The comments made to my previous post, and particularly Jeff's, were well noted. In making him out to be a proponent of industrial education, I forgot the historical context, for Dewey was reacting to the excesses of industrial capitalism at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. I stand corrected on this point. However, I will not cease to label him an "instrumentalist." Dewey advocates the balance of the two factors in education: the psychological and the sociological. An education without the foundation of consideration for the individual psychology renders it a purely socially determined and defined task ("an inert and lifeless mass"). Education without a sociological reference is meaningless and without direction. Indeed, it is the social aspect that provides an end for education, that makes intelligible individual habits and emotions (art. 1).
The dichotomy between education for the present and education for the future is perhaps neat, but not a fully accurate one. Dewey cannot escape from his pure pragmatism. He cannot envision education outside of its socially utilitarian end. If "it is the business of the school to deepen and extend [the student's] sense of the values bound up in his home life," and if the unifying center of education is "the child's own social activities," then every intellectual pursuit at school is rendered important only in relation to its social usefulness (arts. 2, 3). Again, we ask the question, What makes the public school so necessary? What is its special task that makes it so very necessary as an institution outside of the home? If we are to put aside a priori principles and view education and the State's role in purely pragmatic terms, as I believe that Dewey does (or else show me where he ever invokes some grounding principle for education, outside of a utilitarian one), then, I think, it is perfectly reasonable to question the State's role in education based on this model. Who says that the State will do a better job than the family at teaching children moral and social values? Or is the State merely a stand-in for parents who haven't the time to embark on this task themselves? Perhaps Dewey the instrumentalist can become Dewey the empiricist (since that is all that is left to him as a pure pragmatist), and show us that public education on this model is indeed the most practical and utilitarian for society, if it can be empirically shown. History, I think, shows that this model lacked some essential elements.
I mentioned earlier that Dewey had perhaps established a misleading dichotomy between education for the present and education for the future. I present a third option: education for the mind. The grounding in this model would not be what is socially useful, but what is true. The traditional liberal arts model was not simply one that provided students with a wide range of subjects, but it was one that first gave students the tools of effective thinking through which students could master any discipline in the pursuit of truth, which ultimately provided a unifying principle for an entire education. In this model, then, we have transcended Dewey's dichotomy by giving education a loftier goal, which in turn would better the entire person via his mind. This is not to say that this education would be without reference to social reality or social values, or to the individual differences -- quite the contrary. The art of prudentially applying principles to the particular is central to a liberal arts model, for truth always has reference to reality. The individual is not lost in uniformity, but challenged for their own good as a person to better pursue that which they feel called to do.
I will not pretend that I have, in one short essay, somehow solved education's problems. I have probably only made them more confusing. I realize the numerous questions that arise surrounding truth, public education, and even surrounding what is good for the person. I happen to be writing my debate paper on standards and public education, and I am convinced that this debate ultimately comes down to a question of truth. Indeed, we cannot make any assertion with some reference to what is absolute. Even a statement such as, "literacy is culturally relative" (such as Langer made), is an absolute statement with implications for what is true and real. I hope, then, that I have at least proposed "food for thought" by offering what I believe is an often ignored alternative to the great educational debate that still roars on today.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Mike,
My name is Adam and I am a recent graduate of the MAC program (2007), now teaching social studies in a private school. I've enjoyed reading your thoughts so far.
Unfortunately, Dewey isn't alone in his inability to escape from his pure pragmatism. Even in my short teaching career I have run into many instances of administrators or fellow faculty quantifying innovative academic programs in terms of their "social usefulness." Or, even worse, whether or not colleges and universities will "look favorably upon such activities." It seems as though private institutions are plagued by this issue in just the same way as public schools.
Mike, thanks for a stimulating post....lots to think about here. I see the logic in your comments about Dewey's orientation to education, based on what we read, which is a good reminder to me that I probably need to expand the scope of our look at Dewey. My understanding of Dewey puts him, in many ways, quite far from the utilitarian perspective you attribute to him. Indeed, your posting was of significant enough import to me that I felt I needed to think things out with my mentor. Being the true scholar of Dewey's work that I am not, Fred Goodman suggested that, if you're interested in a further exploration of the question of whether Dewey was a utilitarian, that you might check out Dewey's "Art and Education." My conversation with Fred also led to him sharing a quote from a recent book by the contemporary philosopher, Sheldon Wolin, who also takes issue (in a sense) with Dewey (and perhaps with guys like me who stand next to computers and advocate for their educational utility). In his "Politics and Vision," Wolin writes that "The greater problem, however, lay in Dewey’s assumption that a union of democracy with a scientific-technological culture would be a marriage of compatibles. Was the scientific community, with its free exchange of ideas and information, a version of a democratic society – or was it that the concepts and language of modern science had so exceeded the common understanding as to be incomprehensible to the vast majority of citizens? By Dewey’s account, technology had prepared the way for liberal institutions by breaking down the barriers to communication of knowledge and spreading the consequences of action throughout the length and breadth of society. An alternative account might argue that the modern citizen eagerly adopted the latest technology without truly understanding it and hence remained dependent on those who did. (p. 517)"
I find this to be an intriguing caution against falling too much in love with the transformative power of new technology as a tool for building democracy...thanks to you, I have this to think about, and I'm grateful for the challenge to my own understanding.
Finally, I'd suggest that we might all be a little skeptical about the extent to which we can grasp and identify notions of truth with certainty. I think of the late Richard Rorty, who advised us that rather than seeking some ‘neutral ground’ of objectivity, we would perhaps be better served to recognize the power of our subjectivity. He suggested that truth is less in things than in our descriptions of things, and wrote that as words and deeds encounter one another, “a liberal society is one which is content to call ‘true’ whatever the upshot of such encounters turns out to be.” ("Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity", p. 52)
I look forward to further conversation, Mike...I really appreciate your thoughtful work.
Post a Comment