Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education

Dewey continues to trace the development of dualism between the humanities and the scientific (naturalistic) disciplines in education. He argues that this dualism is rooted in the “philosophic dualism between man and nature” (222). In the educational setting, humanities are accompanied with a reduction to “the literary records of the past” (222). However, this type of dualism is not characteristic of ancient Greece. Dewey suggests that it is linked to “the political or ecclesiastic conditions” of Rome and post-Roman Europe stressing the authority of literary documents and their borrowing of Greek culture in this way (222). Modern science after the 17th century was meant to restore the links between humans and the physical world but did not sufficiently impact education in this way. This chapter comprises three sections.

1. The Historic Background of Humanistic Study

Dewey highlights additional aspects of ancient Greek thought relevant to dualist concepts in the Western intellectual tradition. For example, Socrates believed that the “science of nature was not attainable and not very important” (212). He focused on identifying the nature of humanity instead. Plato, in contrast, linked the knowledge of nature with understanding human society. Aristotle progressed further in studying naturalistic fields and contributed to biology and physics. He was also the key philosopher to influence medieval scholars in many ways, including early science of that era. Indeed, these scholars were responsible for the “highly effective systematization of the methods of teaching and learning” (214).

Dewey argues that the subsequent societies that came after the Greeks, such as the Romans, used the Greek literary record instead of directly analyzing the physical world and society. These factors contributed to the fact that “the Greek tradition was lost in which a humanistic interest was used as a basis of interest in nature, and a knowledge of nature used to support the distinctively human aims of man” (215). Until the Scientific Revolution, Europeans focused primarily on studying literature instead of nature—a result of the profound influence of the Greeks.

2. The Modern Scientific Interest in Nature

Dewey argues that one reason for the separation of humans from nature—and humanities and sciences in education—was institutional. However, the Renaissance brought along with it a renewed interest in the natural world and its relationship with people. Revisiting the Greek pagan texts, Renaissance humanism was born. At the same time, the Protestant Reformation led to an increased interest in controversial questions.

Scientists like Francis Bacon began to display “a union of naturalistic and humanistic interests” (216). According to Dewey, instead of liberating humanity, new science “worked in the interest of old ends of human exploitation” (217). He discusses the rise of capitalism—instead of “social humanism”—and the Industrial Revolution which exacerbated class divisions and social inequalities despite dooming the feudalist socio-economic system (217). Some of the thinking that arose in this period also sharpened the dualism between mind and matter.

3. The Present Educational Problem

As society became more complex, so did its problems e.g., public sanitation, poverty, city planning, and mental health. Dewey highlights “the direct dependence of our important social concerns upon the methods and results of natural science” (218-9). He argues that education needs to pursue a more integrated approach and cross-pollinate “both the natural sciences and the various human disciplines” (219). Separating education from the physical world and the society around the student outside school “breaks the continuity of mental development, makes the student feel an indescribable unreality in his studies” (219). He also suggests that culture is stunted, rather than extended, by merely passing on the culture of the past which was representative of the ruling classes.

This chapter examines this relationship between culture and class. Dewey asserts that authentic “individualism is a product of the relaxation of the grip of the authority of custom and traditions as standards of belief” (233). This type of individualism is a modern development. However, instead of transforming the previous belief systems and institutions based on this concept, the new individualism decided that “each individual’s mind was complete in isolation from everything else” (234). One could take Dewey’s argument even further and suggest that the logical conclusion of such individualism is the breakdown of communities—and society—based on such traditional ties. Several problems arose out of this conception of individualism, for example, one of social direction. Dewey suggests that a democratic, “progressive society counts individual variations as precious since it finds in them the means of its own growth” (234). Chapter 22 comprises three sections.

1. Mind as Purely Individual

Dewey reviews the way historical influences divided the realm of education into self-contained fields. He reminds the reader that linking the mind and a private consciousness with the individual self is a modern concept. Both for the ancients and the Medieval thinkers, “the rule was to regard the individual as a channel through which a universal and divine intelligence operated” (223). Plato’s theory of forms or ideas, in which individual humans are iterations of an ideal form, comes to mind.

At the same time, there were historical variants of individualism, for example, the concern for individual salvation during the Middle Ages. The 16th century brought with it relatively greater political and economic agency for individuals as well as the rise of Protestantism. These developments translated into questions about “the rights and duties of the individual in achieving knowledge of himself” (224). Ultimately, “practical individualism, or struggle for greater freedom of thought in action, was translated into philosophic subjectivism” (224).

