Dewey's Writings Research Articles

A Historical Introduction to Continental Pedagogics from a North American Perspective

AbstractThis article aims to serve as an introductory discussion of the European Continental tradition of pedagogics, specifically from a North American perspective. It begins with an overview of the Continental tradition and its main figures. Here, we find a philosophical and, thus, language‐sensitive attitude toward the human, the child; and a specific pedagogical terminology, i.e., descriptions and interpretations about the reality of education, such as educational practices, goals, norms, and organizational forms of educational institutions. John Dewey's educational theories exemplify the North American perspective on Continental pedagogics and its study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. Dewey's writings diverge notably from this tradition, as he integrated into his work American pragmatism and an interest in the scientific method, an interest that plays a role in today's policy trends in the United States and elsewhere. Then again, Dewey took a critical stand toward instrumentalizing pedagogics for political aims. On this point, the German‐born political philosopher Hannah Arendt agreed with him. As Arendt can be seen as an example of a Continental perspective on philosophy that includes a strong warning to separate politics and education, she relates to Dewey's argument against instrumentalization. Thus, this article also features some of her work. The overall intention is to contribute to a renewal of a language for pedagogics by delineating a historical‐philosophical perspective on this specific field of professional practice.

America's Public Philosopher: Essays on Social Justice, Economics, Education, and the Future of Democracy

America's Public Philosopher: Essays on Social Justice, Economics, Education, and the Future of Democracy

Transcendentalism, Pragmatism, and Skepticism: A Response to Saito

Transcendentalism, Pragmatism, and Skepticism: A Response to Saito

THE METHOD OF DEMOCRACY: JOHN DEWEY’S THEORY OF COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE BY DAVID RIDLEY

Reviewed by: The Method of Democracy: John Dewey's Theory of Collective Intelligence by David Ridley Veli-Mikko Kauppi By David Ridley The Method of Democracy: John Dewey's Theory of Collective Intelligence Oxford: Peter Lang, 2021, 220pp., incl. index. John Dewey's writings on social intelligence, collective intelligence and the intelligence of the public have gained renascent attention, especially within democratic theory and democratic education. It has been proposed that pragmatism in general and Dewey in particular, offer an alternative model for democratic participation. This model shares many of the goals of deliberative democratic theory or critical theory, but is proposed to be capable of dodging some of the problems often affiliated with them—such as the powerlessness in the face of the rise of non-democratic populist movements that exploit the very means and apparatus of democracy. It is in part this allegedly non-democratic and non-intelligent populism that has motivated David Ridley to search for a 'forgotten alternative' model for populism: one that relies on the popular expressions of the contradictions of society, but one that is democratic and intelligent. In Ridley's thought neoliberalism presents the essential problem affecting and corrupting all aspects of life—a problem which must be solved in its multifariousness. However, so far the suggestions of how to solve it have been bound to fail due to the denial of collective intelligence, which can be observed in both right-wing populist solutions as well as their traditional leftist counterparts (p. 3). [End Page 295] The book is in three parts. Part one: Theoretical Foundations; Part two: A Problematic Situation; and Part three: Reconstruction. In part one Ridley first travels through the history of western intellectual Marxism and the so-called Frankfurt School. Starting with Lukács and his concept of reification, Ridley draws a rather grim picture of the pessimism and retreat from practice to theory, to which the Frankfurt School ended up in by its first generation, most notably Adorno and Horkheimer. This pessimism and distrust towards the potential of masses followed as an essential undercurrent also to its second generation, of which Jurgen Habermas is the most notable representative. As a way out of this dead-end, Ridley examines John Dewey's contribution to critical social theory in the second chapter of his book. This contribution was, at least during the first generation of Frankfurt School and to some extent even today, ignorantly underrated in Europe. This has been a loss for both critical theory and pragmatism, as both apparently share, among other things, the central interest in a just practice of social inquiry as interdisciplinary social research. It is in the second chapter of part one that Ridley presents his main argument: that uncritical everyday experiences can be transformed into critical opinion, or in Ridley's terms to 'intelligent populism', by means of Dewey's notion of collective intelligence. "Democratic social inquiry is in a primitive sense already in the public's hands," Ridley points out (p. 183). As members of democratic societies, we already are inquirers, but the quality of our inquiries defines the quality of our decisions. Co-operative social inquiry is the method of democracy, a procedure to actualize the aims of democracy: "On one level, Dewey's theory of social inquiry is very abstract and banal. Socialising formal practices of inquiry, developed to sophistication by academics and scientists, would help the public develop its collective intelligence, avoid co-optation by reactionary political parties and interests, free it from the manipulative consumption of the culture industry and, in time, reclaim democracy for the people." (p. 183). In Ridley's presentation, accusations of too much optimism regarding the intelligence of the common man in Dewey's work can be objected to as misinterpretation of his ideas, both in their simplicity and in their nuanced complexity. This nuanced complexity of Dewey's method of democracy is then examined in detail, producing the philosophically most interesting contribution of the book. Following the Deweyan pattern of inquiry, Part two focuses on elaborating what the problem is, once an indeterminate situation has emerged. This is done in two chapters, of which the first one focuses on neoliberalism being...

