Dewey’s Notion of Interest: Antithetic to or Sympathetic with Educational Development?

Abstract

This chapter sets out to analyse and explain the pedagogic significance of the Deweyan notion of interest. First, it considers what Dewey refers to as the ordinary use of the term. Interest has been described as an emotional force, which pushes one to conscious action. It is an overwhelming impulse that directs one’s actions to the achievement of a goal. From this perspective, Dewey presents the different characteristics of interest as dynamic, objective and subjective. In education, the child’s interest in a particular subject matter directs all her efforts and energy to studies in this field. Second, Dewey considers interest as a condition for discipline. The main purpose of this chapter is to investigate whether coercion, external stimulus or extrinsic motivations are necessarily inappropriate means of enhancing one’s interest in learning a subject matter, using Deweyan arguments. Is sustaining a learner’s interest in a subject matter through punishment and other external pressures antithetic to education? Dewey argues that if the teacher employs teaching strategies that appeal to the intrinsic interests of learners, interest is sympathetic to education. The chapter concludes that children do not have uniform interests in a particular subject matter, taking the example of mathematics. Mathematics is a subject characterized with abstract concepts, thereby rendering many students incapable of proper learning attention and concentration. From this perspective, one is prompted to question Dewey’s categorical denial of extrinsic interest in the teaching–learning transaction. I therefore want to draw inspiration from Dewey’s argument that interest is both natural and cultural, to analyse and clarify the context in which interest is sympathetic with and antithetic to democratic educational development, that is democratic ways of engaging students in their own learning, rather than imposing top-down pedagogies.