraced by the U.S. teaching establishment over the years.
Zakaria (2004) believes that the free exchange of goods and services in modern capitalism and the rule of law it creates is a necessary precursor to democratization. In this context, Zakaria would also say that education is essential for building an independent, competitive and technically astute business class that can create wealth and gain independence from the state. As noted earlier, I also contend that education is essential for creating a moral and ethical framework through which capitalism or any social construct can be governed using moral suasion and social opprobrium.
Is it any wonder that Zakaria invokes Schrag (2004) in worrying that California has not built a new public college campus in 30 years, despite a doubling of the population, but has constructed an additional 20 prisons over the past 20 years? The sight of Dewey rolling in his grave is too easily conjured, especially as one considers that few prisons invest the resources needed to train and educate the 96 percent of convicts who ultimately return to society.
Dewey’s enlightened view of education clearly supports the growth and development of capitalism, although it best serves a modern capitalism of ideas and entrepreneurialism than it does a traditional view of mercantile capitalism found in, say, 19th century Britain or even the developing-nation sweatshops of today. After all, it is quite unlikely that Nike or Reebok would welcome Deweyian notions of widespread public education and resulting democratization among piecemeal employees working for their sweatshop subcontractors in East Asia and Latin America?
It is said that Jefferson once said, "An informed citizenry is the bulwark of a democracy.” He is also credited with saying, “Information is the currency of democracy." No matter the source, and there are arguments among historians as to the author and genesis of these sentiments, both quotes are staples of the Jeffersonian language of democracy and central to Dewey’s contention. Both statements underscore why and how education and democracy are inextricably linked. Both statements suggest that given an informed choice, people will generally make rational decisions focused on building and protecting society and avoiding self-destructive acts such as needless wars.
In this sense, education serves as a rich source of oxygen in the blood supply of modern democracy that is needed to preserve and advance the species. Indeed, the less informed the populace, in Dewey’s view, the more subject it is to deception and the diminution of democracy. The less equipped the polity to question its leaders’ actions, the more liable those leaders are to make decisions based on selfish and not collective interests and, in doing so, place society’s future at risk.
This essential connection between democracy and education was certainly not new early in the 20th century. Dewey was greatly inspired by, in Sowell’s (2002) terms, the unconstrained humanistic vision of Rousseau and Voltaire. Indeed, these leading thinkers of the French Enlightenment were themselves influenced by Plato’s “Republic” and, with it, the sense that the sheer accessibility and openness of the democratic ideal was central to its own preservation.
Having said this, Dewey’s was a remarkably constrained in keeping with Sowell’s frame of reference. He well understood the darker side of human nature and considered education to be its salvation. Importantly, he believed education was needed to perpetuate the culture and to continually heal and replenish society. This is where Dewey seems most constrained in his vision. He underscores one of Sowell’s tenets of the constrained vision, believing that societies learn best collectively from generation to generation and not at the knee of learned elites.
Interestingly, Dewey’s world was one ruled by learned elites in which most citizens remained outside the embrace of public education. Additionally, much public education of the time was rooted in memorization and rote learning and not on independent problem solving. Of course, Dewey believed that higher-level, critical thinking skills that liberated and democratized people and societies. It is no surprise, therefore, that rote, repetitive learning is the staple of most repressed societies throughout time. This includes life under Stalin, Hitler and Mao as it does the work regime of today’s sweatshops. It is frighteningly emblematic of the dogma flowing from madrassas throughout the Middle East. Indeed, it’s striking to see how few Nobel Prizes and how little serious scholarship can be claimed by any repressed society, including those of today’s Middle East. Knowledge is lubricant for releasing control, which is why most authoritarian arrangements avoid it.
Dewey published this classic work as war raged across the European continent. Those were dark times as Barbara Tuchman reminded us in both “The Guns of August” (1962) and “The March of Folly” (1985) where, in her words, the downright “unwisdom” of war prevailed.
Perhaps it is from such dark moments that hopeful, enlightened works can emerge. Yet it may also underscore why Dewey’s progressive philosophies were tinged with a practicality and a realistic connection between theory and real-life practice that helped give birth to the Pragmatism movement.
The tragic, lingering question for society – especially one that purports to be broadly educated in Deweyian terms – is how to prevent future wars based on the unwisdom of World War One that Dewey witnessed during the writing of “Democracy & Education”? How far have we really come in cultivating wisdom as a democratic society and especially among our leaders, given events today in the Middle East and elsewhere?
