Philosophical Foundations of Education, Edited by Winston C. Thompson, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023

In order to utilize the superior values of the local Acehnese people by reconstructing the philosophical, ideological, and practical foundations of Social Studies education with. This research was conducted at the Aceh Education Office and the Aceh Education Council. Educational subjects are educators and students and the wider community as education users to get data on the philosophical and ideological foundations of Social Studies education in Aceh. To find out the analysis of stakeholders' perceptions to the philosophical and ideological foundations of Social Studies education, it was found that Aceh's education is in line with its vision based on four values, namely: Islam, Aceh, Indonesiaism, and universality. The four values are based on the understanding of education policy stakeholders consisting of the Aceh Education Board, the Aceh Traditional Council and the Education Office by taking into account the vision and mission of the Aceh government. Philosophical foundations are not well socialized at the practical level in schools as the spearhead of the implementation of education. The authenticity of this research is evident from the process of giving birth to a post-modern structuralist approach. This approach is expected to solve the problem of education, especially social studies education for a longer period of time because it must take into account conditions that may arise in a period of time that stretches far into the future by not leaving the element of locality.

اصول و روش‌هایی که در تعلیم و تربیت مورد استفاده قرار می‌گیرند، از مبانی مختلفی سرچشمه می‌گیرند. هدف این مقاله آن است که مبانی فلسفی و روان شناختی تعلیم و تربیت، بر اساس دو دیدگاه مشابه در شرق و غرب مورد بررسی قرار گیرد: فلسفه اشراقی شهاب‌الدین سهروردی و فلسفه پدیدار شناختی ادموند هوسرل. سوال‌های پژوهش ناظر به تعیین مبانی فلسفی و روان شناختی تعلیم و تربیت از دیدگاه هر دو فیلسوف و مقایسه آنها از حیث مشابهت و تفاوت‌هاست. در مبنای فلسفی هوسرل، پدیدارشناسی جایگاه اساسی دارد و در آن دو گام اساسی مطرح است. در مرحله نخست، تاکید بر توصیف تجربه‌های آدمی و در مرحله دوم، نظر بر کاهش دادن تجربه‌های زیسته است. در مبنای روان شناختی، به جای درون بینی تاکید بر تأمل است. در مبنای فلسفی و معرفت شناختی سهروردی، علم حضوری جایگاه ویژه دارد. در مبنای روان شناختی، درون بینی از اهمیت به سزایی برخوردار است. در مقایسه سهروردی و هوسرل این نکته قابل توجه است که هر دو فیلسوف به نحو اساسی تحت تأثیر افلاطون قرار دارند و هر دو از عینیت گرایی دور می‌شوند. در خصوص تفاوت‌ها باید اشاره کرد که در معرفت شناسی، هوسرل در حیطه علم حصولی و سهروردی در عرصه علم حضوری سخن می‌گوید. در مبنای روان شناختی، هوسرل بر تأمل و سهروردی بر درون بینی تاکید می‌ورزند. چنین مبناهایی، تعلیم و تربیت در دیدگاه هر دو فیلسوف را به سوی نوعی شهودگرایی سوق خواهد داد. واژه های کلیدی: پدیدار شناسی، علم حضوری، روان شناسی اشراقی، روان شناسی پدیدار شناسی، مبانی‌تربیتی‌اشراقی، پدیدار شناختی

The educational curriculum in Indonesia has grown recent times but the philosophical foundation used rarely explored. The philosophical foundation used became an interesting thing. Through the clear philosophical foundation, direction and purpose of education became clear too. This study found that the nature of the educational curriculum 2013 were increasing changes base towards attitudes, knowledge and skills of the learners themselves in order to create a good character education. The goal to be achieved through the curriculum 2013 were producing creative and innovative generations to minimize poverty, ignorance and backwardness civilization. It has an eclectic incorporative philosophical foundation which means taking elements from education philosophy ideologies integrated with the national educational system. Progressivism as one of the schools of philosophy of education has a dominant part in the curriculum 2013 proved through the education system that is much focused to the students as the subjects of education, the teacher as a facilitator and the integrated lessons in one unit. The curriculum 2013 shows that the students must be taught in accordance with the developmental era. It will prevent producing obsolete generations. There are three main competencies of the students should be assessed as a whole things (attitudes, knowledge and skills).

