John Dewey's Democracy and Education in an Era of Globalization

Mordechai Gordon, Andrea R. English, Mordechai Gordon, Andrea R. English

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351112093
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

2016 marked the hundred-year anniversary of John Dewey's seminal work Democracy and Education. This centennial presented philosophers and educators with an opportunity to reexamine and evaluate its impact on various aspects of education in democratic societies. This volume brings together some of the leading scholars on John Dewey and education from around the world in order to reflect on the legacy of Democracy and Education, and, more generally, to consider the influence of Dewey's ideas on education in the twenty-first century. John Dewey's Democracy and Education in an Era of Globalization is unique in that it explores some important tensions and relationships among Dewey's ideas on democracy, education, and human flourishing in an era of globalization. The contributors make sense of how Dewey would have interpreted and responded to the phenomenon of globalization.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Globalization, Democracy, and Social Movements: The educational potential of activism

KATHY HYTTEN

Abstract
In this essay, I explore the contemporary value of John Dewey’s conception of democracy to addressing the challenges of neoliberal globalization. I begin by describing his vision of democracy as a way of life that requires habits of experimentalism, pluralism, and hope. I then suggest that contemporary forms of mobilization, resistance, and insurgency—specifically, alter globalization activism, the Occupy Movement, and the Forward Together Moral Movement in North Carolina—model aspects of Deweyan democracy that are especially important for our times. These forms of civic activism can help reinvigorate Dewey’s vision of democracy as rich, deep, participatory, and creative. I argue a significant value of these movements is the democratic habits and ways of life they encourage and support.

In reflecting on his book Democracy and Education in the late 1930s, John Dewey bemoaned the fact that we in the United States had come to see democracy as a static inheritance, rather than a dynamic process that required ongoing work and reinvention in each new generation. He was troubled by our seemingly insincere denouncement of others around the world (chastising the Nazis for cruelty, intolerance, and hatred), when at home we exhibited some of the same oppressive and violent behaviors, for example, through relentless segregation of, and hatred and prejudice toward, many of our own citizens. The denial of civil rights and mistreatment of African-Americans, Native Americans, women, and immigrants loomed large for Dewey, even as he didn’t write about these issues as much as we might have assumed he would. He maintained that conflicts at home and abroad were in large part a problem of insufficient attention to the work of democracy. We had become complacent, acting as if ‘democracy were something that perpetuated itself automatically … as long as citizens were reasonably faithful in performing political duties,’ presumably like voting and obeying laws (LW 14, 1939, p. 225). We had come to see democracy as a given, a gift bestowed on us by our forebears, rather than an experiment in living together that required ongoing work and nurturance.

Dewey’s concerns about complacency resonate with our current realities. No doubt there are too many examples of citizen disengagement and passivity all around us. At the same time, enactments and performances of democracy around the world are often shallow. Voter turnout in elections is depressingly low, government decisions are increasingly shaped by corporate influence, income inequality is stark and growing, social support systems have eroded, and citizen apathy is often rampant. Green (2008) writes about dangerous habits of living that have become all too widespread in our contemporary era: ‘constant busy-ness, fashionable cynicism, reliance on experts, willful ignorance of our nation’s history and of current events, materialism, personal greed, and … feelings of ‘ontological insecurity,’ generalized anxiety, and personal impotence’ (p. 203). Yet at the same time, we see signs of hope for democratic renewal in growing social movements of diverse arrays of concerned citizens, from the alter globalization rallies in response to actions of international regulatory bodies such as the World Trade Organization, to Occupy Wall Street and its satellite occupations, from the Arab Spring and democratic protests around the world, to the contemporary Forward Together Moral Movement activism in the US South. Yet there is a real question as to which forces will shape our future. Can we create the deep, rich, participatory, and creative democracy that Dewey envisioned as the antidote to fundamentalism, totalitarianism, and elitist oligarchy? Or, will we continue to slide into cynicism and despair, fearing our fellow citizens, waging wars, distracting ourselves with vacuous entertainment, and hoarding individual resources, as we grow increasingly isolated from our neighbors and insecure about our futures?

