15 INTRODUCTION TO SECTION I: CONTEXTS OF DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION Larry A. Hickman Department of Philosophy and Center for Dewey Studies Southern Illinois University The four essays in this section examine the place of John Dewey s Democracy and Education in various contexts. 1 Maura Striano looks at the context of its reception in translations. James Campbell explores its place in the context of Dewey s vision of education as social reconstruction. Emil Višňovský and Štefan Zolcer locate it in the context of pragmatism and participatory democracy. Finally, David Hildebrand examines its place in the context of two ubiquitous (and sometimes controversial) terms in Dewey s technical philosophy: experience and situation. DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION in the Context of Its Translations The first essay in this section, Maura Striano s The Travels of Democracy and Education: A Cross-Cultural Reception History, comes from Italy. Drawing on Michel Foucault s concept of discourse as encompassing ways of constructing knowledge and as a form of power in social fields, Striano argues that when translations enter into discourses other than those of their original language and culture, their impact tends to be reoriented and filtered by the alternative discourses. Her essay seeks to understand not only the ways in which the ideas in Democracy and Education were disseminated, but also the ways in which they have been misunderstood and misinterpreted in their new cultural, scientific, institutional, and political contexts. She draws on several case studies to illustrate how democratic and educational issues have often been separated from philosophical and epistemological ones in their new environments. Striano views Democracy and Education as addressed to an already developed discourse in the United States that featured debates regarding the role of the school in developing citizens capable of the type of deliberative and reflective thought required for citizenship in a participatory democracy. Unfortunately, however, within the cultural, institutional, and political discourses where translations of the book were introduced, participation was often split off from deliberation and reflection, rendering Dewey s central ideas distorted and misunderstood. 1. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916), in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899 1924, vol. 9, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980). EDUCATIONAL THEORY Volume 66 Number 1 2 2016 2016 Board of Trustees University of Illinois
16 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y Volume 66 Number 1 2 2016 In some cases there was acceptance of Democracy and Education by progressive scholars within academic circles, but various cultural and political forces prevented its acceptance as a part of the larger educational discourse. Because it was not possible to use the word democracy at the time of the 1919 translation by Hoashi Riichirō in Japan, for example, it was published under the title An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. The opposite occurred in Russia, when in 1921 the Soviet government published a long excerpt from the book intended to aid the revolution. In this case it was the government, not the academy, that introduced Dewey s thought. Educational administrators and the church sought to maintain traditional educational structures, while progressives viewed Dewey s work as the basis for a new form of citizenship. Striano provides an interesting discussion of Dewey s diminishing impact on education in Russia as revolutionary flux became inflexible structure. It was also the government that introduced Dewey s ideas into Turkey. A Turkish translation of Democracy and Education was published in 1928, following Dewey s visit to the country in 1924. As had been the case in Russia, the government sought to create a social transformation that would usher in new values and new worldviews through education. But Dewey was more cautious: he viewed top-down institutional innovation and control as problematic and suggested that the interests of different localities should be taken into account. Striano argues that the Turkish experiment provides a case study of the difficulties of promoting the educational side of this text at the expense of its philosophical side. Striano s discussion of the reception of Democracy and Education in Germany is of particular note. The first German version, published in 1930, mistranslated some of Dewey s key terms. Moreover, the dominant political tendencies and the mainstream educational discourse were ill equipped to grasp his ideas. A 1949 translation fared no better it was never integrated into the German theoretical discourse of the period. Spain was very different. The 1926 translation of Democracy and Education was well received and had important social and political consequences. Striano s discussion charts the incorporation of Dewey s ideas into the work of progressive educators and the role it played in some of the most significant educational reforms in Spain. When the Spanish Civil War cut short the advance of educational reform in Spain, expatriate educators continued their efforts elsewhere. A Spanish edition of the book that was published in Buenos Aires in 1946 has since played an important role in cultural and educational debates in the Hispanic world. LARRY A. HICKMAN is Director Emeritus of the Center for Dewey Studies and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, MC 4505, Carbondale, IL 62901; e-mail <lhickman@siu.edu>. His primary areas of scholarship are American philosophy, philosophy of technology, and philosophy of education.