George Bernard Shaw once said that, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Of course, Santayana’s well-known injunction holds equally true that, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And yet here we are in a contemporary moment preceded by a century of vast public education and yet seemingly no more wise in matters of war and peace. The condition is eerily reminiscent of the dilemma faced by the character Phil Connor in the movie “Groundhog Day” who was forced eternally to relive the worst day of his life.
Dewey was also writing “Democracy and Education” as Lenin sat in exile in Switzerland. Not surprisingly, Lenin was urging that World War One be framed in revolutionary terms as a battle between bourgeoisie and proletarian interests, while the seeds of the Russian Revolution were taking root without him. It is useful to read Dewey in a context untethered to its democratic roots – absent the goodwill as well as the unconstrained or even utopian visions of a Rousseau or Plato – and to ask how would Lenin have used Dewey’s language to advance his own agenda?
Indeed, ideologues of all stripes misuse the timeless educational principles found in Dewey to centralize power and, paradoxically, limit or even crush democracy? Just witness the “re-education camps” of Pol Pot’s regime or the rote recitation of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” by young Nazi Brown Shirts. Disturbingly, the answer is that despots can and do embrace “education” for their own purposes, quite well and quite often. Dewey tells us that education plays a role in directing or guiding society. Yes, but who is doing the guiding? In an unconstrained vision, and echoing Zakaria’s lament over the loss of educated leadership elites, which elites do we trust, what are they teaching and for what purposes? Dewey writes that social guidance “consists in centering the impulses acting at any one time upon some specific end and in introducing an order of continuity into the sequence of acts.” He later adds that, “This common understanding of the means and ends of action is the essence of social control.” (p. 39) It sounds downright Marxist!
Changing the ontological framework in this manner can actually change the meaning of Dewey or, better put, the subjective interpretation of Dewey. This has long been the joyous work of true democrats as well the soulless work of true despots.
References
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, New York: The Free Press.
Schrag, P. (2004). Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sowell, T. (2002). A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, New York: Basic Books.
Tuchman, B.W. (1962). The Guns of August, New York: Ballantine Books
Tuchman, B.W. (1985). The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, New York: Ballantine Books.
Zakaria, F. (2004) The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Dewey’s vision was progressive. He believed that desirable societies are ones in which the free exchange of ideas and experiences is encouraged and that such intercourse is improved when, through public education, it is better informed and available to greater numbers of people. Democracy is one expression of this free exchange of ideas in which candidates and policies are chosen by an informed citizenry. Too bad John Dewey's ideas were never consistently embraced by the U.S. teaching establishment over the years.
Zakaria (2004) believes that the free exchange of goods and services in modern capitalism and the rule of law it creates is a necessary precursor to democratization. In this context, Zakaria would also say that education is essential for building an independent, competitive and technically astute business class that can create wealth and gain independence from the state. As noted earlier, I also contend that education is essential for creating a moral and ethical framework through which capitalism or any social construct can be governed using moral suasion and social opprobrium.
Is it any wonder that Zakaria invokes Schrag (2004) in worrying that California has not built a new public college campus in 30 years, despite a doubling of the population, but has constructed an additional 20 prisons over the past 20 years? The sight of Dewey rolling in his grave is too easily conjured, especially as one considers that few prisons invest the resources needed to train and educate the 96 percent of convicts who ultimately return to society.
Dewey’s enlightened view of education clearly supports the growth and development of capitalism, although it best serves a modern capitalism of ideas and entrepreneurialism than it does a traditional view of mercantile capitalism found in, say, 19th century Britain or even the developing-nation sweatshops of today. After all, it is quite unlikely that Nike or Reebok would welcome Deweyian notions of widespread public education and resulting democratization among piecemeal employees working for their sweatshop subcontractors in East Asia and Latin America?
It is said that Jefferson once said, "An informed citizenry is the bulwark of a democracy.” He is also credited with saying, “Information is the currency of democracy." No matter the source, and there are arguments among historians as to the author and genesis of these sentiments, both quotes are staples of the Jeffersonian language of democracy and central to Dewey’s contention. Both statements underscore why and how education and democracy are inextricably linked. Both statements suggest that given an informed choice, people will generally make rational decisions focused on building and protecting society and avoiding self-destructive acts such as needless wars.
In this sense, education serves as a rich source of oxygen in the blood supply of modern democracy that is needed to preserve and advance the species. Indeed, the less informed the populace, in Dewey’s view, the more subject it is to deception and the diminution of democracy. The less equipped the polity to question its leaders’ actions, the more liable those leaders are to make decisions based on selfish and not collective interests and, in doing so, place society’s future at risk.