2. Individual Mind as the Agent of Reorganization

In Dewey’s view, the philosophical developments of the Early Modern period “misconceived the significance of the practical movement” (224). People did not want to become individuals free of all ties—in nature and society—they sought “greater freedom in nature and society” (224). Instead of enhancing social ties, some philosophical schools “isolated the individual from the world, and consequently isolated individuals—in theory—from one another” (225). Dewey emphasizes that humans are social creatures, and it is through “social intercourse, through sharing in the activities embodying beliefs” that people obtain a mind of their own (226).

It is impossible to discard all previously transmitted knowledge without reaching an outcome “of general imbecility” (226). For this reason, an individual’s role in the realm of knowledge is “the redirection, or reconstruction of accepted beliefs” (227). However, Early Modern philosophical theories did not conceive of an individual “as the pivot upon which reconstruction of beliefs turned,” but rather as a “separate entity, complete in each person, and isolated from nature and hence from other minds” (227). Such is the philosophical basis for denying “the social quality of individualized mental operations” leading to severing “connections which will unite an individual with his fellows” (228).

Dewey also reviews the regional variations of this Early Modern philosophical trajectory in France, Germany, and England. For example, the French tradition “developed the idea of reason in opposition to the religious conception of the divine mind residing in individuals,” whereas the German tradition, embodied by Hegel, “made a synthesis of the two” (230). For Hegel, “an individual becomes rational only as he absorbs into himself the content of relationality in nature and in social institutions” (230).

3. Education and Equivalents

These philosophical traditions since the 16th century impacted the realm of pedagogy, and “the school has been the institution which exhibited with greatest clearness the assumed antithesis between purely individualistic methods of learning and social action, and between freedom and social control” (231). For example, some educators identify freedom in schools as lacking social direction. In Dewey’s view, freedom facilitates independent observation and thinking and improves learning. To be an individual means to have one’s own purpose. In contrast, excessive uniformity leads to destroying originality and subordination to the views of others. Such is the case when teachers have students recite the material “in the exact form in which the older person conceives it” (232). Dewey suggests that education should “take cognizance of the union of mind and body in acquiring knowledge” (233). Otherwise, academic docility, memorization, and reproduction of the teacher’s views lead to “intellectual servility” (233).

The “Vocational Aspect of Education” discusses the preparatory professional component of schooling. Dewey defines vocation as “any form of continuous activity which renders service to others and engages personal powers in behalf of the accomplished results” (245). A vocation should involve “making a livelihood with the worthy enjoyment of life” and “practical behavior having definite results” (245). This topic is linked to all the aforementioned major issues discussed throughout the book such as the dualisms and the “individual conscious development with associated life” (245). The very structure of society and its inequalities also reflect the character of education. This chapter comprises three sections.

1. The Meaning of Vocation

Vocational factors are one of the features of education. However, education remains divided between the sciences-humanities antithesis and mind-body dualism. The latter, for instance, associates liberal culture with leisure and “a spiritual activity not involving the active use of bodily organs” (235). Dewey argues that the opposite of having a career is not leisure or cultural pursuits but “aimlessness, capriciousness, the absence of cumulative achievement in experience” (235). A vocation is not an isolated specialized skill but has a direct relationship with the physical world and society. For instance, being a professional artist is only one “specialized phase of his diverse and variegated vocational activities” (236). After all, an artist seeks subject matter in the outside world.

2. The Place of Vocational Aims in Education

Vocations feature “varied and connected content” (236). Dewey considers it tragic when people fail “to discover one’s true business in life” and are forced to do something different professionally due to circumstances. Dewey defines the right profession as having “the aptitudes of a person […] in adequate play, working with the minimum of friction and the maximum of satisfaction” (236).

Dewey argues that education “through occupations” is one of the best forms of learning (237). For example, the progressive movement of activity fosters ingenuity and observation skills to carry out certain tasks rather than simply replicating machine-like routines. In the same context, training “through occupations” is the “only adequate training” (238). Overall, the “dominant vocation of all human beings at all times is living-intellectual and moral growth” (238). Educators teaching vocational matters must ensure that they engage them in a way that involves “a continuous reorganization of aims and methods” (238).

3. Present Opportunities and Dangers

Historically, education of the general public was “distinctly utilitarian” and even more vocational (238). These were apprenticeships allowing students to learn a trade. The same could be said about the ruling elite and its vocation whose job it was to rule. In 20th-century democratic societies, vocational training is linked to a growing standing for the service industry, manual labor, and commercial professions, “Labor is extolled; service is a much-lauded moral ideal” (240). Since Dewey wrote this book, labor and class-based issues lost their standing in the 20th-century United States, in part, because its ideological rival, the Soviet Union, valorized the working class.