La Philosophie pour enfants : une piste pour réconcilier enseignement disciplinaire et vie scolaire ?

"Philosophy for Children: a Way to Reconcile Disciplinary Teaching and School Life? Drawing mainly on John Dewey's writings, this contribution aims to extend the dualism of a traditional conception of education at the epistemological, pedagogical and organizational levels. This conception was already criticised by this author at the beginning of the 20th century and still remains widely present today among the school community. Through this approach, we demonstrate that the dualist approach is as many obstacles to be removed in the process both to improve and rebuild a better education. The hypothesis defended here consists to demonstrate how philosophy for children, strengthened by its pragmatist heritage, can challenge these dualisms and thereby jeopardize the traditional conception of education. Keywords: John Dewey, philosophy of education, co-curriculum, school life, philosophy for children "

Democratic Education: What Would Dewey Say?

The author examines select excerpts from John Dewey's writings on democracy, discusses the role of education in a democracy, and offers ideas on how to provide students with a democratic education.

“Caught in Its Movement”: Liberalism, Critique, and Dewey’s Implicit Philosophy of History

Abstract “Philosophers,” Dewey writes, “are parts of history, caught in its movement; creators perhaps in some measure of its future, but also assuredly creatures of its past” (Dewey 1927, 2). The question of the philosopher’s embeddedness in either her own or some earlier historical moment constitutes an important theme in Dewey’s account of pragmatism, in particular his account of politics. In lieu of a formal treatise on history, this paper focuses on Dewey’s claims about history as they are enacted in his political analyses. Drawing on texts such as Liberalism and Social Action (1935) and Freedom and Culture (1939) as well “The Role of Philosophy in the History of Civilization” (1927), I hope to elucidate in greater depth the function and meaning of the term “historic relativity” as a central concept in Dewey’s philosophy of history (Dewey 1935, 42). Further, I evaluate Dewey’s criticisms of both classical liberalism and Marxism on historical grounds, where he employs what I call political obsolescence claims. From these texts I reconstruct and critically assess what I refer to as Dewey’s implicit philosophy of history. I conclude that the presuppositions of Dewey’s political reconstruction represent the very mode of uncritical historical reproduction which his philosophy ostensibly cautions against. To suggest one possibility for addressing these tensions, I gesture toward non-coincidence as a critical historical category through which we might articulate the historic present with the hope of transforming it.

John Dewey and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB): What Would He Say?

Using John Dewey's writings and hypothetical thinking, this paper presents a critical review of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and its implication for reform. It begins with Dewey's early work and includes his greatest success at Arthurdale WV in the l 930's. The importance of constructivist thinking is juxtaposition among the reformist views of today's assessment driven policy to qualify for funding. Like Dewey, the author argues for experiential learningto make connections in real life situations presented through school opportunities. In trying to highlight transparency, closing failing schools, bringing equanimty, raising standards, and improving curriculum, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) produced a culture of assessment without its accompanying experiential component. Learning best occurs when the experience connects with other aspects, so transfer of the knowledge becomes easily retrievable.

Dewey in the World of Experiential Education

AbstractThis chapter considers whether John Dewey's writings about experiential education are relevant to modern‐day conceptions of adult experiential learning. It highlights how some of the threads of Dewey's thinking are still pertinent, but much more complex.

Dewey: a panacea for the ‘schoolification’ epidemic

ABSTRACTHigh quality early years’ education is associated with providing a child-centred curriculum based on a knowledge of how young children learn. The global ‘schoolification epidemic’ has led to an increasing focus on prescribed curricula and presents as a serious threat to the quality of children's early years’ experiences. Findings from research in Ireland confirm this shift towards ‘schoolification’ and the association of school readiness with a child's age and the acquisition of academic skills. Revisiting Dewey's writings provides a much needed impetus for a return to child-centredness and a re-conceptualisation of early years’ education as a process of forming fundamental dispositions.