Hickman Contexts of Democracy and Education 17 Striano provides a fascinating account of the influence that Democracy and Education has had in Italy. Since the appearance of its first translation in 1949, this work has been an essential tool for educators working toward cultural transformation. Striano reports that the split between educational academics and educational practitioners that occurred in other countries never occurred in Italy. Dewey s influence has, however, been limited by the historical separation between educational and philosophical areas of discourse. Striano concludes her essay with a brief meditation on the relation between philosophical discourse and public discourse in Dewey s work. One of the most important features of Democracy and Education, according to her, is its ability to engage multiple audiences within different areas of discourse that are reflectively interconnected. 2 DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION in the Context of Dewey s Larger Social Vision In Democracy and Education: Reconstruction of and through Education, James Campbell takes us on a tour of Dewey s larger educational philosophy and examines the role of education as social reconstruction. He reminds us that Dewey, along with other reformers of the Progressive Era in American history, thought that unless philosophy was approached through education, it had a tendency to become empty intellectualism. Dewey thought that the American educational system of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with its many overlapping layers and jurisdictions, was too haphazard and needed to be reconstructed to reflect changing conditions. He rejected some of the fundamental ideas of traditional education: education as transmission, education as promoting conformity to accepted standards, and education as separate from other social institutions. Campbell argues that Dewey s rejection of education as preparation is particularly relevant to educational policy as it is practiced today in the United States. Campbell addresses an issue that has drawn the attention of some of Dewey s critics: since the educational process has no end beyond itself, does it constitute an end or telos in the sense articulated by Aristotle? Campbell answers this question by pointing out that for Dewey growth must be understood in Darwinian terms. The educational process involves continual reorganization, adaptation, and transformation. For humans, evolution involves learning to think critically and to enjoy the learning experience. Immaturity signifies lack of ability to make decisions and to bring inquiry to a successful conclusion, so education as Dewey characterizes it involves growth toward maturity, or capable self-direction. It is a matter of special interest that Campbell retrieves a passage in which Dewey compares the school to the settlement house. In a society that is ethnically and culturally diverse, the school should have the function of blending the backgrounds and interests of the many communities it serves. 2. Maura Striano, The Travels of Democracy and Education: A Cross-Cultural Reception History, in this issue.
18 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y Volume 66 Number 1 2 2016 Given the numerous problems that public schools in the United States now face, was Dewey overly optimistic, as his critics claimed? Campbell responds to this question by noting Dewey s faith in humankind. His faith in education was part of a larger social faith, or as Dewey put it in a 1939 lecture, a belief in the ability of human experience to develop the aims and methods by which future experience will grow in ordered richness. 3 DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION in the Context of Participatory Democracy The third essay in this section, Emil Višňovský and Štefan Zolcer s Dewey s Participatory Educational Democracy, comes from Slovakia. Višňovský and Zolcer explore themes of pragmatism and participatory democracy in Democracy and Education. They note that social and political philosophers have for the most part failed to give this work its due, and that some have even questioned whether it contains a theory of democracy since only one of its chapters deals specifically with the subject. Višňovský and Zolcer first present a richly detailed account of how Dewey s understanding of democracy developed over more than fifty years. In the early stage (during the last two decades of the nineteenth century), Dewey laid the foundations for much of what was to come. He sketched out his idea that democracy as a form of government depends on moral and spiritual forms of association, that democracy as an ethical ideal depends on the inner qualities of individuals, and that democracy as a social and economic ideal depends on equality as an ideal. They note that already in this early stage Dewey was arguing that the remedy for the evils of democracy is greater democracy. Their retrieval of Dewey s remark that the place of industry in education is not to hurry the preparation of the individual pupil for his individual trade is probably best understood as a pointed response to some of the trends in higher education in the United States, the UK, and some countries in Europe that tend to reduce the mission of the university to that of an economic engine. 4 Višňovský and Zolcer see the later stage of the development of Dewey s ideas as having several subphases, all of which were devoted to providing philosophical support for the ideas he sketched out in his earlier work. They identify the first of these phases with Dewey s rejection in The Public and Its Problems of democracy as purely political. 5 They find Dewey in phase two demanding inquiry into the causes of the twentieth century retreat from democracy and arguing that efforts 3. John Dewey, Creative Democracy The Task Before Us (1939), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925 1953, vol. 14, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), 229. 4. John Dewey, Schools of Tomorrow (1915), in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899 1924, vol. 8, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), 402. 5. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (1927), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925 1953, vol. 2, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984).
