Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of EducationDewey, John
Philosophy
Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education
Dewey, John
Education -- Philosophy; Education -- Social aspects
There is, however, grave danger that in insisting upon this end,
existing economic conditions and standards will be accepted as final.
A democratic criterion requires us to develop capacity to the point of
competency to choose and make its own career. This principle is violated
when the attempt is made to fit individuals in advance for definite
industrial callings, selected not on the basis of trained original
capacities, but on that of the wealth or social status of parents. As a
matter of fact, industry at the present time undergoes rapid and abrupt
changes through the evolution of new inventions. New industries spring
up, and old ones are revolutionized. Consequently an attempt to train
for too specific a mode of efficiency defeats its own purpose. When the
occupation changes its methods, such individuals are left behind
with even less ability to readjust themselves than if they had a less
definite training. But, most of all, the present industrial constitution
of society is, like every society which has ever existed, full of
inequities. It is the aim of progressive education to take part in
correcting unfair privilege and unfair deprivation, not to perpetuate
them. Wherever social control means subordination of individual
activities to class authority, there is danger that industrial education
will be dominated by acceptance of the status quo. Differences
of economic opportunity then dictate what the future callings of
individuals are to be. We have an unconscious revival of the defects
of the Platonic scheme (ante, p. 89) without its enlightened method of
selection.
(2) Civic efficiency, or good citizenship. It is, of course, arbitrary
to separate industrial competency from capacity in good citizenship. But
the latter term may be used to indicate a number of qualifications which
are vaguer than vocational ability. These traits run from whatever make
an individual a more agreeable companion to citizenship in the political
sense: it denotes ability to judge men and measures wisely and to take
a determining part in making as well as obeying laws. The aim of civic
efficiency has at least the merit of protecting us from the notion of a
training of mental power at large. It calls attention to the fact that
power must be relative to doing something, and to the fact that the
things which most need to be done are things which involve one's
relationships with others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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