JOHN DEWEY'S HIGH HOPES FOR PLAY:DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATIONAND PROGRESSIVE ERA CONTROVERSIES OVER PLAY IN KINDERGARTEN AND PRESCHOOL EDUCATION

Exploring John Dewey's hopes for play reveals much about the key role he thought it played in education in a democratic society. PlacingDemocracy and Educationin the context of Progressive Era controversies over play in the kindergarten movement and preschool education illustrates Dewey's view that teacher-guided free play could reconcile the dilemma of the need for individual agency and social discipline. Dewey built upon and critiqued the scripted play pedagogy of kindergarten founder Friedrich Froebel. Drawing in part from progressive kindergarten teachers, Dewey constructed his own notion of play that he argued fostered experiential learning, voluntary participation, and social order. For Dewey, play and work were naturally linked in ways in which the needs of the child and society coalesced. Analysis of sources from the kindergarten movement and the Sub-primary Department at the University of Chicago Laboratory School provide background for interpreting some of Dewey's writings on play, which influenced modern contests over how young children learn and should be taught.

Between Means and Ends: Reconstructing Coercion in Dewey's Democratic Theory

John Dewey's democratic theory is celebrated as a classic statement of the theory of deliberative democracy. This article challenges deliberative appropriations of Dewey's political thought by situating his democratic theory within the contentious history of American labor politics. In his writings on direct action, strikes, and class struggle, Dewey advocated coercive and nondeliberative modes of political action as democratic means for democratic ends. Examining Dewey's writings on democracy, action, and the use of force reveals how a means-oriented pragmatism circumvents the problematic dichotomy of ideal ends and non-ideal means framing contemporary debates about idealism and realism in democratic theory. Pragmatism's account of the interdependence of means and ends in political action, as a process of creative and collaborative experimentation, combines a robust defense of coercive tactics with a consequentialist critique of violence.

Democracy, Partisanship, and the Meliorative Value of Sympathy in John Dewey's Philosophy of Communication

ABSTRACT This article engages the work of John Dewey to outline a pragmatist philosophy of communication that is adaptive to the undemocratic effects of extreme partisanship in belief and argument. Using his aesthetic theory, I sketch out an account of the phenomenological motions of communicative experience of self among others. I then examine the ways that partisan habits of thinking can warp our communicative activities. Drawing upon Dewey's writings on logic and ethics, I examine his account of the habits of intelligent communication. Building on this ideal, I propose “sympathy” as both a feeling and a cognitive method to decrease the pull of distorting partisan habits of reasoning in communicative situations. Linking mindful receptivity to conversational others and an explicit method of charity becomes a viable way to instill true communicative respect in democratic communicators.

A Century of John and Evelyn Dewey's Schools of To-morrow: Rousseau, Recorded Knowledge, and Race in the Philosopher's Most Problematic Text

A century ago, John Dewey and his daughter Evelyn published Schools of To-morrow to nearly universal acclaim. However, over the course of the 20th century, critics of Dewey have drawn upon Schools of To-morrow to accuse him of being an uncritical disciple of French philosopher, Jean Rousseau, of being opposed to the transmission of content to students, and most recently of endorsing a curriculum that patronized Black students. As a result, the text has become John Dewey's most controversial and problematic. In this historical study, we seek to place Schools of To-morrow in its historical, intellectual, and social context. The first part of the study traces the writing and publication of the text, as well as its changing reception over the past century. The second part of the study directly responds to the three criticisms previously cited: that Dewey was a disciple of Rousseau, that Dewey was opposed to the transmission of content knowledge, and that Dewey endorsed the racially segregated school system of Indianapolis depicted in the text. Drawing upon Dewey's other writings, his course syllabi, his personal correspondence, and lecture notes, we argue that the first two accusations are unfounded, but the third is partially accurate, although incomplete. We conclude that Schools of To-morrow is an undervalued text in the Dewey cannon that warrants closer study.

