dorhastings's review against another edition
4.0
It is astounding to me that someone had these ideas and expressed them as early as 1916. We can still learn so much from it. The writing might be difficult to get through (you've got to be dedicated to finish it), but it's worth it.
mlindner's review against another edition
3.0
http://www.bookglutton.com/detail/John+Dewey/Democracy+and+Education+an+Introduction+to+the+Philosophy+of+Education/400.html. Read: 18 July-22 Sep. My 1st long nonfiction work read on the Touch. It went OK but this, for me, would have been better in print.
dngoldman's review against another edition
5.0
Democracy and Education
John Dewey
8.31.19
This seminal work deserves to be read today. It has a lot to say about educational battles we’re still fighting but also how a vibrant humanistic education system is necessary for a thriving democracy. In fact, you work backwards from Deweys’ theories. Suppose you had a thriving democracy and wanted to destroy it. Attached the type of education of Dewey desires would be a good place to start.
Broader purposes of education:
Once societies get to a certain size (geographically and otherwise), only education can pass along culture and civilization. While DNA can pass on the traits needed to live, and informal learning can pass on local customs, civilization’s perish without formal education - there is simply no way to pass them on. “With the renewal of physical existence goes, in the case of human beings, the recreation of beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, misery, and practices. The continuity of any experience, through renewing of the social group, is a literal fact. Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life.”
(p. 2).
Dewey rejects the notion of education as just learning of facts and knowledge. Instead, education is social and prepares people with skills and attitudes to live in a democracy (e.g. being able to argue and accept other arguments, for example). Education is about training the person for the social environment. Isolated learning is not education.
“A being connected with other beings cannot perform his own activities without taking the activities of others into account. For they are the indispensable conditions of the realization of his tendencies. “(p. 9)
[Comparing learning with the end training] “But the horse, presumably, does not get any new interest. He remains interested in food, not in the service he is rendering. He is not a partner in a shared activity. Were he to become a copartner, he would, in engaging in the conjoint activity, have the same interest in its accomplishment which others have.” (P.10). The piercing question Dewey begs is why do we educate people like horses.
Dewey sums up the goal of education as education itself “[o]nly education that makes for power to know as an end in itself, without reference to the practice of even civic duties, is truly liberal or free.” (p. 195).
These passages show how Dewey ties principles of education to to principles of democracy.
Democracy and Education
“The sort of education appropriate to the development of a democratic community was then explicitly taken as the criterion of the further, more detailed analysis of education. (p. 247). .
[T]he development of a truly democratic society, a society in which all share in useful service and all enjoy a worthy leisure. It is not a mere change in the concepts of culture–or a liberal mind–and social service which requires an educational reorganization;
The educational transformation is needed to give full and explicit effect to the changes implied in social life. The increased political and economic emancipation of the "masses" has shown itself in education; it has effected the development of a common school system of education, public and free. It has destroyed the idea that learning is properly a monopoly of the few who are predestined by nature to govern
(pp. 196-197).
Relating to the Dewey’s pragmatism is is idea of continuous reconstruction. In both education and democracy, progress is never ending process of fits and starts. “The ideal of a continuous reconstruction or reorganizing of experience, of such a nature as to increase its recognized meaning or social content, and as to increase the capacity of individuals to act as directive guardians of this reorganization.” (p. 247).
“Knowledge is not just something which we are now conscious of, but consists of the dispositions we consciously use in understanding what now happens. Knowledge as an act is bringing some of our dispositions to consciousness with a view to straightening out a perplexity, by conceiving the connection between ourselves and the world in which we live.” (p. 263).
“In an analogous way, since democracy stands in principle for free interchange, for social continuity, it must develop a theory of knowledge which sees in knowledge the method by which one experience is made available in giving direction and meaning to another.” (p. 264).
Without this type of education Dewey warns, “Men still want the crutch of dogma, of beliefs fixed by authority, to relieve them of the trouble of thinking and the responsibility of directing their activity by thought. They tend to confine their own thinking to a consideration of which one among the rival systems of dogma they will accept.” (p. 259).