The article explores how education promotes social change. Using the philosophical foundations of adult education outlined by Elias and Merriam (2001, Philosophical foundations of adult education (3rd ed.), Krieger) as an analytical framework, the article compares the similarities and differences between popular education forms in two countries: Highlander education in the Appalachian Mountains in the United States and study circles in Sweden. The findings of the article indicate that, influenced by the folk schools’ education connecting to the social, political and economic problems of life, Highlander education and Swedish study circles dealt with the problems of life in education, but took different directions due to their different social and political contexts. Influenced by the radical philosophy of adult education, Highlander education attempted to achieve social and economic justice through social liberation in local communities; based on humanistic education philosophy, Swedish study circles pursued social democracy mainly through individual development. These different approaches to social change are reflected in three dimensions: participants, financial support from the government and the organizational systems. The differences are shaped by their different social and political backgrounds, and reflect their different philosophical foundations and different approaches to social change.

Abstract: The orientation of education in Indonesia is more likely to lead to the foundation that has been built by Western philosophers from three well-known philosopher figures, namely Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the educational thoughts of these three philosopher figures so that they can become the foundation of educational philosophies that are developing today. The research method used is a qualitative analytical-descriptive method by examining the thoughts of the three philosopher figures and being compared by looking at the phenomena of today's society. Based on the research results in this paper, it shows that the philosophical foundation of education that can be adapted from the thoughts of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle at this time, namely; education is carried out in a dialogical manner, critical thinking, the need for the participation of the government and society, education is directed to conquer passions by reason, the purpose of education is to achieve speculative happiness. These philosophical foundations need to be built in today's education.

The foundation of education is a universal human aspiration; therefore, in addressing educational issues, complex solutions with philosophical foundations are necessary to ensure that the resulting solutions benefit all segments of society. One of the figures with strong philosophical views on education is Ki Hadjar Dewantara. Ki Hadjar Dewantara, a nobleman from the Yogyakarta Sultanate, firmly held a high concern for the development of education. The philosophical views put forward by Ki Hadjar Dewantara have become the basis for educational development in Indonesia. Ki Hadjar Dewantara expressed that the essence of education is an effort to internalize cultural values ​​into the souls of children with the aim of shaping them into complete human beings, both spiritually and mentally. This educational philosophy is known as the "Sistem Among," which emphasizes the basic ability of children to overcome the problems they face by providing them with broad freedom of thought. Ki Hadjar Dewantara formulated his philosophy by applying indigenous Indonesian culture, selectively adopting Western values ​​to fit the trikonic theory, and then adapting them wisely. Ki Hadjar Dewantara also made several contributions to Indonesian education, including the implementation of the leadership trilogy in education, the three educational centers, and the paguron system. Education is an effort to develop the human potential of learners, both physically, intellectually, emotionally, and morally, so that this potential can be realized and beneficial to their lives.

Mission and vision play an essential role in strategic management. They are the philosophical foundation and strategic direction of higher education, serving as a guide, inspiration, and control tool to achieve organizational goals. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relevance and impact of mission and vision on academic services provided by Indonesian higher education institutions through governance and human resources. The research instrument is based on relevant literature and uses a Likert scale to measure implementation, socialization, and effectiveness of mission and vision, academic services, governance, and human resources. Data were collected using the online random sampling method, and the number of respondents was 10,937 lecturers. The study uses a serial mediation analysis to test the hypotheses. The research results show that governance and human resources positively affect academic services. As a mediator variable, they can improve academic services. The results highlight the significant contribution of mission and vision to governance. Governance also contributes significantly to human resource management. Human resources can boost academic services. This study emphasizes the importance of the university’s mission and vision, namely the philosophical foundation and strategic direction of academic services supported by appropriate human resources and good governance.