The Democratic Curriculum: Concept and Practice

Dewey continues to offer arguments that remain powerful on the need to break down the divisions between ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’ in terms of his specific theory of knowledge. Dewey's writings are used to argue that a democratic curriculum needs to challenge such divisions to encompass the many forms of knowledge necessary in the contemporary classroom. Gandin and Apple's investigation of community participation (Orçamento Participativo or Participatory Budgeting) in the curriculum of the Citizen School in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will be explored as an example of democratic structures informing educational planning. The work of Paul Hirst, Atli Harđarson and Chris Jane Brough is analysed regarding the issue of curriculum aims and student negotiation. Dewey's emphasis on learning as a collective enterprise will resonate here. Brough offers innovative research on student-centred curriculum integration that suggests even very young children are able to participate in debate over their own learning. Hirst and Harđarson provide contrasting views on the issue of curriculum aims—Hirst arguing that a curriculum cannot exist without definable aims while Harđarson challenges the very notion of settled aims if students are to be reflexive regarding their education. The article also refers to the work of Alexander on the use of dialogic questioning in the classroom. Such questioning, it is suggested, enhances and encourages collaborative forms of enquiry necessary for a democratic curriculum through discussion between teachers, students and other stakeholders.

Dewey, Interest, and Well-Being: Prospects for Improving the Educational Value of Physical Education

Despite the current policy prominence of physical education, there is still unease about the subject's educational contribution. In this respect, we are surprised by how seldom John Dewey's writings inform contemporary reviews of aims and values. We outline how his writings on connecting the child and the curriculum and schools with society are relevant to deliberations on how students could derive enhanced meaning from physical education. We address criticisms by Richard Peters of Dewey and discuss related issues on: interest and engagement, problem solving and criteria for personal growth. We discuss how the thinking of Dewey and Valerie Tiberius might inform the development of physical education curricular that are more deeply connected with the lives of students and which promote well-being. In particular, we argue there is a need for future curriculum to be designed in ways that invite students to cultivate informed and stable physical activity habits and values.

John Dewey and the Artful Life: Pragmatism, Aesthetics, and Morality

John Dewey and the Artful Life: Pragmatism, Aesthetics, and Morality

A Voice from the Past Calls for Classroom Technology

John Dewey's writings on education reform tell us we should embrace technology in the classroom so that we can prepare students with 21st-century skills.

John Dewey's Quest for Unity: The Journey of a Promethean Mystic

John Dewey's Quest for Unity:The Journey of a Promethean Mystic Loren Goldman (bio) Richard Gale , John Dewey's Quest for Unity: The Journey of a Promethean Mystic. New York: Prometheus Books, 2008. 215 pages. ISBN 159102630-X. $32.98 (hbk.) Richard Gale's slender monograph is a sometimes insightful, sometimes enervating and always personal reckoning with John Dewey's philosophy. Gale's basic thesis is that Dewey is a unificationist malgré lui, that despite being committed to empiricism and pluralism his pragmatism remains profoundly metaphysical in a non-naturalistic sense. This claim is hardly new or surprising. Thinkers as diverse as George Santayana, Richard Rorty and John Patrick Diggins, to name but a few, have also noted traces of supernaturalism and monism throughout Dewey's corpus. Moreover, recent works including Victor Kestenbaum's The Grace and Severity of the Ideal (Chicago 2002), James Good's A Search for Unity and Diversity (Lexington 2005) and Melvin Rogers' The Undiscovered Dewey (Columbia 2008) have addressed the intersection of Dewey's writings with spiritual and religious themes. Gale describes his own contribution as "a mere footnote" (26n9) to Steven Rockefeller's John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (Columbia 1992), an intellectual biography narrated in the long shadows of Dewey's evangelical upbringing. Where Gale's work stands out, however, is in its claim that Dewey's corpus is incoherent unless significantly modified. As Gale sees it, Dewey's work is shot through with a tension between his scientistic metaphilosophy and the "metaphysical" bases and aspirations for his theory of experience. On the one hand, Gale argues that Dewey denies qualitative experiences any cognitive value; on the other, he offers that Dewey's privileged process of inquiry rests on intersubjective communication about qualitatively "felt" and ultimately ineffable problematic situations in experience. As such, Dewey's endorsement of scientific method is incompatible with his aesthetic conception of inquiry. Therefore, either his methodology or his metaphysics has to go. Gale recommends that Dewey drop his infatuation with science and own up to his identity as a traditional metaphysician. The work's introduction explains Gale's systematic approach to Dewey's philosophy and briefly lays out the general argument. Gale reads Dewey's key concepts [End Page 135] of inquiry, moral democracy, communication and education as forming a pyramid "with growth as the summum bonum at its apex" (11). In Gale's words, growth "involves the realization by an individual of ever richer and more extensive unifications, both within herself and with other persons, as well as with her natural environment" (11). Below this apex comes inquiry, the controlled and directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into a unified, meaningful whole (12). Inquiries are successful if they lead to greater harmony within concrete experience. Gale writes that inquiry "involves the realization of greater esthetic unification" (12). Moral democracy comes next, for it "will empower citizens to freely bring about their own growth, and to do so it must create the circumstances in which they will become effective inquirers" (13). Communication undergirds moral democracy, for "[c]ollective inquiry requires a community of shared interests and purposes" which can only be gleaned through "widespread communication" (14). Finally, education sits at the pyramid's base, teaching citizens "how to engage in collective inquiry" (15). While perhaps somewhat forced (an image of a cone or cylinder rather than a pyramid seems more apt), Gale's pyramidal schematization, whether one accepts it or not, reveals that the systematic aspects of Dewey's work can be easily overlooked if one does not make a conscious effort to illuminate them. This image, moreover, allows Gale to make his dramatic claim that "Dewey's grand pyramid is a glorification of humanity as a Promethean creator of meaning and value through the active control of nature by inquiry. . . . This one-idea fanaticism is both the glory and the misery of Dewey's philosophy" (18). Cataloguing the errors of Deweyan inquiry is the task to which Gale applies himself in subsequent chapters. The rest of the book is structured in two parts composed of four chapters each. The first section, "Growth, Inquiry, and Unity," develops the argument that Dewey is obsessed with unity. Gale...

