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 change in practice necessarily brought about a change in theory.
The individualistic theory receded into the background. The state
furnished not only the instrumentalities of public education but also
its goal. When the actual practice was such that the school system, from
the elementary grades through the university faculties, supplied
the patriotic citizen and soldier and the future state official and
administrator and furnished the means for military, industrial, and
political defense and expansion, it was impossible for theory not to
emphasize the aim of social efficiency. And with the immense importance
attached to the nationalistic state, surrounded by other competing and
more or less hostile states, it was equally impossible to interpret
social efficiency in terms of a vague cosmopolitan humanitarianism.
Since the maintenance of a particular national sovereignty required
subordination of individuals to the superior interests of the state
both in military defense and in struggles for international supremacy
in commerce, social efficiency was understood to imply a like
subordination. The educational process was taken to be one of
disciplinary training rather than of personal development. Since,
however, the ideal of culture as complete development of personality
persisted, educational philosophy attempted a reconciliation of the
two ideas. The reconciliation took the form of the conception of the
"organic" character of the state. The individual in his isolation is
nothing; only in and through an absorption of the aims and meaning of
organized institutions does he attain true personality. What appears to
be his subordination to political authority and the demand for sacrifice
of himself to the commands of his superiors is in reality but making his
own the objective reason manifested in the state--the only way in which
he can become truly rational. The notion of development which we have
seen to be characteristic of institutional idealism (as in the Hegelian
philosophy) was just such a deliberate effort to combine the two ideas
of complete realization of personality and thoroughgoing "disciplinary"
subordination to existing institutions. The extent of the transformation
of educational philosophy which occurred in Germany in the generation
occupied by the struggle against Napoleon for national independence,
may be gathered from Kant, who well expresses the earlier
individual-cosmopolitan ideal. In his treatise on Pedagogics, consisting
of lectures given in the later years of the eighteenth century, he
defines education as the process by which man becomes man. Mankind
begins its history submerged in nature--not as Man who is a creature of
reason, while nature furnishes only instinct and appetite. Nature
offers simply the germs which education is to develop and perfect. The
peculiarity of truly human life is that man has to create himself by his
own voluntary efforts; he has to make himself a truly moral, rational,
and free being.
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