Equality
Dewey smells elitism in much of the traditional learning structures. Universities provide education for those who don’t need to labor. Education focused on labors provide skill but not the social skills to fully participate in democracy. There is Neo-Marxist element to Dewey’s critique - similar to Marx’s argument that specialization robs workers of value of the full range of their talents. “The failure to fully educate into a democracy is a type of theft. But when we confine the education of those who work with their hands to a few years of schooling devoted for the most part to acquiring the use of rudimentary symbols at the expense of training in science, literature, and history, we fail to prepare the minds of workers to take advantage of this opportunity.(p. 199). Such social divisions as interfere with free and full intercourse react to make the intelligence and knowing of members of the separated classes one-sided.] (p. 263).
Pragmatism
The education theory “which is advanced in these pages may be termed pragmatic. Its essential feature is to maintain the continuity of knowing with an activity which purposely modifies the environment. (p. 263).
Pragmatism and morals
Acts “are moral in an emphatic sense not because they are isolated and exclusive, but because they are so intimately connected with thousands of other attitudes which we do not explicitly recognize–which perhaps we have not even names for. To call them virtues in their isolation is like taking the skeleton for the living body. The bones are certainly important, but their importance lies in the fact that they support other organs of the body in such a way as to make them capable of integrated effective activity. p. 273).
Social theory of virtue: To possess virtue does not signify to have cultivated a few namable and exclusive traits; it means to be fully and adequately what one is capable of becoming through association with others in all the offices of life. 274
The different types of education.
Dewey rails again the type of education the treats humans as biological repository of facts. Yet, he criticizes equally the type of education that so focuses on the wants of the individual without the broader social context.
“Hence one of the weightiest problems with which the philosophy of education has to cope is the method of keeping a proper balance between the informal and the formal, the incidental and the intentional, modes of education.”
(p. 7).
The difference between man and ants
”The parts of a machine work with a maximum of cooperativeness for a common result, but they do not form a community. If, however, they were all cognizant of the common end and all interested in it so that they regulated their specific activity in view of it, then they would form a community. “ (p. 4).
“Making the individual a sharer or partner in the associated activity so that he feels its success as his success, its failure as his failure, is the completing step. As soon as he is possessed by the emotional attitude of the group, he will be alert to recognize the special ends at which it aims and the means employed to secure success. His beliefs and ideas, in other words, will take a form similar to those of others in the group. He will also achieve pretty much the same stock of knowledge since that knowledge is an ingredient of his habitual pursuits. (p. 11).
Learning technical skills must be within social context. “When the acquiring of information and of technical intellectual skill do not influence the formation of a social disposition, ordinary vital experience fails to gain in meaning.” (p. 7).
John Dewey
8.31.19
This seminal work deserves to be read today. It has a lot to say about educational battles we’re still fighting but also how a vibrant humanistic education system is necessary for a thriving democracy. In fact, you work backwards from Deweys’ theories. Suppose you had a thriving democracy and wanted to destroy it. Attached the type of education of Dewey desires would be a good place to start.
Broader purposes of education:
Once societies get to a certain size (geographically and otherwise), only education can pass along culture and civilization. While DNA can pass on the traits needed to live, and informal learning can pass on local customs, civilization’s perish without formal education - there is simply no way to pass them on. “With the renewal of physical existence goes, in the case of human beings, the recreation of beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, misery, and practices. The continuity of any experience, through renewing of the social group, is a literal fact. Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life.”
(p. 2).
Dewey rejects the notion of education as just learning of facts and knowledge. Instead, education is social and prepares people with skills and attitudes to live in a democracy (e.g. being able to argue and accept other arguments, for example). Education is about training the person for the social environment. Isolated learning is not education.
“A being connected with other beings cannot perform his own activities without taking the activities of others into account. For they are the indispensable conditions of the realization of his tendencies. “(p. 9)
[Comparing learning with the end training] “But the horse, presumably, does not get any new interest. He remains interested in food, not in the service he is rendering. He is not a partner in a shared activity. Were he to become a copartner, he would, in engaging in the conjoint activity, have the same interest in its accomplishment which others have.” (P.10). The piercing question Dewey begs is why do we educate people like horses.
Dewey sums up the goal of education as education itself “[o]nly education that makes for power to know as an end in itself, without reference to the practice of even civic duties, is truly liberal or free.” (p. 195).
These passages show how Dewey ties principles of education to to principles of democracy.
Democracy and Education
“The sort of education appropriate to the development of a democratic community was then explicitly taken as the criterion of the further, more detailed analysis of education. (p. 247). .
