A Companion to John Dewey's "Democracy and Education"

D. C. Phillips

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780226408378, 9780226408231
• eBook ISBN: 9780226408408
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This year marks the centenary publication of John Dewey's magnum opus, Democracy and Education. Despite its profound importance as a foundational text in education, it is notoriously difficult and—dare we say it—a little dry. In this charming and often funny companion, noted philosopher of education D. C. Phillips goes chapter by chapter to bring Dewey to a twenty-first-century audience. Drawing on over fifty years of thinking about this book—and on his own experiences as an educator—he lends it renewed clarity and a personal touch that proves its lasting importance.
           
Phillips bridges several critical pitfalls of Democracy and Education that often prevent contemporary readers from fully understanding it. Where Dewey sorely needs a detailed example to illustrate a point—and the times are many—Phillips steps in, presenting cases from his own classroom experiences. Where Dewey casually refers to the works of people like Hegel, Herbart, and Locke—common knowledge, apparently, in 1916—Phillips fills in the necessary background. And where Dewey gets convoluted or is even flat-out wrong, Phillips does what few other scholars would do: he takes Dewey to task. The result is a lively accompaniment that helps us celebrate and be enriched by some of the most important ideas ever offered in education.
 

The Companion to Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education

Preface, 1915

There are many readers, no doubt of reckless or impatient disposition, who make a habit of skipping past anything in a book that bears the title “Preface” or even “Introduction.” They are overly keen to get embroiled in the “main work” as soon as possible. In the case of the preface to D&E this constitutes a major blunder. (And, it should be pointed out, it is an even greater mistake in the case of this companion!) For the first part of this two-paragraph piece that Dewey wrote in 1915 is only three sentences—albeit, in typical Dewey style, three long sentences—yet it contains the key not only to D&E but to much of Dewey’s corpus. What a bargain: having the key to unlock dozens if not scores of books and essays, all in three sentences! It is worth savoring each of these in turn. (The following discussion bypasses the second and shorter paragraph containing Dewey’s personal acknowledgements.)

The first, and shortest, sentence proclaims that the aim of D&E is to “detect and state” the “ideas implied in a democratic society” and to apply these ideas to educational problems. In using the terms “democratic” and “democracy” in referring to a society, Dewey is not pointing to the presence of a particular electoral mechanism (free elections) or to an electoral principle (one person, one vote). He has in mind something deeper, for to him the term implies a mode of living, a mode of interaction between the individuals who constitute a community. Dewey had memories, perhaps somewhat romanticized, of the New England state of Vermont in which he spent his childhood—of such things as decisions about matters of local import being made by citizens who were equals and who negotiated their differences at town meetings, and neighbors helping each other gather firewood or make candles in preparation for the coming harsh winter. Sometimes he used the term “conjoint living” to refer to all of this, for in this view there were many crisscrossing lines of connection or association between individuals. What are the educational implications of this conception of democracy? D&E is an attempt to provide an answer.

It probably is wise, even at this early stage, to alert the reader to the fact that although the account of democracy that Dewey gives is beguiling, it has been too “Pollyanna-like” for some. Does Dewey deal satisfactorily with the fact that sometimes in communities there are unnegotiable differences between individuals and that sometimes people act in self-serving ways rather than with the welfare of the community in mind? Does he deal satisfactorily with the fact that there are minority groups with discordant priorities? Does he sufficiently recognize that institutions exist that to a considerable extent shape or even determine what courses of action are possible? Or, perhaps, is Dewey putting such matters aside and offering a picture—an ideal—of what a democratic community should endeavor to become? Readers will have to decide such issues for themselves as progress is made through the chapters.

The second sentence, more complex in structure, is best quoted in full:

The discussion includes an indication of the constructive aims and methods of public education as seen from this point of view, and a critical estimate of the theories of knowing and moral development which were formulated in earlier social conditions, but which still operate, in societies nominally democratic, to hamper the adequate realization of the democratic ideal.

The last two-thirds of this sentence summarizes a thesis Dewey only argues and defends cursorily in D&E, although he certainly makes use of it quite frequently, as we will note as our reading progresses; he also referred to it in other works but argued it most extensively in his readable volume Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920/1948). Stated in its most general and probably its most defensible form, this thesis holds that the ideas that are circulating within a society, even outmoded ones that still survive, can influence the practices and policies that are current in this society. In a more controversial form, his position was that the philosophical theories held at any historical stage of a society’s development (and these of course included “theories of knowing and moral development”) were a reflection of the pressures and problems and conditions that the society faced at that particular time—in a sense, Dewey can be interpreted as arguing that they were part of the society’s adaptive response to its environment. While this is well and good, Dewey held it becomes a problem if the philosophies of a period, and the institutions and modes of social interaction, and so on, that were developed under their influence, persisted after the environment had undergone major change. For the persistence of the older ways and assumptions could prevent the development of new and more adaptive ideas, ideals, and practices. In short, the inheritance coming from earlier times will now “hamper the realization of the democratic ideal.” For example, later in D&E we will find that Dewey identified the existence of the kind of antiquated educational arrangement displayed in the classroom I mentioned in the introduction (the one that had so horrified me) as a consequence of an old philosophical theory persisting when the social conditions that once had made it relevant no longer existed.

