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
These last words remind us that Aristotle again makes a distinction of
superior and inferior even within those living the life of reason. For
there is a distinction in ends and in free action, according as one's
life is merely accompanied by reason or as it makes reason its own
medium. That is to say, the free citizen who devotes himself to the
public life of his community, sharing in the management of its affairs
and winning personal honor and distinction, lives a life accompanied
by reason. But the thinker, the man who devotes himself to scientific
inquiry and philosophic speculation, works, so to speak, in reason, not
simply by *. Even the activity of the citizen in his civic relations,
in other words, retains some of the taint of practice, of external or
merely instrumental doing. This infection is shown by the fact that
civic activity and civic excellence need the help of others; one cannot
engage in public life all by himself. But all needs, all desires imply,
in the philosophy of Aristotle, a material factor; they involve lack,
privation; they are dependent upon something beyond themselves for
completion. A purely intellectual life, however, one carries on by
himself, in himself; such assistance as he may derive from others is
accidental, rather than intrinsic. In knowing, in the life of theory,
reason finds its own full manifestation; knowing for the sake of knowing
irrespective of any application is alone independent, or self-sufficing.
Hence only the education that makes for power to know as an end in
itself, without reference to the practice of even civic duties, is
truly liberal or free. 2. The Present Situation. If the Aristotelian
conception represented just Aristotle's personal view, it would be a
more or less interesting historical curiosity. It could be dismissed
as an illustration of the lack of sympathy or the amount of academic
pedantry which may coexist with extraordinary intellectual gifts.
But Aristotle simply described without confusion and without that
insincerity always attendant upon mental confusion, the life that was
before him. That the actual social situation has greatly changed since
his day there is no need to say. But in spite of these changes, in spite
of the abolition of legal serfdom, and the spread of democracy, with
the extension of science and of general education (in books, newspapers,
travel, and general intercourse as well as in schools), there remains
enough of a cleavage of society into a learned and an unlearned class,
a leisure and a laboring class, to make his point of view a most
enlightening one from which to criticize the separation between culture
and utility in present education. Behind the intellectual and abstract
distinction as it figures in pedagogical discussion, there looms a
social distinction between those whose pursuits involve a minimum of
self-directive thought and aesthetic appreciation, and those who are
concerned more directly with things of the intelligence and with the
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