Hickman Contexts of Democracy and Education 19 to build democracy must be advanced on many fronts, including those that are religious, cultural, educational, artistic, and international. In their third phase they find Dewey addressing the need for a truly industrial democracy that would address economic inequities. In phase four they find Dewey developing the idea of democracy as a way of life that cannot stand still, that must be continually recreated and re-formed. In this phase Dewey identifies one of the chief tools for such renewals as development of the sciences. Finally, in phase five they highlight Dewey s treatment of democracy as creative democracy as involving faith that requires action. Turning more specifically to the text of Democracy and Education, they emphasize two types of correlation between democracy and education: first, democratic societies need educated citizens; second, democracy as a social ideal of shared interests and free and open interactions provides the basis for educational practice. They identify the deep philosophical question that Dewey confronts in the book as how people can live together at all. They note that one substantive difference between democracy and education is that democracy is an option but education is not. No society, even the least democratic, can long survive without some sort of education. In the final section of their essay Višňovský and Zolcer point out that Dewey s concept of democracy as participatory provides the link between school and society, and that participation develops social virtues as the curriculum is tied to the life of a community. They are therefore highly critical of the academic capitalism currently popular in some countries that seeks to evaluate educational institutions in terms of financial efficiency. Because of their affiliation with Comenius University in Bratislava, they are pleased to note that Dewey s ideas in Democracy and Education resonate with those of John Amos Comenius (1592 1670), who conceived of schools as the workshops of humanity. DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION in the Context of Two Controversial Concepts: Experience and Situation David Hildebrand s essay The Paramount Importance of Experience and Situations in Dewey s Democracy and Education connects the book to Dewey s wider corpus. Hildebrand argues that some of the main elements of Dewey s technical philosophy can be found in this textbook for teachers, which Dewey himself viewed as his best effort at summing up his entire philosophical position. Hildebrand selects two pivotal concepts of Democracy and Education as a way of approaching Dewey s masterwork. The first of these, experience, replaces traditional dualisms such as mind/body and reason/emotion that pretend authority and ultimacy with continuities that shift the responsibility for making meaning onto human shoulders. Dewey develops his concept of experience as experimental, as direct or reflective, and as key to a pedagogy of presence in the classroom. Dewey s treatment of experience deemphasizes categorization and ordering as it emphasizes the evolutionary and the ecological.
20 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y Volume 66 Number 1 2 2016 The second pivotal concept, situation, is treated in various ways as ontological, temporal, inquirential, and social. Hildebrand tells us that the situation in Democracy and Education provides educators with a justification (logical, psychological, pedagogical, and moral) for reconstructing curricula and methods to be more radically experimental, interpersonally caring, and socially relevant to actual students. 6 Teachers need to create whole learning situations that take into account the personalities, the backgrounds, and the emotions of learners. Clues for moving the educational experience forward consequently emerge from the situation itself. Hildebrand also notes that for Dewey moral development is not a special section of the curriculum, but integral to every learning experience. Education is about learning to make good choices, and it is choices that form habits and character. Dewey denies that there can be an ultimate hierarchy of ends or values since inquiry in education pertains to existential situations. Finally, Hildebrand returns to the relation between education and philosophy that has been the undercurrent of his entire essay. Evocatively, he characterizes education as philosophy s trainer in the sense that it commits philosophy to the practical regimen needed for vitality. 7 *** Taken together, these essays highlight four of the contexts that inform our understanding of Dewey s masterwork and sharpen our vision of what remains to be done. 6. David Hildebrand, The Paramount Importance of Experience and Situations in Dewey s Democracy and Education, in this issue. 7. Ibid.