Originally published as a special issue of Educational Studies, this volume demonstrates the ways in which sound considerations can significantly contribute to educational foundations. Regardless of their origin or interpretation, sounds are theoretically and practically foundational to educational experiences. As the means through which knowledges are passed from one person to another, sounds outline the fluid, porous boundaries of educational ecologies. This book draws out and expands upon the already-present sonic metaphors that exist at the center of philosophical and historical foundations of educational studies. Contributions demonstrate the ethical dimensions of this line of inquiry, emphasizing the need for education to offer a right both to speak and to be heard in order to take on a truly democratic character. By highlighting emerging attention to sound scholarship in education, contributors attend to and otherwise explore sound possibilities for educational theory, policy, and practice. This book will be of great interest to graduate and post-graduate students, libraries, researchers, and academics in the field of educational foundations, philosophy of education, education politics, and sociology of education.

In this essay, we posit that modern medicine, in its Asclepian focus, has subordinated the need and importance of Hygieian healing and caring, and in so doing has lost a quality that is essential to medicine, and fundamental to its lasting moral value. We argue that an integrative medicine must be based upon a core philosophical foundation that re-enjoins Asclepian and Hygieian approaches in true conceptual and practical dialectic, such that integration represents a synthesis of these orientations in epistemic, humanitarian and ethical domains. While we assert that a core philosophy is critical to the development and sustainability of an integrative medicine, such claims remain vacant in the absence of some meaningful attempt to put these concepts into action. We believe that to apply such philosophical foundations, an approach is necessary that simultaneously engages education, research, practice and policy. This involves not simply studying and co-opting new (or older, more ancient) modalities in a curative paradigm, but represents a paradigm shift that requires and is based upon understanding of, and skills for the application(s) of the most appropriate types of treatment(s) to affect disease, illness and health in a patient-centered model of care.

Developing students' character and personality is the main goal of education that requires special attention. This is becoming increasingly important in the era of globalization and digitalization which brings great challenges in maintaining moral and social values ​​among the younger generation. The basics of education, which include philosophical, psychological, sociological and cultural foundations, have a significant role in forming students' characters with integrity, empathy and discipline. This article aims to analyze the role of each educational foundation in supporting the formation of students' character as a whole and in depth. Using a descriptive qualitative research method through literature study, this research examines the contribution of each foundation comprehensively. The research results show that the philosophical foundation provides guidance on the basic values ​​and principles that students must have; psychological foundations help adapt educational approaches to the mental and emotional development of students; sociological foundations of creating a positive and supportive social environment; and cultural foundations strengthen local cultural identity in students. This article contributes to providing an integrative, holistic approach to character education, especially in Indonesia, with the hope of providing richer insight for educators in designing effective learning strategies in developing students' character and personality in accordance with local and national values.

Indonesia has been independent for more than a half of a century. However, the educational philosophy and practices still adopt the Western philosophy and practice which do not suit the characteristics of Indonesian students. As a matter of fact, Indonesia has local wisdom values which have been legally established as the foundation of philosophy and educational praxis. This paper discusses local wisdom-based educational philosophy which become the foundation of Indonesian education adopted from the values ​​of the Indonesian local wisdom. The writing method used is Heidegger’s Existential hermeneutic Ontology. Based on this method, there is an existential meaning that the philosophical basis of Indonesian education consists of the ideological foundation, instrumental foundation (The 1945 Constitution), and a practical foundation (Laws, Government Regulations, Ministerial Regulations, and Multiculturalism). The ideological, instrumental and practical foundations have two basic concepts, namely; religiosity and humanity. Based on the sources of philosophical, instrumental, and practical values, it is concluded that Indonesia’s educational philosophy is the Religious Humanist Multiculturalism. Religious Humanist Multiculturalism is a multi-religious universal values ​​that live in Indonesia and human values ​​that are in line with Indonesia’s multicultural national identity. Keywords: Pancasila, Educational philosophy, Religious Humanist Multiculturalism DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-12-11 Publication date: April 30 th 2020

