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
Upon the educational side, we note first that the realization of a form
of social life in which interests are mutually interpenetrating, and
where progress, or readjustment, is an important consideration, makes a
democratic community more interested than other communities have cause
to be in deliberate and systematic education. The devotion of democracy
to education is a familiar fact. The superficial explanation is that
a government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless
those who elect and who obey their governors are educated. Since a
democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it
must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these
can be created only by education. But there is a deeper explanation. A
democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of
associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The extension
in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so
that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to
consider the 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. These more numerous and more varied points of contact
denote a greater diversity of stimuli to which an individual has to
respond; they consequently put a premium on variation in his action.
They secure a liberation of powers which remain suppressed as long as
the incitations to action are partial, as they must be in a group which
in its exclusiveness shuts out many interests.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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