Furthermore, some vocations gained significance since the Industrial Revolution, for instance, those in manufacturing. The scientific basis for industrial advancement means that “industrial occupations have infinitely greater intellectual content and infinitely larger cultural possibilities than they used to possess” (241). Similarly, the advancements in the field of psychology in the early 20th century emphasized the need to experiment and explore.

Societal changes should lead to educational changes. Their success rate “depends more upon the adoption of educational methods calculated to effect the change than anything else” (242). Dewey reiterates that vocational education should not simply “subject youth to the demands and standards of the present system” but should improve on it (244).

Next, Dewey examines the philosophy of education. He defines philosophy as “the generalized theory of education” (254). In his view, philosophy follows the scientific method by posing hypotheses and testing them in action. Philosophy may help to bring about “a modification of emotional and intellectual disposition” to achieve harmony. In this framework, education is the “process through which the needed transformation may be accomplished” (254). This chapter comprises two sections.

1. A Critical Review

Dewey begins with a brief review of the previous chapters. His initial chapters cover “education as a social need and function” by discussing the general traits of education and society (246). Earlier, he examined different societies, including the “intentionally progressive” societies featuring greater freedoms rather than being ruled by traditions, taboos, and a “superior class” (246). His concept of education in a democratic society is the key criterion for Democracy and Education. One of the themes in this book is the continuities and breaks in society as they were linked to the various kinds of dualisms that Dewey discussed: “practical and intellectual activity, man and nature, individuality and association, culture and vocation” (247).

2. The Nature of Philosophy

Dewey moves on to assess philosophy. As a generalized education theory, philosophy offers “an outlook upon life” (249). In this way, it is also different from science based on specific laws and facts. At the same time, philosophy is not identical to knowledge. The latter—“grounded in knowledge”—is science because it “represents objects which have been settled” (249). Philosophy, in turn, is linked to thinking because thinking “is prospective in reference” (249). Indeed, philosophy examines widely felt social problems. Yet because philosophers use technical language, they become “a specialized class” (251).

Dewey describes education as “the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and fellow men” (252). It is in this sense the philosophy is “a general theory of education” (252). It is through education that philosophy also becomes broadly useful rather than a “sentimental indulgence for a few, or else mere arbitrary dogma” (252). Reconstructing philosophy and its big questions “must go hand in hand” with those of education and society (253). 

In this chapter, Dewey focuses on the way socio-economic inequalities with the free exchange of ideas and social continuities and exacerbates compartmentalization in society and education. A truly democratic society 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” (263). This chapter comprises two sections.

1. Continuity versus Dualism

Dewey reviews his criticism of various types of dualism, such as people versus nature, in the previous chapters—a consistent theme in this book. He links dualism with social divisions, for instance between the ruler and his subjects. Each dualism “leaves its mark upon the educational system” (255). Dewey argues, instead, in favor of continuity. He believes that evolution displays the continuity of human development. Modern evolutionary theories arose in the 19th century, and Darwinian impact would have been relevant at the time of Dewey’s writing.

The theory of knowledge also comprises dualisms such as “the opposition of empirical and higher rational knowing” (255). The former is perceived to be utilitarian, whereas the latter is “supposed to be something which touches reality in ultimate, intellectual fashion” (255). Another example is the active and passive forms of knowing. Yet another opposition seems to exist between emotions and intellect in which emotions are believed to be personal and disconnected from pure intelligence. The mind is thought to address the outside world, whereas emotions—an inner counterpart. Dewey links the latter antithesis to the “systemic depreciation of interest” (256).

2. Schools of Method

There are several philosophical systems based on “different conceptions of the method of knowing” including rationalism, idealism, Scholasticism, transcendentalism, etc. (259). Dewey already addressed some in relation to the question of education because they involve “deviations from that method which has proved most effective in achieving knowledge” (259). According to Dewey, “the function of knowledge is to make one experience freely available in other experiences” (259) In turn, “knowledge is a perception of those connections of an object which determine its applicability in a given situation” (260). For example, a flaming comet is not an isolated event but is part of an astronomical system.

Each time a new method arose, it was linked to the given social conditions. For example, Scholasticism had a relationship with the accepted authority of the Church. Here, Dewey goes through historical stages in an almost dialectical manner, not unlike Hegel or even Karl Marx. Dewey believes that his proposed method of knowing is practical because it is linked to understanding the outside world and society.