Introduction. The philosophical-axiological view on the dynamics of the formation and development of Russian education, which represents the main features of the society within which it functions and normally represents the “mold” of the culture that generated it (a fractal attribute): under present conditions it is the basic foundation of the domestic education. The goal is to analyze the historical conditions and problems of the relations between the educational model and the values and norms of culture and society; to show that the philosophical view on the specifics of the reflection in the education of the experience of sociocultural life activity provides an opportunity to theoretically comprehend the modern educational reality that develops in the super dynamic social conditions of the global information culture. Methodology and methods of research. Comparative characteristics of the dynamics of historical development of the Western and Russian models of education make it possible to carry out analysis using the methodological foundations of the philosophy of education (ontology, epistemology and axiology) and to determine the general strategies for building a new civil society with a value-humanistic type of consciousness. It is possible to predict the creation of a unified educational vector on the basis of recognition of the “European dimension in education” and the formation of an integral intellect of the human being (intellect, but not a resource of thinking, spiritual potential or educative values). The real modernization of education, in the modern sense, raises the question of training pedagogical personnel who have gone through the “individualization” or “essential transformation” path. Today, a constantly growing teacher is urgently needed, from which new ways of communication, open ness to innovation and moral ecology are required, which requires detailed analysis from the standpoint of the methodological possibilities of the philosophy of education. Practical significance. The historical and philosophical analysis proposed in the article, as well as the ontological and axiological tools, allow quickly assessing the current state of the problem of interaction between education and socio-cultural values. The material of the article can be useful to specialists dealing with the genesis of ontological and methodological foundations of the modern philosophy of education and the search for the ways of constructing a new educational vector. Scientific novelty and results. The article draws conclusions on the specifics and possibilities for expanding the range of presence of Russian education in the world space, and the autonomy of Russia’s own values in the education system. Praxiological analysis of the sociocultural realities of our time indicates that postmodern culture has ceased to be branch-based, and social development has become integrative. In unity, they are moving towards a new type of rationality and new ways of communication. The question remains open for the developing Russia: what socio-cultural priorities will need to evolve as the modern valueeducational guidelines?

Across North America students in B.Ed. programs are offered courses dealing with the historical, philosophical and sociological foundations of education. In this study prospective teachers in B.Ed. programs at two large universities were surveyed to determine their perceptions of the social foundations component of their training.

The dynamic development of the curriculum is essential to addressing the demands of contemporary times and Islamic education. However, the implementation of an independent curriculum, as an effort to simplify the previous one and strengthen the profile of Pancasila students, has not been fully realized in educational institutions, presenting challenges in adapting to current needs. This study aims to innovate the philosophical and theological foundations of aqidah and moral education in Madrasah Ibtidaiyah based on faith. The methodology used is a literature review, collecting data from journals, books, and conferences. The findings reveal that philosophical and theological foundations greatly influence the goals of Islamic education in nurturing individuals with noble character. The formation of tauhid within the family serves as the primary basis for establishing faith, which is a crucial asset in formal education. Teachers play a vital role in delivering materials related to Islamic values using various strategies and methods to integrate knowledge and moral development. By practicing faith in daily life through worship, students can cultivate sincerity in their actions. Therefore, a PAI curriculum grounded in strong philosophical and theological principles can help build morally upright and strong individuals.