In this paper, I argue that studying and participating in social movements can provide us with resources to help deepen democracy in the present. I focus in particular on progressive movements, that is, ones that center issues of social justice, equity, and diversity and call for expansive and inclusive notions of citizenship. These movements are rooted in Dewey’s belief that ‘what the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children’ (MW 1, 1899, p. 5). Working to create the kind of rich, deep, participatory, and creative democracy that Dewey wrote about in Democracy and Education a century ago remains an important way to challenge disengaged cynicism and passivity in our present era. Dewey’s vision of democracy is still timely; educating for democracy as a way of life and disposition toward others and the world is more necessary now than ever. At the same time, I suggest that contemporary forms of activism, mobilization, insurgency, and resistance are signs of hope that this deeper vision of democracy is both possible and increasingly desired by citizens from all walks of life. Rather than simply judge activist efforts for the concrete outcomes and changes they produce, we should see them as potential spaces for democratic renewal, where people can come together to learn and practice some of the most important habits of democratic citizenship, such as communication, cooperation, dialogue, experimentation, inquiry, empathy, solidarity, open-mindedness, and collective action. In working with others to speak back to injustice, and to create the conditions for all individuals to grow and thrive, we can begin to internalize the habits necessary to cultivate deep democracy.

Among the central themes of Democracy and Education is the critical role of education in preparing students for democratic citizenship. This entails both teaching so as to cultivate certain attitudes and dispositions, and helping students to envision a more desirable and just future and working to bring it into existence. It also involves seeing participation in social action and movements as forms of informal, yet nonetheless powerful, education. Education for democracy is precisely what we need today in order to speak back to the challenges of neoliberal, corporate-driven forms of globalization. That is, we need a complex and nuanced vision of democracy as a process where people see civic activism, informed by critical and collaborative inquiry, and an important habit of social engagement. Recent citizens’ movements and protests can provide us with resources for cultivating and deepening the habits of democracy around the world. I argue that as educators, we should both habituate students for lives of civic engagement and activism and teach them about current movements and the possibilities they engender. Together, these actions push us closer toward realizing Dewey’s vision of deep democracy as a way of everyday life.

I begin the first section of this essay by revisiting Dewey’s vision for democracy and its relationship to education, something he most fully outlines in his now classic text, Democracy and Education. I illustrate how this vision is embedded in the work of several contemporary educational scholars attempting to create a more democratic foundation for education and schooling. Second, I identify some key Deweyan claims about democracy, focusing on the importance of habits of experimentalism, pluralism, and hope as integral features of a democratic way of life. I select these features in part because they are such important characteristics of contemporary social movements. Third, I describe the nature of several contemporary social movements and the potential ways in which they reflect a Deweyan vision of democracy, focusing particularly on alter globalization protests, the Occupy movement, and the Forward Together Moral Movement in North Carolina. Fourth, I read these movements through a Deweyan lens, arguing that they offer provocations for inquiry, new language for understanding social realities, and lessons for reinvigorating democracy in our times. They also provide opportunities for people to develop new tools for social change and to internalize important democratic habits, including empathy, solidarity, open-mindedness, responsibility, and collective action. I conclude by briefly discussing the educational implications of these movements, both how the movements themselves are educational to participants and witnesses, and how exploring these movements in schools can help students to see and understand a range of potentially transformative democratic possibilities. While I do not romanticize social movements, my ultimate claim is that they should provide us hope that Dewey’s vision of deep democracy is indeed possible, and in nascent forms, already exists.

