Dewey Democracy and Education

• Implications of Human Association
• Society is viewed as one but is plural
• Many groups form society - some intersect, some do not
• What is the ideal society that is useful

• Must base the idea of an ideal society upon ones that exist so that it is practicable 
• Groups many points of interest consciously shared and communicated, varied and free points of association.

• Conversation about dictatorship, stratification's of have and have not's 
• The influence which educates some into masters and others into slaves ...loses meaning and prevent social endomorphis.  The rich lose as do the working class in this model

• Takes on science as a narrow viewpoint...inline with Giroux to some degree
• Viewed as isolation and in isolation rigidity
• It is the connection between humans that improves understanding.

• The Democratic Ideal
• Two criterion
• 1.  Numerous points of common interest and reliance on mutual interests in relation to social control
• 2. Freer interaction among social groups (once isolated)- adaptability in meeting new situations by continuous readjustment 

Constitute a democratically constituted society

Devotion to education in a democracy is that a government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless the government is obeyed and those that obey are educated.

The extension in space of the number of individuals that participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity.

Widening of shared areas of concern and personal capacities that characterize democracies are not a product of conscious or deliberate effort, but the widening of travel, commerce, migration, control over energy, science (written in the 1920's so extrapolate the internet in there).

After individualization and a broader community of interest have occurred it is a deliberate effort to sustain them.  

A society in which stratification occurs into separate classes is fatal and must see to it that intellectual opportunities are accessible and on equal terms.

A society that is in classes need only educate the ruling class.  A society that is mobile, with full channels for distribution of change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability, otherwise they will be overwhelmed by change. 

(Is that what is happening in US?)

• In footnote - 3 epochs Plato being one
• A society stably organized when each individual is doing what he has the aptitude for by nature and in a way that is useful to others and that the business of education is to discover those aptitudes and progressively train them for social use.

Plato starting point is that a society depends on knowledge at the end of existence or complete knowledge. 

Justice is a of the proper limits and distribution of activities

Knowledge must be considered and ordered consistently in a society in order to evaluate knowledge for inclusion. 

Education's function is to discover and order knowledge.

Plato:  if a ruler should form a state after patterns of consistency then regulation is preserved, an education could be given which would sift individuals discovering what they were good for and assigning work in life that fits

Obviously development not considered by Plato and longevity was not an issue in his time

Plato lived in a society of classes so he had difficulty in conceptualizing the uniqueness of individual and capacity of gender.  He subordinated the individual to the society as a whole or community in function.

He actually was wanting no change - to find all knowledge, each individual in place and then static harmony

• Individualistic Ideal of 18th Century
• Nature and Rousseau now speak for diversity. 
• Education in accord with nature furnishes the goal and the method of instruction and discipline.  

Chief interest was in social progress.  The positive ideal was humanity.

In nature his capacity is found, but in the ruling class capacity is hampered for selfish ends

A link to Giroux and neoliberalism.

Freed man had unlimited scope as wide as humanity and was an organ and agent of a comprehensive and productive society.  

Evils of state are limits on free powers of man. 

Living in a feudal state at this point.

To give nature the full swing was to replace corrupt and inequitable social order for a new and better kingdom of humanity.

Advances in natural science promoted this. 

The first step in freeing men from external chains was to emancipate them from internal constraints of false beliefs and ideas

Concept of a wax mind and infinite possibilities of truth.

Education as National and Social

The weakness of the previous theory was obvious.  Leaving everything to nature negated the idea of education and left things to accidents of circumstances. 

Organization for the realization of harmony required.

Genius may rest in individuals but needs to be supported by state and thus education 

Pestalozzi

German thought started to influence. 

Education as a civic function. 

The German state felt that systemic attention to education was the best means of regaining political integrity and power.

Brought a change in theory with individualistic theory receding into background.  State furnished the instruments and the goals of public education.

School from K to university supported the patriotic citizen and soldier. 

Theory emphasized social efficiency.  Individual interests subordinated to state or communal interests. 

Individual in isolation is nothing.

Educational philosophy needed a re-conceptualization. 

Kant - education is the process by which man becomes man begins life submerged in nature but must go to a man of reason - moral, rational and free being.

Nature is instinct and appetite

Issue of identifying education that prepares for the now, not the later if then.

We must depend on the efforts of enlightened men in their private capacity - spread of ideas and acceptance by others - individualistic cosmopolitan.  

Individual ideas but for humanity as a whole's improvement

Kants successors Fichte and Heigel elaborated the idea that the chief function of the state is to submit his ideas to the state.

Top paragraph summarizes all three ideas.

The conception of education as a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind.  One of the fundamental problems of education in and for a democratic society is set by the conflict of a nationalistic and a wider social aim.

On the one hand science, commerce and art transcend national boundaries.  They are largely international in quality and method.  They involve interdependence and cooperation amongst peoples inhabiting different countries.  At the same time, the idea of national sovereignty has never been as accentuated in politics as it is at the present time.  Each nation lives in a state of suppressed hostility and incipient war with its neighbours.

Each is supposed to be the supreme judge of its own interests, and it is assumed in a matter of course that each has interests which are exclusively its own.  To question this is to question the very idea of national sovereignty which is assumed to be basic to political practice and political science.  

This contradiction (for it is nothing less) between the wider sphere of associated and mutually helpful social life and the narrower sphere of exclusive and hence potentially hostile pursuits and purposes, exacts educational theory a clear conception of the meaning of social as a function and test of education that has not yet been attained.

End paragraph summary is very useful for paper.