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 confusion corresponds to the existing situation of human
intercourse. On the one hand, science, commerce, and art transcend
national boundaries. They are largely international in quality and
method. They involve interdependencies and cooperation among the peoples
inhabiting different countries. At the same time, the idea of national
sovereignty has never been as accentuated in politics as it is at the
present time. Each nation lives in a state of suppressed hostility and
incipient war with its neighbors. Each is supposed to be the supreme
judge of its own interests, and it is assumed as matter of course that
each has interests which are exclusively its own. To question this is
to question the very idea of national sovereignty which is assumed to
be basic to political practice and political science. This contradiction
(for it is nothing less) between the wider sphere of associated and
mutually helpful social life and the narrower sphere of exclusive and
hence potentially hostile pursuits and purposes, exacts of educational
theory a clearer conception of the meaning of "social" as a function
and test of education than has yet been attained. Is it possible for an
educational system to be conducted by a national state and yet the full
social ends of the educative process not be restricted, constrained, and
corrupted? Internally, the question has to face the tendencies, due to
present economic conditions, which split society into classes some
of which are made merely tools for the higher culture of others.
Externally, the question is concerned with the reconciliation of
national loyalty, of patriotism, with superior devotion to the things
which unite men in common ends, irrespective of national political
boundaries. Neither phase of the problem can be worked out by merely
negative means. It is not enough to see to it that education is not
actively used as an instrument to make easier the exploitation of one
class by another. School facilities must be secured of such amplitude
and efficiency as will in fact and not simply in name discount the
effects of economic inequalities, and secure to all the wards of the
nation equality of equipment for their future careers. Accomplishment
of this end demands not only adequate administrative provision of school
facilities, and such supplementation of family resources as will
enable youth to take advantage of them, but also such modification
of traditional ideals of culture, traditional subjects of study and
traditional methods of teaching and discipline as will retain all the
youth under educational influences until they are equipped to be masters
of their own economic and social careers. The ideal may seem remote
of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet
tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public
system of education. The same principle has application on the side of
the considerations which concern the relations of one nation to another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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