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
This state of affairs may be formulated by saying that the older
humanism omitted economic and industrial conditions from its purview.
Consequently, it was one sided. Culture, under such circumstances,
inevitably represented the intellectual and moral outlook of the class
which was in direct social control. Such a tradition as to culture is,
as we have seen (ante, p. 260), aristocratic; it emphasizes what marks
off one class from another, rather than fundamental common interests.
Its standards are in the past; for the aim is to preserve what has been
gained rather than widely to extend the range of culture.
The modifications which spring from taking greater account of industry
and of whatever has to do with making a living are frequently condemned
as attacks upon the culture derived from the past. But a wider
educational outlook would conceive industrial activities as agencies for
making intellectual resources more accessible to the masses, and giving
greater solidity to the culture of those having superior resources.
In short, when we consider the close connection between science and
industrial development on the one hand, and between literary and
aesthetic cultivation and an aristocratic social organization on the
other, we get light on the opposition between technical scientific
studies and refining literary studies. We have before us the need
of overcoming this separation in education if society is to be truly
democratic.
Summary. The philosophic dualism between man and nature is reflected in
the division of studies between the naturalistic and the humanistic with
a tendency to reduce the latter to the literary records of the past.
This dualism is not characteristic (as were the others which we have
noted) of Greek thought. It arose partly because of the fact that the
culture of Rome and of barbarian Europe was not a native product,
being borrowed directly or indirectly from Greece, and partly because
political and ecclesiastic conditions emphasized dependence upon
the authority of past knowledge as that was transmitted in literary
documents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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