This essential connection between democracy and education was certainly not new early in the 20th century. Dewey was greatly inspired by, in Sowell’s (2002) terms, the unconstrained humanistic vision of Rousseau and Voltaire. Indeed, these leading thinkers of the French Enlightenment were themselves influenced by Plato’s “Republic” and, with it, the sense that the sheer accessibility and openness of the democratic ideal was central to its own preservation.
Having said this, Dewey’s was a remarkably constrained in keeping with Sowell’s frame of reference. He well understood the darker side of human nature and considered education to be its salvation. Importantly, he believed education was needed to perpetuate the culture and to continually heal and replenish society. This is where Dewey seems most constrained in his vision. He underscores one of Sowell’s tenets of the constrained vision, believing that societies learn best collectively from generation to generation and not at the knee of learned elites.
Interestingly, Dewey’s world was one ruled by learned elites in which most citizens remained outside the embrace of public education. Additionally, much public education of the time was rooted in memorization and rote learning and not on independent problem solving. Of course, Dewey believed that higher-level, critical thinking skills that liberated and democratized people and societies. It is no surprise, therefore, that rote, repetitive learning is the staple of most repressed societies throughout time. This includes life under Stalin, Hitler and Mao as it does the work regime of today’s sweatshops. It is frighteningly emblematic of the dogma flowing from madrassas throughout the Middle East. Indeed, it’s striking to see how few Nobel Prizes and how little serious scholarship can be claimed by any repressed society, including those of today’s Middle East. Knowledge is lubricant for releasing control, which is why most authoritarian arrangements avoid it.
Dewey published this classic work as war raged across the European continent. Those were dark times as Barbara Tuchman reminded us in both “The Guns of August” (1962) and “The March of Folly” (1985) where, in her words, the downright “unwisdom” of war prevailed.
Perhaps it is from such dark moments that hopeful, enlightened works can emerge. Yet it may also underscore why Dewey’s progressive philosophies were tinged with a practicality and a realistic connection between theory and real-life practice that helped give birth to the Pragmatism movement.
The tragic, lingering question for society – especially one that purports to be broadly educated in Deweyian terms – is how to prevent future wars based on the unwisdom of World War One that Dewey witnessed during the writing of “Democracy & Education”? How far have we really come in cultivating wisdom as a democratic society and especially among our leaders, given events today in the Middle East and elsewhere?
George Bernard Shaw once said that, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Of course, Santayana’s well-known injunction holds equally true that, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And yet here we are in a contemporary moment preceded by a century of vast public education and yet seemingly no more wise in matters of war and peace. The condition is eerily reminiscent of the dilemma faced by the character Phil Connor in the movie “Groundhog Day” who was forced eternally to relive the worst day of his life.
Dewey was also writing “Democracy and Education” as Lenin sat in exile in Switzerland. Not surprisingly, Lenin was urging that World War One be framed in revolutionary terms as a battle between bourgeoisie and proletarian interests, while the seeds of the Russian Revolution were taking root without him. It is useful to read Dewey in a context untethered to its democratic roots – absent the goodwill as well as the unconstrained or even utopian visions of a Rousseau or Plato – and to ask how would Lenin have used Dewey’s language to advance his own agenda?
Indeed, ideologues of all stripes misuse the timeless educational principles found in Dewey to centralize power and, paradoxically, limit or even crush democracy? Just witness the “re-education camps” of Pol Pot’s regime or the rote recitation of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” by young Nazi Brown Shirts. Disturbingly, the answer is that despots can and do embrace “education” for their own purposes, quite well and quite often. Dewey tells us that education plays a role in directing or guiding society. Yes, but who is doing the guiding? In an unconstrained vision, and echoing Zakaria’s lament over the loss of educated leadership elites, which elites do we trust, what are they teaching and for what purposes? Dewey writes that social guidance “consists in centering the impulses acting at any one time upon some specific end and in introducing an order of continuity into the sequence of acts.” He later adds that, “This common understanding of the means and ends of action is the essence of social control.” (p. 39) It sounds downright Marxist!
Changing the ontological framework in this manner can actually change the meaning of Dewey or, better put, the subjective interpretation of Dewey. This has long been the joyous work of true democrats as well the soulless work of true despots.
References
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, New York: The Free Press.
Schrag, P. (2004). Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sowell, T. (2002). A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, New York: Basic Books.
Tuchman, B.W. (1962). The Guns of August, New York: Ballantine Books
Tuchman, B.W. (1985). The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, New York: Ballantine Books.
Zakaria, F. (2004) The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.