In Democracy and Education, Dewey famously condemns what he called “the cold-storage ideal of knowledge,” in which students are asked to accumulate disconnected pieces of information for possible later use.1 This insight is now conventional wisdom for many progressive educators, but it is not only school knowledge that can achieve the status of “cold storage”: scholarly works can gain this status as well, especially as they become canonical in a particular field. Once a work falls into the “cold storage” category, few will deny that it should be read, but even fewer will actually read it. Many of the works of the nineteenth century educational pioneers have already fallen into this category; how many educators still read the work of Maria Montessori, Friedrich Froebel, or, to pick an example from the pragmatist tradition, William James? On the hundredth anniversary of its publication, Democracy and Education has not yet entered the scholarly deep freeze, but certainly more people tend to invoke it or cite it than actually read it. We are hopeful that the essays in this section will contribute to renewing interest in this text and in Dewey's ideas. All of the authors included here are dedicated to the task of showing how key ideas from the book can make a concrete and immediate difference in contemporary educational situations, whether in such big-picture challenges as facing up to the funding crisis in higher education or the task of decolonization, or more everyday challenges like figuring out how to teach math and science in an effective and compelling way. In preparation for our work in editing this section, we both reread Democracy and Education in its entirety, a task neither of us had undertaken since graduate school. As the French like to say, the book has les défauts de ses qualités: the “shortcomings of its virtues.” On the one hand, the book is overly comprehensive and lacks coherence. Designed as a textbook, Democracy and Education covers a large range of topics at breathtaking speed, and it occasionally veers into now-obscure intellectual debates. As Dewey's longtime admirer C. E. Ayres once put it, “[Dewey] is incurably episodic. Whatever the general plan of book or chapter or section, whatever the larger strategy may require, he never passes an enemy trench without mopping it up. Tactics always outdo strategy.”2 On the other hand, the book's incredible range means that it has a great deal to offer. Every chapter addresses a dilemma that remains relevant on the educational scene and provides pathways toward overcoming the attendant challenges. Whether Dewey is insisting on the social nature of intelligence, defining what it means to have an educational experience, or reenvisioning what vocational education should entail, there is always some significant insight on offer. As David Meens notes in his contribution to this section, we must be careful to avoid taking up these proposals as gospel, as they emerged from a particular historical situation, but “to reconstruct Dewey's views critically, with an eye to both their possibilities and limitations, is the Deweyan gesture par excellence.”3 As we went through the editorial process of curating first the proposals and then the essays, a few notable themes have emerged under the overall “living ideas” banner. First, and perhaps most significantly, several of these essays propose reconstructing Dewey's prescriptions for democratic practice in some way. As the welfare state bargain continues to erode and the rich and powerful regain a Gilded Age level of influence in the United States and in other nations around the world, many are thinking about the place and the voice of the ordinary citizen. Several essays in this section take up the question of what grassroots democracy may mean in the age of neoliberalism, specifically within the contexts of public schools and universities. A second emergent theme, closely related to the first, is that of agency. One of the aspects that makes Dewey's educational prescriptions so compelling is his focus on the development of a robust, positive freedom (the power to take action, as opposed to simply freedom from restriction) on the part of learners and, more broadly, citizens. There are essays in the section that deal with enhancing student agency in both math and science education, and that deal with democratic citizenship education more broadly. Several essays also address the challenge of developing agency among university and K–12 educators in the face of both an adverse labor climate and an increasing sense of fatalism. In all of the contributing authors' accounts, Deweyan democracy, in its substantive sense as “a mode of associated living,” is seen as a critical catalyst in giving people back their sense of agency. Above all else, all of the essays in this section have in common the fact that they can be appreciated and immediately put to work by educators and policymakers. While the authors included here are all are in touch with current scholarship on Dewey, their primary purpose is not to advance our understanding of Dewey's work (although many of the essays do this), but rather to provide a curated selection of some the most powerful ideas embedded within Democracy and Education. From reforming math education to reenergizing demoralized teachers to providing frameworks for decolonization, one comes away with a sense, after reading these essays, of new possibilities for education. This was what Democracy and Education provided a century ago, and, as we will show in what follows, this is what it can still provide today. Of all of the essays in this collection, Kurt Stemhagen's “Deweyan Democratic Agency and School Math: Beyond Constructivism and Critique” is probably the most