[T]he development of a truly democratic society, a society in which all share in useful service and all enjoy a worthy leisure. It is not a mere change in the concepts of culture–or a liberal mind–and social service which requires an educational reorganization;
The educational transformation is needed to give full and explicit effect to the changes implied in social life. The increased political and economic emancipation of the "masses" has shown itself in education; it has effected the development of a common school system of education, public and free. It has destroyed the idea that learning is properly a monopoly of the few who are predestined by nature to govern
(pp. 196-197).
Relating to the Dewey’s pragmatism is is idea of continuous reconstruction. In both education and democracy, progress is never ending process of fits and starts. “The ideal of a continuous reconstruction or reorganizing of experience, of such a nature as to increase its recognized meaning or social content, and as to increase the capacity of individuals to act as directive guardians of this reorganization.” (p. 247).
“Knowledge is not just something which we are now conscious of, but consists of the dispositions we consciously use in understanding what now happens. Knowledge as an act is bringing some of our dispositions to consciousness with a view to straightening out a perplexity, by conceiving the connection between ourselves and the world in which we live.” (p. 263).
“In an analogous way, since democracy stands in principle for free interchange, for social continuity, it must develop a theory of knowledge which sees in knowledge the method by which one experience is made available in giving direction and meaning to another.” (p. 264).
Without this type of education Dewey warns, “Men still want the crutch of dogma, of beliefs fixed by authority, to relieve them of the trouble of thinking and the responsibility of directing their activity by thought. They tend to confine their own thinking to a consideration of which one among the rival systems of dogma they will accept.” (p. 259).
Equality
Dewey smells elitism in much of the traditional learning structures. Universities provide education for those who don’t need to labor. Education focused on labors provide skill but not the social skills to fully participate in democracy. There is Neo-Marxist element to Dewey’s critique - similar to Marx’s argument that specialization robs workers of value of the full range of their talents. “The failure to fully educate into a democracy is a type of theft. But when we confine the education of those who work with their hands to a few years of schooling devoted for the most part to acquiring the use of rudimentary symbols at the expense of training in science, literature, and history, we fail to prepare the minds of workers to take advantage of this opportunity.(p. 199). Such social divisions as interfere with free and full intercourse react to make the intelligence and knowing of members of the separated classes one-sided.] (p. 263).
Pragmatism
The education theory “which is advanced in these pages may be termed pragmatic. Its essential feature is to maintain the continuity of knowing with an activity which purposely modifies the environment. (p. 263).
Pragmatism and morals
Acts “are moral in an emphatic sense not because they are isolated and exclusive, but because they are so intimately connected with thousands of other attitudes which we do not explicitly recognize–which perhaps we have not even names for. To call them virtues in their isolation is like taking the skeleton for the living body. The bones are certainly important, but their importance lies in the fact that they support other organs of the body in such a way as to make them capable of integrated effective activity. p. 273).
Social theory of virtue: To possess virtue does not signify to have cultivated a few namable and exclusive traits; it means to be fully and adequately what one is capable of becoming through association with others in all the offices of life. 274
The different types of education.
Dewey rails again the type of education the treats humans as biological repository of facts. Yet, he criticizes equally the type of education that so focuses on the wants of the individual without the broader social context.
“Hence one of the weightiest problems with which the philosophy of education has to cope is the method of keeping a proper balance between the informal and the formal, the incidental and the intentional, modes of education.”
(p. 7).
The difference between man and ants
”The parts of a machine work with a maximum of cooperativeness for a common result, but they do not form a community. If, however, they were all cognizant of the common end and all interested in it so that they regulated their specific activity in view of it, then they would form a community. “ (p. 4).
“Making the individual a sharer or partner in the associated activity so that he feels its success as his success, its failure as his failure, is the completing step. As soon as he is possessed by the emotional attitude of the group, he will be alert to recognize the special ends at which it aims and the means employed to secure success. His beliefs and ideas, in other words, will take a form similar to those of others in the group. He will also achieve pretty much the same stock of knowledge since that knowledge is an ingredient of his habitual pursuits. (p. 11).
Learning technical skills must be within social context. “When the acquiring of information and of technical intellectual skill do not influence the formation of a social disposition, ordinary vital experience fails to gain in meaning.” (p. 7).
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