Dewey on Democracy

In one of his most well-known statements about democracy, Dewey writes that it ‘is more than a form a government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint, communicated experience’ (MW 9, 1916, p. 93). He offers this description in chapter 7 of Democracy and Education after he has laid the groundwork for a progressive conception of education, where our central aim should be to cultivate the habits necessary for citizens to live together in ways that are peaceful, harmonious, individually enriching, and communally desirable. He argues that we need criteria, or a standard, to measure the quality of various modes of social life and to support why a democratic vision is indeed the most desirable. He is careful to point out that this vision of democracy must come from looking at the strengths of existing societies, not from some impractical or fanciful ideal. Most philosophers of education and democracy are familiar with the standard he offers: ‘How numerous and varied are the interests which are consciously shared? How full and free is the interplay with other forms of association’ (MW 9, 1916, p. 83)? This standard is both seductively simple and profound. He calls for us to seek out shared interests with others, eliminate barriers to communication across lines of difference, and develop common bonds, but at the same time to value a diversity of perspectives and interests and not to simply collapse these into a unified or homogeneous world view or social vision. In a democratic society, all voices are valued, institutions are flexible and change when they no longer meet peoples’ needs, and citizens develop new habits when situations demand new forms of interaction.

Dewey rarely defines democracy in terms of systems or procedures, instead he wants us to first and foremost consider it a way of life. It is a way of life that is manifest when people hold certain attitudes and dispositions toward each other and the world. For example, they value inquiry and free communication, seek out multiple perspectives on information and phenomena, make decisions based upon the best evidence available, consider the impact of their choices on others both near and far, support and care about their fellow citizens, and work to develop shared interests. These dispositions are strengthened and reaffirmed within communities. Indeed, Dewey argues that idea of democracy is embedded in ideal community life, and that ‘the clear consciousness of a communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of democracy’ (LW 2, 1927, p. 328). He writes that,

Whenever there is conjoint activity whose consequences are appreciated as good by all singular persons who take part in it, and where the realization of the good is such as to effect an energetic desire and effort to sustain it in being just because it is a good shared by all, there is in so far a community. (LW 2, 1927, p. 328)

Here he implies that communities are democratic when they bring out the good in all of us, allow us to grow, and compel us to want others around us to grow as well.

For Dewey, democracy is a habit and way of being, more than a static inheritance or political system. It is a process that requires active engagement, not something we create and then institutionalize once and for all. It is a personal way of life and moral ideal that is premised on faith in our fellow citizens and their ability to use their minds well, act intelligently, make choices, construct goals, and assess the implications and consequences of potential actions. Describing this process, Dewey offers,

Democracy is the faith that the process of experience is more important than any special result attained, so that special results achieved are of ultimate value only as they are used to enrich and order the ongoing process. Since the process of experience is capable of being educative, faith in democracy is all one with faith in experience and education. (LW 14, 1939, p. 229)

As he suggests, the foundation for this faith in the democratic process is education. Without schools that teach students the habits of inquiry and citizenship, we have no compelling reason to believe that people can or will work together, drawing on their experiences, in order ‘to generate the aims and methods by which further experience will grow in ordered richness’ (LW 14, 1939, p. 229).

We can see Deweyan democratic foundations in the work of a number of contemporary educators and scholars who are attempting to reinvigorate a democratic mission and vision for schools. These are important because they illustrate the Deweyan roots of contemporary approaches to democratic education, and because they translate his sometimes-abstract philosophical ideas into concrete strategies and practices that can be enacted in schools today. For example, Beane and Apple (2007) argue that democracy ought to be the benchmark, standard, and ethical anchor that we use to assess with ‘wisdom and worth’ of our social policies, educational practices, and international relationships (p. 5). Drawing from Dewey, they describe democracy as an ongoing endeavor whose moral heart entails upholding the dignity and worth of individuals while they work together to achieve common goods. Indeed, the values and principles that Beane and Apple outline for democratic schools make concrete some of Dewey’s more abstract philosophical ideals. For example, democratic schools teach students, as citizens in the making, to value the rights and dignities of all people, including and especially those historically marginalized; care about diverse others and common goods; cherish an open flow of ideas, even when some are unpopular; use skills of critical analysis and reflection to evaluate problems and ideas; maintain faith in the capacity of individuals and groups to understand and resolve problems; draw on democratic ideals to ground their life choices; and organize and promote systems, policies, and institutions that support and further a democratic way of life (p. 7).