To dispel any suspicion that I am reading too much into a few lines of prose, and to substantiate that Dewey did, indeed, hold the thesis I have been discussing, here is a statement from Dewey’s introduction to the 1948 edition of Reconstruction in Philosophy:

The adverse criticisms of philosophies of the past are not directed at these systems with respect to their connection with intellectual and moral issues of their own time and place, but with respect to their relevancy in a much changed human situation. The very things that make the great systems objects of esteem and admiration in their own socio-cultural contexts are in large measure the very grounds that deprive them of “actuality” in a world whose main features are different.

It is fair to say that this view of the nature (and social origins and purpose) of philosophy is both very interesting and very controversial. While it is a truism that any philosophical position must have arisen in a social context, it is arguable that the form and content of this position is more a reflection of the state of debate and controversy within the philosophical tradition at the time than it is a reflection of the social issues that are prevalent. Furthermore, how on earth could it be established that a philosophical thesis was, indeed, a “reflection” of some aspect of the sociocultural environment? Again these are issues the reader should ponder. The discussion must now move on, but the issues raised here will resurface in the discussions of later chapters of D&E.

The third and final sentence of the paragraph under scrutiny reads as follows:

As will appear from the book itself, 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, and is concerned to point out the changes in subject matter and method of education indicated by these developments.

Dewey is simply whetting the reader’s appetite here. The ideas he signals are complex and to some degree controversial, and they require much more exposition and argument to make them fully graspable—and obviously he could not do all of this work in the preface, which would then run amok and become the whole of the book! But certainly these snippets of an agenda are intriguing if not mind-boggling. For example, the experimental method of the sciences is a method for gathering evidence for or against the truth of a hypothesis, so what is the link here with democracy? And what has the evolutionary struggle for existence, and the survival of individuals with the fittest adaptations, to do with education? And to make these questions more intractable, what is to be made of Dewey’s remark that the “industrial reorganization” needs to be included in the picture?

While all these matters are discussed (and perhaps resolved) in D&E, it probably is useful at the outset to give the reader at least a hint—an “advance organizer”—about the direction in which Dewey’s book will take us. The key is an idea Dewey took from the great psychologist and cofounder of the philosophy of pragmatism William James, and possibly from others—namely, that the human ability to think (or, our possession of “mind”) is an adaptive feature that evolved, and which had great survival value in the struggle for existence in the hostile environments in which our ancestors eked out their existence. The biological function of the ability to think, in other words, is that it is to be used to intelligently direct our behavior. Furthermore, this ability was acquired by our ancestors living in a social environment, not by solitary individuals living in caves (like primitive, solitary versions of Rodin’s Thinker). The capacity to think was dependent on the existence of bodies of accumulated knowledge and experience and social tools such as language. All of this was captured in fine style in a passage in chapter 4 of Dewey’s The School and Society (1900/1915); in contrast to earlier times,

at present the tendency is to conceive individual mind as a function of social life—as not capable of operating or developing by itself, but as requiring continual stimulus from social agencies, and finding its nutrition in social supplies. The idea of heredity has made familiar the notion that the equipment of the individual, mental as well as physical, is an inheritance from the race: a capital inherited by the individual from the past and held in trust by him for the future. The idea of evolution has made familiar the notion that mind . . . developed in an environment which is social as well as physical.

When humans evolved the capacity to think, we also slowly developed intellectual tools or strategies—for example, about ways to test plans of action, and beliefs or hypotheses, to see whether they were likely to work if put into practice. The philosopher Karl Popper put this nicely when he noted that a great advance in human evolution occurred when we evolved the capacity to let our defective plans die in our place—a thing that the experimental method of testing makes possible, for it allows us to detect faulty plans and hypotheses in controlled or laboratory settings, and reject them without the catastrophe of having them fail when we are using them in some real-life setting. For this reason the experimental method is among the greatest of the tools that humans have devised—and it not only has made possible the great advances in our physical standard of living, but it also has the potential to strengthen the processes of decision and policy making that are essential in a modern democratic society.