closely related to practice. A former math teacher himself, Stemhagen has pioneered a Deweyan approach to math education, and in previous writings he has argued that it can resolve the familiar tension between the traditional “back to basics” approaches to math and more constructivist approaches. This time around, Stemhagen tackles a new tension that has emerged within the mathematics education community: the rise of a critical theory–tinged strand of math education, which sees constructivists as preoccupied with achievement at the expense of student agency and voice. In an argument that draws on both Democracy and Education and the work at the Laboratory School, Stemhagen suggests that Dewey's integrated approach to mathematics education may provide a constructivist, critical solution that satisfies both camps without compromising either content knowledge or criticality. David Waddington and Noah Feinstein's essay, “Beyond the Search for Truth: Dewey's Humble and Humanistic Vision of Science Education,” explores the ways in which Dewey's conception of science can help us rethink how science is done in schools. They begin with an exploration of Dewey's nonrealist, technological conception of science, which is much more unorthodox than most educators realize. They then demonstrate how such a conception reinforces existing constructivist and humanistic trends in science education, while combating the chauvinist “science from on high” elements of the science curriculum that many students find particularly alienating and mystifying. Although Dewey's faith in modernity provides some grounds for caution, Waddington and Feinstein's essay clears space for an approach to science that emphasizes that scientific ideas are living ideas that unlock powerful possibilities for human agency. The essay by Harry Boyte and Margaret Finders, “‘A Liberation of Powers’: Agency and Education for Democracy,” is concerned primarily with the development of agency and secondarily with curricular change. Boyte and Finders begin the essay by deploring narrow definitions of agency and democracy, and move quickly to an exploration of Dewey's much more robust conceptions of these terms. Suggesting that much of the educational dialogue is dominated by what they see as a misguided set of technocratic discourses about failure, standards, and accountability, they argue that much more attention should be given to agentic, democratic, Deweyan approaches to education. In the final sections of the essay, they argue for one such approach, Public Achievement, a youth civic engagement effort that is now in use in hundreds of communities around the world. Terri Wilson, in her essay “Interest, Not Preference: Dewey and Reframing the Conceptual Vocabulary of School Choice,” focuses on the assumption that parents have distinct preferences for schools, preferences that are expressed in choosing schools for children. This view, shaped by rational choice theory, has been influential in shaping school choice policy. Wilson sees Dewey's view of “interest” as providing alternative conceptual resources for understanding the complexity of parents' choices. She draws on the contrast between a Deweyan view of “interest” and the rational choice account of “preferences” to analyze one parent's choice in more detail. Wilson documents several ways that a rational choice framework falls short in capturing the shifting, situational, and value-laden characteristics of this choice. She argues that Dewey's view of interest offers a vocabulary for exploring how diverse school communities might transform interests toward democratic ends. Moving away from curricular questions, Sarah Stitzlein and Amy Rector-Aranda's essay, “The Role of ‘Small Publics’ in Teacher Dissent,” focuses on developing democracy and agency among teachers. Using Aaron Schutz's analysis of teacher activism as a point of departure, they argue for the development of what they call “small publics” in schools. These small publics are Deweyan democratic spaces within which teachers can dialogue and exchange ideas about the problems they face in the classroom. Whereas Schutz views this type of space as a “stepping stone for more weighty work elsewhere,” Stitzlein and Rector-Aranda argue that small publics are worthwhile both as means and as ends in themselves; they not only prepare teachers to take action in the wider public sphere, but they also provide a critical space “for teachers to think about the meaning and function of power as they themselves engage in acts of establishing and negotiating power together.”4 Kathleen Knight Abowitz takes up similar themes in the context of higher education in “Imagining Democratic Futures for Public Universities: Educational Leadership Against Fatalism's Temptations.” Writing from her perspective as a department chair at a public university, she describes some of the problems facing public higher education: declining rates of public funding accompanied by increased curricular and administrative intervention from the state, the erosion of shared governance, and increased responsiveness to market demands as the institution becomes more tuition-dependent. In the face of these changes, Knight Abowitz argues that it can be tempting to give in to fatalistic accounts that explain how neoliberal trends will inevitably hollow out the university. As a more hopeful alternative, she suggests that university faculty work together to make the university into a more Deweyan democratic environment for both students and faculty, an environment in which civically engaged inquiry and cooperative social intelligence is at the heart of academic activities. Instead of sullenly isolating themselves, tenured faculty members who are disenchanted with the current