Similarly, Ayers, Kumashiro, Meiners, Quinn, and Stovall (2010) also trace their understanding of democracy as an ‘aspiration to be continuously nourished, engaged, and exercised’ (p. 14) with each new generation to Deweyan roots. They too argue we must educate students so that they internalize democratic values, learning to question, dialog, critique, imagine, create, and change their worlds. They offer a vision of democracy built on the same fragile ideal that Dewey described: that all individuals, regardless of race, class, gender, and belief systems, are

… of infinite and incalculable value, each a unique intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, moral, and creative force, each born free and equal in dignity and rights, endowed with reason and conscience, and deserving, then, a community of solidarity, a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, recognition and respect. (p. 12)

These democratic visions for schooling have been significantly muted in our current educational climate where standardization, competition, and narrowly defined forms of academic achievement are celebrated above all else. Moreover, information regurgitation is substituted for inquiry, job preparation is thought to be more important than teaching students how to make a meaningful life, and student worth is often reduced to their scores on standardized tests. This is hardly the vision Dewey had for education in, and for, democracy.

Habits of Democracy

As a process, democracy entails ongoing work and vigilance. It requires that we cultivate habits of engaging the world that allow us to address timely challenges and chart new possibilities for individual and communal growth. Dewey often spoke about democracy in the language of habits. In contrast to the narrow, and generally more familiar, view of habits as behaviors we engage in thoughtlessly and routinely, like brushing our teeth in the morning, he held a more complex view of the meaning and importance of habits. Stitzlein (2014) describes his perspective well. She writes, ‘for Dewey, habit should be understood as a predisposition to act, or sensitivity to ways of being—rather than the more common understanding of habit as an inclination to repeat identical acts or address content precisely’ (p. 63). We adopt habits as part of everyday living, through implicit and explicit lessons we learn from our families, interactions with members of our communities, media and popular culture, and the organizations and institutions of which we are a part. While habits are acquired in all social settings, ‘their cultivation is often most overt in schools, where children watch, imitate, and interact with others as they learn about socially acceptable behaviors and societal traditions, through both direct and indirect means’ (Stitzlein, 2014, p. 65). While we sometimes teach students directly how to behave and interact, for example, through character education programs, most habits are learned and developed more unconsciously, through implicitly adopting ways of being that are conducive to success in schools. This is why the environments we create in schools are so important. Among a range of possibilities, we have the potential to shape students into critical, democratic thinkers, or disengaged, passive followers who implicitly seek to uphold the status quo, rather than challenge it in the interests of equity and justice.

Among the most important habits of democracy that Dewey advocated for, and that are especially relevant to reflection on social activism, are experimentalism, pluralism, and hope. The idea of experimentalism is at the heart of Dewey’s conception of democracy. As a pragmatist, he thought we should engage the world around us critically,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: John Dewey’s Democracy and Education in an Era of Globalization
• 1. Globalization, Democracy, and Social Movements: The educational potential of activism
• 2. Complexity and Reductionism in Educational Philosophy—John Dewey’s Critical Approach in ‘Democracy and Education’ Reconsidered
• 3. Not ‘democratic education’ but ‘democracy and education’: Reconsidering Dewey’s oft misunderstood introduction to the philosophy of education
• 4. Thinking my way back to you: John Dewey on the communication and formation of concepts
• 5. John Dewey and the Role of the Teacher in a Globalized World: Imagination, empathy, and ‘third voice’
• 6. American philosophy and its Eastern strains: Crisis, resilience, and self-transcendence
• 7. Why Should Scholars Keep Coming Back to John Dewey?
• Index