“One must make a distinction, however”: Marianne Moore and Democratic Taste

This essay attempts to characterize the thinking of Marianne Moore on the nature and purpose of aesthetic taste in a democratic culture. Moore stands within one of two traditions of thought on the subject, though tradition may be somewhat too strong a word to describe a constellation of writers without a self-consciously declared affiliation to one another. Those in the first camp, which includes Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Adams, Henry James (in some moods), George Santayana, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jose Ortega y Gasset, cast a suspicious glance upon democracy because of its apparent hostility to personal and artistic achievement. These writers resent the spread of democratic ideals into the realm of culture, and accuse egalitarian forms of government of suppressing artistic quality in the name of political equality. Santayana offers a concise formulation of this line of argument in his polemical remarks about Walt Whitman in Poetry of Barbarism: Democracy was not to be merely a constitutional device for the better government of given nations, not merely a movement for the material improvement of the lot of the poorer classes. It was to be a social and democracy and to involve an actual equality among all men. Whatever kept them apart and made it impossible for them to he messmates together was to be discarded. The literature of democracy was to ignore all extraordinary gifts of genius or virtue, all drawn even from great passions or romantic adventures. (112) For Santayana, a government organized by popular sovereignty is a worthy and enlightened political idea, at least in theory. The problem with egalitarian politics is it leads the public to resent and repress those persons who achieve some measure of cultivated accomplishment in society. When the standards of egalitarianism are applied to the realm of culture, there is no longer any reason to honor literary distinction or appeal to higher tastes, since each of these categories presume a form of social hierarchy, and social hierarchy violates the democratic creed all persons are created equal. Once the democratic public begins to clamor for equality in every sphere of social life, Santayana suggests, political ambition and artistic refinement are sacrificed to the vulgar passions and common standards of the mob. A second strand of thought, which includes figures like John Stuart Mill (with reservations), Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, William James, Henry James (in some moods), and John. Dewey, celebrates democracy's potential for spreading a measure of cultural ambition throughout the populace, encouraging ordinary citizens to strive for and attain the rare and distinguished. For these writers, democracy names a minimal condition of political equality out of which the forms of individuality can be given definition. On this account, the distinctive and idiosyncratic expressions of the individual imagination become the proof by which political equality justifies itself. It is this cluster of assumptions leads John Dewey to reject the idea of democracy as a leveler of cultural achievement or artistic genius. On the contrary, Dewey writes, moral equality means incommensurability, the inapplicability of common and quantitative standards ... Democracy will not be democracy until education makes it its chief concern to release distinctive aptitudes in art, thought, and companionship. A democrat regards equality, Dewey concludes, as that of made universal (Individuality 79-80). Distinction: the word surfaces in the vocabulary of both Santayana and Dewey when discussing democracy's relation to aesthetic taste, and, as we shall see, it makes another prominent appearance at a crucial moment in Marianne Moore's Poetry. Yet this word generally carries pejorative overtones among contemporary literary scholars., in large part because of the influential sociological writings of Pierre Bourdieu. …