direction of the university must take a meliorist stance and organize across boundaries in order to fight to save what is worthwhile about the university. Scott Pratt also draws on Deweyan resources to reconsider conceptions of multiculturalism. In his essay, “Geography, History, and the Aims of Education: The Possibility of Multiculturalism in Democracy and Education,” Pratt names and explores a tension between two conceptions of multiculturalism in Dewey's text. He locates the first — and problematic — conception of multiculturalism in Dewey's connection between “progress” and the process of civilization. This view, for Pratt, reinforces a troubling view of multiculturalism rooted in settler colonialism. Pratt sees more hope in an alternative view of multiculturalism, one that he locates in Dewey's account of aims as “ends-in-view.” This alternative, localized conception of multiculturalism — in Pratt's account — better respects boundaries and lines of difference; as such, it offers a more defensible foundation for contemporary multicultural education. In the section's final essay, “Democratic Education versus Smithian Efficiency: Prospects for a Deweyan Ideal in the ‘Neoliberal Age’,” David Meens steps back to examine the contemporary viability of Dewey's socio-educational prescriptions in Democracy and Education. Meens's central task is to bring Dewey's ideas into conversation with neoliberalism, which he defines as “a dogmatic belief that the goals of Smithian efficiency can and should be embraced as the organizing principles of the capitalist economy and also extended to all domains of modern social and political life.”5 Meens argues that when viewed within the neoliberal frame, Dewey's prescriptions become problematic for two reasons: first, Dewey's emphasis on general education and a resistance to specialization is economically inefficient; and second, Dewey's strong, democratic conception of the “the public” is anathema to the neoliberal vision of the public as a conglomeration of individual agents. Meens worries that if the ascendency of neoliberal ideology continues, the Deweyan educational and philosophical project will become increasingly marginalized. Democracy and Education was published in 1916 amid tremendous political, scientific, and technological change. Dewey notes the importance of these broader social forces in his preface: “the philosophy stated in this book connects the growth of democracy with the development of the experimental method in the sciences, evolutionary ideas in the biological sciences, and the industrial reorganization.”6 These profound social changes, for Dewey, created the need for careful reflection about the purposes and values of such change. Indeed, one of the animating concerns of Democracy and Education is how these rapid social forces might be better directed to democratic ends. In these ways, Dewey's classic text embodies the kind of careful critical inquiry — or “the criticism of criticisms”7 — that he understood as the essence of philosophical inquiry. [Criticism] is not a matter of formal treatises, published articles, or taking up important matter for consideration in a serious way. It occurs whenever a moment is devoted to looking to see what sort of value is present; whenever instead of accepting a value-object wholeheartedly, being rapt by it, we raise even a shadow of a question about its worth, or modify our sense of it by even a passing estimate on its probable future.8 Here, Dewey insists that criticism is an essential — and everyday — activity. It involves inquiry into the possible values implicit within various objects, movements, or events; and how those values might be questioned in light of future aims. Where the essays in this section succeed, they take up this same critical, constructive stance with respect to Democracy and Education. Far from “being held rapt” and preaching renewed dedication to a canonical text, they reconstruct and revivify the ideas in it to fit current conditions and probable futures. In doing so, they engage in “the criticism of criticisms,” not only about the ongoing legacy of Democracy and Education, but about diverse areas of educational policy and practice. In one way or another, all of the essays in this section discuss the fact that we are on the brink of a number of adverse social changes that will transform schools and universities. Many of the authors have proposed Deweyan ideas as sites of social resistance and positive educational transformation, and it is our hope that at least some of these essays will serve as important beginnings in this regard. However, the reason that we are so hopeful that they will do so is because of the way in which they critically reconstruct Dewey: they sharpen and reshape the ideas of democracy and agency and apply them to new contexts. More work of this kind is urgently needed; only by subjecting Dewey to this kind of critical transformation will Democracy and Education continue to be relevant for another hundred years. TERRI S. WILSON is Assistant Professor in the School of Education at University of Colorado Boulder, UCB 249, Boulder, CO 80309; e-mail <[email protected]>. Her research focuses on the philosophical foundations and normative significance of educational policy, including issues raised by school choice, marketization, and parent engagement. DAVID I. WADDINGTON is Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Concordia University, Office LB-545-5, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd., LB-579, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1M8; e-mail <[email protected]>. His primary areas of scholarship are civic education, the work of John Dewey, and the use (and misuse) of video games as educational tools.