It was the implications of this biological or evolutionary theory of mind lying at the core of Dewey’s philosophy that made it so unpalatable to critics, and there seem to have been many of them in the years following the publication of D&E. Surely Horne was speaking for many when he penned the following assessment, which appears in his comments on Dewey’s preface:

Such a conception of philosophy is in line with the “Positivism” of August Comte and the “Agnosticism” . . . of Herbert Spencer. . . . This philosophy is also known as “Instrumentalism” because it uses thought not to go beyond experience but as an instrument or tool to find suitable means for ends with[in] experience. Since it subordinates thought to action, it is also called “Pragmatism.” Since it locates values within the stream of human experience, it is also called “Humanism.” And since it advocates the supremacy of the scientific method, it is also known as “Experimentalism.” . . . Here we are to see a philosophy of education that raises no questions concerning the transcendent; that is, concerning the general meaning and issues of existence, the nature of reality, the explanation of the cosmos, or the place of man in the universe, and makes no suggestion whatever that education may in any way be concerned with any of these things. (pp. 2–3)

Of course, what Horne puts forward here as a criticism, others will consider a virtue. I leave it to the reader to determine, as we progress, to what degree (if any) the author of this companion shares Horne’s sentiments in this feisty passage.

To return to Dewey: Where does “the industrial reorganization” come into the picture? Let it suffice, for now, to point out that the technological developments in modern societies resulted in the restructuring of industry in the Industrial Revolution, and the concomitant restructuring of society and of the social and occupational roles within it; and this meant that parallel changes needed to be made in education to keep it relevant to these new stresses and strains. If the human race was to survive, all of this needed to be handled with intelligence—and the need is still present, because the challenges are still with us. It remains to be seen whether Dewey’s discussion in D&E points the way to survival.

Finally, a comment needs to be made about the date when this preface was written: August 1915. This was exactly one year after the outbreak of the Great War (WWI), and although the USA did not enter the fray until 1917, the bloodbath had begun and entry seemed inevitable. The Lusitania had been sunk, London had been bombed by Zepplins, Canadians had been gassed at Ypres, a submarine blockade of the British Isles had started, and the carnage in Flanders was underway. Yet there is no indication of any of this in the preface or in the book itself, which, given this horrendous context, has a certain ethereal quality to it. (To illustrate his theory of decision making in chapter 11, Dewey uses the example of a general in the “current war,” but it is a thoroughly decontextualized discussion that, considering the situation in 1915, seems exceedingly pallid.) But Dewey was not the kind of man who was unaware of contemporary events; and he almost certainly judged them to constitute a major crisis—after all, a centerpiece of his position in philosophy was his view that the philosophy of a period must be relevant to the social issues of that time. And looking back at WWI later, he certainly saw that it ushered in an age of severe pessimism: “The First World War was a decided shock to the earlier period of optimism, in which there prevailed widespread belief in continued progress among peoples and classes, and hence a sure movement to harmony and peace. Today . . . (i)nsecurity and strife are so general that the prevailing attitude is one of anxious and pessimistic uncertainty” (introduction to Reconstruction in Philosophy [1948]).

So there is something of a mystery about the calm tone of D&E, although the book clearly enough makes the case that the aims, methods, and philosophical underpinnings of education are seriously outmoded and in urgent need of reformulation. As a corrective to what I see as this strange lacuna in D&E, I cannot resist quoting Woody Allen, whose memorable prose in “My Speech to the Graduates” pithily captures the challenge that faced educationists in 1916 and that still faces us today: “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

1

Education as a Necessity of Life

From the dawn of recorded history down to the present age, human communities have been educating their youngsters, and gradually social roles and institutions and structures evolved to carry out this function. Indeed, for about the last 150 years the resources allocated to the task of education have been massive—think of the investments that have been made in establishing school and preschool systems, colleges and universities, libraries, teacher-training institutions, research units, policy development units, and even programs in philosophy of education. All of this is pretty much taken for granted, and many of us do not problematize the general phenomenon and ask why this is so. But if pressed for an answer, we give replies that usually reflect our social positions: if we are successful capitalists, we may be prone to see educational processes and institutions as providing a skilled workforce; if we are government bureaucrats, we see them as contributing to economic growth or international competitiveness; if we are elderly or infirm, we may regard education as a weapon against violence and lawlessness in society; if we are philosophers, we are as likely as not to see education as contributing to the development of the personal autonomy of students; and if we are political theorists, we might focus on educating students to undertake the responsibilities of citizenship.

In these opening pages of D&E, Dewey does not adopt any of these familiar perspectives. It has seemed to me, from my early days as a high school teacher of biology and then as a philosopher of social science, always with an interest in the theory of evolution, that Dewey is adopting in these pages the stance of an evolutionary biologist (a perspective he alerted us to in that fecund third sentence of the preface). For if in the course of d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction: John Dewey and Me
• The Companion
• Bibliographical Essay
• Footnotes