Continuity through Renewal: John Dewey, the International Institute in Spain, and Resisting the Assault on the Humanities

Abstract

This paper marks the relation between humanities education and democracy as one of mutual necessity, since the pragmatic value of each is dependent on the other to be recognizable and realizable. Such an understanding is drawn from the ideas of the American philosopher and educator John Dewey. Dewey’s system clearly reveals the nature of the stakes of the assault on the humanities; it also indicates the educational measures democratic societies should take in response. By instantiating the “conjoint communicated experience” of democracy in a public, shared space in which differences are respected, human meanings are explored, and the expansion of knowledge and experience is valued as an end in itself, the humanities classroom emerges as a site of social renewal, as well as one of resistance to illiberalism. In order to present such a site in a manner befitting Dewey’s pragmatism, a lesser-known, local example of the value of humanities education is examined in this paper: that of the International Institute in Spain, located in Madrid. Beginning with its founding as a school for girls by Boston missionaries in 1892, and through its role at the center of a network of institutions invested in progressive educational reform in Spain during the pre-civil war period, IIE stands as a testament to the continuity through renewal that defines both liberal democracy and humanities education.