74 pages • 2 hours read
John DeweyDemocracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1916A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Education, Experience, and the Social Environment
Dewey begins this book by establishing several concepts, one of which is the difference between inanimate objects and living beings. An important feature for all living beings is experience, that is, their relationship with the world around them. Human beings are complex. Therefore, their environment comprises several integrated aspects such as society, politics, and culture. One consistent overarching theme in Democracy and Education is the importance of linking education to experience. In turn, experience is linked to the relationship with the real world outside school—both the physical environment and social interactions.
Already in 1892, Dewey defined experience as follows, “Our experience is simply what we do” (Berding, Joop W. A. (1997) "Towards a Flexible Curriculum: John Dewey's Theory of Experience and Learning," Education and Culture: Vol. 14 : Iss. 1, Article 5, p. 25). Dewey views education as a lifelong process that continually reconstructs one’s experiences (59). Because experience is continuous and dynamic, it should not be compartmentalized—and neither should education. At the same time, education can have different integrated features. For example, it can have passive and active aspects like experience:
The nature of experience can be understood only by noting that it includes an active and a passive element peculiarly combined. On the active hand, experience is trying–a meaning which is made explicit in the connected term experiment. On the passive, it is undergoing. When we experience something we act upon it, we do something with it; then we suffer or undergo the consequences. We do something to the thing and then it does something to us in return: such is the peculiar combination. (107)
These two sides exist in a continuum, and Dewey appears to conceptualize them as a Newtonian action-reaction type of link. A person has an active social interaction, and that social interaction has a passive impact on them from which they learn. Indeed, Dewey frames experience as “primarily an active-passive affair.” (108).
Because Dewey interprets education as a multifaceted, holistic experience, he challenges the idea of education being mainly a pursuit of the mind, an intellectual feat. Sensations and physical actions are also important to Dewey. Throughout the book, he repeatedly challenges what he calls dualisms in education:
Going to the root of the matter, the fundamental fallacy of the theory is its dualism; that is to say, its separation of activities and capacities from subject matter (49).
Dewey’s criticism targets the excessive intellectualization of the education process as its dominant trajectory. Instead, the active and interactive component of education is crucial and necessary. He suggests linking formal education—acquiring knowledge—to events in the physical world and society to make it relevant and accessible to each student. This may be done in a variety of ways from verbal examples to laboratory work to games. In other words, breaking down the isolation of education from the real world and society and integrating its active and passive elements challenges the artificial dualisms to which it is subjected. For example, Dewey highlights the link between the need for an integrated educational approach and experience:
There is the standing danger that the material of formal instruction will be merely the subject matter of the schools, isolated from the subject matter of life- experience (6).
In fact, Dewey views experience as a fundamental aspect of critical thinking. Linking education to the student’s daily life is one way to foster critical thinking. After all, only thinking renders experiences meaningful, “Thinking is thus equivalent to an explicit rendering of the intelligent element in our experience” (112).
The Relationship between Democracy and Education
Dewey believes that democracy provides optimal support for his educational theory. In Dewey’s view, school education should be accessible to all and should nurture each student’s individual needs while providing the student with formal knowledge, active experience, and social interaction. This type of education should be as integrated as possible teaching students how to think rather than what to think. Allowing students to think for themselves should ultimately shape them to become better members of society not only by making the appropriate voting choices during elections but also acting as an integral part of their community and toward its improvement.
In Dewey’s view, democracy is not just a form of representative government, in which all citizens have the right to vote. Instead, he believes that democracy is “primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (66). He writes:
The extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity (66).
In other words, Dewey places additional emphasis on the social aspects of democracy in which all members of a social group act toward improving their social conditions and learn from each other’s experiences. Dewey even argues that interdependence—whether between a caregiver and a child or between community members—is a strength rather than a weakness. He suggests that democracy enhances “greater reliance upon the recognition of mutual interests as a factor in social control” (66).
Though Dewey does not engage in a critique of capitalism at a fundamental level, he does repeatedly note the socio-economic inequalities between the ruling leisure class and the working class. This system, in which a small number of people live off the labor of many, does not lead to the development of inclusive education but perpetuates the existing system. Dewey writes:
Democracy cannot flourish where the chief influences in selecting subject matter of instruction are utilitarian ends narrowly conceived for the masses, and, for the higher education of the few, the traditions of a specialized cultivated class (148).
However, one of the ways in which social conditions could be improved is through education. In fact, the relationship between society and education is reciprocal: society can improve education, and education can improve society. The school curriculum should, therefore, account for the “social responsibilities of education” (148).
Against All Dualisms
John Dewey identifies and criticizes several kinds of dualism in early 20th century education. In addition to “dualism,” he uses terms like “antithesis” and “opposition.” What is meant by these terms is an artificial division of a phenomenon or a concept into two spheres that are isolated from each other. Many of the dualisms have historical roots, some of which go as far back as ancient Greek intellectual tradition. The most obvious examples are mind-body dualism and humanity-versus-nature dualism. Dewey believes that dualist perceptions lead to various detrimental consequences ranging from social divisions to an incomplete education. In contrast, Dewey’s ideal education features an integrated, holistic approach that does not isolate disciplines from each other and provides activities and social interactions as links to real-world experience.
One of the first conceptual antitheses that Dewey challenges is mind-body dualism. Some historic conceptions of the mind perceived it as an isolated concept engaged in purely intellectual pursuits and free of physical actions. Dewey criticizes this claim since even to perform basic empirical observation, the mind is linked to the eyes (the five senses). Similarly, an action of documenting one’s thoughts by using a keyboard involves both the analytical pursuit of the mind with the physical movement of one’s fingers. He also argues that mind-body dualism leads to “evil results” because it positions the active bodily element—the physical actions of one’s body—as an “intruder” (108).
In the realm of education, the excessive emphasis on formal learning at the expense of activities leads to feeling tired— “a necessary consequence of the abnormality of the situation in which bodily activity is divorced from the perception of meaning” (108). Overall, the mind-body dualism “throws emphasis on things at the expense of relations or connections” (110).
The next dualism, humanity versus nature, has taken on different forms throughout history. For example, there was a perception of society and nature as opposites. This was the view of Thomas Hobbes, in which the world in its uncivilized state (the state of nature) was akin to chaos, and only a society with a strong government could provide safety from the chaos through a social contract. This perception eventually led to a pendulum swing to the opposite perspective with Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rosseau. In his view, society exerted a corrupting influence, and only a return to nature could heal humanity. For Rousseau, “education is a process of development in accordance with nature” (85). At the same time, modern scientists that worked after the 16th century believed that they could subordinate nature to human will. In Dewey’s view, this division and hierarchy are detrimental to education. He writes:
The idea that mind and the world of things and persons are two separate and independent realms–a theory which philosophically is known as dualism–carries with it the conclusion that method and subject matter of instruction are separate affairs (126)
People interact with the physical world (nature) in their daily lives, and a more integrated conception of this relationship is necessary.
Overall, Dewey identifies other antithetical pairs throughout the book and likewise challenges them. They include the humanities and sciences pairing, active and passive approaches to education, intellect versus emotions, and several others. Dewey considers these rival pairs to be artificial and urges the reader to think in terms of connections rather than oppositions. It is this holistic approach that is a better reflection of the real world.
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